With regionals coming up, I wanted to try my list against some Rieekan fighters. The dilemma started early, with me having to decide on first or second player. My Imperial list appreciates going first more than second, but looking back I probably should have taken second player. I took first player against the following:

Rieekan on CR90A, Janina's Light

4x Hammerhead Torpedo w/ TF Organa, RLB, External Racks, Flight Commander

HWK290, Biggs, 3 X-Wing, 4 B-Wing

Precision Strike, Fleet Ambush, Superior Positions

I didn't want to give away easy points with Precision Strike or Superior Positions, so I chose Fleet Ambush (I probably should have gone for Precision Strike).

Deployment was as so:

The Hammerheads each have a B-Wing on board through the RLB. My Raider and Gozanti were set up in the ambush zone. My strategy was to swing them around with a hard right turn, and jump my ISD and Gladiator forward so everything was close together. The Raider with its flechette torpedoes is in the list to work with the Defenders to slow down enemy squadrons, but it's a bit out of place.

After the first turn, my ship placement is a bit messed up, I would prefer to have the Raider between the enemy squadrons and the ISD, but my deployment made that impossible. I'm hoping to use the ISD to kill 1 or 2 ships on my right, with the Gladiator hitting 1 or 2 on the left, with the support of the Raider.

At the end of turn two, we have a mess. The plan with the Gladiator is a hard turn to the right in the next turn to grab the two Hammerheads on my left after the Raider hopefully does something. The Hammerhead on the far left rammed the Raider, but I'm not worried too much since my Gozanti has Repair Crews. The ISD has a good shot at destroying the Hammerhead in front of it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get Rieekan (which was the original plan after seeing turn 1 ship movements). The squadron layout isn't horrible, the HWK-290 is only affecting one of my Defenders.

During turn 3, I lost the Raider and the Gozanti. The Raider was able to destroy the Hammerhead in front of it, but it Rieekan'ed, and if I remember correctly the Raider died in the ensuing return fire. The Gozanti died from the other Hammerhead on my left rolling 1 accuracy on its front arc external racks shot to lock down the scatter. The Hammerhead directly in front of my ISD was easily destroyed, and my jump to speed 3 with the ISD allowed it to maneuver over the ball of fighters in front of it without disturbing any of them. 1 Defender has gone down, but I'm doing steady damage to the X-Wings, pushing damage through even with Biggs passing it out like candy.

At the start of turn 4, I realized that I should have been shooting at the Hammerhead on my right with the two defenders in turn 3, because I have a close range shot at its rear with my ISD side arc (they weren't engaged at the time). Oh well. I take the shot and the Hammerhead is left with 1 damage I believe. I send the two Defenders after it to try and kill it, but need to roll 2 damage to get through the redirect token. I only roll 1 damage... The ISD is hurting, with 7 damage cards on it, so I'm just running it away from the horde of bombers. I spin the Gladiator around to try and take out at least 1 ship (since it's pretty much failed me the entire game).

Turn 5- maybe pointing the Gladiator at a mob of enemy bombers wasn't my smartest plan. I did take out a Hammerhead, but the points trade off wasn't worth it (curse you Rieekan). My Defenders are still going strong in the blob in the center however, so that's something.

End of the game. All of the X-Wings and the HWK-290 were destroyed. My ISD is still alive, just so far away that it's out of the shot. The B-Wings, one Hammerhead, and Janina's Light survived. The finally result was an Imperial victory with a 4 point MoV.

In retrospect, I should have either chosen a different objective (probably precision strike), or just gone for second player so I could still set up my ships in a way that they work together correctly. Being out of position from the start really made the battle difficult, and I was actually surprised I ended up with the victory after losing 3 of my ships. It was still fun, and gave me some ideas for going up against Rieekan with a big fighter blob.

Could you have blown up two Hammerheads first activation if you had deployed the ISD in the ambush?

No gunnery teams, and it's an ISD1. I do like that thought though. Put the ISD out there, rush the Raider and Gladiator up to support it quickly, probably would have worked well.

11 hours ago, emsgoof said:

since [the gladiator] pretty much failed me the entire game

Meaning it rolled poorly, or you couldn’t get it into position?

When I finally got it in position, it rolled extremely poorly.

23 hours ago, emsgoof said:

No gunnery teams, and it's an ISD1. I do like that thought though. Put the ISD out there, rush the Raider and Gladiator up to support it quickly, probably would have worked well.

Put the ISD and Glad out there. Gozanti and raider can catch up better imo.

I would drop the Glad as bait first, then the Gozanti in your zone, by then he has two drops down so you should see a good spot for your ISD. Just my two cents.

It's actually kind of a sneaky pick with Rieekan though. You need simultaniety against him and Fleet Ambush makes that hard.

.... 5 points EACH with RLB??? **** pass.

6 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

.... 5 points EACH with RLB??? **** pass.

Yeah, that was my thought...but I would like to see how it plays out on the table. Each turn after dropping off the B-Wing the HH does squadron? It could work, and I have been wanting to try weird ideas lately...

I fear the Flight Commanders are a bit much, though.

The idea for him was to shoot with the HH, maneuver at speed 1 or even ram, dump the B-Wing for another attack, and then attack again with it the following round. Not a bad concept to be honest. Look at what you’re putting out- 1 Red, 1 blue, 3 black (External Racks), CF command for another die of your choice, then ram, dump the B-Wing for a blue / black attack. That’s a lot of potential damage from a small ship.