Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170311070746

Hahaha didn't go well. Well mostly; 2nd game I did great.

My first opponent tabled me and never lost a ship -- I bumped and missed out on a critical shot in the first round of contact, then he took out Jonus and then Jan, and I was in a bad spot for the rest of the game. He had a couple of Juke Box ties, "Backdraft", and the Upsilon shuttle (Stridan). My rolls were all abysmal, a conspiracy of dice that just wrecked all my ships, and he rolled amazing. The dice gods giveth, and the dice gods taketh away. ;)  That wasn't the bad part -- he's a cool opponent and it was fun near the end seeing how far I could get.

The bad part was that near the start of the battle, all the noise and movement and stress around me finally got to me and triggered a painful panic attack (I have these from time to time). The guy loitering behind me wouldn't give me space even after I asked him to (he just kinda stared stupidly), and I had a really hard time quelling the attack. I finally solved it by grabbing my earplugs to deal with the cacophony of noise, and by physically interposing my chair between myself and Doofus McRetard III so I could have some personal space, and the panic attack finally subsided. With my head and body no longer screaming, I enjoyed the rest of the game, even though my opponent tabled me bad (again, he's a really cool guy and he made the battle fun). Life lesson: When you suffer from panic attacks, make sure you have some tools available, and be creative with how you cut off problems. I'm realy glad I thought of using my chair to give myself some space; the guy just stared at me with blank eyes until a physical barrier was errected, and suddenly the bare minimum one foot of personal space didn't have to be violated anymore. Anyway, that's a side issue.

In the second fight, I tabled my opponent really bad... just as bad as I'd been tabled last game. Things just went right this time: my maneuvers were perfect, and the proverbial dice gods apparently decided I'd had enough last game and turned on my opponent. His two k-wings and one rebel TIE didn't last long at all. I wiped the TIE first with 3 hits thanks to Jan and Rage, and cleaned up his PS2 k-wing soon after. Miranda lasted a bit longer and managed to get half points on my YT-2400, and then it was over. I felt sorry for him, but also felt relieved seeing my fleet actually perform okay.

The third fight was against my good friend who rarely plays... and he really should play more often. He flew an *interesting* fleet, and flew very well. Major Stridan with support crew, Captain Yorr with Collision Detector, and Contracted Scout with PTL + R5-P9, Extra Munitions and Proton Torps, and possibly some other toys. He had 2 inspiring recruits in the fleet, and Captain Yorr allowed him to pull some very fun tricks. He could do a red stationary maneuver with Stridan and still take an action, because Yorr ate the stress. The jumpmaster could do a red K-Turn, and then barrel roll and PTL a target lock, because Yorr. Then Yorr moved and cleared all his stress. This made for some interesting rounds.

I made the mistake of not targeting his jumpmaster primarily, thinking his shuttles would be softer targets. But the jumpmaster was the really dangerous threat, and I could have outmaneuvered the shuttles all day but not the turret. I did manage to kill Yorr by the end, but he was able to kill my small ships and eventually overcome Dash. He flew well and we really enjoyed the stress shenanigans. We both brought debris clouds, and I had a lot of fun just plowing through them without any regard, as did Yorr.

In retrospect, my fleet is great for killing aces, assuming I don't foolishly bump and then lose my allies to amazing rolls. But HLC would be a better cannon for Dash overall. I'll take a donut and Jan'd 5 attack dice over a range 1 Jan'd 4 dice with unblockable hits. It's just too dicey, excuse the pun, to try to maneuver into range 1 or else fail my shot. Still, worth a try, and when I did meet aces without bumping I tended to ruin their lives. It's really too bad the YT-2400 has only one crew slot... that really hurts it, IMO. A YT-1300 can have both Kanan Jarrus and Inspiring Recruit on itself, while the 2400 has to offload one of those onto an ally. This makes me want to try a Wookie Rage + Jan fleet next.