I have been posting these over on the Armada subreddit for a while now, but now I'm hanging out here too if that's cool!
Afternoon, Admirals! Becca is back with borrowed B-Wing ambitions.
Here is the gallery with the photos and captions.
The list: Pelta-Skelter is a very lightly modified version of a list some guys on Twitter recommended to me, (Not sure if they want credit by name so if you happen to see this and do let me know!) and I basically kept it the same but swapped Nora in and Kian Farlander out. It’s two Peltas, Yavaris and a flotilla with three copies of Fighter Coordination Team. He says he’s run this with Leia, Garm and Dodonna as well but I really liked how Rieekan gelled with it during my game.
The Game: I had the bid, barely, so I picked second player and we did Fighter Ambush. He had an Interdictor list I’ve seen a few times from him before, but tweaked to add reserve hangar decks and scale back the fighter screen. It’s Moff Jerry, the Interdictor, Demo, an Arq, two Gozantis, two TIES, Valen and Cienna.
The plan: I’ve never run this before and the list was familiar in squad comp but very different from any ships I’ve used in tandem with squads before. I figured I’d deploy conservatively, focus on the squad game and try to kill the Interdictor while avoiding Demo as much as possible. Mostly though I wanted to just try and feel how pushing B-Wings with three copies of FCT works out.
The problem: I totally blanked on grav shift reroute, and between that and the gravity well I ended up with a deployment that put Yavaris and The Brave Little Flotilla That (Almost!) Could too far out to be of use until late game. That held me back, but otherwise it was a fairly close match. I was also getting used to using FCTs/not having Boosted Comms on more ships, so I made some mistakes with turn order and movement.
The post-mortem: I basically blanked on Grav Shift Reroute and the gravity well as we deployed fleets, so he was able to turn one side of my deployment area into a 0-speed zone and the other half into an obstacle course. FA also meant he had me out-activated at deployment, so I plunked everything down in an arc in the middle and at speed 1, then gave everyone a maneuver dial to bank on turn 1.
As usual with Fighter Ambush!, I deployed my squads out of range of his fast interceptors and near the station. I wanted to keep my squads close to their support ships and did not want to get Jan jumped.
He took advantage with Titus and dropped Yavaris to speed 0 from 1, so I spent the first few turns ferrying maneuvers over with Leia on TBLFT(A!)C and trying to get Yav into the fight.
Our squads got engaged by turn 2, and while I didn’t have Yav in range I had squad superiority and was able to get his stuff either killed (then resurrected and killed again via Reserve Hangar Decks) or tied down by Jan by turn 4. He jumped Ten and Dagger early, so I didn’t get much use out of their anti-squad abilities.
He killed a Pelta at the top of turns 4 and 5, but Rieekan kept them on the table for me which helped with some rams and way more importantly with moving squads around/getting shots off despite them being dead.
The huge boon of FCT as a way to push B-Wings is that by holding Yav back you can move a Pelta and bump squads around so they can be in activation range for Yav and close enough to shoot without moving. Alas, I didn’t get this synergy rolling until too late in the game.
He killed TBLFT(A!)C in Turn 5, but I got the interdictor by rolling a hit/crit and a damage on the second of the B-Wing’s attacks after Nora double tapped, which was clutch and the reason this only went 7/4.
Yavaris tried to run away on Turn 6, but Demo ran it down and finished it off for the table. My remaining squads were out of range so the game ended.
He got his 400 points for the table, and I killed 241 worth of his stuff and scored 60 points off of objective tokens so a 99 MOV and a 7/4 split.
Lessons learned:
1 – FCT times 3 is the way to be! I didn’t get the most out of this list because I was learning it, but I really see the devastating potential of being able to bump squads so often. Distance 1 doesn’t seem like much, but A- it adds up on those speed 2 B-Wings, and B- being able to move them without activating them ensures you get your points worth out of Yavaris more often. Also, unlike Indy, you get to make spot adjustments each turn and have so much more flexibility beyond the speed 4 on turn 2 trap.
2- Deployment/movement is perhaps the biggest part of this game, and screwing with gravity is a great way to spike a wheel. Even in an objective that doesn’t rely all that much on obstacles, his grav shenanigans messed up my deployment and meant that I didn’t get to use Yav’s double tap until way late in the game, which probs gave him the edge. The grav well effectively renders one half of deployment a no-fly zone, and with smart obstacle placement you turn the other half into an obstacle course and the other player either has to deal with some damage or spend turns 1 and 2 messing with maneuver dials.
3- Nora, B-Wings and Yav are a devastating combo! Even with Yav being out of play until nearly the end and even with him running engineering commands for most of the game to dump damage cards and repair shields, Nora and a stock B-Wing chewed right through the Interdictor once Yav and BCC made it to the party. The other nice thing about this is that even as he repairs, I get objective tokens for putting damage back on, and Nora makes it easy to take shields back off.
4- For the same price as a stock X-Wing, a stock YT is a slow and glorious tank. You drop one blue anti-squad die but gain two hull points and counter 1 and drop from 3 to 2 on speed. Based on the way I use the Jan/Biggs ball and since I generally have them pacing B-Wings, I think it makes more sense to have a YT in there for Biggs to pass damage to. At least in this list. In my other B-Wing list I think having bomber on basically everything helps out so I may play around with the composition.