So after trying out Mon Strosity (D+5) at the MS regional, and some minor tuning, I took it for another run at the Indy regional. Let me start by saying that it was a great event, well hosted, and at a great store. In the following AAR, I do some things that are going to sound kind of...mean spirited. In any tournament above store championships, I play by the rules and I play to win. A great many times I have expressed my dislike of some of the more debatable mechanics of Armada: large bids, flotilla spam, and activation spam. At the end of the day, the only way to get these mechanics looked at is to exploit them. So rather than take the high road, I do things like play fleets with 40 point bids, stacks of flotillas, ramming, etc. I didn't like my fleet any more than the people that I was playing, but it was the best chance to win. Anyways, here was the fleet:
Mon Strosity
Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 384/400
Commander: Admiral Ackbar
Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Sensor Net
[ flagship ] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 points)
- Admiral Ackbar ( 38 points)
- Defiance ( 5 points)
- Lando Calrissian ( 4 points)
- Engine Techs ( 8 points)
- Advanced Projectors ( 6 points)
- Reinforced Blast Doors ( 5 points)
- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
- Leading Shots ( 4 points)
= 190 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Bright Hope ( 2 points)
- Jamming Field ( 2 points)
= 22 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Repair Crews ( 4 points)
= 22 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Repair Crews ( 4 points)
= 22 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 20 total ship cost
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)
= 18 total ship cost
1 Jan Ors ( 19 points)
3 VCX-100 Freighters ( 45 points)
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points)
= 90 total squadron cost
The field ended up being 38 people or so. I passed on taking a bye for two reasons, one: to maybe get more points, two: to not get matched against a store champ in round two.
If I have mixed of any of the matchups, let me know. Doing my best to match off fleet composition because I am horrible with names. NOTE: Two of the fleets outbid me and chose to go first, the other two I picked second. I think round 4 and one other round had me outbid?
Round 1 - Nick C
This matchup started with me relating how the LMC80 is my voted "most likely to run off the table". I went second, and he chose firing lanes. His setup was excellent, but he was in a hurry to prevent too many points from firing lanes. He set up to block the Mon Strosity with his hammerheads while his MC30 and LMC80 chased behind. I have no idea if I could have dodged the blocks because his LMC80 caught its corner off the board while turning to chase and was destroyed. After that, two of his hammerheads went down after all of them launched all their black dice at the Mon Strosity. His last chance to salvage was if the MC30 could roll almost perfect and kill the Mon Strosity. Unfortunately, his rolls were not good enough and the MC30 went down. Total MOV was well over 400 in my favor.
Round 2 – Nick G
This fleet was two ISD1 with a set of mostly antisquad screen. He picked my Adv gunnery, with his non-flagship and the Mon Strosity as the objective ships. Nick had a plan to swing by, pick off the points he could, and then run. His objective ship ended up taking a round of shots to the back and dying. I then used a flotilla to block the Mon Strosity in place, as well as one to block his flagship. Due to no accuracy on a short-range shot, my block on his flagship was successful, and it died in the next couple rounds. Total MOV well over 400 in my favor.
Round 3 – Alexander B
Alex picked my sensor net and lost in deployment. The two objective token sets were at opposite corners. I had deployment advantage, all my squads and flotillas were in my corner, and all his ships were in his corner. I then deployed the Mon Strosity to prevent him from running his corvettes to harass my transports. He tried to kill the Mon Strosity and lost both corvettes and a transport? Meanwhile, the transports and the VCXs farmed around three tokens a turn at speed zero, since nothing was threatening them. When the Mon Strosity lost most of its shields, I ran it out of range. Total MOV over 400 in my favor.
Round 4 – Jerry S
At this point, I had enough of a lead that all I needed was 6 points and I couldn’t lose, even less with a decent split at the second and third tables. Jerry had me outbid, however, he couldn’t afford to let me pick the firing lanes out of his objective list, so he gave me second and picked Adv Gunnery. He set up a conga line to sweep across the front of the Mon Strosity. A flotilla block on the leading AF prevented it from boxing the Mon Strosity and forced it to either slow down and take the barrage or speed up and take the barrage. After losing the ship, Jerry chose to cut his losses and run. An unfortunate dice counting error on the last barrage of the game prevented the death of another AF. Total MOV was a bit below 100 in my favor, I think.
The fleet did what it was designed to do in its matchups. I didn’t run into any of the scenarios where I needed to take first player, which helped considerably. I could go into more construction and thoughts on strategy, but judging by threads, I think half the forums wants me burnt at the stake for playing it, and the other half has declared the first half idiots for not being able to beat it 
Happy Monday everyone.
PS: Once again, thanks to @CaribbeanNinja, @Jahangeer358 for the matches and advice after they beat me at MS. Also @Brikhause because @Jahangeer358 shamelessly steals his fleets.
Edited by AdmiralYor
