I got to play my very first Separatist game last night, and I tried something other than just swarming.
Basically I overloaded Count Dooku, and played almost nothing on the rest.
List:
Sith Infiltrator - Count Dooku (94 points)
- Tractor Beam
- General Grievous
- DRK-1 Probe Droids
- Stealth Device
- Scimitar
- Heightened Perception
- Kraken
Belbullab-22 - Feethan Ottraw Autopilot (36 points)
Belbullab-22 - Feethan Ottraw Autopilot (36 points)
Hyena - Techno Union Bomber (32 points)
- Energy-shell Charges
- Landing Struts
198 points total.
Basically I had several ideas that I wanted to test. Firstly I wanted to get a feel of some new ships. It was also my first time playing a Force user (Up to this point I have been playing Scum only, so not many Force user options there, and the one we have I have never flown). I also wanted to get an in-game idea of how the DRK-1 probes and the grappling struts play out. It's fine to theorise about these things, but nothing beats first hand experience on the table.
So basically I just added them all into the list, but I also had some very specific game plan. Start out slow (try to delay actual engagement until turn 2 or 3).
The theory of what I wanted to happen:
Deploy with Dooku cloaked.
Turn 1. Just make a turn or 1 bank or something with the small ships and calculate. (Basically I'm just holding back) Kraken the calculates in place. End of turn Dooku spits out a probe.
Turn 2. Move the probe into range. Decloak Dooku. Maybe get a Jam, but unlikely at this point. Turn the small ships towards the enemy and TL something from the probe.
Then use Perception to shoot with Dooku first. Use the tractor beam to strip a agility and hopefully tractor it into a position to get shot at with the smaller ships, that now have double mods. Then use Dooku's ability to cloak. He now has 4 agility (1 own +1 from stealth +2 from cloak) making him a far less attractive target.
Obviously after the initial engagement it takes a lot more effort to load up on calculate and target locks. Also using 2 force a turn on Dooku means it can't be done repeatedly. But that was the basic idea. Have an initial hit that's really hard and have ships that don't melt in one shot. And I guess one can see my years of playing scum leaking into my list design with the overly complicated combinations.
In reality what happened:
(Played against Torkul Mux, Captain Nym and Fenn Rau)
Mostly work out as planned. There was one sticky point.... Mux. Instead of shooting first and then cloak hiding, Dooku was forced to shoot last, lost his Stealth device on the first hit (obviously rolling 2 dice instead of 4 makes this much more likely)
But I still had the double mods (calculate + TL) which meant that I could melt Torkul in a turn or 2.
I then made a bad move with Dooku landing on a rock, so once again he couldn't do his thing, but this actually helped because I could recharge some Force.
But the next turn he recovered, shot at Captain Nym on IN7, rolling him onto a rock and leaving him with no green dice. So the other guys could do some good damage there as well.
I basically killed both Nym and Mux before losing a ship. But (and this is a big But) the opponent had some really bad rolls in crucial moments. One Belbullab surviving Fenn and Nym (plus dorsal Turret). Basically all my ships were badly damaged but nothing dead.
We called it a turn later for time with Fenn still untouched, one Belbulab out and all the rest below half.
The game could still have gone either way. Fenn is a monster, and since my ships were all near dead if he flew well he could have taken me out one at a time.
All in all I really enjoyed it, and I feel my wacky list has some potential. (Maybe not tournament potential, but definitely casual potential)
And I did learn a few things about probes and struts like I wanted too.