Hello!
Welcome to Madfuhrer's World's rundown where I'll talk a little about the trip overall (it was my first worlds) and my opponents and what I faced and how everything went!
I started my trip off by leaving Phoenix at 6 in the morning. For anyone that knows me, I'm not a morning person are this was a miniature ****, especially since I was travelling alone! Get to my airbnb around 1 and promptly slept for a good few hours. Had to recharge naturally. Decided that I should figure out the best way to get to the center and since I'm a cheap bastard I decide that i'm going to walk. The weather outside is fairly lovely after all! If I were to take a beeline from my airbnb to the ffg center, it would be about half a mile at most, but that highway is truly a pain in the butt and the walk was actually about 2.2 miles. So I get to the center and I see people pull out some IA stuff to play a game or two, and several people are gathered getting ready for registration and discussing imp assault stuff so I go up and introduce myself. Of course, ACTUAL names don't really mean anything so after we introduce our selves we decide to also throw in some forum names and it was at that point it was "Oh, THATS who you are!" It was really good to actually put faces to names. The ones that stuck out most to me were @Matsu Robun , @Masterchiefspiff , @thatjakeguy. Great bunch of dudes! Anyway, we get all of our registration stuff done and then part ways. I walk back to my place and settle down and just relax.
Game Day 1
I start of wednesday as any good long event player should: a hearty breakfast that you regret eating all of at the time! I get an uber to the event with plenty of time to set up and prepare everything. I had all of my tiles in seperate bags, and my little plano box full of the components that I needed.
My list is the following:
Vader
Palp
2xEriots
officer
zillo
RBF
Unshakeable
Command cards:
2x Parting blow
2x Reinforcements
grisly contest
face to face
dark energy
deathblow
negation
bodyguard
urgency
fleet footed
force rush
celebration
looking for a fight
The bolded command cards I swapped in at the last minute. Originally I had pummel and deadly precision but swapped them out for what I have in there. In my testing I found pummel to be fantastic on the jabba map, but since that was out and uscru was in (which it is terrible on) I cut it for bodyguard which I did actually manage to use to decent effect. Deadly precision was a big one to cut, but the extra 4 points from celebration came in clutch in some of my games.
Round 1
Round one pairing go up and I find the table that I'm supposed to be at, and I don't immediately see my opponent so I start setting up the tiles. I finish setting up the map and my opponent still hasn't showed. Turns out that he wouldn't show at all. So the first round is a win I guess????
Round 2
Nal hutta crate pickup
Opponent: Eric
list: 2xEriots 2xEjets palp, officer, upgrades
I start with initiative and take the top side since I don't want his jets to get the easy crate off the cliff. I pass until I can't (naturally) and I have my officer push a riot so he can pick up a crate to my left on the isolated hallway and the other runs up the middle. My other riots split off in the same fashion but don't have the speed to pick up any crates. Vader and palp set up behind the riot wall I have in the middle. Eric played it carefully with his jets, but ran his riots right up the middle. He also had a jet attack the riot trooper to my right, and then had palp have him attack again and kill the riot. No big loss, I had reinforcements. Eric gets initiative and uses one of his riots to throw a grenade to my clumped up guys in the middle. 3 damage to palp, vader, and 2 riots. Ouch! I was a little worried about how the rest of the game would go. My riots go and end up killing one of his. He goes with his other riots and almost kills one of the damaged riots on my side. I have palpatine go and make him feel the full force of the dark side! He tempts his emperor, has vader kill a riot trooper, and force lightnings another and slinks back to safety. He has his jets attacking but they aren't getting much through. I have some movement cards in my hand so I run vader up to his palpatine and give him a nice ole attack that puts 9 damage through! quite the roll! End of round vader kills palpatine and celebrates his death for 12. I kill the other 3 riots, through a combination of things and I had to hide vader because of relentless jet attacks, but It came to the end of the round and I just needed to force choke a jet (the only jet that I would kill) so Eric conceded. No parting blow this game.
2-0
Round 3
SCRU U district sit on crates.
opponent: Kenny from Zion's Finest 6-1
List: Han, Drokk, Hera, MHD, 3po, Gideon, mak, 2xrSmuggs.
I'm pretty sure Kenny started with initiative and took the top side. I positioned two riots from different groups at the door to my terminal, 1 got pushed by an officer to the two crates in the middle, and the last ran up to the crate by the fountain while vader ran up to the fountain and palpatine took position at the crate just next to my starting zone. I tempted mak I think. Kenny positioned most of his forces near the door to his terminal and han took position on the terminal while his smugglers grabbed the crates near his entrance and the booth. End of round and we both open the doors to our terminals. Han takes his shot at palpatine and I get a case massive bone zone. Han rolls 8 straight damage and palpatine rolls a surge block. He adds on hera for another 1 putting 9 damage on to my emperor which put me on the back foot. I decided that instead of attacking han with vader's end of round, I chose to force choke him instead, because I didn't want the return fire. Not a very fair trade but that is how it is. Start of round 2 I have to go with palpatine or risk loosing him. I didn't have any of my 2 point cards and the only 1 point cards I had were face to face and negation. So I go with palpatine first because I have to or risk loosing him. I have him tempt 3po run up to have vader attack Han and then run behind my center door. Kenny played stealth tactics and rolled a dodge on one of his whites so vader did nothing. He then goes with Mak I believe in order to strategic shift me, which was fine by me, my hand was hot garbage. Well my redraw was also hot garbage. Force rush and something else that really didn't matter. From there I remember han getting to run away, not sure how, but he was at like, half health. I think I attacked him with a riot trooper. But I remember thinking that I needed to kill his support so vader went to go kill hera. My roll was abysmal so I went to go reroll and got tough lucked. That's kind of how the game went. My cards were trash and I knew that I needed to kill han and drokkata but I just couldn't get it done. I lost vader shortly after the failed attack on hera and with no health on the emperor and having not killed anything but some smugglers, there was no way for me to come back and it was mostly an unwinnable match from there.
Kenny was a great guy and a great person to play. While being thoroughly handed my loss, I was having a good time, so it really didn't matter.
2-1
Round 4.
Nal Hutta shields
Opponent: Matt
List: Han, rRangers, jyn, 3po, Gideon, mak, r2d2, I can't remember the rest
I won initiative and took the bottom side for the cover. This scenario is pretty great for my list, so I was pretty excited. I have an officer move one of my riots to the right so that I can get to the far right generator which I claim for the first round, along with the middle one with vader and 2 more riots. He sent mak to go contest the left most generator and han and the rest went towards that side as well. I had a riot double move up to mak and then the emperor tempted mak and had the riot attack and lip into the red rocks on the middle. The attack killed mak and I later learned that he had strategic shift in hand. Vader force choked han, which led to a long line of force choking and force lightning han till he died. My riot trooper put up fantastic fights against his rangers who had to come up close to contest. He ignored vader and I had palp fairly well hidden, so no shots there. between the kill points and the copious amount of shield points I got, it was over quickly.
3-1
Round 5
SCRU U district courier droid.
Opponent: Logan
list: Han, Leia, Ko-tun, mak, 3po, Gideon, hera, r2?
Logan seemed to be a standup kid, and I'm sure I've seen him mentioned somewhere before as someone to watch out, and boy was that true!
I'm not a big fan of this map and I decided to try something almost completely out of left field: I didn't expose anyone almost the entire game! I got the top side and I ran vader and one riot off to the right. I pushed vader with the officer so there was no line of sight. The rest of my army was at the door of my terminal. He opened my middle door I believe and I opened his terminal door and end of round swiped r2 and almost put him out of commission. han got a long range shot on the single riot. I'm sure he was expecting me to open my door up to my army, but I didn't give him the chance. I killed r2 at the start of the round with a riot trooper who ended up dying to mak (who I tempted last round). I choked mak and tempted him again to kill him and remained hidden. I think he sniffed out my plan and moved han and leia into the central lounge area to take a shot at the officer I offered up. round 3 starts up and I finally got some good card draw! I run up to leia, get 6 damage through on the dice, and grisly contest her. One of the few times I would get it off. Han goes to run away and shoot, and I go to parting blow. He on the lams, and I use my other parting blow. This was one of the few games I actually drew the dang thing! At this point vader was exposed and not happy! I run up a riot trooper to be next vader while he continues to refocus some guys. I run palpatine up, dark energy han away from 3po and within range of vader and have vader attack to finish han off. I'm able to keep vader alive long enough to get an end of round force choke, but he perishes at the start of the last round. I had just enough points to be in the lead by two. He miscalculated his kill points and thought that killing my officer would be me in the lead in the tie breaker, so with his last shot of the round he took his focused weakened hera to shoot at y courier droid, and couldn't put enough damage through, allowing me the win.
4-1
Round 6
Mos eisley crate pickup.
Opponent: Jonathan
list: Han, Rangers, 2 smuggs, care package + and r2
I've seen Jonathan get a lot of games in on vassal. I hadn't played him myself, but It was fun to watch. He lost round 2 to DT.
I get the indoor location and spread out all of my guys. He sent a smuggler to pickup the crate from the cantina. Again I do something unorthodox: I have vader force chocked that smuggler and palp tempted him to kill him. He focused up his rangers and I think got an end of round shot on a riot trooper that didn't quite kill him. I got initiative and force once had drawn the parting blow+ dark energy combo. I'm able to face to face up to his han, get the attack off and do decent damage, and han's return shot did something like 2 damage. I do the combo and end up killing han before he drew on the lam, which was fortunate. he then responds by killing vader in one set of ranger attacks with some cards. Ouch. He played back as he should and it was just impossible for me to get my riot troopers up effectively so I started running crates, but he was able to do it more efficiently. I killed r2 and celebrated, along with c3po, so he had all 3 rangers and hera and gideon and a smuggler left, while I had 2 riots and palp. He ended up making a tactical error of trying to block palpatine with a ranger... at point blank range. I'm able to kill the ranger and secure the 37-34 timed victory. He could have won by doing something else with his last smuggler.
Jonathan was a great guy and we had some decent conversation the following day. He finished 17th on the day, so I feel kind of bad for him
5-1
Round 7
Mos eisley sit on points
Opponent: brettkelly 6-1
List: Scum Hunters: its sitting out there.
This was a list that I had beat my head against time and time again against DT on Vassal, and I'll let K2-SO tell you how I thought my odds were: "they were bad; very bad". I knew that I needed some luck and for brett to make some mistakes. Neither of those things happened. My initial cardraw was shite. I got the outdoor area and I took a somewhat aggressive approach. I opened the door on the bottom of the map to claim that point, and I had my other riots go into the crate up at the top away from my deployment zone, and one to the door. the other ran into the middle to die. I did manage a reinforcement in my hand. Vader ran up and joined the riot trooper. The riot trooper died to two shots from a range 5? attacks from ig-88, but that did let me get a force choke off. focused greedo ended up shooting vader and got a perfect roll... but so did I. But he had heightened reflexes and put a bleed onto vader along with a couple of damage. Ig starts off the round and puts some damage into vader and falls back. out of reach of almost all of my stuff. I have riots go to attack greedo and greedo takes damage from the first one for a couple of damage. He then dodges the second. Palpatine is able to order a riot to attack greedo... who dodges. I get some lightning off on some of the support. at this point vader is at half health and I have dark energy. I make the mistake of going to attack a weequay with vader using dark energy to get in range. He then plays on the lam and quickly slaughters vader with focused hidden weequays and then plays blaze of glory. ig-88 leaves palp with 1 health and I need a hail mary to stay in the game. ig-88 had 7 damage at this point and was 3 away from palp. I tempt ig-88 to put him to 8, and then I run up and play deathblow. I can theoretically punch 7 damage through with the attack. I roll, and the red comes up as a 1. bummer. My riots settle for killing a support and celebrating, but it was out of hand at that point because ig-88 retreated again and with no range to reach him, I couldn't get his points. I have to admit that I had an unsportsmanlike roll near the middle of the game that I felt terrible about; I tossed it farther than expected and it ended up in bretts lap. Still feel bad about that.
Brett got the win, and the match was a good match. It made me regain my hatred for on the lam (which should be burned to ashes). I knew that that list was going to give me troubles, but I still tried to get things going, but after the double triple on vader my dice went to ice, and my cards were not what I needed.
5-2
With a record of 5-2 my final placement was up to the strength of schedule. Remember that first match that was a no show? 0-7 since he didn't play a game. That really hurt. I ended up 21st on the day. It is what it is and I had a blast getting to meet everyone and play my favorite game. I look forward to going back next year (hopefully).
Take aways from the day. I hate on the lam. with a fiery burning passion. I faced 4 rebel lists and 1 scum lists and I got to see it almost every game. I only got to use parting blow in two of my games because I only drew it twice. TWICE! I have two copies of that card and rule by fear, and I only drew it in 2 of my games. Same with grisly contest. I think my average points for my command deck draws were around .8. Again, I had a blast though and really look forward to next year.
I might do a write up of the side event if anyone is interested in that.
May the rolls be ever in your favor
-Mad
fixed finally.