Armada - Store Tournament Report (2/8/2020)

So it has taken me a couple weeks, but Hubert and Fish came up here and we all went to a store tournament together in Kansas City!

Hubert and I both got our Wave 8 ships in earlier that week, and were both anxious to try them out. Here's the fleet I took to the event:

Name: Title Fleet Mk. 2

Faction: Rebel
Commander: Kyrsta Agate

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

Starhawk Battleship Mark II (150)
• Kyrsta Agate (20)
• Walex Blissex (5)
• Expert Shield Tech (5)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• High-Capacity Ion Turbines (8)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
• Unity (10)
= 209 Points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
• Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
• Tantive IV (3)
= 54 Points

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

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Leia Organa (3)
= 21 Points

Squadrons:
• Lando Calrissian (23)
• Shara Bey (17)
• Green Squadron (12)
• A-wing Squadron (11)
= 63 Points

Total Points: 400

The centerpiece here is of course the Starhawk Mark II, taking a built designed to make it extremely tanky. I rounded out the fleet with my standard SFC build and a pair of TRCR90s. Tantive IV is here to give me some Comms Net power since I am using my GR-75 to command squads. Leia is here for dial control over the Starhawk. 

Hubert brought his long anticipated "Space Wizards" fleet, a "Same-Day-Delivery" Onager Testbed with a supporting Interdictor, Needa Arquitens, and two Gozantis. After some discussion the night before, Hubert swapped his admiral from Screed to Romodi, and building on this changed his Gozantis to Assault Cruiser Variants. Would it be worth 10 points to get a glorious turn or two of throwing 3 red dice? It remained to be seen.

Fish decided to dip his toes into the rebel pond and brought out a true Rebel MSU, anchored by Ackbar on an AF with a MC30 and 3 TRC90s. No squads here either. 

Without further ado, let's get into the games. 

Game #1 - Me vs. Fish

Friday night Fish and I decided to play a warm-up game. With no bid of my own, he took first player and my Surprise Attack. 

I don't remember much from this game other than Fish decided he couldn't kill the Starhawk and focused on kiting away and trying to kill my TRCR90s most of the game. My own TRCR90s were very poorly suited to this matchup, as their batteries were nicely countered by the evades of Fish's fleet. Indeed, I told Fish at the time I thought his fleet had a favorable matchup against mine, as without a bid an MSU could kite around and try to overwhelm the SH. I actually used Agate to take a salvo here to give me that much more killing power against Fish's swarm of ships, but over the course of the game the SH took basically no damage. 

My Jaina's Light is down at this point, and Fish is doing a good job at preventing me from getting too much damage on any one target. The Surprise Attack navigate raid tokens proved very difficult for Fish to work around, however..

In the top left corner, Tantive IV has rolled up on Jaina's ass and obliterates it with a huge front arc shot. Meanwhile, my squads chase down the wounded remnants of Fish's fleet. Foresight goes down on the last turn, while a barely alive AF and the two TRCR90's jump off into hyperspace. 

I don't remember the margin, just that it ended up being a 7-4 for me. Fish acquitted himself well, maneuvering quite skillfully. However, to take as many losses as he did he would have really had to make a push against the SH. For my part, it was frustratingly difficult to get any ship in my front arc while going second, and I don't think I got a single full front arc shot off all game.

Hubert and I suggested a few changes to Fish's fleet, notably swapping in Admonition and putting Gunnery Teams on the AF.

The next day, we headed to the tournament

The Geekery

Apparently the Armada scene at The Geekery had all but died in the two few months I was absent. It looked like it might only be the three of us for a hot minute, but then Cyrus and Kurt showed up and we had ourselves a small tournament of three rounds.

Cyrus's fleet was a further iteration of the Overload Pulse Raddus nonsense he was flying last time, just with two MC75's this time. In addition to the two capital ships and CR90B, he brought two GR75s. No squads.

Jay's fleet was....bad. It was a fleet with a Gladiator, Kuat, VSD-I, and a Raider-I. Four ships that want to go first, a veritable black dice palooza. 

The first round matchups were me vs. Hubert and Fish vs. Jay - with Cyrus getting the by.

Game #2 - Me vs. Hubert

Hubert and I had talked about our matchup quite a bit, and our consensus was that while the Onager was a solid matchup against the Starhawk, me outnumbering him on deployments would probably allow me to keep it in an advantageous position.

Sure enough:

I honestly don't remember which objective of mine Hubert took, and the pictures don't clue me in much either. I do remember he went first though. In any event, I took an Evade on the Starhawk so that I could dodge Onager shots and avoid HIE crits from the Interdictor. The Starhawk is not in the Onager's arc, but Jaina's Light is about to be. 

The plucky little ship evaded the worst of the red dice round one, but on round two, was in black dice range and was vaporized.

However, in the mid-field, my SH plowed into the middle of Hubert's formation and demolished the Arquitens with a front arc shot before starting to take it out on the Gozantis. The HIE crit from the Interdictor was evaded.

Hubert bugged his Interdictor out and turned the Onager to port to face its fate. 

Another Ignition attack put the Tantive IV out of this world, but by now the Unity was in close range and began laying into the Onager. It was only a matter of time for a ship not meant to stand in the line of battle. 

7-4 to me. One thing Hubert and I discussed was that the Onager might need a beefy linebacker buddy to help it when dangerous ships came in at it, and that definitely seemed to be the case here. Neither the Interdictor or the Onager could stand in the line of battle proper.

Fish lost a narrow 5-6 against Kurt, trading hard on ships. Here is his set-up shot from that game.

And so we went to round 2. Hubert against Kurt, me against Cyrus. 

Game #3 - Me vs. Cyrus

I wasn't particularly excited to play against this fleet again, as Cyrus had come very close to beating with me the previous variant of it. However, with the Raddus nerf, it was quite a bit less potent. Additionally, the Unity wasn't going to go down as easily as my LMC80 did last time. 

Cyrus took first player and my surprise attack. 

The way I positioned my fighters on the bottom of Turn 1 made it impossible for him to bring in the Aspiration where he wanted it - and so he decided to hold onto both his Raddus and Profundity drops until round 3. Seizing on this opportunity, I piled onto his flagship. 

Cyrus almost lost right here, having to burn his brace and redict to live through the turn. The Profundity was out of shields, with only five health remaining, but it made it through the turn. 

The drop came at the top of turn 3 (not pictured), Aspiration off the Unity's port bow, the CR90B flagship to starboard. And so, order suddenly became very important. Cyrus went with Profundity first, before it could die. Seeing my chance, I tried to nuke the CR90B out of existence with my side-arc before it could overload pulse me, but came up just short - also coming up 1 health short on killing the Profundity. His CR90B went, and got its overload pulse shot off, but I salvoed and killed it. One of my TRCR90's went, finishing off Profundity, but he was now ready to deliver the coup de grace to the Unity. Aspiration activated boarding troopers, and fired a devastating Ex-rax double arc shot while I was braceless.

And since he got to activate on t4 at the top of the round before I could pitch Walex Blissex out the airlock to recover either of the braces, he got to do it all over again. The Unity went down.

Aspiration was pretty healthy, but now was virtually alone against my squads and TRCR90s. While my corvettes hadn't had much to do the previous two games, against the evadeless Aspiration they finally had the match-up I had been waiting for. 

It was a near-run thing, including Cyrus pulling two XX-9 crits that prevented Tantive IV from firing on him the last turn, but Jaina's Light and my squadrons were enough to finish the job - the finishing blow going to Green Squadron which punched above its weight all through the tournament for me.

8-3 to me. 

Hubert's game was one of the most bizarre I've ever seen. He and Cyrus deployed at opposite ends of the board, and Hubert nuked his speed 0 GR75 right off the bat, which prompted him to spend most of the rest of the game running from Profundity. However, on t5, Hubert turned into the face of the Profundity and the Onager went down in the face of the MC75 double-team. I think it was a 7-4 for Cyrus.

The final games of the night would be me vs. Fish and Hubert vs. Kurt

Game #4 - Me vs. Fish (Round 2)

I did not take many photos this game, as I was very brain dead my this point in the night. This game, Fish decided to take my Contested Outpost and try to kill the Starhawk. 

My plan was to try and nuke the AF as fast as possible and get Raddus out of the picture. However, this went wrong almost from the start with both my TRCR90s dying on successive turns to massive broadsides from the AF. Unity now found itself at the center of a MSU swarm, that even a third salvo was having trouble managing. 

The battleship gave as good as it got, with it and the squadrons taking down all three of Fish's CR90s and the Admonition. This was the game where I finally got to tank to the extent that I always wanted. However, the weight of Ackbar red dice was too much. Unity went out on its own terms, ramming an asteroid for the 14th hull damage rather than taking another shot from the AF. 

7-4 win to Fish, and a well flown game! 

Hubert eviscerated Kurt's black dice fleet in his own game, landing multiple huge Onager hits in what I think was a 7-4 win for him. 

Conclusion

With his second round by, coming in at 20 tournament points to my 19 and Cyrus's 18 - Fish won the tournament! Fish showed that a Starhawk can indeed be killed by sheer weight of fire. Fish cashed in his win for a GR75, while I logged $15 of store credit, before we all headed home.

The takeaways for my fleet were that I really want a bid so I can get off effective front arc shots, and I want Leia on a dedicated comms net ship and not the vessel I use to command squadrons - several times I had to make the difficult choice of taking an ideal command on the SH or commanding my A-wings. I still have not got the hand of running a command 4 ship, and my efforts to order it around were less than ideal. Future versions of this fleet will likely have to drop at least one of the TRCR90s, which breaks my heart as I really liked how they performed (generally - when they weren't countered by Fish's MSU). I would really like another activation, but the only way I can see to get it is swapping out a defensive officer for strat adviser.

On the plus side, the SH does seem to be the ultimate castle fleet ship, and I was pleasantly surprised at how it handled gimmicks a la Cyrus. I also imagine it would have done well against the ever-present Avengers boarding troopers. I was the only person at this tournament with Squads (with my mere four), and its worth noting just how much of a boss Lando is. He is a squad I'm going to have a lot of trouble leaving behind. Green Squadron also came up surprisingly big, although this was a good matchup for it. 

For Starhawks not rocking HIE, I think High Capacity Ion Turbines with LTT is the way to go, making your sides more dangerous while giving rerolls on your salvos just seems to be the way to go. I would have liked to see how this fleet would have performed against a heavy squad fleet, but alas, it wasn't to be this time. 

A big thank you to Hubert and Fish for driving all this way to hang out and go to a tournament with me! It was a blast and so great to play so much Armada in one weekend.

On the way back, Hubert and I just kept building fleets together, and discussed organizing an informal Armada/Legion tournament in LR this summer. Something I'm sure we'll come back to later this spring. In the meantime, just a few weeks to spring break!