Another exceedingly lon battle report from Parakitor. I write these up anyway, so I figure I might as well post them here for others to read as well.
I decided to stick with Imperial this time, and since it was the first time that Wave 2 ships were legal, I had to do it. I know I'll use my 7 TIE fighters in the future, but for tonight it had to be my FIrespray-31 patrol ship.
Parakitor's Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter (Heavy Laser Cannon, Seismic Charges, Weapons Engineer, Shield Upgrade)
Bounty Hunter (Heavy Laser Cannon, Seismic Charges, Weapons Engineer, Shield Upgrade)
Night Beast
Academy Pilot
Academy Pilot
Academy Pilot
100 Points
GAME 1:
Prototype Pilot (Cluster Missiles)
Prototype Pilot (Cluster Missiles)
Gold Squadron Pilot (Ion Cannon Turret)
Luke Skywalker (Proton Torpedoes, R2-D2)
101 Points
The employee usually on duty Monday nights, decided to get into the game. She recently purchased her own ships, and tonight was only the second day she had played. Her friend made the squad for her, and since she was an employee, she wasn't eligible to win, so it wasn't a big deal that she had 101 points. I took out her Y-wing first because ion tokens scare me. Especially with such an enormous beast flying around. She took out a TIE fighter, and I took out an A-wing. That A-wing kill was cool because I managed to get both her A-wings (and one of my TIE fighters) with my Seismic Charges. Those things are wonderful! We ended up going to time, so I had a modified match win.
GAME 2:
Wedge Antilles (Proton Torpedoes)
Tycho Celchu
Luke Skywalker? (Proton Torpedoes)
I can't remember this match very well at all. I know he had to have some Wave 2 stuff in there in addition to Tycho, but I can't remember what it was. So I started out aggressively with my Bounty Hunter: Straight 4. Then his ships moved up and I realized that I was in range of all of them! They each Target Locked me and I thought that was game over right there. Miraculously, I came out of it with 1 or 2 shields remaining, and then unleashed with my Heavy Laser Cannon. So knowing that I needed to play catch up with such a terrible start, I decided to turn to the side so I could get them in my rear arc. Unfortunately, my Academy Pilot wasn't far enough out of the way! If he were just a few millimeters further, I would have had my action. That's when I really gave up hope, but once again we made it through. The Weapons Engineer came in really handy because I was able to lock onto two ships and then fire at whichever one was in my arc. They were really agile, especially Tycho. And somewhere in there I used my Seismic Charges to put a damage on one of his ships. Like I said, I can't remember this match very well. All I know for sure is that Tycho was the last one killed, and we lost the Firespray.
GAME 3:
Wedge Antilles (R2 Astromech, Expose)
Luke Skywalker (R2-D2, Marksmanship)
Biggs Darklighter (R2-F2, Stealth Device)
Learning my lesson from the previous round, I decided to take it slower. I set up my Bounty Hunter to be able to head straight up a corridor in the asteroid field. He set his ships directly opposite mine, with their bases almost touching. First round, nobody was in range. Next round, I was still out of range for a Target Lock, and they came in to lay the smack down. It looked very similar to the previous round, except that they didn't all Target Lock: they used their actions instead. Wedge with Expose is scary! Except that he rolled 2 blanks and 2 Focus. Bummer for him! The other two pilots got some of my shields. Then I blasted away with the Heavy Laser Cannon and knocked out Biggs Stealth Device. Sweet! My TIE fighters came up to bring the hurt, but he survived.
Next round, I saw that his three ships could all hit my base and lose their actions, so I went full ahead 4 and rammed them. In hindsight, I probably could have gone 3, and still taken an action. Well, they all went straight 1 again, predictably, and they all lost their actions -- and they couldn't shoot my Bounty Hunter! In fact, they didn't even move a millimeter. So my TIEs worked on them, eventually taking Biggs down. "Night Beast" was a star all night long, with his focus + evade combos. Wedge took some fire, including a Minor Explosion, so he was down to one hull point left.
Now I was in perfect position to drop a seismic charge. I could hardly contain my excitement! I moved my TIE fighters out of the blast radius, then dropped it. There was silence, just like in the movies. My opponent then said, "Wow, that could hurt." He then revealed his dials and Luke went right towards the blast area. Wedge would have gone past it with a bank 3, but my TIE fighter was right there, and Wedge was bumped backwards into Range 1 of the Seismic Charge. That was enough to kill him, and it sure made my day. The rest of the match was spent hunting down Luke. I think we lost a TIE fighter early on, but we still greatly outnumbered him. And we outmaneuvered him with some fancy barrel rolls. Eventually he decided to go for broke and attack the Bounty Hunter head-on, and he died bravely under fire from my Heavy Laser Cannon.
A modified win and two full wins was enough to win first place! I now have a second pair of acrylic target lock tokens! They are numbers 1 and 3. I love them! I also received my acrylic maneuver templates from Applied Perspectives today and they are impressive! I recommend them.
My thoughts on the Firespray are that it pays to have a low pilot skill. I used Barrel Roll in every match to get my Academy Pilots out of the way, and it really made this squad sing. I kind of want to try Boba Fett, but I realized that I hardly did any bank maneuvers, and when I did there really wasn't an option to go the other way. I also want to try out Proximity Mines, but I am having so much luck with the Seismic Charges that I'm afraid to leave them. The only time I lost my action in the third game was intentional, which probably means I am getting better at maneuvering the big ships. It is just so much fun!
