Hello! My name is Patrick Christians and this is my battle report for the IA North American Championships 2019 that was at Gencon this past weekend. I'm not huge on play-by-plays, so this will probably be at least somewhat brief.
To start my list was as follows:
Deployment Cards
Sabine Wren
Hondo Ohnaka
2x Elite Jawa Scavenger
4x Jawa Scavenger
C1-10P
C-3P0
Jabba the Hutt
Black Market
Temporary Alliance
Command Cards
On the Lam
Tools for the Job
Second Chance
Worth Every Credit
Utinni!
Pickpocket
Dangerous Bargains
Price on Their Heads
Black Market Prices
Negation
Element of Surprise
Rebel Graffiti
Planning
Take Initiative
It's pretty much just a collection of every card in the game with the phrase "gain VPs" on it. You win Imperial Assault by getting to 40 points before the other guy, so I have elected to skip straight to the part where you get points and dispense with all the mucking about and killing people. It's... pretty good. I actually think it's the strongest list I have ever built.
Anyways, on to the actual tournament. I'm not going to do a play-by-play of every single match because A) I think they're boring and B) they mostly played out the same. I'll touch on the highlights, but just imagine that I wrote "this match I played all my command cards, got a bunch of points from them, played the objectives hard, and killed like 3 guys" for every match.
There were 19 people who showed up on the day, so we played 4 rounds of Swiss the first day, then a cut to Top 8 the second day.
Round 1:
I got a bye because there were an odd number of people in the tournament.
1-0
Round 2
vs. Bobby Crowley (scum hunters) on Tarkin AI
I actually lost my first round of the day. I didn't do a great job controlling the AI terminals and Bobby was able to get way more objective points then me, so I lost 37-40.
Figures killed: Onar, 1 Weequay, 1 Gammorrean Guard
1-1
Round 3
vs. Brian Vandergalien (IG + jawas) on Lothal Blitz
This round was actually a jawa swarm mirror, which was unexpected, but fun. Brian was running a different list then me, with IG and Under Duress instead of my VP shenanigans. I got the better end of the jawa fight and took the win 43-20.
Figures killed: 6 jawas
2-1
Round 4
vs. Lance from Michigan (rebel heroes) on Tarkin Weapons
I lost my Hondo at the end of round 1 because I ran him out to grab a control point and figured he probably wouldn't get one shot by Han. I was wrong. Still, everyone else did their thing and I won 40-15.
Figures killed: C-3P0, Chopper, Ashoka
3-1
3-1 was good enough to make the cut for day 2 and put me in a very ok 5th place after the swiss rounds.
Top 8
vs. Peter Burean (rebel heroes) on Lothal Fluctuations
I don't think anything super exciting happened this round. Got my points and won 41-15.
Figures killed: Sabine, R2-D2, Gideon
Top 4
vs. Brian Marks (rebel heroes) on Coruscant Back Alleys Posters
This was definitely the closest match I had all tournament. I got all the posters by round 2, but then proceeded to lose most of my jawas to Han and Drokatta. Brian was able to take some posters back and I was kind of stalled out at 38 points by the end of round 3. My only way to win ended up being to run a Jawa up to his deployment zone to try and kill Gideon, which only did 3 damage, but I was able to fly Sabine in there at the start of next round to get the last 2 damage with a grenade. If I had missed the grenade, I probably would have lost. Final score 42-30.
Figures killed: R2-D2, C-3P0, Gideon
Finals
vs. Logan Streeter (weird rebel heroes) on Coruscant Back Alleys Posters
I played against rebel heroes for my entire day 2, but Logan's list was at least a bit different. He had Han, Jyn, Jarrod, Murne, Hera, Mark, Gideon, R2-D2, and C-3P0, with a command deck full of spy cards and general command deck control. It was a really cool list and Logan is a super good player. He played the first couple rounds very defensively, moving most of his figures across the top of the map over towards the little room with 2 doors. He had the 2 posters in that room, but I had the other 4, so I was ok with the situation. I managed to do a pretty good job this game of dumping my VP command cards as fast as I could draw then, which ended up being pretty clutch against all Logan control shenanigans (Strategic Shift into Hostile Negotiations is p. mean). I ended up opening the my door into that room and we had a fight with about 4 of my jawas vs. his entire squad. I lost all my jawas, but I got Jarrod and Murne in trade (Chopper rammed Murne for the kill, which is always great). Meanwhile, Hondo and Sabie were on the other side of the map and I was able to put a Price on Gideons head, which would have been enough points to win me the game and also was far enough away from all Logan's guys that he couldn't do anything about it. I ran Hondo into his deployment zone to set up the kill for next round, but Hondo's ability stole me the last 2 points I needed to win, so Gideon got to live. Final score 41-28.
Figures killed: R2-D2, Jarrod, Murne
All in all, it was a really fun tournament, everyone was super nice, Gencon is always super fun, and I got a giant novelty die.
I would like to thank my testing partners here in Minnesota for helping my practice a bunch and putting up with my jawas for the past 6 months.