Talk:Drea Renthal/@comment-454133-20161108225107/@comment-454133-20161114065000

Nice! Yea, I'm growing fond of rear-firing ships like Backdraft and Kath. It feels so different to fly and it has its challenges, but it's so cool to whip around and perfectly position a ship that would have been impossible to target with the front arc., and then get a better effect out of it.

This weekend I played a somewhat unique buy-in casual tournament. 150 points, and you can have 1 faction at 150, 2 at 75 each, or 3 at 50 each. So you can mix and match factions, but each is separate and treated as though it were an ally run by another player (can't put IG-88D (Crew) on a B-Wing, etc). We also had some rules limiting using abilities of one faction on another to power up in OP ways, but they were kinda loose and no one seemed to push the boundaries of what they could get away with.

I played Stress Slicers, consisting of Empire:

Major Rhymer [TIE Shuttle, Snap Shot , Tactician , Fleet Officer ] (33)

Kath Scarlet “Mangler” Cannon, Adaptability ] (42)

And Scum:

Binayre Pirate [Assault Missiles, Black Market Slicer Tools , Guidance Chips ] (18)

Binayre Pirate [Black Market Slicer Tools] (13) x 2

Drea Renthal [Twin Laser Turret, R4-B11 ] (31)

Drea doesn't nicely fit with the stress theme since she's stressing the wrong ship, but I was emotionally attached to playing her that day, and I figured she'd make a nice, accurate balance to the other more gimmicky ships. She kind of did well at this, when I remembered to get a lock at the start of battle (dumb me), but she was also a big target because of her low agility. Something more in theme to cause or exploit stress would probably have been a wiser choice. Even just a y-wing with thermal detonators or something...

(I'm imagining saying this in a Dr. Doofenshmirtz voice BTW.  Just sounds right.  Though it lacks a backstory, sorry about that.)       :)

I can tell you right now, it was a serious blunder to put Assault Missiles on a low-PS Z-95; I never managed to fire it even once because I either lacked a lock at the opportune moments, or had all my ships clustered around the target. I just could not get a lock at the right time because of the range + spacing issues that come with low PS, and I knew this would happen with this combo, but simply thought it would work out... Somehow. It did not.

I could have at least swapped Fleet Officer for Systems Officer to help with the lock, but that would have been wise, and clearly I wasn't in that state of mind at the time.

The other thing I should mention straight off is, almost no one died. On either team. I either stressed ships that did not want to be stressed (e.g. Darth Vader), positioned a Z-95 to force a collision and deny actions and shots, and/or strategically parked myself on an asteroid to make myself into a helpless and harmless target, then came out of it okay. Somehow. (I survived somehow, let's go!)  There just wasn't a lot of shooting, and I rolled absurdly lucky at bizarrely helpful times, but usually not when attacking. And attacks were where I could have really used some lucky rolls!

So the goal was to pour stress on targets and then slice them under their shields. Considering I was up against TIE Advanced ships, IG-2000s, Shield-Recharging ARCs, you'd think this would be PERFECT! I had the goal of killing some ships without ever damaging their shields... Yea it did not work out this way. I was great at applying stress with Rhymer, not so much with Kath, and definitely not with exploiting it with the slicers.

It turns out the random chance of Black Market Slicer Tools, as a 50/50 chance, logically had it out for me. I don't know what I did to offend them, but they simply would not cooperate. I landed a couple hits early on, and then never again all night. So the damage I dealt was primarily traditional, wholesome laser and blaster fire. And that felt dirty. I came here to slice not to blast! The indignity of it. (Again Dr Doof.  Though now that I think of it, some self-destruct buttons on the Z95s would have been more in character.)

So about that "almost no one died" thing. The first game I lost by 15 points -- only one ship had died (Drea), and I got half points on a huge ship. I'd made sure the whole battle was spent colliding senselessly, so I could just slicer stuff to death. In fact all the battles were terrifying cluster crashes. Drea finally died to a TIE defender and lost me points, and I only got half that amount from the huge ship. I'd pulled some really fancy maneuvering and it was amazing, just not deadly to anyone.

In the second game maybe only two ships died, and I came out ahead in points. Similar story, lots of collisions and denial. Stress and low PS ships are good at that, if at nothing else... *grumble*  Moving on!

Finally in the third round, no ships died. None. If I'm remembering right, I won by huge ship half points.

Overall I was one of the 3 contest winners (they didn't tell us how it divided out -- we'd run very late and the store had to close 5 mintues ago), and I won another Scyk Interceptor. So yay! But awww... I wanted to kill some healthy, shielded ships and it just didn't work out. Traditional violence just wasn't scratching that itch, you know?

The moral of the story is, violence is the answer, but make sure you can dish enough out.