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| Day 1, Round 2: Doty (left), Me (right) |
Well here it is. The not so long-awaited recap of my win at LSO… I had two goals for this tournament. The big focus was to win. In my first year of competitive armada, I’ve been generally happy with my results. But still something wasn’t sitting right with me. While I won a fair many tournaments -not including an extremely tight 2nd place finish in the Vassal World Cup- none of these tournaments had officially been qualified as a “major” tournament. When I think of a “major”, I think minimum four round day 1, and minimum three round day 2. So going into LSO it was my priority to check this off my list.
The other goal was just to have fun. I had the opportunity of spending some great quality time with a bunch of awesome dudes who share my love for this game and that memory is anchored deeper than any game I played.
First order of business was to decide what guns I needed to bring with me. I had several lists in mind going into this tourney, and finally settled at 6am the morning of on my Agate MK2A build:
When designing my fleet, I had a very specific objective in mind: Counter Jerjerrod double ISD (I played against 3 of these at worlds) and big ship Raddus (thanks Patrick). Basically trying to counter anything ship-heavy which also has solid squadron defenses. I thought a list that could out-kill/farm either of these archetypes while still putting up a good fight if not winning the 134 matchup would do quite well. And here was the result:
My list
Assault Frigate Mk2 A (77)
• Kyrsta Agate (25)
• Ezra Bridger (3)
• Ruthless Strategists (4)
• Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
• Gallant Haven (8)
= 122 Points
CR90 Corvette B (39)
• Sabine Wren (4)
= 43 Points
CR90 Corvette B (39)
• Toryn Farr (7)
• Tantive IV (3)
= 49 Points
GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
• Adar Tallon (10)
• Bomber Command Center (8)
• Boosted Comms (4)
= 40 Points
Squadrons:
• Lando Calrissian (24)
• Mart Mattin (22)
• Hera Syndulla (Ghost) (28)
• Dutch Vander (16)
• Scurrg H-6 Bomber (16)
• Gold Squadron (12)
• VCX-100 Freighter (15)
= 133 Points
Total Points: 387
I knew the meta was transitioning to big tanky, killy ships. So I went heavy on the bombing. Between Gallant Haven and double blue flak + Toryn rerolls I knew I would be okay in winning most squadron matchups as well.
The most interesting part about this list I think was the choice of double CR90Bs. Super cheap, but boy do that smack ya. The main reason I took 2 instead of going one CR90A + double flotilla was my fire lanes objective which sadly no one picked :( But the other interesting thing is when my opponent drives up to sock Agate in the face, the 90Bs plink 2 or 3 damage on the enemy’s approach which fits right into how the list actually kills things (defense token overload). As it turns out, ISDs hate being plinked by pockets of 2-3 damage multiple times a turn. The added value of these 2 or 3 blue dice shots is that every additional source of damage becomes more potent than the previous because of token overload. The B’s really helped me push that concept. The other huge bonus of these little ships is they excel at my red objective (precision strike) which some folks made the happy mistake of choosing.
The only real downsides of these guys is the medium range limit unlike their CR90A superiors and that it takes a lot of practice to not let them get vaporized instantly.
Day 1, Round 1:
My first matchup of the tournament was against Ben (aka Downsizeit. Check him out on Youtube) who was flying a tanky Thrawn build with a gunnery team + spinals + SW-7s ISD2 (the CR90s were shivering on their bases at the sight of it) backed up by an interdictor and an annoying screen of Ciana, Vult, Valen, 1x-tie. His list was built around proximity mines and so was mine! This explains the scatter of yellow tokens on the board. I had bid and chose second. Ben picked my intel sweep. He corner deployed and deployed his prox mines right where I planned to claim the objective tokens. His grav well also funneled my deployment towards the edge so Ben did a nice job of controlling the table early on.
Before the ships had engaged, Ben smelled an early opportunity to try and take out Lando. Fortunately my squads were in GH range and my ruthless flak + returning a rogue counter-alpha cleaned up his squads pretty early on which meant it was time to lay into his ISD.
A part of me was worried about Ben steamrolling through my smalls with his ISD, while the other part of me wanted to encourage him to do so as it meant flying right into my bomber ball + layered firing arcs. He jumped to speed 3 in an attempt to gunnery team fork my smalls and pin Agate which isolated his flagship from the interdictor and prevented any meaningful damage on my frigate (big weakness of having only two sources of damage output). I knew without taking multiple shots per turn that Agate would be okay which is why she could nav dial traffic block herself in the grill of the ISD. From there it was a story of dodging the ISD front arc with my Adar flotilla and Toryn CR90, and bombing until I got the table. Mart dropped a prox mine and dealt 2 facedowns to the ISD which -in addition to ram blocking with the frigate- packed the damage cards and ensured the ISD would go down before it could get its power activation.
Ben’s interdictor finished off my Sabine CR after I rerolled a double into a double TWICE which fortunately had no significant impact. But the dictor folded to a solid round of bombing which got me the table and an early 10-1 (475-43).
Day 1, Round 2:
Aaaand here continues the trend of playing Andrew Doty (head of Legacy and programmer of Starforge) in every single tournament we’ve played in together (VWC, 2nd Chance, LSO, and Endor). Having just moved to Texas, Andrew would now be considered a “local” to me and we had an in-person game one week prior with him practicing his Anakin fleet in preparation for this LSO.
Andrews fleet was a 7-activation squadless Anakin with a SPHA-T victory, BT acclamator, and a ton of ex racks consular. My main focuses were not getting the frigate trapped and not allowing his consulars a sneaky last/first one-shotting my CR90s as I was heavily out-activated.
I went second as usual, and he picked my Pstrike almost immediately as if by instinct. I thought this was a questionable choice for a squadless fleet, but hey I’m not asking questions… My understanding is that Doty has flipped this objective before with ship-heavy and between so many activations and dice pools, he was trying to flip it on me as well.
Doty deployed flexibly in the center of the board, as did I. The inward tilt on the CR90s allows me flexibility as they can turn either way via a nav dial while avoiding blocking in the frigate, and to not stick out too far to get hammered by a consular.
I knew if I had gone into this fight head on I’d get demolished, so I began a hard kite to the right side (sometimes opposite side from where he deploys his acclamator to avoid BT and because its a brick that can’t get around the vic too well). My squads were going to be what won me this game so keeping out of double blue layers of flak was a priority early and throughout the game. I waited a couple rounds until his formation became more scattered while pursuing my ships in order to safely start bombing the consulars. This slight delay made it much easier to avoid flak ranges and to keep my squads alive. Mart was a hero as he created some difficult to avoid mine setups, combined with Ezra + Sabine and the cards were stacking fast on Anakin’s ships.
Andrew lined up a pretty spicy close-range double arc with SPHA-T and ex-racks into the rear of the frigate which poked him pretty hard, but with no sources of follow-up damage the frigate shrugged it off and healed it back with engineer spam.
I knew I wouldn’t table this fleet, so my objective was to score as many victory points as possible, and the kill points would be supplemental. This resulted in me getting 23 tokens for a silly 345 victory points on the objective. I think this game dissuaded most people from taking my pstrike in subsequent games. *most*... Final score was 621-15 (10-1).
Day 1, Round 3:
Round 3 I faced Curtis and his Romodi GT Cymoon (again, not so fun for my little ships but still a rough matchup overall for him) + 2 TRC arqs + 2 goz and a light screen of Tel and Ciana. Hislist was strictly limited to heavy long-range firepower, so I knew my maneuverability and bombing would be what got me the win. I went second and he chose my intel sweep. Boring, but free 75 points ain’t too shabby.
Deployment as seen above outlines my intent of isolating his cymoon and ignoring the arquitens until the ISD was destroyed. The ISD had very little squadron defense so it looked like a real juicy target. This was followed by a hard turn left to focus my firing arcs and bombers on the ISD before assuming a kiting formation on the rest of his fleet mid-late game once the ISD was destroyed. He sent Ciana and Tel a little too early which allowed me to eat them up without much of an issue. I ended up traffic blocking the ISD with the frigate (not pictured) and thankfully I had a nav dial to slip out. I think my first two games made me a bit ballsy on this approach. With no nav dial I would’ve been stuck in the front arc and caught in arquitens CF range and definitely been dead.
My 90Bs didn’t throw a single dice at the cymoon this game as it was my priority to keep them alive and out of that nasty medium range. Once the cymoon jumped forward at speed 3 its only goal at that point was to survive the mass of bombers I threw at its rear. By late turn 4 the cymoon folded to the bombers and it was time for open season on the arquitens. Without Romodi obstruction dice, the arquitens didn’t have enough dice to throw meaningful damage at my 90s. My 90s looped around and plinked the arquitens accompanying the bombers to claim the table with zero casualties on my end. Final score was (475-0) 10-1.
Curtis seemed very frustrated about this game after he himself had come off of two 10-1s in the first two rounds. He was a relatively newer player who was doing very well for himself despite his inexperience, so I tried to turn this into a good learning experience for him. When I gave him feedback, my biggest emphasis for this game (and just about all games of armada) was the idea of granting himself options. Curtis was outdeployed which meant I had 2 small ships to put down after he was on the table. That being said, the most important route to take in this circumstance is that of flexibility.
What you see above in Curtis’ deployment shows the cymoon on one side of the frigate, and the arquitens both wayyy out on the other side. What this deployment fails to take into account is that I don’t actually *have* to fly right in the middle of that mess. That with a nav dial I can choose to ignore half of his entire fleet and firepower. With a more central deployment, perhaps with an arquitens on either side of the cymoon (and more nav dials!), Curtis wouldn’t have granted me the opportunity to isolate his most important ship and make it my 400pts vs his single 180pt ship) Moral of the story, always be thinking of your own plan and try to find the pitfalls in it. If you are your opponent, how are you going to try and exploit the plan you’ve laid out? (I fall victim to the mistake of limiting my options sometimes. More on that later in the article!)
Day 1, Round 4:
Last round of day 1 and definitely my least interesting game was against ATXMike (AcornAdmiral). Mike cleaned up in the first three rounds meaning he was pretty much guaranteed to make day 2 as long as he didn’t get 10-1d. This meant him choosing my intel sweep and flying into a very non-enticing corner bunker that I’d have to fly through if I chose to engage. For reference, this is NOT what my fleet is designed to do. So I briefly toyed with the idea of engaging him in the tiny hope of maybe achieving a perfect 40TP for the day. But Mike’s position and his persistent bunkering caused me to return the favor and disengaged entirely. (75-0) 7-4 to me.
Day 1 Recap:
Finishing the day with 37 tournament points, I was pretty thrilled and hopeful that I could continue the momentum going into the next day. After a fun evening over some drinks with the guys, I was spent from 4 rounds and ready for bed.
Day 2, Round 1:
And here marks the game where I’m still hitting myself on the head. I needed to play well as day 2 was for all the marbles (brand new set of swiss). It was played between the top 4 players from day 1 in a round robin format. Round 1 I played against Mike (ATXMike) for the second time this tournament.
Mike picked my intel sweep and I had already decided that this game was going to be much different than the previous one, as I wanted to fight. I was unsure if this was reciprocated as Mike did the same corner bunker deployment which gave me two choices. The first choice was to take my tokens and fly away with a 7-4 (75MOV) (This would’ve been hella lame and I also wanted more than a 7). The second choice was to fly into Mike’s corner bunker and risk losing some points to potentially trade for an 8 by killing his recusant.
What I did NOT plan for here was for Mike to quickly jump to speed 3 and hard double yaw towards my ships (I thought he would toilet bowl like the previous game). I was silly and had two of my small ships in the perfect position to block my own assault frigate (see photo above) which meant he got to activate his two big boys before my smalls could move and let my frigate get out of dodge. This was okay though I thought. Even in the off chance I lose the frigate I can afford to trade my frigate for his recusant and keep it at a 7-4 win if I lost nothing else. By round 4 his recusant had no defense tokens and lots of damage cards (my squads had yet to bomb that round as well). My frigate was at full health. Just need it to survive 2 shots, which normally isn’t a problem. What followed from Patfist was 11dmg + APT after evade discard, which I brace to 6 and redirect, taking 2 cards due to the faceup from APT. Okay, ouch. Didn’t expect that. I’m still chilling though as he needs a monster roll from the prov to kill the frigate. What follows from the prov is 11dmg which I brace to 6, redirect to shields, take another 3 cards putting me at 5, and he rams and kills the frigate before it got to activate. Not what either of us expected. This meant I didn’t get to activate my frigate to shoot and kill the rec which ended the round on 1 hull and worst of all, had engineering commands dialed up.
My face was hot at this point. His recusant is speed 3, engineering, and it can outrun my squads. I could lose a 4, possibly even 3 if I don’t kill it. The game that followed was putting my squadrons in nasty flak bubbles to chase it down and sacrificing one of my CR90s just for Hera to finally get the kill on round 6. I had to bleed an additional ~40 points of squads and the CR90 to kill the rec just to keep the score to a 5-6 loss. We shook hands good game and I had to take a walk and some deep breaths lol. I was pissed at myself for not keeping my options open by preparing for him to turn in and engage me which was totally my fault. Even if the dice were a major factor in this game. (227-261) 5-6 loss.
Day 2, Round 2:
After a painful and unexpected round one, I recognized I was still in the running but needed to lock in. My next matchup was against Bryson and his Thrawn ISD + ruthless demo + goz and a bunch of bombers (with Hondo/Mauler/FCT shenanigans). My goal here was to win big so that I didn’t need to fly aggressively into Bodhi’s Invincible prov 134 during round 3.
I went second (can you see a trend here?) and Bryson picked my precision strike (LFG!). This meant that I didn’t even need to kill ships. I just needed to win the squad war and then farm for dayz. Unfortunately I still was in a clouded head space thinking about my first round and I wasn’t thinking clearly early on in this game. This also explains why I forgot to take photos of this match…
Deployment was looking good for me as Bryson had his ISD deployed too far from the action which made it easy for me to focus sequentially on each layer of his list one by one. I knew my first priority would be to kill his squads so I could free up my bombers to get farming.
Early on I used Sabine to throw a mine on a rock which was directly in front of my frigate. With Ezra on my assault frigate, I can throw the rock distance 2 with the mine on it. This meant that if his demolisher wanted to be relevant the next turn, he would have to land on the mine and potentially a rock to get into any combative positioning. I activate my frigate, declare that I’m spending a command token which from our understanding means that I surpass the “when you reveal a command dial” step that Ezra’s timing falls under. Despite the timing being inconsequential, my opponent was adamant that I couldn’t use Ezra as we were in the “after you reveal a command dial” step. So my frigate landed on a rock AND a mine and I had to RBD all my cards off well before I wanted to. I was already in a heated headspace from round 1 and this definitely didn’t help. My opponent had every right to tell me I couldn’t use the card and I didn’t insist, but now I wanted vengeance.
(rough idea what the frigate did. Probably still my best maneuver of the morning at that point 🙂)
That same round, he sent Mauler to do some splash damage and Hondo pulled him out before I could tie him down. Start of the next round I baited him into bombing my frigate as I knew based on its positioning that it wasn’t going to die. I lost a couple squads as expected from Hondo/Mauler/FCT/Ruthless but now the fight was where I wanted it. His choice to bomb me wasted several of his squad activations so I returned a nasty rogue alpha and face full of double blue flak with my own ruthless. His squads cleared out that same turn which meant I had rounds 4-6 for Hera, Dutch, Mr. Scurgh and Gold (plus Adar) to go prey on his ships. Long story short, demo died and many instances of flipping structurals on his ISD with 90Bs and squads meant it didn’t last very long. Final score with a tabling and a bunch of tokens (595-61) 10-1 win. (This one felt extra good)
Day 2, Round 3:
At 15 TP going into round 3, I was now ahead of the pack. Mike, who I had played against round one endured the pain of his providence eating a 6 hyena alpha + prov double arc from Bodhi’s Grevious list in round 2, which essentially killed it with one activation. This led to Mike’s defeat and set me up for a simple round 3. Looking at the numbers, all I needed to do was win a 6 against Bodhi to guarantee the win for the event.
After seeing my pstrike objective in action, Bodhi wasn’t eager to give me the opportunity to flip structurals and other nasty crits on his prov. So he picked intel sweep.
This photo just about sums up how the game went. I made Bodhi chase me for it and he decided it wasn’t worth it so everything on his side dropped to speed zero and the game ended (75-0) 7-4 win for me which clinched the win for the event. Not too much to say about this game other than sometimes you’re gonna be playing the tournament more so than the game.
Biggest Lesson Learned:
As a relatively newer player in competitive Armada, this tourney was an affirmation for me in the importance of understanding a meta, and then seeking counters. This was something I didn’t consider going into my first world championships at Adepticon, and I definitely paid the price. Fortunately I applied that lesson to this tournament and it paid off.
The second lesson was a reminder for me to maximize my options when I don’t have perfect information. Applying this would’ve prevented my round 1 loss against Mike.
Final Thoughts:
Not too much else to say here other than to keep supporting these amazing events. Despite all the noise and some disarray in the community right now, at the end of the day the best thing to gain from this game is the buddies we share it with. I love this game and I love to win, but the community I share this all with is irreplaceable.
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