Armada - Store Tournament Report (10/13)

So, a third store championship is under my belt, and I remain undefeated in Missouri through 7 games. The three games I played yesterday, however, were the toughest yet.

A brief run-down of the competition and their fleets.

Cyrus
 - Raddus drop Profundity with Overload Pulse CR90B

Graham
 - ISD2, Interdictor, Demolisher, SFC

Kurt
 - Mon Mothma AF, Admonition, Foresight, A-Wing Ball.

Jay
 - Avenger Boarding Troopers Kuat, Demolisher, Imperial Ace Ball

Only five in the tournament. Based both on player skill and strength of their lists, I knew Cyrus and Jay were going to be tougher nuts to crack, while Graham and Kurt's lists struck me as weak overall.

First pull was against Jay, while Kurt got the by.

Game One - Dave (Rebels) vs. Jay (Imperials)

Jay took first player and after some reflection took my surprise attack, this would be the first time for both of us playing the objective. I deployed three obstacles between the station and his deployment to try to limit where he could place the ship, and he accordingly deployed the Avenger on the station itself.

For my raids I chose navigate, squadron and navigate. My plan was to slow down Demolisher from getting into the fight and double-team Avenger. 

Mithel got a good engage on a number of my squadrons, but Lando with his ability to pull the red double hit when I needed it allowed me to finish off Mithel and Zertik on back to back turns, after which the squadron ball began falling apart. Notably, I was over matched, five squadrons to 4 and 87 points of crack Imperial anti-squadron aces against my more mixed load out of 67. But through combining Lando's ability to finish off squadrons at key moments with timely flaks from my ships, I was able to prevail and won with squadron battle with Shara and Tycho still standing. 

In the center of the board the main event started when my non-flagship LMC80 drifted into close ranged of the Kuat. the Kuat had already taken a pounding at this point, but now was the moment. 

Jay targeted my starboard arc, dumped Ex Racks, and got 10 damage out of the role with no defense tokens to spend. Ordinarily this would have straight killed the LMC80, but I had opened by boosting the starboard shields to 3 and so he came up one damage short. Furthermore, because he couldn't navigate that turn, he couldn't speed up to ram me and finish the LMC80 off and so ended millimeters from my front right corner.

All hail Auxiliary Shield Techs. 

I still would have won even if he had killed this LMC80, as I had the Avenger dead to rights with my flagship off its starboard side, but this meant it was going to be a 8-3 win for me instead of a 7-4 or 6-5. The Avenger went down. 

The 1 health LMC80 would use MCEF to repair back up almost to full health and shields by the end of the game, but was effectively out of the battle at this point. Demolisher circled around trying to nail my flotilla, but couldn't produce the accuracy it needed to kill it. The most embarrassing part was that the Gozantis rolled extremely well and killed the Neb as it tried to hunt them down. But with all his squads, Avenger and his Gozanti's down, the end wasn't in doubt. 

8-3 to me. 

Game 2 - Dave (Rebels) vs. Kurt (Rebels)

I was feeling pretty good after game one, especially when I saw that I had pulled Kurt as my second opponent. Cyrus, clearly the best player of the four, had won his game, but with a 7-4 margin. 

Kurt is usually an Imperial player and was trying out a built that he had difficulty against at some point in the past. The A-wing ball, containing Shara, Tycho, Green Squadron, and 3 Generics. Again I was overmatched, fighting into 78 points versus 67, and 6 vs. 4.

He took my Contested Outpost, and so feeling no rush, I deployed back, intending to make him come to me and attempted to prevent him from double-teaming either one of my LMC80s with his frigates.

Here is where we ended up:

This game was notable in the really bad luck Kurt had with his transports. I through a random side arc shot off the left of the left LMC80 with an accuracy and a crit. He made me reroll the crit into a double hit, which combined with an earlier single hit and running over an asteroid to kill the GR75, and through reducing his activations severely limited his ability to set up for a killer frigate assault. The other GR75 coming in from the left got stuck in a bad position, and after 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to maneuver it, Kurt settled on a course that bumped it into my LMC80, and then bumped it back onto the asteroid, insta-killing it. Two flotillas down.

Meanwhile, Foresight sailed into the midst of my left contingent, and was exploded. The broadside it dumped on the bow of my LMC80 all was engineered away the next turn.

He began his attack in earnest on the bow of my flagship, on top of the station itself, and looking to converge on it with Mon Mothma and Admonition. However, MCEF combined with Garm tokens and well-timed engineering tokens once again shone and kept the ship healthy through the deluge. My squadron ball quickly moved to intercept with Lando once again shining as a finisher. 

With the squadrons tied up, it would come down to the ships themselves.

He was unable to pull the accuracies he needed out of Admonition, however, and while the double-arcs from both ships began penetrating the shields, they were unable to do critical damage. 

The LMC80 sailed away, healing all the way, with Admonition ineffectively trying to chase down a GR-75. Meanwhile, the unthinkable happened and without a timely navigate up on the AF, Kurt sailed Mothma off the board.

10-1 to me.

Game 3 - Dave (Rebels) vs. Cyrus (Rebels)

At long last, the pairing I had sought to avoid. Cyrus was clearly the best player in the store, and he was fielding a fleet with a seemingly unbeatable gimmick: boarding troopers and overload pulse. In the round two battle of the gimmicks, Cyrus had 10-1'd Jay. To win the tournament, I needed to limit my loss to Cyrus to a 5-6, and hope to win in tiebreak, or outright win. My problem was that I didn't really have a good plan to beat his gimmick, as his burst damage would overpower my healing - and I was essentially counting on him not getting the Overload Pulse Crit, as with no reroll capability on the CR90B that was a firm possibility.

He took my Contested Outpost.

He was planning to drop off of Quantum Storm on the left or an Engine Techs CR90A on the right.

I decided to aggressively fork the two ships - threatening to first-strike one if he dropped on the other side. 

And so, on the top of round 2, he called in Raddus.

Profundity spat out the CR90B, which of course landed the crit, but at this point I thought I might have him. That CR90A is double-arced at medium range by the LMC80, and I have  a navigate command queued up for the LMC80 to accelerate it to speed 3 and lead the MC75 - escaping the double arc. 

However, the CR90A survived with one health, denying me the first strike, and allowing it to fire back and engineer shields around and make it a tougher nut to crack. I then failed the navigate over the MC75, it might honestly have never been possible, but a boy can dream.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty bad about my chances at this point. Realizing that it was going to come down to 120 Con-O points versus 109 he would get from sinking the Liberty, my Nebulon made a hard right and headed for the hills. And after killing my Liberty, the MC75 and Hammerhead gave chase.

Annoyingly, my Nebulon came within one damage of killing the Engine Techs CR90 A once again, denying me 59 points as it sailed off into the sunset. My Neb would not be so lucky, and was eventually hunted down by the HH and MC75 on round 5. 

On the left, however, after a couple bad rolls I managed to kill his GR75 and nail all his squadrons (3 Z-95s and Blount), at the cost of only an A-wing. I actually dropped the flagship to speed zero to get all the con-O points possible, but I would need points from somewhere else. For some reason, he looped the CR90B and Quantum Storm towards the LMC80, which both in turn fell to my Squads and the ship itself giving me the margin I needed to win.

7-4 me, by a single point (60 point MOV)

This was the tensest match I have ever played, as it became pretty apparent to both of us after round 2 it was going to come down to a small number of points. Me missing killing a 59 point ship by a single health point twice further compounded by frustration. It ended up being a really sloppy game on my part, forgetting to attack with my Neb a couple times and with Lando on a critical turn. Thankfully it didn't end up costing me the game, and indeed, Lando's ability to modify a red die to an un-scatterable double hit was what got me the last flotilla of Cyrus's.

I think Cyrus probably made a mistake not dropping on my flagship, and made another mistake sending me sacrifices at the end for the win. But, I will say that I really don't know how to play against this particular gimmick, and my win seemed more based on my opponents missteps than creating my own win condition.

My forking strategy kinda worked, but winning against this particular combo would seem to be predicated on him not landing the overload pulse - either through missing the crit or having DCO on all your large ships. At any rate, not a fun fleet to play against, and a tough game.

But, with 25 points to Cyrus's 21, I was the winner of the $25 in store credit this day (plus a few custom art cards), which I used to buy my own Torpedo Frigate and further flesh out my fleet!

Overall Thoughts

If you are not playing Lando, play Lando. He is amazing and makes SFC's suddenly playable again. My little 67 SFC won all three matchups and in two cases was able to start bombing afterwards. 

AST and MCEF shone in game 2 especially, and the comments around the store were that my fleet managed to be extremely tanky while not giving up firepower. Indeed, I came to really appreciate the flexibility of SW-7s, and only missed the expensive gunnery teams once in all three games. I am beginning to come to the conclusion that they are not really necessary on Star Cruisers - especially when MSU is still out of the meta.

It helps me that the Meta at this store is big ship focused, and nobody seemingly likes running heavy squads, as I think I would have struggled against a bomber ball more. I was surprised nobody ran an SSD yesterday.

In any event, with these two Star Cruisers, I managed to upgrade them extremely efficiently, maximizing the Garm effect, and effectively turning them into pocket Star Destroyers. Double-arcing in medium range, these ships gave as good as they got, and they could tank far more than your average Star Destroyer the way I had them kitted out.

I'm also completely sold on Surprise Attack as my new default red objective. It was super clutch, and I honestly think I could have played it a little better with a squadron raid timed to stop the boarding troopers.

In sum, an overall great day of games. With one exception everything in my fleet punched far above its weight, and with a couple modifications and I now have my Chicago fleet ready to go.

Get ready boys, there are going to be some speed 3 LMC80 flank deployments next month XD

Armada Preview - Garm's Exodus

With the end of the quarter upon me and 43 student commentaries to write, I went ahead and made the poor decision to go meet up with friends in Kansas City this weekend for the Renaissance Fair! On top of that, I am headed back to the Geekery on Sunday for another store tournament of Armada before heading home, this time only a 400-point game.

Needless to say I'm more excited for this format than I was for the 600 point, although I still expect to see a lot of SSDs running around. The other big news in the Armada world is the release of Rebellion in the Rim! So now I finally have the cards I've been proxying for quite some time.

This fleet can in many ways be thought of as the final evolution of my tinkering with AST + Garm over the last couple months. The concept is: what if I just completely double down on Garm's gimmick. How far can he get me?

Name: Garm's Exodus
Faction: Rebel
Commander: Garm Bel Iblis

Assault: Surprise Attack
Defense: Contested Outpost
Navigation: Solar Corona

MC80 Star Cruiser (96)
• Garm Bel Iblis (25)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
• Mon Calamari Exodus Fleet (5)
= 138 Points

MC80 Star Cruiser (96)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
• Mon Calamari Exodus Fleet (5)
= 109 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 61 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Ahsoka Tano (2)
= 20 Points

Squadrons:
• Lando Calrissian (23)
• Shara Bey (17)
• Tycho Celchu (16)
• A-wing Squadron (11)
= 67 Points

Total Points: 395

Yeah, you knew this fleet was coming eventually.

The goal here is to skimp on upgrades and gain the most efficiency out of Garm while not losing a SFC. I've been really inspired by Shmitty's Dumpster Fire fleet, sporting a Star Cruiser with only Nav teams. I'm taking it in a slightly different direction. He preferred Nav Teams with Garm to make good use of those Nav Tokens, fixing the LMC80's move chart. I am instead opting to fix its defenses and maximize the use of those Round 1 Garm tokens.

His fleet got me thinking that Star Cruisers might be being overlooked, and gunnery teams on LMC80s might be overrated. The pair I am sporting here are not standard artillery LMC80s, but rather medium-range double-arcing brawlers. SW7's are there to smooth out the damage at medium range, and I finally get to utilize a card I've been eying for years in the form of MC Exodus Fleet.

It's no secret I love cards like 7th Fleet Star Destroyer/MC Exodus Fleet that I can try to min-max the value out of. MC Exodus Fleet has just suffered for years from being too niche. How often do you run engineering anyway? But with Garm, that's a guaranteed double engineering token usage on both ships, so that's already 8 additional engineering points. Factor in a likely engineering command on both and at least 2 Ahsoka'd Engineering Tokens, and now we're looking at 16 extra engineering points over the course of the game, or 8 additional shields potentially for 10 points. Worth trying out at the very least.

Finally, I've got my new favorite card, ASTs, to buff up those side shields for the brawl and get full efficiency out of Garm's round 1 tokens.

In sum, I have a pair of larges that really want to brawl and take damage, get in close and double arc.

The next thing I built was the SFC, with which I wanted to test out if Lando will really bring back the small fighter group. He honestly looks extremely cool, and I think he will punch way above his weight. He's flying in with some usual suspects of Rebel anti-squads - we'll see if it's enough to slow down a determined bomber ball.

Rounding out the fleet was actually the hardest part of this, and something I was hung up on for weeks - swapping out TRCR90s, Peltas, Escort Frigates, etc. I knew I definitely wanted to get a command 2 ship in that could take ASTs to maximize Garm, but trying to get a ship in there I was happy with while maximizing its potential and commanding my squads was proving very difficult. I eventually settled on an AST + LTT  + Support Refit Neb. Cramming on Strat Advisor, I have 5 activations, and 6 deployments. It's less deployments that I would like, but a respectable number of activations for a double large fleet.

For objectives I picked some of the usual suspects and what I expect will soon become a staple red objective - surprise attack.

So, in sum, this fleet wants to get in quickly and brawl, trading punches and winning by out-tanking my opponents. While this fleet lacks specific anti-SSD tools, I think it will fare well because I should be able to easily maneuver the Liberty's into the side arcs while and then start pouring fire and repairing back up.

I probably don't want to run into a Sloane fleet or bomber ball, as I would have to really aggressively close to kill the carrier in both those cases to win. Against an MSU, I think I fare well, but probably not as optimized as a couple battlecruisers sporting gunnery teams would be. In any slugfest with larges, however, I predict I will have a big advantage. Double brace and Garm + Exodus Fleet means that killing my LMC80s will be slow going.

We'll see what happens, this fleet is highly experimental, but if it works I would love to take something like this to Chicago in November.

Armada - Store Tournament Report (9/15)

My continuing quest to find people to play Armada against in my new locale led me today to just south of Kansas City in Shawnee, a 2 1/3 hour drive I don't plan on making a habit of. The Geekery, a game store in Shawnee, still has an active Armada community, and with the release of the SSD had started a series of monthly 600 point store tournaments.

I almost went to the August tournament, backing out at last minute because of work commitments. However, I cleared out my schedule and made the time to go today, taking a list I developed on the drive home from LR last month to take advantage of the 600-point format and my shiny new MC80. 

Shawnee Fleet, “Home One”

Faction: Rebel
Commander: General Dodonna

Assault: Advanced Gunnery
Defense: Capture the VIP
Navigation: Dangerous Territory

MC80 Assault Cruiser (114)
• General Dodonna (20)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Home One (7)
= 161 Points

Pelta Command Ship (60)
• Raymus Antilles (7)
• Intensify Firepower! (6)
= 73 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
• Jaina's Light (2)
= 53 Points

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
• Task Force Organa (1)
= 48 Points

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
• Task Force Organa (1)
= 48 Points

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
• Task Force Organa (1)
= 48 Points

Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette (36)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
• Cham Syndulla (5)
• External Racks (3)
• Task Force Organa (1)
= 47 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Ahsoka Tano (2)
= 20 Points

Squadrons:
• Jan Ors (19)
• Dutch Vander (16)
• Biggs Darklighter (19)
• 2 x X-wing Squadron (26)
• Z-95 Headhunter Squadron (7)
= 87 Points

Total Points: 585

The core of this fleet is maximizing the potential of Home One, a title that is typically underwhelming in 400-point games. Between it and IF, I have a lot of dice control over my three Slave Turreted Scout Hammerheads, the main damage dealers. Add on a generic squadron ball, some ships to command them, and Cham Syndulla to deal with omnipresent SSDs, and I finally had myself a 600 point build I was happy with. As a Rebel Off-MSU, it takes me back to my roots.

There were five* other players in the tournament today. All Imperial. Two were running Executor-II SSD lists - no surprises there. One had a ball of Imperial Aces and was commanded by Piett, the other had two Gozantis (including a Slicer Tools Suppressor), Jonus, and was commanded by JJ. Both SSDs had similar suites of upgrades, DCO, Brunson, QBTs, Overload Pulse, Palpatine. One was Annihilator, the other Ravager. Neither, however, had Defense Liason.

Of the other three players, two were running lists with double ISDs and Demolisher. One had Sloane, Squall and a suite of (subpar imho) Imperial Aces. The other took three Gozantis and 6 TIE Defenders.

The last Imperial fleet was 4 VSD-Is and 3 Arquitens, all minimally upgraded and commanded by Vader.

My first game ended up against what I thought was the superior of the two SSD lists - the one with an ace ball.

Game 1

It's only been a few hours but I can't remember the name of my opponent. He was really nice and a pretty solid player. I really didn't want this match up for my first game (would have preferred the other SSD list at the very least), as my list was built with an SSD in mind but didn't fully seek to counter one. Critically, I was really worried about my squads and about Ravager swatting my Hammerheads at long range. 

I had bid, chose first player, and took his Station Assault. He deployed both in the middle of the map. I had 11 deployments to his 4 and 9 activations to his 2, so I got to place my units exactly where I wanted. Combat began in bottom of round one when he flung his aces forward to engage my squads.

He mis-positioned his opening assault, and I was able to pick Soontir Fel right off the bat. That was about the only good thing I did in the squadron game. This was a messy game on my part on the whole, for example forgetting on turn 2 that I could (and definitely should have) targeted the right station with my Hammerheads as I approached his ship.

While I got a good initial engage on his fighters on T2, tapping Mithel with Dutch, they were too much for even a Tar Pit to handle.

RIP my squads. Took out Soontir then perished to the man by the top of turn 3. He was using Piett and Wulff to cheat out full squad commands every round and obliterated me.

However, at the top of round 1 I led off with Cham Syndulla boarding the SSD, swapping his commands over to navigates and squads. Without DL, he was stuck with this for the rest of the game. Even better, he came up two damage short of killing the Torp HH (yay for being in a single SSD side arc), and I was able to get another couple attacks out of it on round 4 before ramming the Executor-II like the hero it was.  

Home One was never going to be super helpful this game, as HH's were unlikely to be able to produce two accuracies needed to do something interesting against the SSD at long range - so in my deployment I dispensed with trying to group them all together and once again opted for splitting on either side of the SSD. 

This was my first time using Slaved Turret Scout hammerheads, and they hit like motherfucking trucks. Spamming out Concentrate Fire commands as they drifted at speed 1 towards the port side of the SSD, with IF and TFO giving them dice control, they routinely produced 4-7 damage. He would kill all of them and the Pelta by the end of the game, but they did their part.

I didn't do a good job double-arcing with Home One this game, but I did maneuver Jaina's Light perfectly. In the above picture it has one health left, but is on the way out, on top of an asteroid that is obstructing the potentially killing shot from the SSD. 

His squads did a decent job helping him mop up my ships after tearing through my squads, but as they were imperial squads, it was very hit and miss. My attention was completely consumed with the SSD. At the top of round 6, it had 8 health left. My last Scout Hammerhead landed a massive 7 damage hit that he needed to burn his last brace on. A broadside from Home One and Jaina's Light later, I had myself a dead Executor-II

Of the four SSD games at the tournament, it won three, only getting crippled in one of those three. This was the only kill, and it came as quite a surprise to the insufferable Christopher (who did not know how to win gracefully and additionally kept referring to his SSD as "his lovely lady"). His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw that an Executor II had gone down, and suffice it to say after what a sexist asshole he had been the entire tournament I was ready to give him what for if I had the chance. I had him pegged as one of the better players but fielding the worse SSD list (again, without DL). He had managed to stomp his opponent in game one however, (4 VSD guy), and I was saddened to discover that despite tabling my opponent, my 8-3 win (organizers were using 400 point instead of 600 point margins) was actually the smallest margin of victory in the first round of the tournament.

Game 2 

Being the "Worst" of the winners had its advantages however, it meant I would get to go against someone who lost their first round match. I was at first really disappointed to discover that my opponent (4 VSD guy), had dropped and gone to watch the Chief's game - as I thought I would fare well against his fleet. But then I saw his replacement - a last minute entry who brought the only other Rebel Fleet of the day.

Jordan was a good-natured guy who claimed to have competed in multiple official tournaments but to me seemed to have more money than game sense (he was bragging about owning two SSDs the entire event). His fleet against me was FIVE Torpedo Frigates, each one sporting H9s, APs, APTS, and OEs. His flagship was Mon Karren with Dodonna. 

Critically, he had no squads, no slicer tools (I shudder to think of what he would have done against a bomber build), and he also had NO BID. Five ships that want to go first and no way to make sure that happens.

I looked over his objectives and saw opening salvo. It was almost too easy.

All those MC30s are hurtling in at speed three. This game, you can see I deployed to take advantage of Home One versus TFO, as the accuracies would be more important for making damage stick to ships with multiple evades. 

Jordan got off one shot this game before surrendering. Being out-activated, he would roll up an MC30 into range of my Scout Hammerhead gun line, and it would take a shot with the three dice of its front battery, a die for slaved turrets, a die for con fire, and two for opening salvo for a grand total of seven dice from a 48 point ship, then use IF and Home One to manipulate those dice into the max amount of damage. His MC30s went down about two shots per pop. 

Over the course of round 2, I shot down four of them. And at the bottom, he declared he was done and that he would surrender.

Considering I was first player and was going to first strike that last MC30, it was likely I was on my way to tabling him by the end of round 3 - although he might have nailed one of my HH's with the Liberty.

This game was frankly the easiest I have ever played and was gross, I felt really bad for Jordan but his list was simply awful. He claimed he had built it specifically to take down an SSD under the assumption he would face one today, but quite frankly I think he might have struggled against that too given that once the crawfish came into close range, they were easy pickings. MC30s without Admonition are just weak in CQC.

However! Now it was time for the problems to start. The tournament was being run by someone who didn't play Armada, who said that according to the ruleset a concession with over a 140 point margin would result in its final margin being entered into the tournament record. I was not having this, because this was clearly a 10-1 in the making. Jordan agreed this was dumb, but also didn't want to play out the 15 more minutes it would have taken me to table him. After some haggling and discussion, we agreed to record it to the organizers as a 10-1, 551 point margin to me. 

How imprecisely these store tournaments are run, played, and how willing players are to dodge out the minute the outcome is obvious never fails to astound and disappoint me.

I will freely acknowledge though that playing against Jordan was a coup for me. As with most games, success in Armada Tournament seems to be more about pulling the patsy as your opponent rather than being the best player in the event. My first round opponent gave as good as he got until I tabled him, but Jordan was a pushover, and while my first round game had been the longest of the three (2 3/4 hours), this one was the shortest.

So, with two tablings, and feeling pretty good about myself, I went and watched the other games.

Christopher (m'lady SSD) was clearly outclassed as a player by his opponent, but he scored a massively lucky roll early in the match and killed Demolisher before it fired a shot, and coasted off that to an 8-3 victory. I would have really liked to see him lose. Still, his opponent avoided being tabled, which meant even though we both won both our games I had 18 tournament points to his 16. First place! Although both first and second place got $25...

Which was effectively $15 because of the $10 entry fee...

Still, a win is a win!

I splurged and used my store credit to get a second Liberty to round out a fleet build I've been working on.

My experience in store tournaments continues to be lots of people with immaculate storage solutions and expensive peripherals who suck at Armada, specifically list-building. If I go to this tournament again, I'll be curious to see what the competition is like next time around. I definitely didn't get to play the most skilled player at the tournament, and I would have loved to Cham Syndulla Christopher's SSD.

I'm very happy with how my fleet performed, although it definitely needs to honing for maximum efficiency. I really want to revisit the squad ball if nothing else.

I feel like I have down pretty well how to kill an SSD at this point (thanks Hubert for allowing me to practice against an Exec-II before this tournament). I think right now they have a higher win rate because they present such a challenge that players aren't always ready to deal with. Thankfully I had the tools for the job.

On a final note, having played two SSDs with Palpatine aboard at this point, I think he's a pretty bad officer pick for it unless you have a lot of activations, otherwise your opponent just waits until you go then attacks you with impunity. He does seem decent against Sloane ace builds though.

At any rate, a fun Sunday. Time to return to the real world. 

Armada - 8/24 Battle Report

After a hectic first week of school, I was pleasantly surprised from a text from Michael with a picture of his brand new SSD, asking if I was free this weekend. And so today I took a little time off to drive to Springfield and play some Armada.

I brought a fleet I named "Dumpster Fire Defiance."

Name: Dumpster Fire Defiance
Faction: Rebel

Commander: Garm Bel Iblis

Assault: Advanced Gunnery
Defense: Fire Lanes
Navigation: Intel Sweep

MC80 Command Cruiser (106)
• Garm Bel Iblis (25)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Defiance (5)
= 154 Points

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Yavaris (5)
= 72 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 61 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Ahsoka Tano (2)
= 20 Points

Squadrons:
• Biggs Darklighter (19)
• Jan Ors (19)
• 2 x X-wing Squadron (26)
• Gold Squadron (12)
• VCX-100 Freighter (15)
= 91 Points

Total Points: 398

I wanted to continue experimenting with Nebulon-B's sporting ASTs/LTTs, and this fleet is derived from the fleet I ran against Hubert a few weeks ago. However, in light of my game with Hubert, I decided to swap things up a little bit to give me better tools to deal with an SSD. First up, and partially because Hubert recently gave me Home One for my birthday, I swapped out the Liberty for a MC80. I've never been particularly drawn to the ship, but after playing it, I have to say: Defiance might be the best non-Demolisher/Yavarris title in the game and I can't believe I've slept on it for so long. Anyway, I elected to try out the MC80 in part based on the recent article from CGYSO noting ECM as an effective counter to SSDs, and to render me less completely countered by HTTs than I was versus Hubert.  

The "Dumpster Fire" part of the name comes from the squad ball, which is Schmitty's from GenCon. It has the Tar Pit, combined with the incredibly effective for its point cost Gold Squadron and a VCX as a quality of life buff/way to play strategic objectives. 

I spent a long time going back and forth on this fleet, trying unsuccessfully to cram in the MC80 Assault Cruiser and Yavarris to no avail. So I settled on the Command Cruiser and called it a day. 

Here is what Michael chose to run: 

Command SSD with a Gozanti and a flak Raider/Vader/Boba for anti-squadron cover. Notably the Executor has Intel Officer and Palpatine on it for a defence token discarding synergy. The admiral was JJ. 

Michael had bid, chose to go first, and picked my fire lanes. This would be my first time playing an objective of this style, so it would be interesting to say the least. 

This setup should look familiar to anyone who saw my game versus Hubert. @Daniel, he might have deployed the SSD in the corner but both were effectively blocked off with debris. When he deployed in the center, I did my typical "deploy on either side" schtick.

Anyway, we got started and Garm did his thing, with me triggering AST everywhere in the interim. The most notable thing about the opening was Michael's decision to start his raider off at speed four, a huge mistake as it would turn out. Towards the top of Round 2, it ended up in the middle of my squadron ball.

Cool placement bro. 

It suffered the fate of all Raiders and died with most of its shields still up, eaten alive by squadrons. 

However, I underestimated the ability of JJ to make your SSD turn on a dime. 

Yikes. 

So Michael had my Nebs in a pretty good place. JJ strikes me as much better than I initially thought he might be for the SSD, as he saves you from ever really having to Navigate while not giving up the ability to keep your opponents in your front arc. The SSD has so many shields and typically an unengaged side, so having to sacrifice a shield or two is not really a big deal. 

However, Nebs are tough little ships and Yavarris took a massive front arc shot of 9 hits like a champ. evading 2 and bracing the remaining 7 down to 4. 

My other Neb accelerated to speed 3 to try and dodge past the front arc as the Pickle came in from the left. 

My VCX ensured I was winning fire lanes during these turns, typically scoring two per turn to his one. Fire lanes was definitely the most favorable objective of my suite for him, as the SSD gets a leg up on getting the tokens due to how far in the middle of the board it starts, but my strategic was allowing me to steadily start accumulating more. 

By the top of round 3, Vader was gone and Boba was on his way out. My Nebs had managed to slip into the side arcs of the Executor. Michael concentrated fire and tried to obliterate the Yavarris, but came up one damage short. 

For anyone who hasn't played Nebs with ASTs, it completely changes how you play the ship, not only making the already stalwart little ships tankier but additionally allowing you to consistently double-arc and increase your damage output. 

Yavarris was able to get a last activation in before ramming into the SSD and killing itself like the hero it was. Yavarris continues to simply be one of the best titles in the game, and I can't express how much easier strategic made it to use. I actually don't think I will run Yavarris without strategic again. 

The other Neb slipped behind the SSD and we traded flotillas. 

I honestly probably should have just forgotten trying to kill the SSD and focused on objectives, I could have gotten at least another couple tokens, but I really wanted to get this thing to half health to prove that I could. 

Palpatine and Intel Officer were strong in conjunction, but the lack of activations (especially with the Raider gone early) meant that usually by the time I started attacking the SSD, he had gone so there was no real consequence to spending the tokens. 

With Boba gone, the squadrons continued working over the SSD (with Gold Squadron doing some stellar work). The flak was strong but not as overpowering as that on the Assault Prototype, so I managed to do this while only losing Jan. 

However, without squadron commands queued up on the MC80 and the SSD speeding towards the the edge of the board at speed 2, I was unable to get it to half health. It ended the game with 14 health, 3 health short of my goal. 

The token game ended up closer than it should have been, with me at 8 and him at 6, but combined with nailing the Raider and his very expensive squadrons to my loss of only Yavarris, it turned out to be a 7-4 Rebel Victory at 243 to 201. 

Michael's flying of the SSD was pretty solid, notably using JJ to good effect. The losing move was the pointless sacrifice of the Raider. I also think the squad composition was relatively poor, and Boba in particular did not live up to potential. 

Defiance shone when I could use it (leading shots from long-range!!!), but his commitment to going left, put me in the position of tailing him for most of the game and unable to land good hits on target. I would have killed for Engine Techs a couple times, and they could have definitely gotten me in range to hit him another time or two for the damage I needed to score a complete victory. 

If I had this particular game to play over again, I would have placed the MC80 much more in the face of the SSD and counted on ECM to keep me alive. 

Neb-Bs with AST continue to pleasantly surprise me with their staying power in the face of an SSD. My LTTs were a lot more fickle this time around though and it makes me think that I really want IF and to run extremely economic Support Refit Neb Bs with only ASTs for a cheap 54 points each. 

I definitely think I want to continue experimenting with strategic, as I know people don't like playing against it and with the right bid I could potentially force my opponent to play some extremely unfavorable objectives where they have to charge into me or simply lose. 

A fleet I came up with in the aftermath of today: 

Name: Nebulon MSU
Faction: Rebel

Commander: Garm Bel Iblis

Assault: Most Wanted
Defense: Fire Lanes
Navigation: Sensor Net

Pelta Assault Ship (56)
• Garm Bel Iblis (25)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Intensify Firepower! (6)
• External Racks (3)
= 93 Points

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Yavaris (5)
= 65 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
= 59 Points

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51)
• Auxiliary Shields Team (3)
• Quad Battery Turrets (5)
= 59 Points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Ahsoka Tano (2)
= 20 Points

Squadrons:
• Jan Ors (19)
• Biggs Darklighter (19)
• 2 x X-wing Squadron (26)
• 2 x VCX-100 Freighter (30)
= 94 Points

Total Points: 390

We'll see if I ever get to run it!

Armada Weekend - Sector Wars

Finally, the big event. On Saturday, we started setting up around 9:30 for the 6 1/2 hour extravaganza of sector wars. Four 600-point fleets going head-to-head:

I'm not going to reproduce the lists, because the wall of text won't be very interesting to readers. Instead, I'm going to summarize each of the fleets: 

Rebels - Dave

I ran an iteration of the "Dunk" fleet I developed for our first Coreillian Conflict, edited to be better for the 2v2 and against an SSD. The "Dunk" fleet concept was to use a Large Squadron Ball of bombers plus a battle carrier Armored Cruiser to eliminate an ISD before it could hope to retaliate *que airhorns in the distance.* To that end, my fleet had an MC-75, a slew of B-Wings, escorts and Nym, accompanied by Yavarris, a Pelta sporting IF, and a couple TRCR90s. 

Rebels - Daniel

Daniel flew Ackbar with Pickle, 2 Goldfish, a TRCR90, Admonition, and a medium squadron ball. Ackbar is an exceptional Sector Wars admiral as his dice modification works against either opponent instead of just one. Daniel's objective was to be a massive gun line to counter a variety of enemy threats, with the squads serving as escort for my bombers.

Empire - Hubert

Hubert went all in and ran Executor-II, kitted out to the tune of 500 points with a wide array of offensive and defensive upgrades. Supporting it he took a medium squadron ball of interceptors and aces designed to protect the Executor-II from squadron attack. 

Empire - Fish

Motti's flying Bricks, but this time with actual upgrades on them courtesy of the 600-point cap. Backing them up he took a handful of TIEs and an Interdictor. I want to shout out Daniel for correctly predicting they would run this fleet. The idea here is that you just have so many thicc bois on the table that your opponent can't get through them all. The combined Imperial fleet sported a whopping 89 hull points. 

Daniel and I elected to go first and took Contested Outpost. 

The general plan was to get me facing Hubert and Daniel facing Fish, although after seeing the SSD tear through squads the previous day, Daniel and I were both feeling quite apprehensive about my B-wings's odds. 

Hubert deployed the SSD in the corner, and I countered with my signature "Large at Speed 3" to counter him. Fish deployed protecting the SSD's right flank. Daniel deployed approximately across but with my CR90s and his Admonition on the far left. All the squads for both sides were grouped towards the SSD. 

The battle began in earnest on turn 2. 

The MC-75 led it off commanding squadrons into the SSD and using Adar Tallon to set up Nym for the triple tap. Unfortunately, Hubert used a DCO'd contain to stop Nym's crit effect, then very effectively focus-fired him down with squads to finish him off before Yavarris could go. 

The squad battle broke into a general melee, with Daniel and Fish's squads piling on. I ended up commanding the Rebel squads for the majority of the game. The odds were clearly against the Empire squads with about 240 points in squads to their 120, but they had the triple dice flak of the SSD. 

At the bottom of turn 2, we were able to wait out activations and take gunnery team shots out of the front of all of Daniel's ships to begin dropping the shields on the ISDs. 

The Empire was notably very out-activated this game, to the tune of  14 to 21. As a result, on the left side of our formation we were always able to activate after everything had drifted into closer range. Yavarris and the MC-75 always took first activation on our side, trying to get in hits before they or their squadrons could be wiped by the SSD. On the top of turn 3, the MC-75 made one of the critical moves of the game, activating Cham Syndulla and changing Hubert's engineering commands to navigates and squadron commands. The SSD was seriously crippled by this action. 

Critically, MC-75 lived through turn 3 with a mere two health, as it was safely in a single arc of the SSD. However, Hubert finished off Jan Ors, which meant we had to take a turn trying to mop up his annoying array of Imperial Squads including the always infuriating Cienna Ray.

On the left side, we were able to wait out Fish once more, and Daniel's Ackbar gunnery teams AFs began to score huge hits. 

The ships were literally millimeters apart exchanging broadsides and front arcs, with the AF's getting the better of the exchange. Our flanking force started firing on the rightmost ISD of Fish's, bringing it to the brink of death. IF came up big in these volleys, and I think we added something to the tune of ~15 damage with it over the course of the game. 

We actually had to demount the MC-75 so the base could slide in next to the SSD on turn 3. 

With most of the Imperial Squads cleared out, the MC-75 led off turn 4 with a massive hit on the SSD and commanding squadrons in close for Yavarris. However, Hubert countered with the triple attack he'd been waiting all game for, and eliminated the Pelta, MC-75, and a TRCR90 in one massive activation. 

On the left side, both the Assault frigates were in the process of going down, but Daniel got the better of the exchange and traded them for all three ISDs by the bottom of turn 5. The center of the map had cleared up quite a bit by this point, the MC80 and our flanking force on the left, the Interdictor and SSD in the middle, and Yavarris and an array of flotillas crawling up the right side out of range of the SSD. 

The only remaining question at this point was whether or not the SSD would go down. The ship took massive damage from squadrons on turns 4 and 5, including 6 Yavarris double-taps. However, it gave as good as it got, and eliminated squadron after squadron flakking from all arcs. 

By round 6, the ship had less than a dozen health left and few shields to spread around. Yavarris gave it one last double-tap that got it down to a handful of health, but Hubert retaliated and eliminated all but two of the remaining squadrons. After a TRCR90 attack, it was down to 2 health, and either the remaining squadrons or Admonition would have to finish the job. 

One amazing roll later, we had ourselves a dead SSD. 

Excellently played game! GG Hubert and Fish. We got lucky more than our fair share, but the ultimate issue was the lack of escorts near the SSD. It gave as good as it got, but without supporting ships to clear out Yavarris, the MC-75, and the bomber ball, it was only a matter of time. Meanwhile, Ackbar AF's proved themselves to still be quite tough, strong enough to go toe to toe with the ISD's and come out on top. 

Looking forward to the next time we can play something quite this epic!

Armada Weekend - Me vs. Hubert

So, without any further ado, let's get into the actual battle Hubert and I fought on Friday!

I went first and chose Station assault, and he placed them at either corner of the battlefield. He shoved his obstacles in the corners, while I shoved my two in the middle. I deployed along a wide front, with the idea of forcing him to choose a direction to turn his SSD after he placed it in the middle.

This ended up being a relatively boring game, as my plan was to essentially avoid the SSD and take out the stations instead. Meanwhile, with just the SSD, Gozanti, and Gozanti, Hubert didn't have a whole lot of capability to chase me down if I chose to avoid him. 

Turn 1 was nothing but maneuvering, and the action didn't kick off until turn 2.

I forgot that the Assault Prototype had red flak, and essentially my whole squadron ball is in red flak range. Basically all of them ended up taking a hit. for his part, Hubert ran over an asteroid and pulled possibly the worst crit he could have found: 

Fortunately for him I had little in front of his ship so it ended up mattering little.

The squadron battle went very poorly for Hubert, and he ran over Howlrunner sending her to the back of the SSD. My fighters had cleaned up his 5 TIEs by the bottom of round 3 and started attacking the SSD itself. But all this time he was flakking my squadrons.

On the right side, the LTT Nebs were doing an admirable job taking down the outpost while staying out of range of the SSD. The same could not be said for my signature speed 3 Liberty on the other flank, which was not doing nearly the same level of damage to its outpost and had to decelerate to get enough shots in before heading for the rear of the SSD.

I basically realized at this point that attacking the SSD further was pointless, and I might as well keep my low health squadrons alive. However, it was already too late for many of them to escape, as they could not get out of red range in a turn. Hubert picked off Biggs and Dutch with red dice hits as they fled, while Howlrunner re-entered the fray and nailed Jan right as she was about to escape.

My biggest mistake, however, came on turn 4. If you look above, you can see a Neb to the left of the SSD. It's currently in a single arc at red range. I should have gone with basically anything else first and not risked ending somewhere I didn't want to be, but instead I chose to go with it and wandered into a medium-range double-arc.

RIP. 

With all my squadrons and the Nebs gone to both stations and the TIEs for Hubert, Hubert was set to win a 6-5 with 132-120. Here's how things stood as it ended: 

A close game that showed off many of the strengths and weaknesses of the SSD.

Hubert and I could not decide if Station Assault was a good objective or not for his fleet. To Hubert's credit, it did distract my Liberty, keeping it out of the fight for most of the game and drawing the attention of my guns elsewhere. On the other hand, its easy to imagine a re-run of this game where I was smarter moving my Neb and didn't commit my squadrons to flak range, scoring a 100-40ish victory off the two stations for 7-4 tournament points. Hard to say for sure.

For my part, I was pretty happy with how my fleet played, and very happy with Garm plus ASTs. The LTT Nebs also punched far over their weight in what I hope will not be a fluke performance. However, I am concerned that this list doesn't have enough tools to deal with SSDs, which may be all that matters right now.

HTT was not as debilitating as I though, as I didn't realize that it's effect only took hold if you attempted to use more than one defense token. With this in mind, it's effects were not as bad as I thought they might be.

At any rate, I had been looking forward to this game for months. Congratulations to Hubert for the win in his inaugural game with the SSD!