The Battle for Endor 2025 campaign is underway! We’re still in the POD phase, sorting twelve players into Swiss groups before the top three advance to Gold, the next three to Silver, and the rest of us tumble into Chocolate (where, wonderfully, you get to rebuild your fleet and even dip into Legacy Wave 0).
I’ve been sorted into the Western Europe POD – or, as I like to call it, the Carolingian Empire. My first match was against my good friend Spike. Since we are both civilized gentlemen, we naturally chose the platform of a more civilized age: VASSAL. Nothing wrong with TTS, of course, but there’s something deeply satisfying about the crisp clarity of top-down Armada.
We logged on Wednesday at 19:00 local time. It’s been over two years since I last played on VASSAL, so I was a bit rusty, but even at 2.5 hours, the game was still faster than TTS would have been!
The Fleets
My List – “Somehow, Vader Returned with an Onager” (Empire)
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Onager Testbed with Vader, Intel Officer, Varnillian, Veteran Gunners, XI7s, OBPCs
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ISD Cymoon with Intel Officer, Gunnery Team, IF!, Spinals, XI7s, Devastator
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2x Gozantis (one with Hondo, one with Comms Net)
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2x TIE Fighters
Spike’s List – “Draven Endor” (Rebels)
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Assault Frigate Mk2B with ECMs, Hondo, Flight Controllers, Expanded Hangar, DTT
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MC30 Torpedo (flagship) with Draven, Foresight, EST, Ordnance Experts, ECMs, H9s, External Racks
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GR-75 with Adar Tallon & Boosted Comms (Bright Hope)
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GR-75 with Slicer Tools (Quantum Storm)
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Squadrons: Luke, Kanan, Jan, Blount, six Z-95s
Spike had the bid and quite sensibly chose to go first. He picked my Contested Outpost, which meant my game plan was straightforward: sit on the station, farm points, and let him come into range.
The Game
Setup was decent for me, though I made an early misstep by not nesting the Onager behind Hondo’s flotilla. That left it too exposed and too far from the Cymoon, giving Spike’s MC30 an easier flank route than I would have liked. Not a fatal error, but one he definitely exploited.
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| Start of round 2, Onager should be down and to the left |
My first ignition shot was also over-complicated. I fiddled too much with dice mods when I should have just focused on raw damage output to get rid of the brace. Later, I passed on the chance to kill his Slicer GR-75 when I had a double Cymoon arc and Intel Officer lined up. Instead, it limped away alive, costing me the 6th Outpost token in round 6 by slicing away a key Nav on the Comms flotilla.
Those mistakes compounded: I kept the Cymoon sitting on the station longer than I really needed to, which stretched my fleet out and denied me the concentrated fire I needed to actually bag the MC30. The Assault Frigate (the “potato”) also got away, heavily damaged and braceless, but still alive. When the Onager went down, I had nothing left positioned to finish either big ship.
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| Start r5: Onager is gone, Potto heading for the sunset |
Spike, meanwhile, played an excellent game. His squadrons worked overtime with Draven handing out raids, Adar repeatedly refreshing Luke, and Kanan providing just enough disruption. Luke even rolled an early crit that prevented me from having command tokens on the Onager, and later my poor flagship got another crit that limited its ship shots at a key moment – huge swing.
The MC30 mostly loomed as a threat rather than diving in, but that was still effective: it forced me to respect its presence, and later picked up a flotilla kill thanks to an H9 salvo (enabled by that pesky Slicer I had failed to finish earlier). Adar’s flotilla eventually went down once it lost scatter, but only after it had already done plenty of Luke double-taps.
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| End state |
The Result
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Score: 243–141 in Spike’s favor
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MoV: 102
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Result: 7–4 win to Spike
I farmed five Outpost tokens, which kept the score respectable despite losing the Onager and being too spread out to score the kills I needed.
Reflections
My overall plan was sound, but execution faltered. The Onager placement mistake was recoverable, but the Cymoon mismanagement and over-focus on station control doomed my chances to capitalize on Spike’s vulnerabilities.
In hindsight, the Assault Frigate should have died, and the MC30 could have been in serious jeopardy as well. But I spread my firepower, let the Slicer slip away, and lost cohesion. Spike capitalized with clean squadron play, timely raids, and careful positioning.
Could he have pressed harder and gone for a tabling? Maybe. If the potato had pushed into my Cymoon and the MC30 had lined up a last/first double arc, he might have pulled it off. But he would have risked being tabled himself if the dice went my way, so his more measured approach was probably the correct call.
Either way, it was a fun, tactical game and a pleasure to be back in the VASSAL cockpit after two years away. Hats off to Spike for the win – and best of luck to him in the next rounds.
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