Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-31354887-20170816062343

I flew my first imperial squad this week.

Tomax Bren + Unguided Rockets + Crack Shot + Lightweight Frame

"Quickdraw" + Fire Control System + Expertise + Special Ops Training + Weapons Guidance + LWF

Lieutenant Kestal + Synced Turret + Expertise + LWF

Many of the other players at my tournament are imperial regulars and they were interested to see how effective Tomax was with rockets and crack shot combined while many hadn't bothered to field Kestral at all, preferring Double Edge over her. In the first fight I squared off against Vessery, Ryad, and a generic FO pilot. It was back and forth the entire fight, my opponent flew poorly landing Vessery on a rock early on before the engagement even began and knocked out one of his shields, Tomax didn't roll well but luckily neither did my opponent and crack shot gave me the edge to wear Ryad down but Tomax's lack of shields wound up with him taking two crits one of which lowered weapon value and one which lowered agility, I just didn't have enough time to turn around and get rid of the crits before he got melted. Quickdraw was harsh and blew Vessery out of the water as his first order wingmate continually tried to swap targets to give Vessery a lock but always managed to fail and lock a ship that Vessery didn't have a shot on, ultimately Quickdraw and Vess took each other down and it was left with Kestral dogging the generic FO trying to get into range 1-2 to get an attack in which I did eventually manage to do.

The second battle I am incredibly proud of. I went up against Rebel Nym flanked by a pair of generic A-wings using deadeye and cruise missiles. I manage to beat the A-wings to the middle of the field and Tomax got a good shot in and nearly 1 shot one of the A-wings thanks to crack shot, Kestral finished it off. The Nym had adaptability and had takeb the initative to move first shoot first and made the mistake of going for Quickdraw who was at range 1 of the other A-wing, I used quickdraws free return fire from Nym's shot to throw 4 dice at the A-wing and finished it off with Quickdraw's normal shot. After than Nym fumbled and swapped to Tomax who unfortunately only got to take his single shot at the A-wing, he spent the rest of the round trying to get turned around and manage to survive with 1 hull left after hobbling away from Nym's autoblaster attacks while Kestral cricled around and tried to stay at range 2. With Quickdraw at range 1 again (this time with QD's rear facing Nym) as the only viable shot he took it and manage to melt what was left of Nym's health with the two attacks he was given, Kestral made it through the battle entirely unscathed and Quickdraw only had 1 damage card.

My final battle didn't go so well, this time I was up against another Nym with Dash in the Outrider, Nym had accuracy corrector with his autoturret and I got too close with Kestral, Dash also had the initiative on me thanks to VI, I felt like I lost mostly due to poor attack rolls and not having the initative which gave me a pretty good advantage in the other fights.

The things I learned from my first imperial fight.

1. You really need to win the PS war with unshielded ships, Tomax did a good job with his natural PS 8 but a lot of people in my local area love to give Nym VI and adaptability.

2. Tomax can be terrifying with rockets/crack shot but he has to be fighting something about as manuverable as he is or else he's going to spend a lot of the time flying circles to get back around for another shot.

3. Even with Expertise I didn't get many chances to use Kestral's ability either because I was taking new TL's to use with synced turret or because I was fighting enemies that had no way of modifying their blank/focus results, her PS was the most useful thing about her.

4. Quickdraw is good, bombs are bad.