Battle for Darklighter Junkyard - Commandos and Han Solo Commander!

The planet D'rawbri Dge is in Rebel hands, with most of the key sites on the planet secured.  Operation Rancor Snack is going very well for the Rebellion.  Only Darklighter Junkyard remains contested by the Empire...

High Priority - AAR with Priority Supplies Battle Cards

Guess what?  I got a game in against my buddy Kasey with the new Battle Cards from Priority Supplies.  A combination of random luck and careful selection wound up with these cards for the game.

We're getting our games in at Drawbridge Games - my local gaming store - where we're winding up a month long custom League.  "Operation Wampa Brunch"

Operational Objective:  Destroy 2 Trooper Units (easy enough, right?) in a single game.
Major Achievement:  Bring either 2 Commanders and 1 Heavy unit or 1 Commander and 2 Heavy units in your army.  (We have both completed this in previous games)

Worlds After Action Report - Drunkle Raddus and Day Drinking

In case you haven't read my article on what I was bringing to worlds, and what I planned to do with it, read that first.

This becomes important later on.

It's time for Worlds, the best time of the year!  I was running a Raddus build, modeled off both my crazy ideas and Truthiness's crazy ideas.  With that much list building skill, we'll do just fine!

Saturday at Scarif - Grand Army Battle at Drawbridge Games

It happened.  We had the casual play event "Saturday at Scarif" at Drawbridge games, which included a "Grand Army" size battle.  Played on Jake's custom Scarif board, it would be me and Sean as a two headed monster for Rebels, with Luke as our only commander (being the only one we could legally take) while Jake and Kasey ran the Imperials with Vader and Veers.

Special thanks to Rebel Light Works who sent the custom objective tokens to Jake to play on the board.  I hope you can see them well in the pictures provided.

Exact upgrades are unavailable at this time, but the following units were on the board:

Luke supports the Rebel landing from the center, with 7 Trooper squads.

After Action Report - More Legion from Biggs (Game 2)

This time I was playing my old Armada buddy Chris again.  You may remember what happened when I played him last time.  This time would be different!  I'd just played Jake, so two games in one day!

After Action Report - Yet More Legion from Biggs (Game 1)

Got two more games of Legion in on Saturday.  Let's take a look at what happened and the impressions to take away from the games.  The first game was against Jake, a local player who is new to miniatures in general, but has bought in hard to Legion.  He's putting together a very impressive Scarif board.  Anyway, let's get to the fight:

After Action Report - Biggs Plays Legion

Biggs here!  I finally had the chance to play an 800 point game of Legion.  I've bought in with Rebels, and my friend Chris went with Imperials, and we both had assembled our core set and one of each expansion.  We were playing at our local game store, which had a lot of custom terrain available for us to play with.

AAR - Biggs (and Garm) at the Empire Games Center Regional Championship

On Saturday I got to play in the Regional Championship at the Empire Games Center in Streetsboro, Ohio.  I had been practicing with a Clonisher style "Go first and smash with Black dice" list, but I hadn't been liking how it performed, so the evening before I put back together something from the archives, that I updated for Wave 6.  I had won my local store championship with the original list, partly by getting lucky and having my buddy Chris beat Q in the final round to let me leapfrog into first.

Plus, Shmitty wanted Garm to win Regionals, and he had given me a Garm card signed by Zahn himself!

I did pretty well.

AAR - Garm Goes To Red Castle Games

Yesterday was the Store Championships at Red Castle Games in Portland, OR and the first stop on the Make Garm Great Again World Tour 2017!  The tournament was well run, the shop is a nice venue, and a great crowd of players showed up for the event.  Keep reading to see how Garm did.

Stele Open AAR

Congrats again to Dan!

Stele Open is probably the most fun I've had at an Armada tournament to date. Our community continues to amaze me with just how enjoyable an experience they make these large tournaments. The level of play is continuing to rise. Considering I went 2-2 on the day, fifth place was far better than I expected. It helps that my losses were fairly close at 4-7 and 5-6, and my wins were pretty solid at 8-3 and 10-1. However, I think it mainly shows just how close many of the games were. Pete Hodgkins should have the final standing up soon, but the points were pretty tight. Now that I've had some time to reflect, let's go over what went wrong and what went right.

**Edit** For those that didn't catch my list in the Stele Open live updates, here's my list from the day:

Team Ramrod 

Author: Truthiness
Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 390/400   

Commander: General Madine

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)

-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points)
= 51 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)

= 18 total ship cost

GR-75 Medium Transports (18 points)

= 18 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette B (39 points)

-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points)
-  Reinforced Blast Doors  ( 5  points)
= 52 total ship cost

CR90 Corvette B (39 points)

-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points)
-  Reinforced Blast Doors  ( 5  points)
= 52 total ship cost

[ flagship ] MC80 Star Cruiser (96 points)

-  General Madine  ( 30  points)
-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points)
-  X17 Turbolasers  ( 6  points)
-  Leading Shots  ( 4  points)
= 144 total ship cost

1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points) 

1 Shara Bey ( 17 points)
2 A-Wing Squadrons ( 22 points) 

What Went Wrong

Damn you Demolisher!!!

Liberty was my biggest failure of the day. I could not seem to get it in the right position to save my life. The first game I got it mostly right. I just mistimed my squadrons, so it got hung out to dry in the middle of Yavaris squadrons. I was lucky as hell that it hung on as long as it did, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the tabling. Game two was much the same story, except I didn't even get it into the fight when I needed it. I was trying to use the CR90s to block the Arquitens' path and follow in with the Liberty, but I would have been better off doing the opposite. Finally, in the third game, I intentionally set it out there to keep Demolisher occupied, knowing it could deal with a couple salvos, but then I turned it back into the fight. This ended up giving Demolisher another shot at it, all the while it didn't really contribute to the fight in any meaningful way. It would have been better off disengaging and using Madine's maneuverability to stay behind Demolisher the rest of the way.

My squadron use was also questionable for the first two games. In the first game, I jumped out too early, allowing Treb's squadrons to clean mine out just in time for the main ship engagement. Somehow, despite recognizing the mistake going into the second game, I did it again against Mike. I jumped out even earlier, engaging some of his squadrons during the first turn. That gave his eclectic mix of Aces plenty of time to bomb the crap out of Liberty. Side note: Morna Kee fucking hurts.


What Went Right

I still can't get over this roll

I finally learned the right lesson with my squadrons in the third game. I made sure to keep the A-Wings tight to the GR-75s. The combination of anti-squadron batteries and A-Wing counter mauled the hell out of his squadrons, punching well above their level. I managed it again in the fourth game. If I get the timing right, it is a very effective grouping of squadrons. I'm considering swapping out one A-Wing for a VCX to get strategic in play, but I'm not sure I'm willing to disrupt the ball I have now.

The All-Stars were hands down the CRambo90s. They worked exactly as envisioned all day. I understandably got some odd looks and some questions on the forums. After all, I don't have Rieekan, so how effective can they be without being able to abuse the Zombie Lord? The answer is extremely effective if you know what to target. I'm not charging headlong into large ships. I mainly use them has flotilla and small ship hunters. Of the eight flotillas I faced on the day, only one survived. They are effectively speed 5, making them perfect for hunting down the ubiquitous lifeboat flotilla.

What is often overlooked is their armament is actually pretty darn good. A double arc is very easy to line up using Madine, and 5 blues is nothing to sneeze at. Once I was done ramming flotillas into paste, I could use my high activation count and high maneuverability to get them into side or rear arcs of larger targets. From there, I could use the blue dice to add punishment and rely on the Reinforced Blast Doors to ram if needed. The RBDs also make them more durable for working in at that medium range. Since I've started playing this list, I've been using RBDs to discard regular damage just about as often as I'm using them to discard ram damage.

Speaking of Madine, he's the part of the puzzle that makes these CRambo90s so good working as just a pair. They are capable of utterly ludicrous turns, which you really have to see to understand. He's pricey, but I think I've finally found a list where he works well.


Going Forward

Fear the CRambo

After playing this list and many variations of the list I took to Regionals, I think I'm just burned out on the Liberty. It feels much more fragile than the double braces would indicate and the firepower was often not all that impressive. Madine did a lot to make it better, but it still felt like there wasn't much it could do that other ships could do better. The large base keeps it difficult to squeeze into certain spots and an easy target for bombers.

Still, this list was an awful lot of fun to fly. The CRambos and Madine are an excellent match. I'm even finding him useful for bobbing and weaving with the TRC90 and helping the GR-75s adjust their approach with tokens. The squadrons, once I got the right timing, were also an excellent little ball. The key was getting them working in tandem with the GR-75 anti-squadron batteries. Once I did that, the cumulative damage from the black anti-squadron and counter really started to stack up.

As annoyingly ubiquitous as Admonition is both locally and on Vassal, I think it's the obvious replacement for the Liberty. With the right tools, it can hit just as hard if not harder than the Liberty. Its nav chart usually limits it to a single pass or lower speeds. With Madine, I'm hoping to change that tune a bit. The MC30's speed 4 chart suddenly isn't that limited once you add Madine clicks.

500 Point Tournament AAR

This past Saturday I had the chance to play in my first Armada tournament since last fall.  After having fun with the 500 point format in The Corellian Conflict we decided to try a 500 point format tournament using the new prize kit from FFG.  We were all pretty curious to see what impact it might have on the event to play with 100 more points.

Corellian Conflict - Pittsburgh Round 2

The Empire is on the defensive!  Rebel victories a Raider's Point and Polanis has brought fresh rebel organizations into the fight, while the Imperial's own assault on Selonia Outpost was pushed back.   It is a dark time for the Empire, who is committed to turning things around with an offensive onslaught.

State of the sector, start of Turn 2.

Corellian Conflict - The Hyperlane Raid at Raider's Point

The first battle of the Corellian Conflict was a bloody affair, as General Dodonna was committed to bringing resources back to the Alliance, but was not prepared for Darth Vader to be guarding the caravan himself.

Imperial objective ships - 2 Gozanti-Class Cruisers (Vader at top), Demolisher "Demo-Kun", and top-most Arquitens.  Other Imperial forces - TIE x5, "Howlrunner", 2 additional Arquitens with Dual Turbolasers.  Rebel forces:  MC30c Scout w/ TRC, GR-75 Transport w/ Comms Net, CR90-A w/ Dual Turbolasers, Mon Karren, E-Wing x3, Corran Horn, Hera Syndulla, Ketsu Onyo, Rogue Squadron.

Corellian Conflict Live - Pittsburgh Startup and First Round Matchups

It is a time of chaos in the Corellia system.  Corellia itself might be firmly in Imperial hands, but rumors of rebellion popping up throughout the sector has caused significant consternation with Imperial forces.

Here is the story of this fight.

Biggs Pre-Action Report - Worlds

By now I have finished Day 1 at Worlds, and I've already played at least a few games with my list.  But as I write this it is a week before I am set to actually play.  So here is what I am taking to Worlds, what I am going to try to be doing, and my rational for my strategy.  We will see how it actually works in practice, but play testing it hasn't done too bad.

Experimental After Action Report - Vader's Gozanti Wolfpack

Decided to try something that had been kicking around the back of my head for a bit - Gozanti Assault Carriers can get 2 Red Dice with a Concentrate Fire dial down field for cheaper than anything else.  Could I make a list that takes advantage of their benefits?

Well... kind of?

Fun With Wave 3&4 - After Action Report

We had our first local tournament this weekend since Wave 3 & 4 were released.  Summer 2016 kit - XI7s cards for everyone!  In honor of the new tournament I decided to see exactly what the Wave 3 & 4 rebels were truly capable of.

I also had been working nights all week, so the 11 am start time made things a bit confusing.  I woke up the previous day at 3pm, worked 7pm - 7am, then went to the tournament.  By the final round I was awake for 24 hours.  I've since had a nap.

After Action Report: Martinsburg, WV Regional Championship

Here is a writeup that is way overdue.  Back in the end of May, I went to the second and final Store Championship I would be reasonably able to go to.  Martinsburg, WV is about 4 hours from home (Pittsburgh), and me, "Howlrunner", Chris, and his Fiancé decided to make a 2 day vacation of it.  Chris and I (and Dan, who was traveling separately) would be playing in the tournament the first day, an then we would all head down to Washington DC the next day.

Here is how I got runner up - I cannot remember the specifics of the games that I played now, so tactical discussions might be a bit light.

Regionals AAR - Biggs in the Pittsburgh Regional

By now, you might have heard that a Rieekan list won the Pittsburgh Regionals, commanded by one "Biggs".  I promised an in depth writeup, so here we go.

After Action Report - Morgantown Store Championship

Chris and myself managed to get a group of Pittsburgh players to go down and crash our nearest and closest neighbor's Store Championship down in Morgantown, WV at Four Horseman Cards and Comics.  All in all, 12 players showed up for a day of Armada.  It was an excellent time, and a great job hosting by the Four Horseman crew.

Here's what I brought, and how it did.