Or maybe, if you do something enough times, you get better at it!

Anyway, haven't had much time to play or hang out on these forums lately, but got in 3 good games tonight. Won all three, with only the 3rd being close.

#1: Krassis Shoots Eventually

I rejiggered my Krassis squad for more general use:

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On the other side, a Prototype Pilot (Assault Missile), Biggs (some upgrades, unfortunately I've forgotten) and a Rookie, and a Gold Squadron Y-Wing (Ion Cannon). I set up with Krassis in the center and the Interceptors positioned to race up the asteroid alley on the right. Held back on the first turn and then blasted ahead on the 2nd, which worked out. Got two close for the A-wing to use its missiles, evaded all other fire, and positioned to flank in on Biggs. The Y-Wing got separated from the pack so I put a couple dents in its shields, and then put a lot of lasers on Biggs. Had him gone by turn 4, and taking out the others was no problem. I lost a grand total of 2 shields on the Firespray, and one damage on one Interceptor. There was a lot of luck involved in this... I think at least 75% of the time I was rolling max hits on my dice, either unassisted or with focus. HLC hit for 4 damage at least twice. Opponent's evade rolls were below average as well, so by turn 5 or so this was basically a done deal.

#2: The Three-Ax.

For round 2, my opponent had a Imperial squad he wanted to fly, so I switched to Rebels and decided to come up with something new on the spot. I thought, "To hell with it, everyone's always complaining about A-wings and missiles, so I'll just go all out with that."

Against me: Vader (Concussion Missile, Stealth), Howlrunner (Stealth), Backstabber (Engine Upgrade), Black Squadron Pilot (Stealth).

Did a similar setup on this one: 2 A-Wings together on the left, and the other A-Wing and the X near the center. Opponent did pretty much as expected: everyone except Backstabber up the middle, Backstabber sprinting down the flank.

I decided to ignore Backstabber entirely for the moment and used PTL to get missile locks + focus on turn 2. Low pilot skill made this kind of annoying, though. Even more annoying when Vader + Howl teamed up to annihilate one of my A-Wings before its first shot. Already things were looking bad, but then 2 missiles later Howlrunner was gone and turn 3 wasn't looking so bad anymore. Then the X-wing connected with a lucky 1-point hit that fried Vader's stealth.

Backstabber was a nuisance but the A-Wings were able to dance around him. Took out the BSP by turn 4, Backstabber soon after, and wore Vader down consistently. The big moment (beyond wiping out Howlrunner almost immediately) was on turn 3. I know from trying to use him that the worst thing that can happen to Vader is a collision that robs his actions, so I tried to set that up in the middle. It worked beyond expectations, creating a 5-ship pileup that fortunately left me mostly at the rear with targets in sight.

The only real problem was that the game dragged on and on for a long time, with mostly only 2 attack/ 3 agility ships out there! Definitely not a tournament build. I lost only the initial A-Wing, everyone else survived to the end without even any hull hits.

I do think 2x/2a would be a better overall build than this, probably, but used optimally, missiles can really redefine the matchup right away. Which unfortunately I would be shown again in the next match...

#3: Vengeance of Soontir Fel

I'd taken a little break from starfighting with my favorite homeboy Soontir Fel, but it was time to get back in the mix with a little 181st squadron training flight.

The opponent was Luke (Stealth, Determination, R2-F2), Horton (2x Proton Torpedoes, Ion Turret, R5-K6, Shield Upgrade), Prototype Pilot (Concussion Missile).

I set up with the intent to confuse, divide, and conquer. The 3 TIEs along the left corridor, Turr facing directly left towards them in the middle, and Soontir along the right. Opponent set up pretty much all together in the middle. Hoping to avoid getting shot up with missiles and torpedoes, I spent the first several turns moving the Interceptors at odd speeds and weaving Turr back and forth with hard 1-turns. The TIEs raced straight 5s right up the side, which was enough to provoke Luke to break off to deal with them. So now I just needed to ignore the A-wing and kill Horton and all would be well in the Empire.

I was able to blast right past the A-wing and flank Horton with Soontir on turn 3 or 4 and get off a shot that stripped all of his shields in one blow, and I had Turr positioned to almost join him on the next round... but then tragedy struck. My opponent cleverly anticipated my move and raced the A-wing in to intervene, causing me to collide. Then he moved Horton in, target locked Turr, and survived another minor beating dished out to his flank by Soontir. Then he let off a proton torpedo for a one-shot kill on my poor 2nd ace. Had he gotten to fire, he would have been a MUCH harder target to hit, but the A-wing blocking was perfectly done.

Unaware of this devastating blow to the Empire happening on the other side of the table, the TIEs are doing pretty well. One of them has taken a couple hits but on the VERY FIRST SHOT against Luke (a 2 attack vs 4 agility situation) I hit for a damage and knocked out the stupid stealth. Then another shot brought down his shields to 0.

To make a long story short, the TIEs are able to lose Luke on an asteroid and break off towards Horton, who has ion'd Soontir but has only 1hp remaining (all 8 points done by Soontir in just 3 turns). Soontir is being lined up by the A-wing, but the missile shot is a complete miss and now the A-wing is a mild nuisance at best. Two TIEs are in a position to shoot Horton, and the first one does the job, leaving the second free to take a pie-in-the-sky 2 vs 4 dice shot at the A-wing at the far end of range 3... result: 2 hits, no evades, shields gone. Opponent nearly flips the table over in rage. I have rolled almost no blanks all night (on offense), and usually have a focus token handy.

The rest is pretty easy. Luke and Soontir go head-on in a joust that could easily go either way, but Soontir shoots first and Luke... never does. Soontir evades the A-wing and all 3 TIEs converge on it from all sides to wrap things up quickly. All of my ships are damaged (Soontir with 1 hit, one TIE with 1 hit, the others with 2 each) but I've been able to avoid concentrated damage other than that one horrific torpedo.

So, pretty good night for me. I had only one asteroid collision (by a millimeter at best), and lots of crafty boosting and barrel rolling and red-hot lasers. I think I've finally developed the skill needed to be trusted with those fancy Interceptors!

You ran a really good squad too. I have felt like flipping the whole table myself a few times.

He had a rough night for sure. I wasn't missing many shots, but I also wasn't making many mistakes.

Three more games as the Empire last night... might be the last for a while unless I can find some other people to play with. Regular opponent is off to Europe for a few weeks and the others are either having babies or starting new jobs right now!

Anyway, my newfound good fortune held up, right until the last one.

First game I flew a modified version of the Krassis list above. I decided I didn't need the HLC and Gunner, or the bomb, so I dropped Gunner and Seismic Charge, freed up 7 points, and replaced an Avenger with a Soontir... flying in the face of danger this time without a Stealth Device but with PtL.

The opponent was flying a odd Chewie Falcon/Wedge/Prototype A-Wing list. The A-Wing was completely un-upgraded (always a mistake, in my experience), and unfortunately I don't remember what the others had aside from Wedge having Swarm Tactics and Stealth (also a mistake on an X-Wing, IMO) and Chewie having Draw Their Fire (good fit, which he used twice). I need to keep better track of this stuff for these reports!

Anyway, this one was positively a massacre. I laid into the Falcon two straight turns with the HLC, both Interceptors went after Wedge with all they had, the A-Wing that was intended to block me wasn't able to be enough places at once, and I won this with all ships intact, although the Firespray was down to 4hp. I don't think there was any one thing that was super memorable about this match, other than I was routinely rolling 3 or 4 hits on every attack, after Focus.

The second game I went back to the "Try And Keep Up" list that I posted above, and really enjoyed. This time the opponent took a nice little Wedge (Swarm Tactics, Torpedo), Garven, Dutch (Ion, Torpedo, R2D2) squad, but I was still able to get in and annihilate, although admittedly some it relied on some pretty impressive luck on the dice.

We ended up set up in opposite corners, so the opening rounds were a lot of dancing towards the center. He kept all three ships together (as he should), and I split the Interceptors into one flight and the TIEs into another. The first turn of actual combat happened a round earlier than I expected, which was nearly a catastrophe after I both misjudged my own maneuvers between Turr and Soontir AND misjudged how aggressive the enemy intended to be with Wedge. Wedge was able to just barely hit range 3 and get a torpedo off at a Soontir who had no actions due to overlapping. Then he rolled 2 hits and a crit and my heart went into my throat. I stared seriously at my dice, made them promises, blew a little kiss... and rolled 3 out of 3 evades, naturally. AND did a point of damage on my return fire.

Another table-flipping incident narrowly averted when my opponent saw this.

It was mostly smooth sailing after that. I danced the two Interceptors into head-on blocking positions and caused a Wedge-first pile-up, so he couldn't shoot at anything but a range 3 TIE, sent Dutch to a cold place in the sky, lost Turr to a slight error in judgment (barrel rolling when I shouldn't have) + nice roll from Garven, and set myself up for the endgame.

The TIE Fighters were able to position themselves perfectly to block, giving Soontir the opening to get flank shots on Wedge. 3 ships firing on him was enough to do the trick.

After that just an easy mop-up on Garven. In the end I lost Turr, had one TIE down to a single HP, and lost Soontir's pilot ability to a bad crit draw (the only damage he took all game, and unfortunately probably the worst card you could draw with him).

Round 3. A demoralized opponent who has now lost 5 straight to me humbly requests that I fly a list NOT involving Soontir Fel. I agree, feeling kinda bad for his even surviving the last game.

So I went back to my original Krassis Shoots Eventually list (posted above), just swapping out the Gunner for a Homing Missile. Why did I do this? I don't know. I was in a hurry and couldn't find much to do with 5 points. I knew even before I was done setting up the cards that it was a weird choice, but I figured at least the Target Lock continuance would come in handy.

The enemy flew the same squadron, which was a good move. It's a strong group, and he was learning the optimal flow of target locks and focus towards the end of their short lives last time around. I still don't know what that Stealth is doing on that X-Wing, but he seems to like it and I won't argue any more.

In this game I learned that (a) overconfidence is bad, (b) torpedoes are very bad, © "Krassis Shoots Eventually" can certainly be a false statement.

My opponent again set up on the opposite corner from me, where I had already made the major mistake of positioning my Avenger pilots OUTSIDE the Firespray. I hoped this would set them up for flanking, but even moving relatively close to Krassis, what it ACTUALLY meant when the enemy came from the other side of the table was that Krassis ended up taking two torpedoes (one with focus from Garven) all by himself on the first turn of firing, while my Interceptors were juuuuust out of range. That was 7 points of damage, all of which fired before I got to act. I returned fire for 4 points on Dutch, but that was the last time anything went right for me.

Next turn I tried to move my big ass up and cause multiple collisions just to save Krassis, but it didn't work. He got annihilated before even getting to fire a second time. One interceptor got in a few more points on Dutch, including a "you don't get any actions" critical, but this was already looking really, really bad.

Not yet hopeless, though, so I tried some crafty hard-turn evasions with my Interceptors the next turn, hoping to force him to split his fighters. Wedge still manages to pop off a range 3 shot against one of my pristine stealth ships, lands only one hit, and then I roll 4 eyeballs – with no focus. Stealth gone and I about gave up.

That Interceptor got ion'd and died the next turn, I only did 2 more points of damage total, stupid Dutch recovered all 3 of his shields after being down to one HP (and never did manage to fix that critical hit after 4 tries!), and it was a very sad, shameful end to my win streak.

Takeaways:
(a) first and foremost, use the squints to screen for the Firespray, NOT the other way around. It they're not in position yet, don't just advance blindly on the enemy as if they were.
(b) find some other use for 5 points. This would have been easy, but we had agreed not to play with Wave 3 crew just yet.
© moving everyone first and firing everyone last is BRUTAL against these particular Rebels. It is a good list, especially against a smaller number of ships.
(d) I really, really wish Krassis could take a pilot skill.
(e) go back to having really good dice rolls, instead of really bad ones.