5 minutes ago, RapidReload said:

Do you think having the squads way in front of the ships to head of demo via forcing overlap and shooting in the squad phase one round would have helped?

While this is a common (and correct) strategy against Demo, it wouldn't help here for two reasons:

1. The squads were way out of position as most of them were on a board way out to go for ISD.

2. In this case I didn't have first activation, so it wasn't about countering Demo triple tap, but about single shoot-after-move side-to-side attack. There was no way to get enough unactivated squads in place round 1.

2 minutes ago, PT106 said:

While this is a common (and correct) strategy against Demo, it wouldn't help here for two reasons:

1. The squads were way out of position as most of them were on a board way out to go for ISD.

2. In this case I didn't have first activation, so it wasn't about countering Demo triple tap, but about single shoot-after-move side-to-side attack. There was no way to get enough unactivated squads in place round 1.

Sounds like a deployment issue then. Well anyway, congrats to the winner, comiseration to the 2nd place player ;-p.

3 minutes ago, RapidReload said:

Sounds like a deployment issue then. Well anyway, congrats to the winner, comiseration to the 2nd place player ;-p.

Postmortem (as it's 20-20) it was a mix of deployment and navigation issue. I think @Zamalekite didn't recognize the gravity of the threat and tried to speed up past Demo by eating 1 attack and then activating Yavaris first to kill Demo (or to gravely wound it and be out of strike range afterwards). My expectation going in was to lose Demo but to inflict some damage on Yavaris (APT, Ram) and to force his activation next round (that would allow me to kill Toryn/BCC on the other flank). However there was an opening, so I was able to do a trade even with below average roll (only 2 damage after brace, no APT)

Here's the log file: Zamalekite vs PT106 VAT Round Robin Round 2

2 hours ago, PT106 said:

Postmortem (as it's 20-20) it was a mix of deployment and navigation issue. I think @Zamalekite didn't recognize the gravity of the threat and tried to speed up past Demo by eating 1 attack and then activating Yavaris first to kill Demo (or to gravely wound it and be out of strike range afterwards). My expectation going in was to lose Demo but to inflict some damage on Yavaris (APT, Ram) and to force his activation next round (that would allow me to kill Toryn/BCC on the other flank). However there was an opening, so I was able to do a trade even with below average roll (only 2 damage after brace, no APT)

I agree with all of this. Having slept on it I think my first mistake was deploying my Toryn/BCC GR75 when I did and should have placed him after I knew where his ISD should have gone, I could easily have put more squads down first. I should have also put my CR90 flagship before my BCC and used it more properly as a lifeboat during the game and kept it out of the way. It contributed very little anyway and would always get one-shotted in medium/close range of Cymoon/Glads. If I'd just kept him out of the battle that alone would have kept the MOV down to 155 (333 v 178 instead of 500 v 178) for an 8:3 - in a tight round robin that can make all the difference! The CR90 could have survived a long range Cymoon shot and been able to get away after.

This was how things looked after @PT106 had finished his ship deployment

I don't think going for Demolisher was a bad play but I should have started my Pelta and Yavaris further back and slower to have given myself more time to get my squads into position. A single side shot from Demo with no ram would have been a bit of a waste for Demolisher. I also misunderstood how Intel Officer worked (I didn't use him on the first shot, not realising IO can only be used once, very dumb - should have asked!) and underestimated the threat from Demolisher as PT rightly points out.

I could say more but to avoid a wall of text I have a suggestion

@CommanderDave I've really enjoyed reading your AARs. Learnt quite a bit from it. Are you open to guest blogs? I'd be happy to do a write up of my game with PT with screenshots. If you fancy it I can also add some comments on the write up of our game to give my perspective on the match?

Really good game against Roquax. I took him off guard with Demo and scored a solid victory. I’ll write it up tomorrow, but it looks like a 10-1.

Rolling Round Robin Stats:

13 (400) Commander Dave

16 (356) PT106

6 (0) Roquax

9 (152) Zamalekite

Well played @CommanderDave

In line with the general trend coming out of Regionals so far we're going to have an Imperial winner in the VAT too!

Managed to do my write-up this morning over coffee. Great game with @Roquax. Really took him by surprise in the squadron fight.

http://armadaaarsbydave.blogspot.com/2018/12/vassal-tournament-round-robin_11.html

And @CommanderDave vs @PT106 starts now.

Here's the initial setup

Commander Dave (top) is 1st player. Playing PT's Contested outpost.

End of Round 1:

End of a destructive round 2. Interdictor, and PT's Demo go down.

End of 3:

End of 4: Dave's Gozanti goes down.

And the game is done with 6-5 to me MoV 10. I ended up very lucky as my Ciena survived at least 3 IG88 shots and one Firespray shot on one hull (As otherwise it would've been 6-5 win for Dave).

Very tough and interesting game. I went all in on Interdictor early on which paid off, however after that my ISD was out of position to hunt Demo, so I tried to bleed away as few points as possible (as 5-6 loss was still getting me 1st) and it worked.

@CommanderDave was very good and tough opponent with very interesting (and surprisingly tough) fleet. Inderdictor(!), no ISD, only 3 activations. Need I say more? So hats off, I'm definitely impressed (especially given that I pulled 6-5 only due to several very lucky rolls)

On 12/10/2018 at 6:18 PM, RapidReload said:

I'd argue that the issue is mostly with demo being such a good counter to yavaris if you are outactivated. Rieekan would help if you had something significant to shoot in that round but it doesn't sound like you did even if you had rieekan. Activation advantage vs these lists was the main motivation while i attempted for 6 act with my lists, of course it had an issue against superior sqds like yours.

Do you think having the sqds way in front of the ships to head of demo via forcing overlap and shooting in the squad phase one round would have helped?

Wow! What a close game. An MOV of 10!

Congrats on the win PT. And well done Dave on taking such and interesting fleet so far

Congrats PT!

Finished the AAR on the game with @PT106:

http://armadaaarsbydave.blogspot.com/2018/12/vassal-tournament-final-commanderdave.html

Great game, and congratulations on the tournament win!

Congrats PT and thanks to Ninja for modding.

Hey, tourney aint over!

ah! well then Dave fooled me!

3 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Hey, tourney aint over!

Nearly there

@Roquax and I are due to play tomorrow 9:30 GMT/4:30 EST

RCAF v RAF

On 12/16/2018 at 10:46 PM, Zamalekite said:

Nearly there

@Roquax and I are due to play tomorrow 9:30 GMT/4:30 EST

RCAF v RAF

Ok so @Roquax and I weren't able to play after. Roquax conceded so that wraps up my tournament with an 8:0.

Sorry if that was a bit of an anticlimax for anyone!

Thanks again @CaribbeanNinja for hosting a great tournament! I really enjoyed it and every opponent I played was a great sport.

Congrats to @PT106 on the win and for solidly beating me!

Looking forward to Vassal World Cup

Is that the last game? What are the final standings?

With the final game of the RR in the books, the final RR standings are:

22 (366) PT106

18 (400) Commander Dave

17 (292) Zamalekite

6 (0) Roquax

Final Swiss standings:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q0J54IDOT0-n0yPhXvdIkNoEj9h484Eufjtz53i4T14/edit?usp=sharing

Congratulations to all that were able to partake, and to PT106 for winning the tourney. This was a breeze to run, as always. Thank you all for making the VASSAL Armada community really great!