Well after a couple months of pretty decent prep, Denver Regional has finally come and gone. This was The Durandal Initiative's first participation in an official organized Armada tournament and I have to say it was more fun than I imagined. @durandal343 and I had a fantastic time. We met some great people, played a ton of Armada and to top it off we finished 1st and 4th out of a field of 23. @durandal343 needed to pop 1 transport in the final round of his last match to complete the tabling that would have landed him 2nd in the standings but just couldn't get the dice to give him the accuracy he needed. All in all it was a great weekend.

While we'll be posting a full video covering our trip and our experience in the tournament later I wanted to write up a batrep of my matches while they were fresh in my mind. I've never been that great at typing these batreps up (I'm way too long winded for my own good) but I'll give this my best and hope I don't bore people.

First my list, those of you that have watched our Regional Prep videos know I've been working on an ISD/Quasar Sloan build for a couple months. While it went through a lot of iterations I finally landed on a 3 activation fleet that when laid out on the table looks fairly innocuous but can punch with the best of them. So the list:

ISD Kuat Refit , fully loaded with with Gov Pryce , Leading Shots , Avenger , Darth Vader Boarding Party , External Racks and ECMs .

Next is Admiral Sloan's chariot in the sky, the Quasar Fire I sporting fire red pin stripes, Boosted Comms , Flight Controllers , and Capt . Brunson .

And in support a lone Gozanti Cruiser with Comms Net .

The squads or as I like to call them "Sloan Herpes": Howl Runner, Mauler Mithel, Valen Rudor, Cienna Ree, Saber Squadron , a Red Shirt TIE Fighter and the bros (fist bump blow it up) Maarek Stele and Col. Jendon .

Total fleet point: 381

My first opponent was (please forgive me if I get any names wrong I'm absolutely awful with names) Andrew. He brought an Cracken MC75 Ordanance with various upgrades I can't quite remember, an AFII with Flight Controllers and Boosted Comms and 2 GR75 transports that I believe both had Comms Net and one was Bright Hope . He had a pretty decent Biggs ball for a squadron presences, Biggs , 4 X-wings , a Y-wing (Nora?) and Jan Ors . I had him out bid so chose 1st player which appeared to come as some surprise and I was told throughout the tournament that the local meta there hardly ever saw first player bids of more than 11 or 12. I chose his Fighter Ambush objective over Precision Strike and Superior Positions.

Deployment ended up looking something like this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3xzO4OLDV6jOWAi82 . I made my first mistake of the day deploying my transport too far from my ISD to comms net a token over to it which lead to disaster later. I deployed my ISD at speed 3 across from his MC75 and set Pryce for turn 2 looking for the big hit on his MC75 turn 3.

Turn 1 we each proceed to move forward. I re-positioned my squads to make an alpha strike on his bomber ball on turn 2 to prevent them from getting into my ISD. Since I was badly out activated (now that I think about it I think he had Strategic Adviser on the MC75) I was forced to move my ISD before he had activated anything but a GR75. Since I couldn't get a squad token from my transport (for Vader later) my ISD banked a squad token instead of the usual nav token (queue ominous foreshadowing music) and went straight ahead speed 3. This let him respond to my first aggressive move with my ISD by moving his MC75 out wide to my right flank at speed 3. I was very much hoping for him to turn into the interior of the map but I think he saw the major danger there and wisely chose to go wide. I knew then I was going to have a very tough decision to make at the end of turn 2.

Unfortunately, I did not get a picture at the top of turn 2. Going first I activated my Quasar and threw everything I could at Biggs. He countered with a squadron activation from a transport I believe and then my transport relayed a squadron command to 2 more squads to final finish off Biggs. It took 6 full squad attacks to kill that jerk but he finally went down in 1 turn of shooting. Since I had Pryce my opponent was forced to move the rest of his fleet. He brought his AFII forward and continued to move his MC75 wide around my right flank at speed 3. This was what I had feared. https://photos.app.goo.gl/jRQ8UCWCeo0NGcC82

We were now playing very close to the right edge of the map and my ISD was going speed 3. I did have a nav command queued up but I knew that if I wanted to get into close range of that MC75 I was going to have to make a hard right turn at speed 3 which would pretty much guarantee that I would end up flying off the map at some point in a later round. But I also knew that if I chose to fly into the middle of the engagement after his AFII he'd be bombing and broadsiding with 2 Ackbar ships for 2 turns and I'd prob loose the ISD anyway. So I committed to ending the MC75 and probably signed the death certificate to the ISD as well. End of Turn 2, top of turn 3: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hEqZg2aMmGOGRiYw1

Turn 3 I had one hope. That I could get the MC75 just close to death and then ram him to keep my ISD in place so that my following 2 dials (all nav commands) would allow me to turn the ship safely away from certain doom at the edge of known space. I started turn 3 activating the ISD which had a squadron command. First I spent my banked squad token to pop Vader onto the MC75 and remove the ECM upgrade. I then used my squadron dial to activate the dreaded Maarek/Jendon double tap. Then it was the ISDs turn. I got wrapped up in the moment and didn't even bother to count damage. Just rolled, popped External Racks and rolled some more. I think I ended up with 14 damage or something unholy like that. Poof went the MC75 and any hope I had of keeping the ISD on the board. After that it was a speed 3 turn in towards the middle of the map but we could both see the writing on the wall. That ISD was not long for this match.

And unfortunately, I failed to take any more pictures of this match. I kept my transport and Quasar far enough away from the engagement while my fighters mopped up his squads. Turn 5, I believe my ISD went off the map giving him 141 points and making it a really close game. What ended up making the difference was that my remaining squads were finally able to finish up the Biggs ball and got a couple damage cards onto his trailing GR75. They weren't able to kill it but the damage cards gave me 2 VP worth 15 each. At the end my MOV was 63. Enough to get me a 7-4 Win.

And this concludes this portion of the write up. As I feared I'm too much of a gas bag to complete all this in one night. It's pushing midnight and I've got things that need doing... like my head hitting a pillow. I'll try to get the last 2 matches posted tomorrow night so until then, "stay on target!"

Looking forward to the rest of it! I wish I'd thought to take some pictures - this was my first placement that might warrant a decent recap.

Woah... ok. So Easter weekend happened. While I'm not particularly religious it did mean an impromptu drip to Greeley, CO to visit Grandpa with the kids. That being said, my apologies for the late follow up on these batreps.

My second match of the tournament was against a really cool guy who traveled up to Denver with a buddy from New Mexico. His name (again sorry if I get this wrong) was Josh. Josh was a really great guy to play against. He brought a fleet like I had never faced before. A fleet that was quite intimidating for it's ability to both dish out damage and tank back more damage than I was confident I could deal. His tanky build looked something like this:

ISD Kuat: Avenger, Boarding Troopers, External Racks, Leading Shots, Reinforced Blast Doors and Strategic Adviser

Interdictor : Motti, Targetting Scramblers, Grav Well Proj, Interdictor Title, Taskmaster Grint, Projection Experts and D-caps

Gozanti : Repair Crews, Supressor

Gozanti : Comms Net

TIE Fighters x 4, TIE Int x 2

I think it turned out that he and I had the highest bids to go first in the tournament. I believe he was at 386 and was pretty surprised that I had him out bid at 381. I chose first and picked his Contested Outpost. @durandal343 and I had probably played that objective the most leading up to Regionals so I felt pretty comfortable with it. After obstacles were placed he set the outpost on the left half of the play area and then placed his grav well token directly across from it in my deployment area. This created a huge bubble right across from the engagement area that I really didn't want to place my ISD. To start deployment I placed my transport right on the grav well token facing away from where all the fighting would be. I figured he'd be happy sitting there until he was threatened enough that I needed to get him moving. After squads were placed I measured 3 away from the grav well token to the right and placed my Quasar pointed at the transport and then after he placed his Interdictor to the left of the station I lined up my ISD on it after being sure I was 3 away from the grav well token. Again, I set the ISD to speed 3 and Pryce for round 2.. Final deployment looked like so: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7KstdhZnFvEwzUeC2 (for some reason I took this picture from his side of the table).

Turn 1 I activated my transport and comms net a squad token over to the ISD to prep Vader's Boarding Party. Josh then used Strat Adviser so I obliged by activating my Quasar, banked a nav token and moved it to pass my transport. He then moved a Transport of his own and I banked a nav token and moved straight with my ISD speed 3. After that it was all him. He moved his Interdictor towards the front of my ISD at speed 2 and to my surprise kept his ISD Kuat at speed 3 and moved up next to his Interdictor. Squad phase I re-positioned my fighters slightly so they were all in Boosted Comms range of my Quasar and he moved his squads to keeping them tight against the front of his Capital ships. End of turn one: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3NTP3WKqL1TrwO9y1

Turn 2 Pryce kicked in so I kicked things off with the Quasar. Activating my now standard alpha strike of Howl runner, red shirt TIE, Cienna then Mauler to finish of whatever was wounded. He then activated a transport pushing 2 squads. I then activated my own transport also pushing 2 squads to finish of a couple more of his fighter screen. I think at this point he was down to less than half his original fighter compliment. And now is when Josh made the mistake that I think sealed the match for me. Later he remarked that he'd never practiced flying that particular fleet going 2nd and it really threw him. I can very much relate as I've done the same thing many times. Here he got super aggressive and activated his ISD which was at long range, tossed 3 red die at my ISD then moved up next to my ISD at speed 3 in. He set himself up a nice double arc shot on my ISD had he been going first but there were 3 problems with that maneuver. 1st was that he had doubled arced his own ISD against mine and I had yet to activate. 2nd was that I was going first the following rounds which meant I was going to get 2 rounds of double arc shooting into his ISD before he'd be able to activate again. And finally, it limited his ability to move his Interdictor where he wanted it. The only place it fit was on an asteroid, right in front of my ISD. From here things got ugly fast. I activated my ISD, figuring I couldn't kill a Motti ISD in 1 turn of shooting I popped Vader and took out the Reinforced Blast Doors on the ISD. I then rolled my side arc, popped External Racks then rolled out the front arc. I then used my nav dial and nav token to drop to speed 1 and swing my nose slightly in towards his ISD. End of Turn 2: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ocvlpCodyZ8W3J5k2

Turn 3 went as advertised, I activated my ISD, which used a squad command to attack with Mareek/Jendon flipping his brace, another 2 full arcs of fire took down his ISD. I then moved my ISD forward blocking his Interdictor on the asteroid. By the end of the round I believe I had eliminated the last of the enemy squads and his Interdictor fired and moved, rammed my ISD and then landed back on the asteroid. Despite all the spammed engineering commands I think we both saw that the Interdictor wasn't going to be able to take that kind of abuse for long. End of Turn 3: https://photos.app.goo.gl/E3OhPfGatEIfgdAi2

Turn 4 Quasar activated squads to start stripping defense tokens from the Interdictor and then after the Interdictor activated and landed back on the rock the ISD went and finished it off. End of turn 4: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rbVqx7cWoItwM80j1

At this point I forgot to keep taking pics.

Turn 5 I was able to take out 1 transport with squads and shooting from the ISD as well as close range to the station now for VPs.

Turn 6 Mareek/Jendon was able to take out the remaining Transport.

Final score: I believe he got 4 rounds of station points (80) plus he killed the Red Shirt TIE (8). I took the full 400 for tabling plus 40 points for the objective for a 10-1 victory.

After the match Josh and I spoke a bit, I think he had a really compelling fleet build that I actually liked a lot. Having to go 2nd with it definitely threw him a bit I think as well as not having practiced with the objectives he brought going 2nd. With Contested Outpost he really had no need to rush out so aggressively to meet me but it can be a tough flip to go from 1st player aggressive to 2nd player bait and trap mentality between one match and another. I can definitely attest to that. I've been wrecked more times then I care to admit because I was unable to do the mental gymnastics necessary when suddenly faced with going 2nd unexpectedly.

Anyways, that was it for match 2. It put me at 17 points which was tied for top of the board with another player who I would face next. But it was a tight field. I believe behind us was another player with 16 points and a couple with 15 so it meant that at the final table myself or my opponent needed a decisive victory to stay on top. I'll do my best to get the last write up done within the next day or so. Until then.... "stay on target."

Ok, so this has taken much longer to get to then anticipated. Not sure anyone cares anymore with the new FAQ out and all the excitement around FFG swinging the nerf bat like a blindfolded kid at a piñata party but I'm going to finish this batrep even if it kills me. So, without further ado, I present to you Denver Regional Match 3 .

My 3rd and final match of the day was against a very nice guy by the name of.... Alex? Gavin? JACOB! Again, apologies for names. I'm the worst. From here on I'll call him Gavin Jacob as I did not see an Alex on the final standings list. Jacob brought a quasi-fish farm fleet minus the flotilla spam. To the best of my recollection his fleet was:

MC80 with Ackbar , Defiance, Electronic Counter Measures, Early Warning Systems, Quad Battery Turrets, Strategic Adviser, Leading Shots? and god knows what else I forgot?

Neb-B with Yavaris, Flight Controlers?

GR75 with Comms Net?

3 x VCX, Scurg Bomber, Wedge, Biggs, 2 x Y-wing

Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep, Advanced Gunnery

When it came time to pick from his objectives I was faced with a conundrum. Several months ago, I was schooled very thoroughly by Mack Dalla Lana on TTS with a straight up Objective Farming fleet. Mack was a super nice guy but definitely had me out classed when it came to competitive play. He’s got a great podcast (found here https://soundcloud.com/activation-advantage ) and was recently featured in the top 4 at the Canadian Nationals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkkPwDQXGQ

In our match I had picked Fire Lanes. Oh, how new and unspoiled I was before that game. (For those interested in watching the shellacking that Mack gave me here’s the link: https://youtu.be/vUUfvIuwxfg ).

Now at Denver Regionals I knew the crazy amount of points that can be racked up by those fleets. In hind sight I probably should have picked Intel Sweep and just spotted Jacob the 75 points but at the time Advanced Gunnery seemed the lesser of all those evils. And so, I gave his fully kitted out Death Pickle the ability to shoot me twice from the same arc every round. I would not recommend doing this and I mostly likely won’t be repeating it in the future. He obviously chose his MC80 as his objective ship and I chose my ISD.

At this point in the day I was so focused on trying to play well that I unfortunately didn’t remember to take many pictures of this match. Deployment was pretty standard. I placed my transport dead center of the deployment zone pointed parallel to the play area going to my right. He then deployed his transport facing straight at mine right across from me. I then proceeded to drop all my squads 2 at a time and so did he. I then deployed my Quasar to the right of the Gozanti facing left going speed 3. He then surprised me by placing the Yavaris out on my far-left flank positioned so it faced in towards the center of the map slightly. This was the tricky part. I knew that no matter which side of my Gozanti I deployed my ISD he would respond by placing his MC80 parallel to it across the table forcing me to fly right at it’s side arc while moving away from me. This would mean taking a ton of heavy fire on the approach and it would also make timing Gov Pryce’ ability a challenge. What I decided to do was place my ISD going speed 3 on my left flank thinking that if I didn’t like my chances against the Death Pickle I could make a faint towards it then turn hard left and take out the Yavaris and fly the ISD to safety taking out as many squads as I could before the match ended. He then deployed the Defiance directly across from my ISD flying towards the right side of the map.

End of Deployment Mine: https://photos.app.goo.gl/is80ld2dvUvVIjya2

End of Deployment His: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XaFmnn3rHhqJbChp2

I waffled back and forth for quite some time when setting Pryce here. If I wanted to commit to taking out the MC80 I figured turn 3 would be my best option. But there were a lot of ways that could go wrong for me not the least of which would be if he turned his MC80 in towards me aggressively I feared the ISD would be caught hanging out there turn 3 while his whole fleet peppered it with turbo lasers. I ended up setting Pryce for turn 2 once again. Cowardice? Maybe. Probably. But I prefer to think of it as well thought out caution.

Anyway, turn 1 began as they usually do, my Gozanti activated and sent a squad token over to the ISD. Gavin popped Strategic Adviser, so I then activated the Quasar banking a nav token and moving forward to pass the Gozanit. Jacob then activated his transport and moved it straight forward towards the middle of the map. I activated the ISD, banked a nav token and moved ahead and 1 end click towards the MC80 at speed 3. Jacob then sent the Yavaris forward towards this MC80 and sent the MC80 forwards speed 2 slightly turning in towards the middle of the table. We then spent the squadron phase repositioning our fighters for action the following turn.

No picture of Turn 1 unfortunately. ☹

Turn 2 Pryce kicked in so I activated the Gozanti. Jacob had kept his fighter screen nice and tight in towards his MC80 and they were far enough away that if I sent out my fighters to attack them now they’d all be out of native range of the Quasar the next turn limiting me to 4 squad activations the following turn, so I chose to wait. I banked a squad token with the transport and he continued on his merry way. Gavin then activated his transport and moved it forward again into the middle. This actually moved his transport away form his fighter screen leaving it exposed and close enough to start working on. I then activated my Quasar and sent four squads at the transport. They stripped the transport of its scatter and of 1 shield on the close side hull zone. Gavin then activated Yavaris who took a long range shot at the front of my ISD doing minimal damage and moved forward putting the vulnerable Yavaris side in long range of the front arc of my ISD. Gavin then moved his MC80 which I believe was still outside of long range of the ISD and continued a slow turn inside. My ISD activated taking a nav command. Fired 3 long range reds at Yavaris, dropped to speed 2 and moved up to Yavaris close range. With squadron commands queued up on all my ships for turn 3 I spent the squadron phase ensuring that all my squads were well within range to be activated. Jacob actually used the squadron phase to pull his squads back behind the MC80 which left his transport out front of his formation with no fighter screen.

Again, no picture of end of Turn 2 (bad SgtDurandal!). ☹

Turn 3 is were the match swung my way but not decisively. I activated my ISD first revealing a squad command. I sent Maarek/Jendon after the exposed Transport which Maarek destroyed because that’s what he does. The ISD then overkilled the snot out of the Yavaris. Just like that my opponent was down to a single activation and without a really good way to push his squads. I then decided to keep my ISD at speed 2 to deny Gavin the extra die from QBTs and to keep him out of medium range of the MC80 for 1 more turn. Gavin got the MC80 into action with a squad command, he sent a couple y-wings and the scurg at the front of my ISD then Ackbar the front twice. Using my brace and both redirects I believe I was able to take most the damage on the shields. Might have taken a single damage card but my memory is starting to fail me. After all that my Quasar and transport activated and sent all the squads not named Maarek or Jendon after his bombers. They took out 2 Y-wings and damaged the Scurg badly. During the squadron phase he moved Wedge and Biggs up to engage Maarek and sent his VCXs to engage my scatter aces out in front of the ISD.

Squadron Phase of Turn 3: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FTGYP1niAXQfdZVk1 (he’s just about to move Biggs and Wedge up to Maarek. This would also be the last picture I took for the rest of the day).

Turn 4 started with the Quasar activating squads that did their best to kill Biggs and Wedge. The ISD then took 2 more long range Ackbar shots to the face, this time minus the Defiance die. The ISD was on life support by now. The MC80 continued its slow circling turn. The transport activated 2 squads to finish off the Scurg and send another over to finish off Wedge. The ISD then took a long range shot and used a nav dial to just barely be able to park itself in the rear arc of the MC80 but also giving it a double arc shot for Turn 5. Squadron phase then ended with Biggs and the VCXs doing light damage to my squads.

Turn 5 started with the ISD activating, popped Vader and removed ECMs from the MC80 and fired both arcs and external racks into the MC80 leaving with 1 maybe 2 health left. The ISD was then forced to move forward into the MC80’s side arc which promptly go it blown up. In the end it was the Quasar that activated and was able to finish off the MC80 with squads tabling my opponent.

Final score: with both objective ships giving us double points it came down to the fact that I got the full 400 for tabling my opponent which landed me with a 9-2 victory. This left me with 26 total points and in 1 ^st place at the end.

This was my first major tournament and it was a blast. I found all the people I’ve met in the Armada community to be super welcoming and great to play against and look forward to many more.

Final Standings : https://photos.app.goo.gl/w4b087N7r2J9Mz9g1

The Loot: https://photos.app.goo.gl/j85v0exWrLoQpC6p2