Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-27029853-20171005192730

Good luck at Nordics LasseKaa! I hope it goes better for you than it did for me.

About my performance, I've been partially a little busy, but also there was a game that notably soured the experience for me and so I haven't been as eager to post.

The day started off badly with me somehow forgetting my dials, but I was also manage to borrow dials.

First round matchups announced, and I spot that my opponent is someone whom I played at the PTL Open where our game was decided by a 50/50 die roll on Anti-Pursuit Lasers triggering. We look at each other's lists, he had a Palp Yorr, Vader, and Omega Leader list. And then there was a mistake in the pairings (if I heard correctly, Duncan Howard had a bye from winning regionals that was not inputted correctly).

I got paired up against quad TLT Sienar Specialists with Lightweight Frame for the first round as a result. This was my first playing against an Aggressor one outside of a furball. The opening engagement I had expected the formation to go either go to its right or center which I had covered, but my inexperience with Aggressors blinded me to the possibility of it going right. From there my forces were separated and picked apart. I did manage a kill on one of them, but my opponent forced me to split the damage expertly for a 100-25 loss for me. My opponent wound up making it to the top 16, and the holding Canadian champion said he was also made a fool of as the Aggressors danced around the asteroids.

Second round I won't go into too much detail, but against a Quickdraw RAC I earned a victory when RAC flew off the board, even though the game was basically in the bag. This game kinda threw me off for the rest of the day though. My Defender also got knocked onto the floor at this point and I stepped on it returning from reporting my score.

Third round I came up against Tri Imp Aces: Lieutenant Kestal with Veteran Instincts, Lightweight Frame, and an Ion Cannon, Darth Vader with Veteran Instincts, TIE/x1, Advanced Targeting Computer, and an Engine Upgrade, and Quickdraw with Veteran Instincts, Lightweight Frame, FCS, and the title. After the first pass, I had stuck damage on Vader and Ionized him, Quickdraw had been following him, and Lieutenant Kestal has been flanking. Deathfire's clusters took Vader out and they started targeting Quickdraw, Backdraft weirdly kinda got into a solo battle with Kestal where Kestal tried sticking to the main engagement and Backdraft used that to get shots off on Kestal. Now, I managed to stick a lot of damage onto Quickdraw, but Vessery had to slow play, so either a 1 bank or a 2 straight were in order. Unfortunately, I misjudged the distance here and failed to get shots off on Quickdraw and chose the wrong one, which would have likely killed Quickdraw rather than leaving her at 1 health. Quickdraw then killed Deathfire and the combination managed to pick my list apart slowly.

4th Round I came up against Dengar in the Punishing One with a K4 Security Droid and Unhinged Astromech, a single Plasma Torpedo, Guidance Chips, Adaptability, and Glitterstim and Bossk with Veteran Instincts, a Homing Missile, 4-LOM, Zuckuss, K4 Security Droid, and Guidance Chips. He pinsired me quite well and PS overkilled Backdraft with munitions in the first strike. What happened from there was weirdly interesting, Deathfire and Vessery punched hard that round. Deathfire then dropped all 3 bombs on Dengar who moved straight into them. Some more shots from Vessery weakened Dengar further and Deathfire was reduced to 1 hull. But Dengar was right behind Deathfire who then dropped his munitions pre-maneuver and hit Dengar with 2 bombs which killed him while simultaneously swinging hard to get behind Bossk's arc. From there Vessery and Deathfire put damage into Bossk while staying behind him (with help from the Ion Cannon). They killed him just before he'd have been forced to fly off the board.

Round 5 I came up against an opponent who claimed she was terrible and had only been playing for 6 weeks, but she was also playing a Fair Ship Rebel variant: Lowhhrick with Selflessness, Operations Specialist, and Jan Ors, bare bones Captain Rex, Roark Garnet with TLT and Nien Nunb, and Biggs with Integrated R4-D6. I managed to get a good starting engagement with my ships outside of range of her two rear ships, Lfdkjshrick and Roark. I managed to Ion Biggs, which fragmented her formation slightly because of Rex's lack of speed 1, and I got a Homing Missile into Rex to do some damage. Deathfire managed to follow it up by dropping Clusters where the formation was going, and then I dropped some premaneuver. Sadly though, on the second drop I watched her roll blanks or focuses thrice. Backdraft succumbed to the TLTs eventually, and Deathfire was next to fall. I managed to take down Rex and Biggs in the process though. After time was called, Vessery was able to shoot down Roark with the TIE/D to get a 4 point victory.

My last match I came up against Quad Kashyyyk Defenders with Wookiee Commandos. My opponent castled, so I had to approach them in order to get them to end the castle. In retrospect, I should have placed more rocks closer to him. At this hour I was tired however and figured my best bet was to charge at him and hope to get lucky. Again, in retrospect, after I was at range 4 or 5 I possibly could have disengaged and tried running for the asteroids, but wasn't really up to it at the time. Suffice it to say, I had below average luck.

So I ended 3-3 with the worst MOV of all the 3-3s.

Most of my matches were fun overall however and I got some cool swag. I got the participation Howlrunner and custom PTL cards, I got a cool custom movie still of Zeta Leader, high res action figure shot of Rebel Captive, a custom Cruise Missile, the Gencon geriatric Han Solo, and an acrylic ship marker of one of the local squadrons.

Our group started Heroes of the Aturi Cluster properly as well. We had one mission where we had to destroy some Sensor Beacons located on asteroids that had 3 defense dice, 2 hull, and a Sensor Jammer, but the mission had 12 asteroids and asteroids could be within range 2 of the board edge but not range 1. The best part though was the Imperials got an elite reinforcement...but that elite reinforcement was a Lambda Class-Shuttle which did not deal with those 12 asteroids well. I am now a PS 4 Moldy Crow pilot with Engine Upgrade, Autothrusters, Autoblaster, Lone Wolf, Sabine, Cluster Mines, and Inertial Dampeners.

One of the LGS had fallen behind on their Qkits so had some of the last 3 kits (I needed an Ello Asty and the Q3 stuff still). I was planning to take a triple X-Wing list, but the person I was supposed to borrow Wes off of didn't realize I also needed another X-Wing. I wound up taking out of my box an imperial squadron where I was to test the Striker, although I had to modify it so that I had all the legal components (only have one Delta Squadron Pilot was the main problem). I flew an Imperial Trainee with the Ailerons and Lightweight Frame, a Delta Squadron pilot with TIE/x7, an Onyx Squadron Pilot with TIE/D and Ion Cannon, and an Epsilon Squadron Pilot with Comm Relay. But only 3 people showed up, but we were told we could split the kits amongst ourselves if we paid the tournament entry fee, so we did so.

I faced triple X-Wings the first round and managed to outjoust them, losing only the Trainee in the process.

The second match I played against someone who had only brought 2 competitive lists, so he fielded his nationals squad of Inaldra in a Light Scyk, two Tansarii Point Veterans in Heavy Scyks with Ion Cannons, all three Scyks with Attanni Mindlink, and a Fenn Rau with PTL, Autothrusters, and title. He sorta baited me with Fenn and Inaldra while flanking with the Tansarii Point Veterans. Weirdly though, he tried to pinsir me with Inaldra as well, so I was able to damage Inaldra while putting in most of the work against the two TSPs. My nice reengagements on the ships. The x7 Defender was getting Ioned and struggling, but ultimately with some very lucky rolls I was able to damage Fenn once, keep the Epsilon alive, and end the game by setting up a killbox on Fenn.

It was actually a fun fleet to fly. If doable, I may try to drop the Epsilon for a 2nd Striker and lower the Onyx Squadron Pilot to a Delta Squadron Pilot.