IA Regional Report
January 27, 2018
Gautier, MS (USA)
MacNarb Gaming
Hey folks!
It’s been almost a week since my Regionals so I thought it was high time I brought my Regionals Report. I wanted to get this done sooner but it’s been a busy week for me with work so this is the first chance I’ve got! My memory is decently good on the tourney, and I also took some notes and I recorded a synopsis of my games on my drive home so that helped preserve information, but I still may have made a few mistakes here and there.
Before I jump in- shout outs to Roger for supporting our skirmish scene at MacNarb. He has been awesome with prize support, and we have been able to use old kits from years ago and get promos long gone (i got a winter 2015 medal for winning a winter 2017 tournament lol). Super generous and supportive. Also shoutout to Matt (one of our best local players) for doing a great job TO’ing and keeping the atmosphere friendly.
A tiny bit of my background leading up to my list and the game by game breakdown. I initially bought IA for my birthday in summer 2015 (my son was born just the day before, so maybe it’s another reason IA has a “special place in my heart” 
lol). I kept up with the competitive skirmish from a distance and observed the 4x4, trooper spies, and hunter metas since I was full time working and full time working on a master’s degree (etc) so I just didnt have time for a hobby game. Finally this past August (after graduating) I was able to go to my first tournament, and after that I fell down the rabbit hole of the forums and playing lots of games on VASSAL. My first tournament list was Gideon, C3PO, temp ally, BT1, Onar, IG88, Elite Weequays, and an Elite Jawa and I had a good time and won a store championship. Even though I was new to actually playing the game, observing some stuff beforehand did help me a little bit (though I’ve learned so much just by playing- practice practice practice- “repetition is the mother of all learning!”).
I debated a long time what to bring for Regionals. I was torn between Vader w/ sentries jets and reg riots (I had alot of success practicing with Vader so I felt good about him), IG88 merc list (I love him, but I kinda wanted to move on to something else), a merc droid splash list, or a Han Chewie Rebel list. I had very little practice with Han Chewie so I didn’t feel confident enough to bring it and I knew other people would so I didn’t want to many repeat lists. Even though I have played best with Vader I honestly wasn’t in the mood and I knew there would be other Vaders, and I just don’t have as much fun with him right now. And I knew there would be some IGs and just repeat Blaze of Glory gets old and tired (and occasionally feels unfair). I wasn’t as scared of Jedi Luke but he’s still a threat for sure.
I’ve really enjoyed playing with Elite Sentry Droids. They are quickly becoming one of my favorite units for various reasons. They aren’t perfect, but I love what they bring. I also heard people “dogging” on the Clawdites and saying they couldn’t win a Regionals. I played with an Elite Clawdite in different lists a good bit recently, and I’ve really enjoyed playing them. I felt like people saying they aren’t great was a challenge issued- so I said “Challenge accepted.”
I don’t own doubles of any expansions so it limits my list building, but I think I have what I need to be competitive. Also, I knew my local meta despised the Ugnaught swarm (why FFG, Why!) so I knew that only folks from out of town may bring it, but I knew I had to take a risk somewhere. I debated trading Greedo and 2 1 point cards for BT1, but I ended up going with this list:
Deployments (40 Points): Mercenary Faction
10 Elite Sentry Droids
7 Elite Weequay Pirates
3 Elite Jawa Scavenger
2 C3PO
6 Elite Clawdite Shapeshifter
1 Devious Scheme
1 Black Market
6 Onar
4 Greedo
Command Cards (15 cards, 15 points)
3 Assassinate
2 Call the Vanguard
2 Heightened Reflexes
2 Tools for the Job
2 Comm Disruption
1 Tough Luck
1 Primary Target
1 Negation
1 Intelligence Leak
O Officer’s Training
0 Celebration
0 Positioning Advantage
0 Element of Surprise
0 Planning
0 Take Initiative
Some general thoughts heading into the tourney: With Devious Scheme and the Clawdite I knew that I had a good chance of always having initiative round 2. I would usually have at least 5 cards by round 2 and sometimes 6, and one of those would likely be negation or comm disruption. I also had call the vanguard. The point is I knew I would likely be able to set up a safe, strong strike with either sentries/weequays/or onar at the beginning of round 2.
With on the lams everywhere and other things I thought intelligence leak would be a strong choice. The senator form of the clawdite can surge for recover 2, and if I could keep it back I knew I could get my health back from the strain damage of discarding high cost cards. With planning and officer’s training and black market I knew I had good card draw. I knew I wouldn’t try to kill Vader but always kill palp and a few jets and officers and then take objectives. Against chewie i would have to be flexible. Kill Han (weequays have a good chance of getting it done, and I was willing to risk losing one of them to take out Han and potentially pull of celebration thereby negating a 4 point loss). Pray IG doesn’t draw Blaze (lol) or hopefully intelligence leak it away. Focus Greedo most games and give him a damage power token (or a surge on Nal Hutta if you want to guarantee range with his +3range surge).
We have a growing skirmish scene in the New Orleans area and there is a group in Mobile, AL as well so I knew we could have decent turn out. Unfortunately about of our local group couldn’t make the tournament and some Mobile players didn’t come either. We still ended up with 10 people but we should have had closer to 20. We had players from Orlando, Atlanta, and Houston show up (some who have traveled all around and even played at Worlds), so thanks for being willing to drive so far guys! Regardless of my wish that we had more folks, here are some of the other lists:
2 Rebels (Han/Chewie/Jyn/Hera/3po/Gideon/smuggler/balance of force etc),
(el alliance rangers, el echoes, Han, c3po, gideon, smuggler, smuggler, balance)
3 Imperials (Vader/Palp/2xejets/2xofficers/zillo), (Vader/Palp/ejets/eriots/2xofficers = no zillo- yes he forgot to put in zillo :/)
(palpatine, terro, dewback, sentries, ejets, officer, zillo, i think)
5 Mercenary (IG88, Maul, weequays, rcp etc), (IG88, Vinto, etc. w/ stuff I I cant remember), (jabba, maul, ahsoka, weequays, etc), (bossk, onar, vinto, jabba, RCP, elite weequays), and (my list)
Without further ado, here’s the round by round!
Round 1: Nal Hutta Swamps (Raining Freight)
Used my store championship thing to get the free bye this round. 2 other byes were used, so 1 player got a free bye, meaning only 3 games were played. Since we had only 10 players we knew there would be 4 games then a cut to Top 4 and the final 2 games. This meant with 6 missions that we wouldn’t see this mission again all tourney, and I was relieved! Thankfully there were no Ugnaught lists so it wouldn’t have mattered that much for me anyways. The 3 games played were all super close and decided by 2-3 points. The Han/Chewie list had a tough situation where it was unclear whether time was called before or after the end of round effects had completed, it was ultimately ruled that they needed to play one more round. Had the game ended the Han/Chewie list would have won (he was playing for that to be last round), but with his figures exposed and an unanticipated last round he ended up losing. I felt bad for him because he potentially could have made top 4 had he won this game, and it was a demoralizing loss for him. It was awesome to see Maul vs Maul in a match. And Ahsoka did Ahsoka things. The guy running the Jabba/Maul/Ahsoka list was new but still did a good job I heard.
Result: BYE (Record 1-0)
Round 2: Mos Eisley Back Alleys (Concealed Treasures)
Opponent: “G” from Houston (Vader/Palp/2xejets, 2xofficers, Zillo)
I took the bottom right red zone with the sand since the crates (this is the one you pick up crates and take them back to the drop off point for 4 points) on my side are a little safer compared to the ones on the left. My starting hand was “negation, tough luck, and planning.” Planning early got me “comm disruption/ call the vanguard.” My end of round got me tools 4 job and officers training. He moved both ejets on the leftmost side to keep them safe and pick up a crate round 2. His Vader got in my face on the right side and the lane with the terminal by my zone. Palpatine he tucked close to my door by terminal, and this ended up being a big mistake. I was able to play call the vanguard and use a sentry with a focus and damage power token to put 6 damage on a jet trooper (saved by zillo i think). Then during the round 1 multi-fired to kill 2 officers and thus take away 2 activations. The Jawa was able to survive tempt and an attack thanks to a tough luck. The big play of the game then was the Jawa ran up to palpatine and played tools 4 the job and used the dmg token from Palp’s Tempt played officer’s training and ended up doing 8 damage to Palpatine. Then Onar ran up and finished him off with rush and a shot. I ran Greedo and a Weequay up the right side to grab crates (which they cashed in during round 3). I had a sizeable lead but Vader was able to kill a few folks, the jawa died, and then after the crates dropped off both figs were right next to Vader. Vader ended up taking the easy end of round to kill c3po but then he surprised me to play celebration. Thankfully I had enough of a lead it didn’t matter but it got scary for a moment. I ended up taking the win with an unused assassinate dormant in my hand.
Result: Win 29-24 (Record 2-0)
Round 3: Nal Hutta Swamps (Shielded)
Opponent: “The Zan Man” (Bossk/Onar/Vinto/RCP/Jabba/El. Weequays)
“Zan” is the son of the TO and a young player, and he actually made some good moves this game and has a ton of potential to only get better. With Devious I made him take the blue “pond” zone on the top of the map.
He ran Bossk up the left side to contest a shield and put Vinto and Onar on the right side to contest one (where my Greedo was). This was probably one of his mistakes as Onar didnt do much the rest of the game. His other mistake was moving Weequays up the lane that is to the left of the one with the impassible terrain “cliff” area and hiding them to the side. I think he was counting too much on his take initiative to work. I also had call the vanguard this game so I was able to seriously wound a weequay and then finish it off, killing a weequay and c3po with a multi-fire attack. The other highlights were Bossk dodging 4 TIMES (including rerolling into a dodge from a weequay which i had to tough luck away). Bossk did a ton of damage to Onar but thankfully I was able to run Onar away safe. I sacrificed weequays to contest the shield and keep Bossk busy from killing Onar. My Greedo dodged twice but Vinto and Onar finished him off. At the end of round 2 he just didnt have enough figures to contest objectives with the slug sitting fat doing nothing, and after that the writing was on the wall. If he hadn’t played his weequays recklessly and put Onar out of play this match would have been much closer. I’m excited to see Zan get better and better as time goes by (he’s already almost winning Destiny tournaments!).
Result: Win 40-16 (Record 3-0)
Round 4: Mos Eisley Back Alleys (The 2 points controlling a crate mission)
Opponent: @Mrshojen (Han/ERangers/EEcho Base/ 2xsmuggler/Gideon/C3po/bal.)
At this point I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew I had a good chance of making top 4, and my opponent was the only other 3-0 left. I debated conceding the game to keep my cards secret but told myself I came there to have fun and play IA so I decided to go ahead and play on.
I took the bottom right zone again (the red sandy one) as I was just getting comfortable there and a few of the boxes are a little safer.
We don’t have any Rebel players in my local area so I don’t have a ton of experience against Rangers (even after many many games on Vassal I’ve only faced them maybe 3-4 times) but I know they are capable of great ranger and damage output. I was terrified of them moving in on me end of round. I think this game I didn’t draw negation or comm disruption opening hand so that also made me nervous. He overextended one Echo Base Trooper towards the middle by the door near his terminal and opened it. My first Sentry moved up and got some damage in then moved back to safety. I told myself I shouldn’t take risky shots this time but I played reckless and moved a Sentry Droid up to take a shot to try and finish the Echo. I rerolled and he tough lucked it so i didn’t make range, and now my Sentry was exposed. At the edge of the horizontal middle lane right next to my deployment zone. I must say my Sentries rolled poooooor on defense all day (every single roll was a single block), but regardless, he did the smart thing and he moved up rangers and 2 ones killed the sentry pretty quick. He moved his Han in the middle to contest the middle boxes and I moved my Greedo next to him to contest them. Han ended up killing Greedo and Greedo parting shot for 6-7 damage. A weequay was able to move up and kill Han outright with no Return Fire. At this point I made a big mistake. I wasn’t paying attention to the timer, and at this point the game had somewhere around 5-10 minutes left, meaning we were certainly playing our last round with all the activations still remaining. I had my Onar up the right top corner of the map (with red deployment bottom right) close to an Echo Base that wasn’t activated and a Ranger with full health but that had already activated. Onar was focused and had a damage power token on him so I knew there was a chance to 1 shot the Echo Base. I ended up going for the Echo Trooper and put 7 damage on him which would have been exactly enough to kill him. Onar had plenty of health so he wasn’t going to die that round. Had I been paying attention to time I would have certainly gone for the Ranger as the 4 points would have been crucial, instead I left an Echo with 1 health to scurry away. Time ended up being called that round and I lost it. Had I killed the Ranger we would have had a tiebreaker, and I would have won based on having more kill points. Either way, he played it perfectly and it was a well deserved win.
Result: Loss 21-25 (Record 3-1)
TOP 4 CUT
So I felt a huge sigh of relief knowing that despite a few sloppy choices in my last game I was still in 2nd place and secure in the top 4, but that was a short sigh knowing my opponents would be tough. The gentlemen I faced in Rounds 2 and 4 both made the cut, as well as Jeremiah, a newer player in the NOLA area who ran a Vader/ejet/eriot/palp/2xofficer list and accidentally added up his points wrong and thought he had 40 and therefore forgot to include zillo! Major props to him for making it so far without zillo. He played the riots well on Nal Hutta too! I’m definitely not looking forward to losing to him in the near future (lol)! We had an hour dinner break before our top 4 games, so I ran to Wendy’s and had a delicious salad
TOP 4 Match (Re-match)
Jabba’s Palace: Spoils of Crime (The 2 points per crate you carry mission)
Opponent: “G” from Houston (Vader/Palp/x2ejets,x2officers)
I’ll say up front this is one of the weirdest games of IA I have ever played. I took the red zone with the stairs by the terminal (I guess I have a thing for red zones since I took that one every time lol). After he deployed his figures I set up my weequays and sentries so that I could get shots from either the throne room or the middle hallway on Round 1 or decimate stuff on round 2. I can’t remember if I had negation or comm disruption but it was one of them so I felt safe against Take Initiative, and maybe he was fearful of that as well because he played very conservatively. The 1st round ended up being a cat-and-mouse sort of thing. We both took a bit of time to move our figures. I moved my figures more to the right and eventually into the throne room. I threw Greedo down the pit to get crates on Round 2. He ended up keeping the jets on the left side of the middle hallway close to the rancor pit door, along with Vader and Palp (he took a crate with Palp round 2). I took advantage of the distance to pick up a few crates in the throne room area with a weequay and the jawa to start netting points. Vader was out of force choke range Round 1.
Round 2 he tried to Take Initiative but I stopped it. Round 2 he ended up opening the pit, I was able to use Onar to kill off a few ejets from one group and another one was seriously hurt as well. Greedo hid in the back corner of the pit and Vader followed him. Even with primary target Greedo only did like 3-4 damage to Vader, but I knew I wasn’t going to kill Vader so I didnt’ care. I think this was his big mistake of the match as Vader did very little this game and ended up just killing Greedo and picking up a crate. I think he as afraid of my firepower since the claw sat back and dished out tokens while the 3po handed out focuses so all my figures were powerful and rolling at least 3 dice plus my hunter cards. The big play to win the game for me was playing intelligence leak and getting rid of his celebration (yes he had grenadier and negation in his hand but I felt like in this sort of match Celebration could win or lose the game). He grenadiered C3po to kill him. At this point end of round 2 we were tied on points 16-16. I used Black Market at the end of round and flipped over Tough Luck and claimed it as a victory point to eek out the win. At the moment we didn’t think about who would have won the tiebreaker so my opponent wasn’t too thrilled, but since I had killed 2 ejets (8 points) and he had only killed Greedo and C3PO (6 points) I would have won the tiebreaker even if I hadn’t drawn a 1-3 cost card with Black Market.
Result: 17-16 Win (Record 4-1)
FINAL MATCH
I was thrilled to be in the Finals, and even more thrilled to be refacing my opponent from Round 4 who I had lost to earlier thanks to the whole Ranger fiasco. He is a good sport and one of the friendliest, good-spirited opponents I have ever faced. And he is crazy for driving from Orlando with his daughter all night before the tourney! Nonetheless, he played without any signs of fatigue and it was a tough match.
Finals: Jabba’s Palace (New Ownership- 4 pts for controlling a stash mission)
Opponent: @Mrshojen (Han/ERangers/EEcho/2xsmuggler/Gideon/c3po/balance force)
Once again I took the red zone with the stairs which was a bigger deal this time since the Rangers fair better from that side. He opened his door early but I waited till the end of the round to open it and move my jawa to contest the stash in the Rancor Pit. I felt like I would get a good point swing from this since the jawa could kill a smuggler easily (if no dodge) without itself dying and then claim more points. A focused Greedo w/ a damager power token popped out to shoot an Echo base trooper on the throne stash. The echo made range blue green to do 1 damage and greedo shot back 3-4 and bleeded the echo, then ran to contest the stash. Han ran to the middle stash and shot Onar end of Round. I couldn't decide whether to let Onar die and get off a shot or double move him to safety. I decided to shoot. Onar got off 1 attack beginning of round 2 but then died from a smuggler attack (he had 1 health left). Han moved towards Greedo and the deployment zone. I forgot to mention he had moved a Ranger right up to my door end of round 1 and just sat him there but I ignored him.
I moved all my weequays/sentries/claw in hiding in the area by the terminal and stairs and below that so they could pop out to take shots in the throne room and run back to safety. I ended up using a Sentry to move in the middle hallway and multifire to take out a Ranger with 1 health and a smuggler in one shot. The big play for me was playing Intelligence Leak. He had “on the lam” and “negation” in his hand. I had negation in my hand but not comm disrupt, and i also had take initiative. So I was torn on this one. I ended up thinking that on the lam was more valuable since I wanted to take out Han in one activation. A focused weequay was able to move out and shoot for 6 damage, and he decided to save his return fire shot. My other weequay moved out and played primary target and then was able to assassinate to do enough damage to kill Han, then I celebrated it for 4 more points. I drew comm disruption and was able to stop negation and take initiative but I think that happened the round that Han died and that's why he couldn't stop Celebration, but I'm not sure. Greedo double moved had to contest the middle stash so I tapped him with TA but Gideon ran up and shot him with no line of sight so no parting shot for Greedo that round anyways. Greedo rolled a dodge this game and survived an echo base and Han shot (Han only did like 3 damage on one end of round attack), so he definitely put in good work. If he had moved 3po to take the middle stash the game could have gone 1 round longer, but the writing was basically on the wall at this point either way. I had 2 sentries, 2 weequays, and my claw all damaged with 2-4 damage taken on each but none died. He surprised me with a grenade from a Ranger to do some of that damage but it wasn’t enough (i forgot he had echo troopers so i didnt expect it in his list).
Result: Win 40-14 (Record 5-1 and Regionals Champion)
I had a great time at our Regionals. Thanks again to everyone who made this possible and to all the players who came! A few thoughts on my list as a whole:
I really loved having so many strong lower cost figures. Onar was a beast every game except my last one honestly. Greedo is always a good choice (GIA) and if you can get off a random dodge he can be absurdly annoying. He’s great for shooting at Vader and Palp, or even an ejet or officer so he’s strong against that list (also because it is very hard for imperials to mitigate dodges). He's still worth trying to keep around though so don't just throw him out there and assume he's got back his value from one parting shot.
I loved the Weequay/Sentry combos as they bring different things to the table. Sentries are so good if you can pull off multi-fire. Sometimes they can make like 10 range but other times they flop. I rolled lots of Green dice with “1 range 1 surge” so that was frustrating, but the multifires offset their bad 1 shot rolls I had this day. 8 health is robust but still 1 shotable by some Hunters and Vader. The Clawdites are underrated. They do have low health so you have to be careful. I find that it is tempting to run them in as Streetrats because you want the unmitigated damage from assassin’s blade but often that isn’t the best choice. In my Finals match I could have run it to the middle to contest an objective but gave up 4 points just so I could keep it safe, and I think that was a good call. Their access to spy cards is very strong and won me a few of the games. Priority Target is very powerful, and honestly I forgot to use it all day. You have to be so careful to make sure you switch forms though, and maybe ⅓ times I would forgot to do it and shoot myself in the foot later for missed opportunities. I actually think the regular version can still be awesome if you use it 2 rounds to buff other characters and play spy cards while sitting on a terminal, but I need to practice with it.
One of the weaknesses my list also has is lack of movement. I took the risk of using no movement cards (Opportunistic, Urgency) so I could fit in officer’s training (sometimes the reroll with no card draw was worth it) and celebration (half of my games i used it, the other half it was a dud card). I sometimes wanted the movement pretty badly, as without Gideon I had absolutely no extra movement. The other major weakness is that all of my figures can potentially be 1 shoted with the exception of Onar (in highly rare cases), so you have to play very carefully and know when to take risks. If you want to be good with the Clawdite you need to practice it alot, but the payoff is incredible. Some matches it rolled incredible on Conspire, others it rolled nothing. Overall it evens out, and the spy cards are so good they make up for a few missed tokens.
I really enjoyed this list. I do think I was lucky to not face IG/Chewie lists as without Intelligence Leak those lists are bonkers scary for this list. You have to contest objectives with this list, but I still found myself getting more kill points that my opponents so it definitely has firepower. 4 characters with rerolls is strong, as is 4 solid 4 dice characters. All in all it’s a great list, but not perfect. I’m just happy to get the Clawdite a Regionals Trophy. Now on to trying out Wookie Warriors...
