Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170224180433

I like your list! I may have to umm... "borrow" it for some personal testing sometime. :D

Wednesday I finished playing my remaining Draft pilots.

First game was the fleet I listed above:

Corran Horn + R2-D2 + FCS + VI

Wes Janson + R3-A2 + VI + Integrated Astromech

Biggs Darklighter + R4-D6 + Integrated Astromech I did very well this time. Biggs played his role well, allowing Corran and Wes to be aggressive and reckless. Once I had him down to one ship he called the game. I actually can't remember many details though. :( I remember my 2nd game better.  I switched fleets to use up all my draft pilots, and flew this nonsense: Kath Scarlet [ Conner Net, Calculation , Tactician , Slave-1 , Long Range Scanners , Extra Munitions ] (47)“Epsilon Leader” [ Sensor Cluster , Twin Ion Engine Mk. II ] (22)"Wampa" [ Twin Ion Engine Mk. II ] (15)"Night Beast" [ Twin Ion Engine Mk. II ] (16) My opponent flew 3 TIE Bombers.  Two were loaded with missiles, bombs, & Extra Munitions, while the third was either Captain Jonus or Tomax Bren (I think it was Tomax).  I figured if I could blast the snot out of one of those heavily loaded bombers early, I could quickly grab a victory.  Instead I failed that, due to poor maneuvering, PS disadvantage, and a lot of good arc dodging from my opponent.  Ultimately it was pilot skill that hurt me most -- he was PS 7 across the board, and gave me initiative. This left me going first with my whole fleet, and he did an infuriatingly good job of almost always dodging arc by mere millimeters.

My other mistake was flying Kath like a moron, and not getting enough shots off. She spent too much of the game outside of combat, navigating around obstacles. And I also Evaded with her twice when I should have known to Focus instead, because Homing Missiles.

I started by skirting the obstacles to get him to fly inside, then turned inward. I was hoping to plant a conner net in their path when I turned Kath away, but that ended up being useless due to bad timing, and Kath spent several rounds not contributing, blocked by her own net and some obstacles. Wampa's ability never paid off, though Epsilon did help a bit, particularly on our first joust before the fleet split up out of formation. Wampa died first, then I managed to finally kill his support bomber with a conner net. I dropped the net over my ship and his, and we argued over whether the net affected both ships, but someone stepped in to support me before I had to look up the rules. So one bomber down, another damaged. I can do this...

Throughout the game though he bombed me like a champ, doing a really good job with thermal detonators and cluster mines. Thankfully he never hit multiple ships. I think Wampa actually died deliberately clearing out cluster mines for his buddies, since he wasn't gonna make it anyway.

After Epsilon died it was down to a badly damaged Kath and a healthy Night Beast, vs two bombers with some missiles left. Kath managed to get some damage into the bomber before she died, and it followed soon after. She actually lived absurdly long thanks to how poorly both his cluster missiles did (4 attack rolls, maybe a couple damage).

But now it was Night Beast vs a healthy bomber who was down to a single missile.

I made a dumb mistake and forgot he had long range scanners; I should have charged him and stayed on his butt all game, but instead played it safe, and let him get a lock. Now I was really worried. But after some weaving and diving, Night Beast ultimately pulled it off. His pilot ability is very, very good IMO; if he had a higher PS he'd be a staple in many fleets. I could focus and either roll or evade, and despite my poor PS, I eventually landed the final damage and won the game.

But man it was a long, painful game...

For my third game, having used all my draft pilots, I went back to my Nera + Jan + Biggs fleet and had fun despite losing hard. This player's dice were LAVA HOT! His attacks were 1 hit and 3 crits, 3 hits and 1 crit, and so on ALL GAME. I would suspect cheating if I didn't see him do it with my own eyes. His defense dice were also infuriating. He was flying Fenn Rau, Ketsu with title+PTL+Engine Upgrade, and a Z-95 with thread tracers. Biggs died on the first round of contact due to amazing damage output, much of which was crits so his droid couldn't help at all. I managed to blast Fenn out of the sky and do some damage to Ketsu, but then he completely wrecked Nera and I was down to Just Jan.

Ketsu's PTL + Engine Upgrade made his pilot ability really dangerous BTW, because he was often at range 1. With 1 or 2 tractor tokens on my ships, I just couldn't endure the shots.

And Ketsu might have died a lot sooner if I'd remembered to use Jan's pilot ability a lot more often (grrr... brain, y u betray me?!)

I thought I could still do this, so I ran like hell with Jan, pinging with TLT the whole way. First round of this went well, and I scored some hits. If I could just do two more damage to ketsu, I'd have the game (that Z-95 didn't scare me one bit). And I would have won. I would have won! But those mad, mad dice! He evaded basically every single shot, no matter the roll, and finally put enough damage into Jan to end her heroic last stand.

All in all a really fun match, cool opponent, and we both enjoyed the match. I still think I'd have won it easily if not for those treacherous dice rolls. ^_^