So after deciding to take a double Silencer list to CAC and experimenting with both @Biophysical 's generics and 2 PS 6 PTL/AS with a Nu gunboat I ended up taking the following -
- Kylo w/ PTL, Advanced Optics, Advanced Sensors, Auththrusters, Title
- Blackout w/ PTL, Advanced Optics, Advanced Sensors, Auththrusters
- The backbone of the Empire and definitely not a traitor, Academy TIE w/ ...nothing
Round 1 - Vader, Inquisitor, and... Soontir! -
He was a relatively new player and I think this was his first tournament. He had actually forgotten all of his dice, tokens, templates, etc. So I loaned him some of my extras for the day. The academy died pretty early but got a key block on Vader that left him tokenless and almost killed him. He made several moves that would have been absolutely correct against another list, trying to cycle ships out of range. But against ships with boost/BR green 5 straights I ended up getting several R3 shots on naked ships. End of the game was Kylo and Blackout vs. a wounded Soontir. I chased him for very long time while Soontir did Soontir things ie. not die. But in the end he conceded. 100-12 Win
Round 2 - 3BQD
I actually had played against this gentlemen at regionals and in that game he put all of his locks on one ship, this time he spread them out so it was a tougher approach. We traded some long range fire but the only harpooned fired was into the academy who did his normal thing and died not all that long afterwards. Kylo took a nasty hit from Quickdraw and I cycled him out while Blackout managed to nab the rest of QDs shields after he baffled one going over debris. Kylo swung around the far way and dropped one of the Nu's at R1 and then rejoined Blackout in hunting down the others while both leveraged adv sensors to dodge just about all arcs. 78?-12 Win
Round 3 - HLC IG-88B and triple shot Bossk with Fearlessness, Manger, IG-88D, and Gunner
I was not super happy to see this list since Bossk's arc is huge and dodging 3 Mangler cannon shots that do minimum 2 damage if they hit is just brutal. She initially fortressed in the corner and I approached from 3 angles slowly. She broke formation towards Blackout and I pounced in expecting to bump one of them with Blackout, eat one shot, and then be behind Bossk for the rest of the game. Instead she, very nicely, self bumped everything and Blackout ended up at R1 of both and ate 5 damage. He tried to run but an undodgeable 4 hit HLC shot from a slooping IG dropped him and the academy did his thing and exploded. Kylo against the world! I think I had knocked off maybe 5 shields total at this point. But through a lot of intentional bumping into Bossk, rolling off and then rebumping at a different angle to keep arc on IG, and some lucky dice I managed to whittle IG down and flipped a darksided stunned pilot on him which ended up killing him when he bumped Bossk again. After that it was pretty much over as I just parked on Bossk's tail for the rest of the game. Very close game, and I barely clawed it back. 100-53 Win
At this point everyone was split into pods based on their record. So I got put into the murders row 3-0 pod and was top table so my next game was on stream. I thought about not doing it and I'm not sure I'll ever watch it but I'm glad I took the plunge since it will hopefully be easier next time.
Round 4 - QD, Palp shuttle, deadeye Rho
This was my first game on stream and I was super nervous. The approach went well with some free shots on the shuttle. Next turn I arc dodged the Rho (or so I thought) and lined up a nice through debris shot for Blackout. Unfortunately I was so concentrated on making sure Kylo didn't take that harpoon that I didn't notice that Blackout was just barely in R3 so he took that one and a harpoon from QD. I cycled him up and around to approach from the back where he hopefully wouldn't take fire and send the academy into block. I was expecting the cluster to break up but my opponent was able to intentionally bump the shuttle which then ended up with all of my ships clustered up right next to Blackout. Followed up by a nice sloop out of QD and a Palped crit, double boom and my whole list takes 2 from the poons. The academy died in a horrific double major explosion shortly after that and it was once again Kylo against the world. I brought him back around and finally guessed right on his QD move which let me take a free shot on the Rho and set me up to take out the shuttle next turn. And then he guessed right and 1 straighted with the Rho blocking my adv sensors BR which then led to Kylo landing on a rock by a hair. Great game even if it's not indicated in the final score, and thanks to Back to Dials for streaming it. 16-100 Loss
Round 5 - Palp shuttle, Ryad, Vessery
I'll just start off saying that my opponents green dice were terrible this game. Things started off well which me blazing into the asteroids with 5 straights. The academy traded shots with the shuttle coming out on top of that engagement for once. Then he K turned the defenders thinking I was going to keep coming in fast except that I BRed back 2 straighted in and had some juicy unanswered shots... that did I think 1 shield all told. After that it was a bunch of arc dodging the defenders while taking pot shots at the shuttle. The academy landed a perfect 3K that set it up for the killing blow. Blackout blanked out a couple of times and started taking some serious fire so he bugged out, but not quite far enough and ended up dying to double R3 shots. Fortunately the academy get a key block on Ryad which let Kylo put 3 into her, and then did the same by blocking her 5K the next turn letting Kylo take her out. Then surprise surprise Vessery killed him. After that Kylo and Vessery had a pointless slap fight with each other doing virtually no damage till time was called 65-53 Win
Round 6 - Nymranda
This was one of the better players in the area and so I knew this was going to be a tough game. Approach went well, Kylo took a 1 hit harpoon out of Nym but traded a single crit back which put him down to PS 0, that's the only reason this game was as close as it ended up being. Blackout got to R1 out of arc of Miranda and took all of her shields while the academy ate a trajectory simulated proton bomb. Kylo bugged out to avoid that same proton bomb. Blackout was in a tough spot and needed to do something squirelly to get away from Miranda's inevitable bomblet which unfortunately because I got greedy and also wanted a shot with him ended with him taking Nym's 2nd proton bomb leaving him at 1 hull. The academy was PS killed so that he couldn't take an R1 shot on Miranda and Kylo plinked away at Nym nabbing another couple of shields. Both Silencers bugged out to come around for another pass rather than trying to chase bombers. Blackout managed to arc dodge Nym and stay out of range of Miranda for a while taking a shield or 2 off Nym while dodging the TLT fire with autothrusters. But eventually, once Miranda got all the way stuck in, 4 TLT shots were just too much and he died. At this point I realized that Nym was worth 54 points and I could win if I took him out so Kylo went all in on Nym. I got him down to one hull at time but just couldn't close the deal since I had had little in the way of offensive actions as I had to keep using them dodging bombs, arcs so I wouldn't get harpooned, and save the focus for defense against the TLTs. A really exciting and close game. 0-53 Loss
Overall CAC was a blast. I really liked the pod format as after the first 3 rounds everyone was flying against other people with with a similar skill/list level. There was plenty of raffle swag, I nabbed a set of coasters with focus icons on them which I fully plan on being a **** and using as 4" wide focus tokens at some point. Sadly my Xwingo cards was a bust, a couple of the boxes were just literally impossible for me to get based on my lists/my opponents but it was still a lot of fun hunting for them. My favorite thing though was that I ended up winning a secret prize for being a Rebel double agent as the Imperial who killed the most Imperial ships. Which was... an alt art academy pilot. Turns out that little guy was just faking his own death every single round and was a Rebel agent the whole time. Also completely appropriate as I think I was literally the only one there flying and academy. Fun time and shout out to Jon Conley for doing a great job running everything, I'll definitely be back again next year.