Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170622055142

I played two games today.

First fleet was We Special Forces Three:

"Backdraft" with A Score to Settle, FCS , Pattern Analyzer , Special Ops Training , Lightweight Frame (33)

"Quickdraw" with Crack Shot ,  FCS, Pattern Analyzer, Special Ops Training, Lightweight Frame (36)

Omega Specialist with Crack Shot,  FCS, Special Ops Training, Lightweight Frame (30)

I have 3 TIE/sf ships, so I wanted to see them in action together. This actually did reasonably well. I do think Backdraft is the strongest pilot... Quickdraw's counterattacks can be scary, but his main value is his PS IMO. Backdraft's rear arc just feels more effective for positioning etc.

That said, in this game my opponent started with amazing rolls, consistently rolling max damage and max evade on every single roll for two rounds, while I rolled average or terrible. I lost Quickdraw very early and his counterattack did nothing. I figured I was doomed, but then his dice evened out a lot, and I was able to eventually take him down.

He was flying Quickdraw with VI + LWF + FCS + title and I forget what else; Duchess with title + LWF + I forget; and "Whisper" with Agent Kallus + FCS + Predator + ACD. I killed Quickdraw first, the round after he killed mine (when the dice finally started to behave), and Duchess landed on an asteroid so I had a round of reprieve from her. But Whisper decloaked at this time and started giving me hell. I killed her next, but not without taking a lot of damage. Thankfully Backdraft and Omega were rolling reasonably well now, and were able to endure the damage. After that it was pretty easy finishing off Duchess, though a little, *ahem*, dicey.

Bah-dum-tss!

I was really pleased I turned that fight around. Though my opponent being kind of unfamiliar with the TIE Striker's title helped a bit too. Duchess' damage could have tipped things overwhelmingly in his favor if he had killed another ship.

Next came Seal Team 7:

Colonel Vessery with Tractor beam, Adaptability , TIE/D , Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (37)

"Backdraft" with A Score to Settle, FCS, Pattern Analyzer, Special Ops Training, Lightweight Frame (33)

Omega Specialist with VI ,  FCS, Special Ops Training, Lightweight Frame (30)

Opponent had Manaroo with mindlink, Asajj Ventress with Latts and mindlink, and Fenn with mindlink plus title and Autothrusters.

Having all PS 7s gave me a lot of versatility, since I could move and attack in the optimal order. I really like flying fleets that play well with each other like this. All through the fight this helped me with Vessery's abilities.

First round of contact, he launched Manaroo forward far to block me. Good move... Omega bumped her, Vessery bumped Omega, and Backdraft barely avoided a bump. Asajj drifted south on the west side, stressing Omega. I fired with Backdraft first to establish a lock for vessery, and then fired tractor beam and primary. This laid some decent damage into manaroo, and I didn't take too much damage from asajj and manny in return. Omega shot asajj and did a bit of damage. Fenn was on the far right, still trying to join the fight.

Next round, I moved Backdraft north to point his business end at the fight behind him, then segnored omega west (still focusing thanks to the pattern analyzer), and k-turned vess. By fluke, none of my ships bumped Asajj, who had moved in for the bump. Instead, I now had 3 ships surrouding asajj at range 1. Nice. Unfortunately Manroo had run away, so I decided to dump a good deal of damage into asajj instead. Fenn did join the fight this round, and boosted into range 1 of Backdraft's tailpipe. He didn't roll devastating damage, just stripped shields, and I decided to ignore him and focus on asajj.

I took her down to 3 HP, and one of her crits was Console Fire. Next round, Asajj plowed through an asteroid running away, and thus couldn't turn over the crit. It did another damage to her... down to 2 HP. Unfortunately I had no one pointing arcs at her, so I laid into Manny and finished her off.

Now asajj flew around the top, clearing her crit and avoiding shots for the moment. He left Fenn in charge of finishing me off. Backdraft took a lethal blow, and then we started jousting back and forth. Two features of his Fenn caused me a lot of grief and dragged this process out. First, attanni guaranteed him a focus even as he jousted to his heart's content. This turned Fenn into a scary TIE Defender with autothrusters and a mean range 1 game. Second, Autothrusters worked in concert with his good rolls to always just barely block all damage from my shots.

During this time Asajj reached the northeast corner, curved southward and then southwest, but then had to curve north and east again to avoid asteroids -- her focus was too valuable to Fenn at that moment and she couldn't risk a bump. After some more skirmishing, his green luck finally gave out and I managed to land some heavy hits on Fenn.

Now Asajj started drifting down the west side of the asteroids, much like she had at the start of the match. And I moved in for the kill. My ships were hurting, but I just needed two damage. First round of shots passed without any hits on either side. Latts had protected her absurdly well most of the game, and continued her service here. But the second round spelled her doom. Vessery fired extremely well and ended the fight.

All in all, I think this was the stronger fleet. Vessery felt like a much more effective ally than Backdraft, even despite losing the PS war so easily. Also sharing PS 7 allows me to choose when Vessery fires -- either first to lay on a tractor token for both buddies, or after his FCS buddy shoots so he has a lock to reroll all his shots. And the tractor beam was a very useful weapon, even though it almost never hit during this particular game (curse you, latts and autothrusters!!!  HISSSS!!!!).

A nice night of X-Wing. I quit early instead of playing a third game, because I'm tired and this has been a busy week at work. It's likely to get much busier. :(  But I do think I'll still have time to play on Wednesdays at least.