I've really enjoyed reading other Prime batreps, so keep them coming! My friend and I visited Chicago this past Saturday for the Gift of Games Prime, and we had a fantastic time. As always, we met and chatted with excellent folks, and though it was about 5.5 hours there and then back again (making for quite a long day), I'd absolutely make that run again, even if it was only to get stomped 🤣 Anyway! There were two reasons that I took the same fleet from the Elizabethtown Prime to the one in Chicago, despite expecting that the competition would be even fiercer given that we're running out of chances to win a Worlds ticket: 1) I thought it ran fairly well the last time I played it, and 2) I haven't had much time in the past couple of weeks to play a match (didn't play a match at all in the week leading up to the tourney) because of work. So, I chose to fly what I know and resist the siren-like call of subbing in my Tarquitens-Onager fleet (which has seen play exactly once) for my current Tarkin fleet.

Ain't Tarkin 'Bout Love (45/396/400)

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Kuat Refit (112 + 66: 178)

+ Grand Moff Tarkin (38)

+ Strategic Adviser (4)

+ Darth Vader (3)

+ Electronic Countermeasures (7)

+ Leading Shots (4)

+ Assault Proton Torpedoes (5)

+ Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer (5)

Gladiator I-class Star Destroyer (56 + 18: 74)

+ Skilled First Officer (1)

+ Ordnance Experts (4)

+ Auxiliary Shields Team (3)

+ Assault Proton Torpedoes (5)

+ Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer (5)

Gladiator I-class Star Destroyer (56 + 18: 74)

+ Skilled First Officer (1)

+ Ordnance Experts (4)

+ Auxiliary Shields Team (3)

+ Assault Proton Torpedoes (5)

+ Seventh Fleet Star Destroyer (5)

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2: 25)

+ Comms Net (2)

Hondo Ohnaka (24)

IG-88 (21)

Onto the matches!

Round 1: I as matched up against Jason F., who had come in from Wisconsin. Really pleasant, fun guy who had me worried out of my **** mind with a Leia CR-90 swarm. It's hard for me to get my black dice to stick to these slippery corvettes, and so I worried that I would just run past them and then get harassed by their red dice in my flanks the entire game. So I chose to take first player so I would at least deprive him of last-firsting me. I believe I outbid him 396-398. We played his Asteroid Tactics. If his defense tokens are the difference between my winning and losing, then I've already done screwed up. I deployed my Gozanti and two Glads in the middle of the board, angled to run to the right. He piled up a couple of CR-90s and squadrons in the far right (of me) corner, so that's where my Kuat went. His flagship went wide left of me with a single CR-90 directly across from my Glads. His CR swarm moved to the right of my Kuat, who turned hard to make sure they did not escape the front arc. My inside Glad and Gozanti turned in the same direction, while my outside (left) Glad sort of stayed out there to keep the outlier CR-90s honest. 3rd round is when we began to engage, resulting in a dead IG-88 (which I'd expected, but he still went a little sooner than I'd have liked), as well as a dead TRC-90. At this point, I had a decision to make: have the Kuat stick around for side shots and hope to land something meaningful, or just get the heck out of there. In the past, I'd have stuck around. But before we started, I'd insisted to myself that I would absolutely only take what Jason gave me rather than trying to force anything. So my Kuat ran while my outside Glad turned in so that both of my Glads could meet the oncoming CR-90s and cover the Kuat's flank. By the top of round 5, I was able to kill another TRC-90 because now there was nothing for Jason to do but try and ensure getting at least one kill to offset his loss. So one of the chaser CR-90s got too close to one of my Glads and went down. Shara died to Hondo by the top of round 6, and then Hondo began to flee. We were coming up on time, so trying hard to finish so we could actually get some lunch (which was REALLY important for me, as I'd not eaten anything but an orange and a handful of Doritos since I was up at 3am...bad call, me. Bad call...). My Gozanti had had some close calls, but lived up until this point. He did great work, but finally went down. However, I had two really strong shots on his ships - one on Jaina's Light (which was carrying Leia), and one on another TRC-90 (or perhaps the lone CR-90B, I can't remember which). However much damage each Glad did, they could not take down either ship before the end of the round. Luckily for me (and I always say I'd rather be lucky than good), Hondo had disengaged the previous round in order to avoid sustained fire that might cost him his merc pirate life. As such, he was in striking distance of Jaina's Light, moved in, and took the shot, landing the damage I needed for the kill. I won the match with a 7-4, discovering that I missed the 8-3 by only two points. I was a little disappointed, because I knew I'd need more tournament points to be competitive, but I was still happy with this result, given that I felt as though I were starting the day against a fleet that traditionally gives my Tarkin fleet a lot of trouble.

Round 2: I played against Steven J., who also came in from Wisconsin! Yet another pleasant, fun opponent. He was fielding Piett on an ISD-I, a Raider, and a Gozanti, alongside a load of squadrons. If I recall correctly, it was 4 TIE Bombers, 4 TIE Defenders, and Dengar. At this point, I'm scared, because that bomber cloud will rip me apart. IG-88 and Hondo are there to target the most dangerous squadron an opponent has (2 squadrons, at best) and buy me a little time. But against a bomber ball like that? Yeah, no, that's not going to work for me at all. If I remember correctly, he had the bid and chose to go first. After Steven looked over my objectives, he said “these are all terrible.” At that point, I felt simultaneously flattered and awful. Flattered that I’d given him miserable choices, awful that he was not going to necessarily enjoy any objective he chose. The round had started, and we were the last ones to start playing, so he decided that Abandoned Mining Facility was the least of 3 evils. Unfortunately, I have to admit that this was something that caused me a sigh of relief, because at least now I could force him to fight on my terms, which was hugely important because I was still desperately worried about his angry bomber cloud. We deployed everything but the dust fields, and I chose to deploy mine just left of center. I figured that gave me options depending on where his dust field landed. He put his right of center, and so I deployed my ships in a very tight formation behind my dust cloud where they could begin mining on the first turn. Unfortunately for him, he’d never played AMF before, and as a result, I think I was able to exploit my plan better than I had anticipated. By the top of round 2, he was moving, and the only ship of mine not dropped down to speed zero was my far left Glad (having deployed my Gozanti far left, and then my two Glads flanking the Kuat so I could remain flexible). I’d farmed 4 tokens to his 0. By the top of round 3, I’ve got 8 tokens to his 0, but he’s on approach and this is the round when my ships need to start moving again, lest they be defenseless against his squadrons. Sure enough, the first casualty of the match in round 4 is IG-88, but I also have 13 tokens to his 0. At this point, I decide this is the match in which I can accumulate as many points as possible and go for the tabling, too. But I make said decision a little too eagerly, and turn my Kuat just a little too hard to join the fight. I’m not great at flying tight formations, and so my Kuat runs into the back of the Glad deployed at its right, scoots, back, and they both take damage. This is obviously terrible news for me, and now I’m a little worried. At this point, one Glad is right in the ISD-I’s side, ready to wreak havoc. But my other Glad hasn’t finished its approach and is already surrounded by bombers. There is, literally, no daylight for this guy. So I’m flakking as much as I can, and the first Glad goes on his bombing run after Steven’s Gozanti goes down, and runs like **** past the ISD. I’m certain I won’t get the Raider, but I can chase it away from the battle. So I do. My swamped Glad dies before doing taking action much more meaningful than flak, which is all my Kuat can do as well. By the top of round 6, he’s lost a Gozanti and a couple of squadrons; I’ve lost a Glad and IG-88, and I’ve got 16 tokens to his 0. At the end, I didn’t trust my dice from Hondo enough, and pushed one of his Defenders onto a Purrgil in order to get the remaining one damage for the kill. I ended up with an 8-3 win because I just didn’t have enough juice to burn the ISD-I. I’m obviously happy with the outcome, but know I still needed better than an 8-3 to give myself a cushion going into the latter two rounds.

Round 3: Aaaaaaaaaand I’m paired up against Jack O. Ruh-roh. If you’ve met Jack, you know he is a ridiculously nice guy, and I really enjoyed talking Armada with him. But you also know he’s a skilled player, and this is the guy who stomped me with Ravager awhile back at the Chicagoland charity tournament. So, you know, I’m not feeling great. Oh, he’s not flying Ravager, mind you. He’s flying a Starhawk with Kyrsta, against which I’ve not yet flown. I don’t know about the rest of you, but here’s what happens when I fly against an SSD: my hands get a little shaky, and my heart starts beating a mile a minute. I’ve beaten more SSDs than lost to them, but they still just intimidate the **** out of me. I apparently have the same reaction to the Starhawk, though I’d never flown against one before, so it was a little bit worse. So here’s one of my two biggest errors of the day: I choose to go second. He’s got more squadrons than me, I worry that he’s got that unholy triptych of squadron objectives, and so I overthink it and choose to go second. If you read a lot of the blogs, a lot of the best players say the same thing: don’t get cute, stick to what you know, DON’T DEVIATE FROM THE PLAN. It’s not until we’re done with the match that the words “I looked at the trap, Ray!” bounce around in my skull because I let myself get rattled. He had two flotillas and a Starhawk. I should have gone first and just chanced the objectives. Instead, I have the bid, choose to go second, and we end up playing my Advanced Gunnery. So I won’t be mining objectives for points: I need the kill. I’ve got Advanced Gunnery, so I think I can make that work. I knew I’d be outdeployed, so I set up my Glads and flotilla at the center of the map, and then landed my Kuat on the outside facing in, knowing that I could blitz his flank. I march into battle, and by the top of round 4, one of my Glads is dead, along with both of my squads. I knew Hondo and IG-88 would die, but they went down a heck of a lot faster than I anticipated, so that wasn’t great. Now the thing that really sucks: as my Kuat approached the Starhawk, I knew I only had one shot at avoiding the double-arc, and that was stepping into the front arc where he could shoot my Kuat once, and I could hammer away at him twice after stripping away an upgrade with my Vader boarding team. It was so, so close, but I was confident that I had found the maneuver that would get me there. I locked in the tool, and started moving. **Always move slowly so you don’t bump one large ship model into another large ship model, thus moving the stand. “Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon!** I pushed his Starhawk model with the nose of my Kuat model. Ugh. Absolutely UGH. Jack was extremely gracious and felt so awful that it came down to that, and I appreciated it, but I just couldn’t see anyway around what happened next: we approximated where the Starhawk was, put it back, and I landed my ISD, at which point, I was double-arced. I had measured, and was 98% certain that I had the move to get inside the front arc. It was going to be half a hair’s distance, and we probably would’ve had to call judge to check and make sure I’d gotten it. But the estimation of where I would have landed was strictly my own, was already going to be ridiculously close, and I didn’t feel comfortable making any sort of assertion that I could fit without getting double-arced. Again, Jack was incredibly gracious and heartsick over the whole thing, but at the end of the day, these things are going to happen, and I should have simply moved a little slower or asked him to pin down his base so that I could’ve avoided this. I’m less frustrated about the way it turned out for me, and more frustrated that I will never know if my assessment with regards to placement and avoiding his side arc was correct or not! Anyway, at this point, he burns my fleet to the ground and I get a 1-10. No losses on his side. I knew I needed to kill the Starhawk, thought I had it, and then the bump happened. But, so it goes. Looking forward to facing my next Starhawk! But at this point, I know I’ll be tumbling from table 4 and have no shot at a top finish. All I can do is try to salvage my score in round 4 and maybe earn myself something I likely don’t deserve!

Round 4: I get paired up against Mike M, who is flying an Onager with Jerjerrod. Just as I’d not yet flown against a Starhawk, I’ve not flown against an Onager either. I’ll be honest: my brain was fairly fried by the final round, so I’ve got fewer details on this match than my previous matches. He had Demo in this build, as well as two flotillas and a Raider. Sticking with my streak of honesty, I looked at his build and couldn’t figure out how such seemingly disparate elements of a fleet could synergize. I assumed he was making it work somehow, but I just couldn’t see it until he sprung it all on me. I gotta tell you, it was the most successful original build I’ve seen in person in a long time, so big kudos to Mike, even if it resulted in me getting stomped, lol. So I spread my ships out, trying to force him into making a choice regarding which ship to target with his Onager. He chose the Glad I’d deployed just right of the middle of the board. I deployed my Kuat on the far right so I could zoom in and flank his Onager and when Corvus moved to that side, I thought maybe I could snag Corvus too. His Demo was out to my left, so I deployed my left Glad out there to keep Demo honest as best I could. He chose to go first, and we played Infested Fields. IG-88 and Hondo were on token duty, and as Mike had deployed his two obstacles in his far corners, IG was going to snag one of them before bouncing back to battle, since Mike was flying squadronless and IG was unlikely to impact the fight. This is where, again, I tried to get cute. Lesson learned: don’t do that, dummy. I was messing with the middle Glad’s speed, trying to stay out of close range of the ignition token, then planning to jump it and speed up to hit the Onager before it melted me. Demo came in at me, but couldn’t kill off either Glad before it landed between them both. I knew at least one of my Glads, if not both of them, were going to die this turn. So I chose one to hit Demo. I rolled one hit/crit and several hits, but chose to keep most of the roll. He used Brunson to shrug off the APT die. This was probably the worst I felt today. I know Armada fatigue kicks in by round 4, but to have missed something so obvious? Woof, I felt dumb. He easily braced and redirected the remaining 3 damage (I think it was 3 or 4, non-crit), and then the Onager killed both Glads in one fell swoop. At this point, I’m going to lose, but I can try and salvage things. So my Kuat turns in on the Onager hard. But the Onager’s Salvo combined with XI7s takes its toll (I had used my Vader on Mike’s Raider to strip HIS Vader because I didn’t want to lose APTs or ECMs). I hammered as best I could, but wasn’t thinking about the fact that the Onager can move up to speed 3, and since Mike was first, I couldn’t keep up with it. However, I’d already committed, so now, Demo is swinging back around to take another pass at me while I’d been wasting Hondo’s excellent rolls (seriously, his first attack was a hit/hit, then every single attack after that was a hit/crit) on the Onager thinking I could get it, instead of wiping out Demo and saving my Kuat. So, you guessed it, Demo kills my Kuat on the last activation, I get tabled again, and he lost nothing. It was brutal. That said, Mike was an extremely gracious and lovely opponent to play, which meant that even if the result of my match was undesirable, I have to admit that his winning with such a nasty and original fleet was something he absolutely earned, and I can’t possibly begrudge him that.

So I ended the day with 17 tournament points, and I believe I was third from last by the end of the day. I was sorry that I tumbled from table 4 to table 8 all the way to the bottom of the standings. Especially because I believe the Starhawk matchup against Jack was a more favorable one for me than I realized. I think he was actually at a disadvantage, but outplayed me, and I let my nerves prevent me from being a particularly worthy opponent for him. But with that said, I knew the competition would be fierce, and I already had plans to attend the LCQ at Adepticon, so, that’s the way it goes. I exceeded my expectations at the Elizabethtown Prime, and I underperformed at the Gift of Games Prime. I will say this: I had a really great day, chatting with folks, playing a ton of Armada, and I got to watch my friend Nathan match up against Nathan Coda at the top table at the end of the day, which was really exciting! And by “got to watch,” I mean I know it was happening because my fourth match was my third of the day to go to time, so we were the last ones done 😁 Thanks to Gift of Games for running a great Prime, and thanks to the Armada community at large for always showing up and making these trips worthwhile!

Even if i like this report, but reading this whole rounds in one paragraph is really hard.

But about one part i am not sure:

17 hours ago, Irate Pooka said:

I didn’t trust my dice from Hondo enough, and pushed one of his Defenders onto a Purrgil in order to get the remaining one damage for the kill.

Using the effect from Hondo, to place another squadron near Hondo, does not trigger the overlap with the Purrgil, because it is no move.
it is about the same as replacing Mauler for example. Using the effect from Hondo on Mauler does not trigger the splash damage from him.

47 minutes ago, Tokra said:

Even if i like this report, but reading this whole rounds in one paragraph is really hard.

Thanks for the feedback, Tokra! I was worried that breaking up each round might be announced for the reader, but I'll be sure to break it up in the future for easier reading!

As for Hondo, my understanding was simply that a squadron needs to overlap the Purrgil to take damage, not end movement on it. Mauler specifically says "after you move," indicating that his movement during activation is a requirement to me. Can anyone clarify this for me? I'd hate to have incidentally cheated!

1 minute ago, Irate Pooka said:

Thanks for the feedback, Tokra! I was worried that breaking up each round might be announced for the reader, but I'll be sure to break it up in the future for easier reading!

As for Hondo, my understanding was simply that a squadron needs to overlap the Purrgil to take damage, not end movement on it. Mauler specifically says "after you move," indicating that his movement during activation is a requirement to me. Can anyone clarify this for me? I'd hate to have incidentally cheated!

From the RRG:

Ob stacles
When a ship or squadron overlaps an obstacle after executing a maneuver, it resolves an effect that depends on the type of obstacle it overlapped:

You can as well compare it with a ship, that is overlapping squadrons and forcing a new placement of these. If they are placed on a station this way, they do not recover the hull.

Thank you very much for the clarification, Tokra, even if I now feel like a total POS! Seriously, that's good to know and I appreciate your saying something. With 4 blue dice I probably should have gotten the Defender anyway, but I'd have felt even worse if I did that to kill a scatter Ace and had that swing the match results. Now I know not to, so I thank you!

Thanks for the write-up! I was your round 4 opponent, and just want to tell you that was a very enjoyable game for me as well. You are a great opponent and a pleasure to play against. I had just lost to Nathan Coda in round 2, so I was kind of right there with you in kind of being ready for the day to be over, but our great game really made the whole day worthwhile to me.