Friday, August 29, 2014

Battle report : Fat Chewie VS double Defenders

I'm terribly sorry about all this. After all, he's only a Wookiee!

Having been on the wrong side of the Fat Chewie stick much to often I decided to try it for once against one of my regular opponents Lanyssa. 

You can read his debrief in French on his blog : http://escadronsabre.over-blog.com/2014/08/name-code-2dhlc.html with more pictures from his side of the table.

His list was the classic : how can I fit 2 HLC with Jonus for rerolls?
Jonus, 2 flechette torpedoes
Defender Delta, HLC
Defender Delta, HLC

I was playing:
Chewie, C3P0, Millenium Falcon title, Gunner 51
Biggs 25
2 Bandit squadron Z95 24

I really like the combination of fat Chewie +Biggs, because Chewie is really tough to get in the end game, and Biggs helps him to get there (see Paul Heaver list at the US National). The 2 Z95 are there as fillers being reasonably tough for their points.

Deployment looked like this:

He deployed in triangle formation, to benefit from Jonus reroll. I deployed in 2 groups, with Biggs ready to slide toward Chewie and behind the middle asteroid.

There I made my first mistake, moving Chewie 3 forward in the 1st turn, while the rest advanced only 2. Of course Lanyssa closed as fast as possible with a 5 forward.
Turn 1 picture shamelessly taken from Lanyssa blog:
The 3 forward allowed both Defenders to fire on Chewie, taking a combined 7 hits, while I only took one shield of the defender on my left. I remember thinking clearly : he can move 5 forward, so you have to move strictly less than 3 to stay out of range, not sure why I put a 3 instead of a 2 forward. 
Oh well, mistakes happen.
 
I also made a mistake for Chewie shot on a range 3 defender. I took focus as an action, as I would be rolling 3 evade dices and 3 or 6 attack dices. I rolled hit, eye, eye with Chewie first shot.

Now in this position would you use Chewie focus or not, knowing that you have gunner?
I'm looking forward to your reasoning in the comments.

I did not. He promptly rolled 4 blanks and took a shield and I did not roll a single eye in defense (odds of rolling at least an eye with 3 dices are only 37/64) .

Next turn he banked 2 toward Chewie, while the 2 Z flew 4 forward, Biggs hid behind the asteroid and Chewie advanced 1.
Sadly I misjudged the distance a little bit, and one of my Z could not fire on the left Defender. The rest of my ships did 4 damages, dropping it to 1 hull. In response his 2 defenders reduced Biggs to 1 hull (asteroid power!) and Jonus added another 2 damages to Chewie with a flechette (Chewie is now down to 4 hull).

Close up shot of the action (love the Defender at this angle):

No picture of turn 3, it was basicly a huge pile up of ships, with biggs banking one left, the 2 Z turning 2 left, Chewie doing a one forward. The damaged Defender bomber 5 forward to escape the action, while is wingman turned hard right 1. Jonus bumped into Chewie.

Fire was inconsequential : Chewie failed to finish the damaged defender, and Biggs survived the actionless shots of Jonus and the defender.

Turn 4, he K-Turned the damaged Delta to return to the fight, and bumped with the other one. Jonus took the place of Chewie who flew through the 2 asteroids in front of him. The 2 Z bumped to get firearcs on Jonus.
Jonus died to the combined firepower of my ships while dealing an additional damage to Chewie, and the defender killed Biggs.

Turn 5, Chewie turned right to evade the returning defender, while the Z turn to face it.
The front Z destroyed the damaged defender and lost 2 shields to the other Delta.

Turn 6 and 7 : Chewie maneuvers to get back into the fight, while the 2 Z dogfight with the defender:

Turn 8 : Lanyssa made a mistake and K-Turned behind the lead Z, putting it at range of Chewie and my 3 ships.
The combined fire took it down before it could fire.

The game was much closer than it should have been I think, mainly due to my first mistake with Chewie. Biggs really helped there to put me back in the game. If I had taken another 2 Zs, Chewie would have died on turn 2, and the game would have been much different.

I also think that Lanyssa list would be better with PS 3 defenders, or maybe one PS3 and swarm tactics on Jonus to get a PS advantage against filler ships.

Looking forward to see your choices for using tokens on a first gunner shot in the comment (with a small explanation if possible).

Time to reload,
Ica

1 comment:

  1. I would have used the focus to make 3 hits instead of 1.

    It seems the reasoning of this fat Chewie list is to accept (and even provoke) damage on chewie first, then get Biggs in the line of fire (like you masterfully did, behind an asteroid) to force your oppenent to shoot another target and get Chewie to live longer (or at least that's what I remember from Paul Heaver's article)

    So using the focus you have 2 possible outcomes, which might be cumulative depending on luck:
    - you force your opponent to use his own focus, reducing incoming damage (I suppose Lanyssa did focus)
    - you start making damage
    The gunner reroll is quite radom, so having your maximum damage (3) seems appealing for me.

    But anyway: you won the match so I guess you took "the" good decision.

    (strange to speak english between two french people ^^)

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