Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-454133-20171130071247

The tourney was a bust because not enough people showed up, so instead the organizer and I had a nice casual WOOKIEE CIVIL WAR!!!!

I flew 3 wookies:

Wulf with Predator + Breach Specialist + Tactician

2x Wookiee Liberator with Predator + Breach + Tactician

He flew 4 wookies (actually 12 if you count the crew slots):

4x Kashyyyk Defender with Wookiee Commandos

I think Wookies are like the Klingons of Star Wars. Chewbacca is Worf, as he's somewhat level-headed and socialized into human society, and the rest are just biding their time until they can burst out of isolation and prosecute all-out war on the entire galaxy. This civil war is but a glimpse of things to come...

I'm calling it right here, Disney. Once the Empire and First Order are finally fully defeated, the wookies will realize there's nothing left to hold them back and they don't need their Resistance allies anymore. The entire galaxy will fall under their dominion!

But as for this particular battle, I started out in the lower-left corner spaced out about 2.5 ships apart, with Wulf in the back and his Lib buddies forward in a shallow V formation. My opponent placed his wookies in pairs, 2 in the center and 2 close to the left of the board (my left). I sped forward and turned in for combat by round 2, with my 3 wookies engaging his 2 early on. I did some minor damage to one of his, which evaded a lot of hits. His dice were hotter than the sun though, and over this round and the next he poured a lot of damage on me, which was really alarming. I had focused with Wulf to try to draw fire onto him and also in hopes of finishing off one of his wookies, but he took Wulf down to only 1 hull left. In exchange I'd taken one of his much more disposable wookies down to 1 HP. Tough gamble.

But over the next couple of rounds, my dice started to warm up just as his started to cool, and I also did a good job of keeping Wulf from taking too many shots. So much of flying Tucks is directing shots onto the ships that can take it, and reinforcing/carefully positioning the ones that can't. I managed this and thanks to a good chunk of luck, Wulf never died. I even rammed him into a ship at one point to keep it from shooting him. :D

I finished off the heavily injured Kashyyyk, and put a lot of damage into one other. At first it looked like we were going to smoothly pass each other like 18th century ships of the line, broadsiding each other. However, soon he bump-chained and took a lot of damage because of it, and then split up his formation to try to get shots on me. I ended up in much better positions for the next while, with him getting few or no shots for about 3 rounds. I was able to clean up pretty easily after this, though his last wookiee was untouched so it took some time to grind down.

Conclusion

I personally think 3 wookies with the right upgrades are stronger than 4 wookies, but some people swear by 4 and I can understand why. It's a metric crap-ton of hull to chew through with those reinforce tokens (my opponent had 3 damage cards left in his deck when the game ended), and 4 wookies have a chance of dealing a lot more damage than 3 in the right circumstances. But with Tactician stressing him, Predator rerolling 2 dice, and Breach Specialist defending me against severe crits... these are a really strong boon that makes up reducing my team from 4 to 3. More ships are also harder to manage, and you do not want your tucks bumping, especially bump-chaining.

I also did well with planning my maneuvers around obstacles, a skill I pride myself in, but I do need practice. That's something you've gotta do on the table (and against an uncooperative opponent who will challenge you, like in this match); Vassal or solo practice just won't do!

Epilogue:

"Sure, Wullffwarro was a tyrant who drank human blood and destroyed planets, but he built lots of hyperspace bypasses!"