Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170604082930

Yesterday I played a 100 point battle with a twist. This was part of a campaign my Friday Night game store started running while I was on vacation. In addition to the standard 100 point list, each player has an additional ship that will be present across all their battles, and who starts generic & inept but grows over time. The rules for this ship are vaguely similar to the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, though I haven't played that yet so I'm not sure how much.

I got 40 points to build the ship (I think they started the campaign at 30, but everyone's character sheet got thrown away by accident so they just upgraded all the players to 40 to build another pilot). The ship's base price is that of the cheapest pilot for the ship. It's pilot skill 4, has an elite slot, and a 2nd modification slot. You can increase pilot skill one at a time by paying the PS you're trying to reach (so 5 points to get to PS 5, then another 6 to get to PS 6, etc). Bad things can happen if this ship is killed, particularly this week since we were in neutral territory (e.g. losing an upgrade, or dying outright if you roll double-crits on your outcome roll). But you can fly it off the map to escape when things get too hot.

I was torn between a B-Wing, a U-Wing (thanks to Rogue One), or a K-Wing. Unfortunately the B-Wing is a bit too clumsy and delicate in the current meta, and I figured it'd die fast (and I wouldn't have any cool pilot ability like Nera, Keyan, or Ten Numb). The U-Wing would make a fantastic support ship... but I didn't really need that much support, and rebel crew are not strong enough in that role right now to thrill me (though Leia Organa would have been interesting). I was still very tempted to do a U-Wing thanks to the movie turning it into such an awesome & iconic ship. Ultimately though, I chose the K-Wing because of the absurd build I could create with the build rules:

K-Wing (23) + TLT (6) + Extra Munitions (2) + Proton Torpedoes (4) + Guidance Chips (0) + Long Range Scanners (0) + Deadeye  (1) + Kanan Jarrus (3), total 39 points. Chips + LRS + Deadeye on a K-Wing was just too tempting to turn down. In retrospect, Homing Missiles could have been better than Proton Torps, but oh well. I paired him with my Nera + Jan + Biggs fleet (proton torps not adv. proton tops version), giving Jan Recon Specialist instead of Kanan.

Because I expected my K-Wing pilot to die, I named him Mort. (in the voice of Kilian from Kilian Experience) It's a cool name, for cool people.

We started very late because several people arrived very late, and attendence was surprisingly sparse. Then I found out I wouldn't play the first round because we had an odd number of people. So I sat and played Grow Castle on my phone; it wasn't as fun as X-Wing. :(  Finally around 90 minutes later they started the next round.  My opponent had "Quickdraw", Soontir Fel, Carnor Jax, and his special pilot, a TIE/sf with FCS , Concussion Missiles, Chips , Lightweight Frame  , Title , and I'm not sure what Tech or Elite (I think PTL?).

Because Mort is not great at turning around without slamming, I decided on a slow-roll joust, hoping to pour munitions on my foe in a first pass to take a few ships off the table. Unfortunately he managed to position the initial encounter to just fire at Biggs (everyone else was out of range) and did a single damage. Biggs' dice were hot most of the game though. Next round I was too close for comfort, and couldn't shoot Nera's torps because Carnor was too close and also blocking focus spending (so no Deadeye, and the lock was on a target too close). So I just poured primary weapon damage and Mort's torpedo into Soontir and Carnor, taking care to leave Quickdraw alone for the time. Next round Mort sped past (since he has TLTs this wasn't a problem), as did Jan. Nera K-Turned to finish off Carnor, and Biggs slow-rolled, hoping for a bump or a close-range shot. He got the close range, but never got his shot off. I managed to kill Soontir, and reduced Carnor to 1 HP, causing him to decide to run away. Somewhere in the process Biggs died to Quickdraw or maybe Soontir, but he'd served a very useful role in deflecting damage away from my munitions ships, especially Mort who my opponent soon revealed he was keen on murdering.

All this time, his custom pilot was flying in from the far corner of the board. He hadn't been putting shots into me due to range, and I think this hurt him a bit because despite my bad positioning, I'd been doing a lot of harm to his fleet. Now he entered the fray though, and this was not good for me. Nera took a hard hit at range 3 from both TIE/sf ships, and the K-Wing also took some damage. In return I wiped the shields from Quickdraw, greatly reducing the threat he posed. Now he went from disconcertingly very dangers to only very dangerous. ;)

Carnor continued to flee, but Nera chased him down and ended his shenanigans. But in the mean time on the other end of the fight, Mort was taking some bad hits. Despite the gallows humor that led me to name him after his likely death, I did want him to survive, so I surprised my opponent by SLAMing out of range, toward the board edge. This left his custom pilot exposed from trying to chase Mort down, and I laid a lot of damage into him.



Nera was down to just 2 or 3 Hull, Mort had 3 HP left and was running to the safety of cowardice, Biggs had finally died, and Jan was untouched. My opponent was down to his custom pilot with 2 HP left, and Quickdraw with I think 1 HP left. Nera had unloaded both her 5-dice proton torpedoes as well as a few 4-or 5-dice primaries; Jan was really making her attacks bite hard. Mort hadn't managed to get a 2nd torpedo out... it's been a while since I flew a K-Wing and I wasn't used to its dial or movement patterns, and had fallen back to just TLT shots powered by focus tokens and the occasional lock.

Mort escaped off the board, and my opponent's custom pilot soon ran for the edge too. I TLT'd him and barely missed the kill, getting him down to 1 life. I'd hesitated on the kill earlier and now I was missing the chance. I didn't know if he was bluffing about fleeing though, so I had Nera chase him down just in case. Unfortunately he wasn't bluffing, and Nera missed the chance to lay shots into Quickdraw that round.

The ending is kinda fuzzy in my head because we were in a hurry to finish. I'm not sure if Quickdraw finished Nera off, or if she barely survived. I think she died. But Jan avenged her death with TLT shots. Win for Wazat.



So neither side lost their custom pilot. Mort lived! SF dude lived! The table next to us did feature a pilot KO, and he lost his most expensive upgrade as a result (but thankfully didn't roll perma-death).

I think munitions on a K-Wing are tricky. K-Turning works better for the 2nd pass than SLAM-turning, since if you have a lock you can still fire. Though if I'd been more patient I could have gotten that 2nd torp off and probably done massive damage; straining to stay in TLT range and not give myself a Weapons Disabled token probably hurt me in the long run. But my strategy of choosing a custom ship with SLAM for emergency getaways did work well, and I avoided a tragic space murder. I also should have done the Adv. Proton Torpedoes variation of my Nera-Jan-Biggs fleet; it's more fun, and I kept flying my fleet like I was playing that version.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">I earned I think 4 squad points for my victory. If I'd shot down the enemy's custom pilot I'd have gotten more, but I know & like the guy and I kinda hesitated to do it (probably should have done it anyway -- he wouldn't have been upset), and by the time I decided to kill him, it was too late. I think I'll spend the squad points on either more munitions (homing missile or proton bombs?), or increasing pilot skill.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">I still love the U-Wing thematically, but at the same base cost I think the K-Wing was mechanically more effective thanks to SLAM, TLT and primary Turret, Long Range Scanners, etc. Though the U-Wing would have handled formation jousting a bit better, perhaps, and I kinda wanted to watch a U-Wing pilot get better and better as the campaign went on, eventually becoming legendary.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">But I named him Mort with intent -- I expect he won't make it for very long. I mean, how many times have I gotten Luke killed? ;)