Saturday night, casual game of Armada against my son. We played Most Wanted, with me as second player.

Having seen what looked like a fun VSD build in a thread on the list building section, I went with the following

VSD2, Moff Jerjerrod (never used him before), Minister Tua, Gunnery Team, Disposable Capacitors, Leading Shots, Dominator, Redundant Shields

GSD1, Ord Experts, APT, Demolisher

GSD1, Ord Experts, APT

Raider1, Ord Experts, External Racks

Gozanti, Comms Net

Howlrunner, 3 x Ties

I don't have my son's full list, but the basics were

CR90a

GR75 Transports, Comms Net

MC80 (not sure which variant), Madine,

Pelta, Command Ship, Phoenix Home

Raymus Antillies was somewhere too.

6 squadrons - I think he had Nora Wexley, another Y wing squadron and 4 sets of x-wings, one possibly named.

The most wanted were my Gozants, and his pelta (I chose this one as I thought it was the second highest points of all his ships - it was - and I thought I could destroy it but not so sure of getting the MC80).

I deployed with the VSD, Gozantis and a GSD and fighter support in the middle, Demolisher to the right of the first GSD and then the Raider on the far right flank.

He deployed with his MC80 out on his far right (my left), all his fighters, Pelta, Corvette.

I hadn't realised how quickly he could get his fighters forward, thinking I could move mine forwards to engage his first. I was wrong. However I got away with it, losing only one squad of Ties, taking down a squad of x-wings in return on Turn 2.

Turn 3 saw me take on the Pelta and CR90 with my VSD and GSD. I destroyed the CR90, but only by getting the final damage by ramming with the GSD. The pelta was in a position to be destroyed in Turn 4. Fighters continue to dog fight with me adding some flak damage where I didn't have two arc to fire on capital ships.

However Turn 4 also saw the MC80 finally make it into the fray, and boy did it make its presence felt. The Pelta however survived, barely.

Turn 5 the MC-80 one shotted the VSD via a double arc - He got three accuracies first shot and then following one or two other bits of damage from the pelta etc earlier got enough to destroy it. It then bumped Demolisher.

The loss of the VSD was bad from two points - one, flagship and second, no more Jerjerrod manouevering. This was to bite me on the bum.

I was unable to move Demolisher sufficiently to keep it on the table, so off it went (Schoolboy error #1).

In Turn 5 I did manage to destroy the Pelta which was on one or two hull points.

Turn 6 I then managed to fly my raider off the table too (Schoolboy error #2)

Stupid thing was, if I had paid a bit more attention to the edge of the board, a Move dial would have saved the Raider.

With regard to the squadrons at the end, my son was down to Nora and one x-wing squadron (on one health point, **** it!), I only had Howlrunner.

We totted up the points, and it was a rebel win 294 - 277 (although my son didn't feel like he had won!)

If only....coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn't.

Lessons learned:

1. Pay attention to the board edges!

2. Flak at every opportunity - Throughout the game I was scoring hits and whittling his squadrons down.

3. Do not over extend the fighters - This was for my son. About turn 3 he had over extended his fighters so was only able to control 2 out of the 4 or 5 squadrons on the table at that time.

4. Not sure that I used either Jerjerrod or the Dominator and Redundant Shields combo to its fullest.

Really enjoyed playing this list and will try again in another game.