I'll start by saying I'm a noob.

[[[Back story - skip to the next brackets if you're only interested in the match]]]

I saw the miniatures online and thought they looked awesome enough to go on a shelf. (Also, I make stop motion animated videos, so using them to make a starwars fleet battle is an idea I'm toying with as well). So I bought without being certain I would ever even play the game.

After buying the core set at half price, my brother (a DnD and WoW player) got wind of my purchase and wanted to encourage my tabletop gaming habits and bought me Rogues and Villains, Home One, and an ISD. This further grew my interest and so I went back to the gaming store and bought their second copy of the core set (still at half price).

So, all told I got 2 core sets, and H1 and RaV and an ISD all for $100.

A friend/acquaintance heard that I had bought into SWA and told me that he was setting up a 1000 point game with up to 10 players, and I was welcome to come and watch (or even play depending on who showed up).

I watched a few tutorials online, but you don't really get a feel for it until you sit down and actually get hands-on experience.

[[[Start here for the match]]]

I was going in blind.

I arrived and glanced at the table. Imperials - 3 star destroyers (one a Chimera) 1 victory class, 1 interdictor, a carrier, gozanti, raider, gladiator, light cruiser, and a slew of squadrons I can't recall. Rebels - MC80 (not sure if SC or BC), Phoenix Home, MC30c, at least two MC80-H1 (maybe there was a third? not sure), Profundity, Assault Frigate, flotilla, CR90, and hammerhead, and Nebulon-B Frigate. Plus a ton of squadrons. I was on the rebellion side.

According to the point values that my friend calculated (with all the commanders and such) the sides were equal. But the reality was far different. It was a massacre of the rebellion. Not a single SD fell, and every rebellion ship excluding the MC30c, fell by the end of turn four. Each team had 5 people, and we all handled a few ships each, with one person as the team captain making the final decisions. We were each given strategies to play out with our respective ships. I had two ships, one at each end of the board and my job was to jet around the edge and get behind the enemy and mow them down. Amazingly my two ships lasted the longest out of all the rebellion ships. I helped as best I could, and I learned a lot from seeing how the game played out.

From what I could tell, when you have that many ISDs lined up, there's no where you can play around them, It was only at the very ends of the board (where I was located) that you could get around and attack from behind. It was like a battle line of old with riflemen on one side and swordsmen on the other. The cavalry at each end would try to race around and flank the other battle line, but the line was so long, and the few moments when my ships could have attacked, the ships that would have been my target moved out of range before I was given the chance to go by my captain.

I guess the valuable lessons I've learned is that tactics don't always scale up equally for Emp vs Reb, and ship order is CRITICAL.

Thanks for reading!