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

Battle report : Bomber swarm VS Vador Shuttle & 2 Bounty Hunters

Go big or Go home!

After reading the bomber thread on the fantasy flight games forums, I wanted to try the Tie bomber. I'm a fighter swarm man myself, so I tried to cram as many ships I could into 100pts.

Here's what I got : 5 gamma squadron with seismic charges, 100 pts. My reasoning was : more ships, more firepower, more ordnance at the impact point on the important turn. After that, higher PS means you can see where is your opponent before unleashing said ordnance.

Guess what: no plan survives first contact with the enemy!

Knowing I would be playing a 5 bomber list, my opponent decided to play :
2 Bounty Hunters, Gunner
Omicron Lambda, Darth Vador

I won the initiative and tried to spread the asteroids out. He deployed first and I deployed right across in a 2 deep formation:

We both slow played the first turn, with hostilities starting on turn 2. He focused with all 3 ships, while I target locked the middle Bounty Hunter.

I made a mistake here, I should have banked and concentrated on the shuttle, because as you can see position was ideal for him: the 2 bounties have room for a 1 straight next turn, and I won't be able to use my seismic charges. I locked instead of focusing because I knew I would be able to use the lock the following turn after K-Turning.

He did 3 damages to the top bomber : 2 crits (1 with vader), console fire and thrust control fire, while I removed 3 shields from the middle hunter, keeping 3 locks on him.

As planned I K-Turned behind him, which would have been great against almost any other ships, but was a disaster here. I managed to lower the middle hunter to 3 hull, while the he killed the damaged bomber (who had crashed into the lambda as he was stressed, he was unable to K-Turn) and did 2 additional damages to the top bomber (crit is another console fire!)

Here is the board after turn 3:

At this point, the situation was difficult for both sides.
We had the same number of hull+shield on both sides (30) at the beginning of the game, but due to the way Vador works, he actually lost 11 points to my 8. However, I was down one ship, and my firepower was thus 20% lower.

Disaster! I went too slow, letting the hunter increase the distance to range 2, meaning that I failed to destroy the top hunter, leaving him with 1 hull (choose focus as my actions, failed to roll any eyes).
The hunters on the other hand finished the damaged bomber, leaving the lambda free to crit the lead bomber, taking two damages for Vador : damaged cockpit (twice) and injured pilot .

The board after turn 4:

It was looking pretty grim for Gamma squadron!

He banked 3 the top hunter and hard turned 2 the other, the lambda banked one. On my side, the damaged bomber did 1 straight at PS0 to get an action, while the 2 others leap-frogged it, all three dropped charges on the lambda.
In a stroke of luck, the first bomber took the last hull from the top hunter. While the lambda did its thing, leaving itself and the damaged bomber with 1 hull.

The board after turn 5:

I K-turned the 2 bottom bombers to finish the lambda before it got to fire another force powered shot while the top bomber trailed the hunter.

The board after turn 6:

The rest of the game is less interesting, suffice to say I tried to preserve the damaged bomber from the hunter, failed, and lost another bomber to get the firespray down to one hull.

Here is the board on the last turn:

At some point we entered a turning duel, and I tried to match his radius, taking a 2 hard turn.

I had a 3 dices shot, with no action, to his 2 green dices and evade token for his last hull.

3 Blanks! We had to call the game as I had to leave : Victory for Vader, with 80pts destroyed to my 62 pts.

Even if I ultimatly lost, the bomber is definitely an interesting ship to play, much more resilient than my usual Tie-Fighter, and with lots of ordnance options. Now I want to try missiles and torps!

Time to reload,

Ica