Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-454133-20170722074319

On Wednesday I flew my Expertise Dash + Norra fleet once and got to see how strong it is. One battle is not enough to properly assess its potential but it seemed to work well. I never used Leebo though, so I'm thinking I'll replace it with Intelligence Agent or Inspiring Recruit, and replace Rigged Cargo Chute with Feedback Array, to close the donut and give him an option after bumping. Sometimes the damage and ion is really worth it, and I think Feedback Array will ultimately be better than the Lando ion-to-boost tradeoff. That night I also bought the Auzituck, Scurrg, and TIE Aggressor, since my membership at the store gave me a reasonable discount. I'm glad I got to fight one game; work has kept me so busy, and I've been too tired to go to most Friday games. This Friday though I managed it.

Today I flew the infamous Lowhhrick + Kanan Jarrus + Biggs fleet. We only got 4 people to show up for our tournament so it was small, but casual and fun. After playing with it I like the Auzituck a lot, though it definitely is a mix of pros and cons. Lowhhrick's ability is really good, BTW, especially when protecting Biggs. I think I may trade Wookie Commandos for Lightning Reflexes. The commandos rarely paid off (and even then, by only a little), while a one-time 180 flip could rescue this ship when it gets in a tough spot. Alternatively Engine Upgrade + Daredevil + Kanan Jarrus (Crew) could be really funny (subverting the normal limit of the ship), though I'm not convinced it'd be ideal given the cost. :)

On my first game, my opponent jousted me directly and it cost him big. I destroyed all his ships and all he got was Biggs. The fleet was in full form, drastically reducing the damage to Biggs and dishing out decent damage in return. I killed my opponent's Expertise Maarek Stele (TIE Defender) on the first round of contact, and then picked off his two TLT TIE Aggressors after a few rounds. He did manage to kill Biggs before going down, though.

Second game went extremelly poorly, because I piloted Kanan like a drunk. I'm usually really good at planning risky maneuvers and getting them to pay off, but my choices with Kanan were terrible, maybe because I'm not used to the large ship base. The whole game hurt after that. I wish I'd chosen debris instead of big asteroids; game would have been almost entirely in my favor (I chose asteroids expecting jumpmasters and other large ships, hoping I could navigate them better, but it did not turn out that way).

My opponent flew PS 9 Poe + Intensity + BB-8 + Primed Thrusters + Autothrusters + Black One and it was obscene. Along side him was Jake Farrell + title + Cruise Missiles + PTL + VI + Autothrusters, and Ahsoka Tano + VI + Sabine's Masterpiece + Captured TIE + Rey. It's a much more wicked list than it appears at first, and yes, it at first appears very wicked. Jake and Poe were extremely tough nuts to crack, and Poe could hit hard. Jake had performed poorly in his previous game, doing only 2 damage with the missiles and then dying, but in this game he was a real problem.

On only the second round, I barely cliped an asteroid with Kanan and rolled a hit. I'm also strung out right then, as Jake whips around and fires a max-power cruise missile at him and deals 5 damage. In a single round, before anyone else has reached me, Kanan is down to naked hull. This is bad. Next round I plan a daring k-turn to get right behind or beside Poe and either blast him with my primary or my unavoidable autoblaster. But once again, I clip an asteroid by a tiny fraction, almost perfectly flush with the token edge. I'm pretty sure I'd moved my template by accident; my opponent was generous and let me roll a die to detemine if I'd overlapped, but the die said yes. This bad maneuver is what threw the game for me. It was a stupid move and I spent the rest of the game paying for it. Instead of doing tons of damage with Kanan, I took tons of damage. Dancing Poe was too tough a target for my other ships to easily crack, though they came so, so close.

After a few more rounds I finally lost kanan despite trying to be very evasive. The following rounds were a very long grind, as Biggs + Lowhhrick were very defensive, and he had to fly very cautiously to avoid getting Jake or Ahsoka blasted out of the sky in one round. His ships were very evasive, and it was hard to keep Dancing Poe and Jake in anyone's arc. Eventually he got both Ahsoka and Jake behind Biggs and Lowhhrick and I had trouble finding a place to k-turn Biggs because the obstacles were so tight there. Poe was ahead so I just charged forward to try to end him. Lowhhrick had even more trouble with the terrain; again, debris would have been better. I continued not taking much damage, and ahsoka even broke stealth to attack finally, but after a long grind I eventually died without having taken down any of his ships. Jake had 2 hull left, Poe just one. I really just needed one lucky break but it never happened.

Sure, the dice screwed me repeatedly (I kept blanking out when I really needed a hit on Poe), but far worse was my terrible Kanan flying. During the mid- and end-game I kept getting complimented by my opponent on how well I was flying, with really slim margins on the asteroids but not hitting them; I was finally back in form. But having lost Kanan to previous stupidity, it was already over.

It was a brutal grind at the end. My opponent and I were later joking about just how grueling it had been; two highly defensive fleets flown by cagey, cautious players... it was so bad. I explained that the Rebellion had broken up over that fight. ;)  Overall I feel good about my later performance, especially since my opponent was one of the best players I know.  It felt good to be doing so well against his brutal fleet.  I do wonder though how it would have gone if I had flown kanan properly.

Third round was against two TLT Y-Wings and rebel Nym with TLT + Expertise + Bomblet Generator + Havoc + Engine Upgrade + Collision Detector + "Genius". I put A Debt To Pay on Nym and expected to kill him first for the best points, but on the approach my best shots were easily on the y-wings, so I whittled them down and eventually killed them. That Autoblaster Turret is great, btw... I would have preferred TLT if I could afford it, but the autoblaster did get some really solid hits in. His bomblet generator also wasn't very toothy... he bombed me twice (kanan + biggs, then later kanan) but only managed one damage on me all game.

I really had to hustle to chase down Nym though, after having lost Biggs to TLT spam from first 3 ships, then 2 ships. Biggs lived a long time, but Kanan had to separate to avoid plowing through all the asteroids, and thus couldn't offer his protection. Lowhhrick doggedly pursued Nym, but kept getting only good shots on the remaining y-wing (this is where it died; wookie rage finally killed it). Finally though I got Kanan back into the fight and tried to pinser Nym between him and Lowhhrick, but it didn't pan out. He just dodged too many hits, and since he's a small ship I couldn't count on half points for the victory. I spun my ships around and tried to run him down with Kanan, but only got autoblaster shots off on him instead of the full might of 5-dice primary.

In the final round he rammed Kanan and dropped a Genius Bomblet, dealing 1 damage to himself and none to Kanan. Lowhhrick fired a final salvo but it wasn't enough to kill Nym. Time was called, he got Biggs and half Kanan. We were a mere 1 point apart, in his favor. Gah! So Close!

I got 3rd place out of 4 players, which granted me a gorgeous alt-art Crack Shot. I love crack shot despite not liking its regular art, so I'm really excited to have this. I also got $10 in store credit,  apparently   because one of the players was also the tournament organizer and so couldn't win prizes. I paid another $3 for a 2nd TIE Aggressor. It's the ship of the wave that I can most easily imagine wanting in groups of 2 or 3, if only for abusive TLT spam. :)   Haven't flown it yet though so hopefully I like it, though it's nice to have more Unguided Rockets.

Good games today, and I'm really happy it's the weekend. My brain is turning to mush from work. Thankfully Monday is a holiday in Utah (celebrating the settlers of the state back in the 1800s), so I can enjoy a 3-day weekend and some BBQs. I need the R&R, and I've been playing Starcrawlers lately (which I kickstarted but only now got around to) and I want some extra time to really delve into it. I hope everyone enjoys their weekends!