Rebellion in the Rim pt. 6 (Round 5/1st battle Act 2)

 

It's been a while since last I updated our RitR campaign. Progress has been sooo slow I've lost a bit of interest. Here is a brief summary of Round 5 (1st battle Act 2). 

Tarot-sized ship cards for Clone Wars factions

 

I just had to share some photos of these AMAZING tarot-sized ship cards I got from @petersaber over at the Armada Discord (link in sidebar). He prints these periodically, so do reach out to him if you're interested. 

I absolutely HATE the smaller ship cards (and to a lesser degree, the bigger upgrades) so I was thrilled somebody was making 'em in the old size.

Here are a few closeups so you can appreciate the quality. Look how he managed to get the new ship keywords in there as well (right under the image). Very clever.

The paper used is VERy sturdy and has a "plastic" feeling to it. No chance of tearing or getting bent. I'm guessing it can even tackle a coffee spill (not going to test that).

Got a couple of these cute alt arts as a bonus. Now I want ALL the squads in this alternate format 😅😅😅

Casual 600-pointer: Mar Tuuk vs Mr. Red Fish

 

Had a nice casual 600-pointer yesterday. Been too long since I played a battle of any size bigger than RitR 😅 

600-pointers* are my fav for casual games. It feels a lot like 400 (including how objectives affect the game) but with room for more of everything. You can have a good selection of ships of all sizes and still have a decent squad complement. You can also afford some suboptimal picks and not feel that too keenly. 400 points is a good choice for tourneys - a compromise between the feeling of a full fleet and time limitations.

* We have a 150 points in squads/2 flotilla limit in place.

I knew I wanted to run a CW faction because now I have the models but haven't played them before IRL only on Vassal. I tried making a Republic fleet but with only 1 squad pack I couldn't quite get the fleet I wanted so I gave up and ran with Seppies. Having only 4 Vultures meant I was going ship-heavy 😆

Simple fleet really: put as much plastic on the table as possible, keep it simple, roll a bunch of dice. IF! + Linked takes care of dice fixing, Mar Tuuk adds in dice (his drawback is really very small for ships with decent dice pools). 

BTs on the Recusants was a last-minute addition to give them some close-up punch. That worked REALLY well. The red flak/LTT also kept enemy squads hiding for most of the game so was decent. But Light Destroyer with Swivel would probably have been even better. 5 red + 2 black at long range. I'll try those next time.

TI-99 and RHD don't really mesh too well but I had to try something to keep the Vultures around long enough for flak to matter. Muni is there to keep the flag alive if it brawls. Same with BoB. In this game that didn't happen (you don't run your flag to brawl into the Ackbar death zone) but IMO it's a solid little trio.

Any hope of staying at range evaporated as my opponent turned out to be Ackbar with H1 (goodbye braces and useless Thermals) and 2 GT potatoes. We were both as 600. Rolled for initiative and my opponent picked 2nd. I went for Opening Salvo. No guts, no glory!

I wanted to kill Ackbar as quickly as possible. Failing that, get an activation advantage. Both of those didn't work. About the only thing that DID work was preventing a circling conga and having the rebel fleet spend its objective tokens piecemeal while I got more mileage out of my (red) bonus dice).

It was quite bloody, ending with the rebels being table 1st activation turn 5, for the loss of 1 Rec, 1 Muni, 1 Battle Refit, 3 Vultures, and a Rec at half points.

Mar Tuuk is a pretty solid commander. Call him simple or unimaginative but he gets his red dice more easily than Romodi. And once you're shooting into unshielded hull zones that's maybe better than extra dice. His drawback only comes into play once the enemy ship is nearly dead and if you've got more than 3 dice chances are that you can toss 1 die without trouble and still get the kill.

After the match, we discussed the fleets and the games: 

We agreed that taking out Intel Officer from the AFs to make room for X-wings was a mistake. Same with counting on H1 being safe the entire game and not needing def retros. HFZ/Draven on JL was a specific response to my consistent use of Counter squadrons and not some crazy stunt. It didn't do much here but against my usual fleets it melts my poor TIE Ints 😢

As for the game it was halfway lost at setup with rebels going in two directions and almost crashing and me blocking in an exposed Ackbar. Still, with all the dice being thrown - stuff was regularity doing 7-8 or more damage per shot with blocked braces - things could have gone differently.

Very fun game!

Update VASSAL OP 21 Midsummer Madness fleet submissions

Midsummer Madness is now accepting fleet submissions!

Midsummer Madness format: You submit a list, but you NEVER play it. Instead you're randomly assigned someone else's list each round. Scoring is the total of your own points and the points your fleet has scored. Can you make 80 TP!?

4 rounds Swiss. 1 week per round.

The deadline is Wednesday, 23rd June.

Start round 1 is Thursday, 24th June... aka MIDSUMMER.

Be there or you don't count as a mad 'mada player! 

https://forms.gle/hnJiEoqC2QusZwnh9