Battle Report - Garm's Dumpster Fire vs Mon Mothma

Recently Biggs and I had a bit of a long back and forth about designing a Garm fleet that used the admiral's flexibility to have a fleet with some strong gunnery backed up by some bombers.  You can read the thought process HERE.

Life intervened a bit, but I finally got a version of the fleet on the table and wanted to share with you all how the game went.  I ended up against a buddy's Mon Mothma fleet that had something of a similar strategy, with a bomber wing supporting TRC equipped CR-90s.

This gave us the chance to play out a classic EU Rebel Grudge Match.  Who should have the right to lead the Rebellion, the Senator from Chandrilla or Space Dad from Corellia?  Read on to find out!

Match-up of the Week: JJs Juggernaut (Bacta the Future) vs Jarenis (Church of Rocco)

Battle of the J's!  This week the big match-up we will be covering is between the Juggernaut himself, and regular booth commentator JJs Juggernaut - team captain of "Bacta the Future", and relative unknown Jarenis, team member of "Church of Rocco".

Vassal Tournament - After Action Report (Round 1)

To see my thoughts on my overall list, click here.

To see the FFG Forum thread, click here.

Round 1

Biggs IRL vs godofcheese  <- Click for Log File of the game to replay it in Vassal.

godofcheese's List:

VSDII

  - Admiral Screed

  - Gunnery Team

(Total: 118)  [Total w/ Most Wanted: 203]

VSDII

  - Intel Officer

  - Gunnery Team

(Total: 99)

GSDI

  - Demolisher

  - Engine Techs

  - Assault Concussion Missles

(Total: 81)

Looking over my opponents list, I knew my easiest path for victory was to destroy 1 of his ships, and only trade 1 of my CR90s in exchange.  With each of his ships pushing 80+ points each, but neither being naturally over 125, I knew dropping one of them would give me the win if I didn't overextend.  As I figured earlier, Big Boy needed to live, but everyone else was expendable if they netted me a bigger fish when they dropped.  He elected to go as 2nd player, leaving me to chose his objectives, and with the above thoughts in mind, I decided to go with Most Wanted, hoping I could use it to drop one of his ships slightly faster, and counting on the Big Boy's ability to outshoot whatever it couldn't outrun, or Jaina's Light's ability to outrun everything.

Vassal Tournament - After Action Report (Initial Thoughts)

For my list in the Vassal Tournament, my though process was to give myself multiple options every turn, with the theory that the more options I had to work with, the less likely I was to be in a situation where I had no chance of success.  For this I went with a list that focused on one Battleship style ship, an AFII-B kitted out as a flagship with Mon Mothma (better evades), Advanced Projectors (to use All of the AFII's heavy shields), and Enhanced Armament / Gunnery Team, to maximize firepower from the side arcs.  Well, the closest thing we have to a battleship in Wave 1 at any rate.  I christened this monstrous point-filled abomination "Big Boy", and he clocked in at 125 points, or 5/12 of my total list.  Losing Big Boy would basically be an auto-loss.

Armada Commanders Wave 1 - Rebel

Previously, we talked about Imperial Commanders - what they did and when to use them.  Now we are going to discuss their Rebel counterparts.  As before, the Commanders represent the Flagship officers of your list.  You can only chose one, and by chosing one you are locked out of utilizing any others.

General Dodonna

Dodonna is the lowest costed commander, for either side - coming in at 20 points.  His fleet-wide ability is that if an enemy ship is dealt a faceup damage card, you get to look at the top 4 cards of their deck and select which one the critical hit will be.  

If you want the most out of General Dodonna, you need to plan ways of dealing critical hits and faceup damage cards - more than you normally would.  The obvious synergy is with Dodonna's Pride, the Corvette Title that allows you a faceup damage card in exchange for cancelling all other damage. Luke Skywalker is another - being able to ignore shields, and bomber lets you drop crits directly onto the hull.  With that said Dodonna doesn't descriminate between ships and squadrons - any build so long as it can land criticals will be improved by him.

Garm Bel Iblis

For just 5 points more than Dodonna (25 points total), Garm fills up your fleet's command tokens to full on the start of the first round and the start of the fifth.  Unlike Dodonna, his ability is better the more high command ships you have to fill up with tokens.  Corvettes would only get one, but Assault Frigates would fill up 3 tokens each.  This gives you a significant action boost in the early game and the mop-up portion, and competes directly with Tarkin for number of tokens handed out.

The drawback is that because you can't have multiples of tokens, you can wind up with more than you need.  How many of you bank your command on turn one?  Can't really do that if Iblis has already maxed out your token supply.  On turn 5, are you really going to use all the tokens that just popped up?  Do you already have some banked from Turn 4?  Oh well, don't get all your tokens. Took a Corvette?  Too bad!

Mon Mothma

Mon Mothma is the most expensive of the Rebel Commanders, coming in a 30 total points, and 10 more than Dodonna.  However, with that in mind, she takes the Rebel's biggest defensive token, the Evade, and makes it significantly better.  All evade tokens can be used at medium range to cancel one die (normally long range only) and can be used at short range / distance 1 to force a reroll (normally medium range only).  This is big, as every rebel ship out at this point has at least one evade token (the Corvette has two) and the Imperials really love to get into medium / close range for their shots. Being able to force a Screeded die to reroll a hit/crit is huge, as is straight up cancelling a mid-range hit/hit from red dice.  It means all your ships can be that much more survivable.

The drawback is that you are giving up a full 10% of your list (4% or so if you count Dodonna as the baseline) for this defense boost.  And you are turning away a lot of free tokens / critical effect boost. And anyone with an Intelligence Agent on their ship can neuter your expensive commander for a mere 7 points.

Well, that's it for the rebel high command.  Feel free to comment to let me know what you'd like to see me cover next.  Until then, fly casual!