The Fantasy Flight Game Center up in Roseville hosted a 3-round store tournament. It was a great time and given it’s the monthership store of Fantasy Flight Games, not to be missed. There were 29 players all total which isn’t a bad turnout and I’m sure hoping these numbers will continue to grow in size. I really should take in a evening game night up there to see what Armada play is like up there for pick up games. Anyway let’s look at the rounds.
The first thing I noticed with this event is there seemed to be more imperial players than rebs. I didn’t empirically count so without a post to the facebook group (Twin Cities Star Wars Armada in case you’re interested) with exact stats we’ll never know.
I fielded a tuned up variation of my list I’d played last time up there. One ISD and 3 Gladiators and then Howlrunner and 3 TIE fighters. Pretty meager on squadrons but I figured just enough to be able to engage and keep some enemy squadron’s busy. Motti as my admiral but frankly most of the day I was having Screed regrets. Next time!
For my first match I played Tony who I had met a few weeks back at the first tournament I’d played up there.
He was fielding Imperial too and it was nice to see the progression of thought he’d put into his force.
I was player 1 and I picked Intel Sweep from Tony’s cards. I choose my naked Gladiator to scoop up my victory tokens and Tony picked his ISD. With two Victories to flank and generally being squadron light this was going to shape up to be an interesting brawl.
I executed on my plan to send in two of my Gladiators to set and hold a line and then bring in my ISD on the flank. Tony had to move forward to pick up victory tokens and thus present his flank.
From behind my Gladiator on scooping duty needed to rock and roll to pick up the meager two tokens and maybe having a slight chance of being able to move in for a 3rd depending on where Tony decided to steer his ISD.
As fate would have it my demolisher Gladiator would go up quick but my ISD would get onto Tony’s ISD and start to bring on the hurt. I kept my squadrons on my left with the thought of covering my scooper Gladiator … just in case…
With 4 black die and a really good roll that would be all she wrote for his ISD and would assure me not only 75 points of the scenario but also the ~150 some points for his ISD.
Last picture for the end of the game… a 9-1 victory. It was a nice strong start to the day. Truth be told I really worried about taking on 2 VSDs and 1 ISD as I figured I would be at a disadvantage due to the firepower difference but poor die rolling on Tony’s part sure did play a part in sealing his fate.
For game 2 I moved up to table 2 which of course signals you’re higher up in the standings. My opponent Ben had won his previous game 10-0 … strong indication of a tough match ahead.
I was player two and he selected my precision strike mission. Ben was playing a pretty squadron heavy mission and featured some devious selection in squadrons. Next to the Neb out there you can see he had 1 Nym and 2 Scurrg Bombers that made for a nasty swarm, not to mention great way to pick up victory tokens.
Frankly I screwed up my setup and should have had my ISD to the left of the Glads.
My Glads would melt one by one due to the very effective squadron attacks. Nym would take out my brace tokens on pretty much every one of my ships. Talk about luck. My squadrons just didn’t have enough, even with Howlrunner, to be able to knock much out of the sky or put up an effective defense.
It was pretty Monty Python Black Knight light … oops there goes and arm… there goes my other arm … now a leg…
At the end of the game, just a single Gladiator to deliver the bad news to Lord Vader. A crushing 449 to 142 points for a crushing 1-9 loss.
For the 3rd game I played Blake. I was player 1 and we played superior positions. With the placement of obstacles I tried to keep them more to one side of the board which in turn caused play to be more on one side.
As an Imperial, anything you can do to predict where the battle will be works to your advantage to point your fire arcs effectively.
This time I improved on my setup mistake from the prior game and it showed. I put my ISD in the line as the anchor with my Gladiators to swing around and attack into the flank. Our first target was his smallest ship a Raider.
My ships made very quick work of it but at the same time I puzzled over the Rhymer ball I was staring at. I really needed to use the 2 blue die Gladiators coupled with my meager squadrons to take them down.
As luck would have it, I did the right thing, I kept my squadrons back so when he came in to attack I engaged his ships. He would plow through the squadron scrum with his ISD at just the right time which allowed me to locate his benefit giving heros on the other side of his ISD and thus out of the fight. Plink, Plink, Plink and they were down. I would lose just one Gladiator and 24 points in squadrons.
All in all a pretty close game but a 4-6 loss in the end. If I had just picked up one victory token and I mean just ONE it would have been a 5-5. I didn’t pick up a single token the entire match but due to the loses I dished out (pretty much taking out all but 2 of his TIE bombers) I made up the point difference. He had 135 to my 0 in victory points. On the other hand I had 206 points in losses inflicted on his squadrons and ships to his 103. Just a 28 point difference for the match.
The results were posted on facebook. A middle of the pack result for me and I’m generally pleased with that.
I did get to stick around for the award ceremony. Oddly for the “free stuff” they don’t do like we’ve done for our Flames of War Tournaments where we make sure we have enough prizes so everyone is able to get something, instead the top 8 received “something” but the remainder of the prizes were by random drawing which I didn’t win. So from a prize perspective was blanked. They did however pass out an Imperial Star Destroyer class II and Raider Class I card with custom art which was pretty sweet. The ISD card was from the Sullust event from last year.
Can’t wait for the next one… I have my next list ready to go….