Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-454133-20180208061035

Today Sunny Bounder rolled 5 hits 3 rounds in a row, and it was awesome!

I flew this fleet:

Manaroo with Adaptability and K4 Security Droid

Inaldra with Trick Shot + "Heavy Scyk" Interceptor and HLC

Cartel Spacer with "Heavy Scyk" Interceptor and HLC

Sunny Bounder with "Heavy Scyk" Interceptor and HLC

My opponent had a TIE Punisher with Bomblets and Trajectory Simulator (maybe also Unguided Rockets?); an Upsilon Shuttle with Tactical Jammer plus Pattern Analyzer and Inspiring Recruit; and a Captain Yorr with Systems Officer and Fleet Officer. He was running an extra-silly list, which he parked in the corner so that the Lambda was in the back, ready to bump the upsilon. The TIE Punisher was also behind the Upsilon, ready to bump.

Here's his plan:  The Upsilon would always do a stationary maneuver (Yorr would steal the stress), Pattern Analyzing a coordinate so Yorr could do Fleet Officer (which happens before the upsilon stressed itself). Yorr now has 2 stress. He would then bump into the Upsilon, but by performing a green he cleared both stress thanks to Inspiring Recruit. When the Punisher activated, it could launch a bomblet 5 straight, just a bit out of range of hurting his team.

We both packed the asteroids around his corner of choice so that they were as dense as possible, producing a fortress worthy of Mordor.

At first his ship placement wasn't quite tight enough, so he bombed his own Upsilon (but did no damage). After a bit of wiggling he got the punisher into place though.

Faced with the threat of a 4-dice Upsilon, a 3-dice Lambda, and a Bomblet-Launching punisher, I decided to not approach from the front. That way lay only death. After a few rounds of maneuvering around the side, my opponent was still holding his position, seeing if he could get any shots off that way (after my initial pass I'd have to do something to turn around without going off the board or high-centering on those asteroids); also he was just very dedicated to the cheese he was playing. ;)

And then the magic started happening. Sunny felt safe and didn't evade or focus, she target locked. And rolled 2 hits with her HLC. I spent the lock and rolled 2 more hits. BAM, 5-hit shot, finished off the TIE Punisher (who the rest of the team had barely managed to soften). Next round she rolled 3 hits on the upsilon, and rerolled for a 4th and thus 5th hit. That's twice in a row!

By this point I figured she wasn't going to pull it off again because I wasn't counting on getting actions, and I didn't want to fly her in front of that Upsilon. Instead I strategically bumped my ships in a line (Inaldra in front) to pull a go-slow. Manaroo had her corner clipped by the upsilon's arc, and the lambda had Manny and Inaldra in arc. Manaroo K4'd a lock and gave it to... sunny.

I tried to finish off the Upsilon with Manaroo but it lived with 1 HP left, so it got to fire, dealing 5 damage to Manny (who rolled blanks on defense, and took ). No one else could finish the Upsilon -- Inaldra had bumped and Cartel Spacer rolled poorly. Then Sunny takes her turn... 2 hits, rerolls... 2 more hits. BAM, another 5-hit shot, third round in a row! We couldn't believe it. It nuked the Upsilon far beyond what was necessary.

Another unbelievable "you must be joking, you made that up" moment came just before this, when Inaldra shot at the Lambda. The Upsilon she was touching had Tactical Jammer, obstructing the shot. I announced I had Trick Shot, and my opponent responded with "No way, you're making that up!". I showed him and we were busting up. Sadly she was too close to fire her HLC, so this was only a 4-dice primary attack... and I only rolled one hit. No tokens thanks to all the bumping that round. He rolled an evade, so poor Inaldra missed her chance, just in time for Sunny to show her how it's done.

At this point the Lambda had no more Upsilon bumping action, it had to move this round, so of course it chose a stationary maneuver. ;)  I had to turn my fleet to avoid the upcoming edge (or another bump-fest), and he had his selection of targets.  Manaroo managed a left sloop by the skin of her teeth, and barrel rolled thinking that would get her out of arc.  I was wrong, so here she was still at range one, clearly in arc, and tokenless.  He fired, but didn't roll any damage; so lucky!  I made a few pokes to lower its HP.

Now the Lambda really did have to move forward, which it did, bumping into one of my scyks, barely moving a couple millimeters. The great immobile Lambda, never moved all game! ;)  Two of the scyks had now k-turned to re-aquire arc, while Manaroo had green banked onto an asteroid to pass a lock to someone (I think Inaldra).  The Lambda fired but did only a shield of damage to the Cartel Spacer, and then Inaldra fired and finished it off with a natural Hit-Hit-Crit.

It was a very funny and silly battle. I like the combo he had going, kind of like the U-Wing with Hera (Hera Turret). We figured if he had it turned 45 degrees he'd be better able to cover the whole battlefield, and then it would be easier to break formation and turn to fight once the enemy came into range (if he wanted to). BTW he has his Empire ships painted with a black glossy design with small details painted red or white (like a red stripe across the wing of the Lambda). It's a really good look for the empire; I wish I'd taken pictures!

So, that was a fun casual night. Man, Sunny is dangerous! Had he turned in for the kill she might have been targeted first (and Manaroo would have to pass her lock + focus so she could evade as her action). But since she was so safe, and quite lucky, she got to pull of the 5-dice nuke two more times than I'd dared to hope! ^_^