Sunday, July 22, 2018

MA In Art History - The Soundness of Plans

“A great tactician creates plans. A good tactician recognizes the soundness of a plan presented on him. A fair tactician must see the plan succeed before offering approval.
Those with no tactical ability at all may never understand or accept it. Nor will such people understand or accept the tactician. To those without that ability, those who posses it are a mystery.
And when a mind is too deficient in understanding, the resulting gap is often filled with with resentment.” 
― Timothy Zahn, Star Wars: Thrawn


When last we talked about Thrawn, I had a list built to try and take advantage of planning and looking into the future while maintaining flexibility.  Having now played it a couple times (once in a fleet patrol, and also casually) there are a LOT of moving parts.  Which is good, because it's training me to git gud at remembering when things happen and looking at the board state and seeing the future.

There are some unnecessary things though.

5 activations made Gov. Pryce completely unnecessary, to the point where I actually could harm myself by using her ability.  Strategic Advisor does the same job for 3 points cheaper.  No point in dropping my activations either.  The Gozantis are integral to my token generation strategy, and the Raider is a really, really good escort, and it's flak helps me score points off squadrons if I can't get a straight table.

The ISD-II as the flagship is a bit unnecessary.  I'd actually rather run a Cymoon, but it can't take Chimera because of it naturally having a Fleet Command Upgrade slot.  I'd take a Kuat, but I'd lose a ton of long range firepower.  But an ISD-I has a ton of firepower available at close range, and if given a small Spinal Armament upgrade, it even has the same long range firepower.  So here is my next iteration of the list:
Imperial I (110)
• Grand Admiral Thrawn (32)
• Boarding Troopers (3)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• Chimaera (4)
• Entrapment Formation! (5)
= 167 Points

Imperial I (110)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Boarding Troopers (3)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• Avenger (5)
= 135 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points

Raider I (44)
• Ordnance Experts (4)
= 48 Points

Got a bit of a bubble at Medium Range between, especially on the sides.  But we still have great maneuverability between 2 command dials per turn on the important turns, banked tokens, and Entrapment Formation!  You'd think we've got bad dice modification, with only Leading Shots, but switching to Intensify Firepower gives us a good solid floor to roll off of.

Ultimately though it is still a list that wins by correctly identifying what your opponent is going to do, and having the right answer dialed in.  With Chimera and tokens generated from Comms Net Gozantis, you really only need to look one turn into the future, which you should be able to do.

This is the list I'll be bringing to my Store Championship.  If Konstantine can win one, Thrawn should be able to take it home with an overly complicated plan!

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