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!
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