Armada Store Championship Report

It had been awhile since any store nearby myself had decided to run any events for Armada.  But the Village Geek up in McPherson was holding a store championship, so a friend of mine and I drove up.  I had been prepping by playing around with a pretty standard build out these days, featuring and ISD2 and a tooled up Victory 2.

Motti's angry triangles  (398/400)
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Imperial II-class Star Destroyer (120 + 25)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ XI7 Turbolasers (6)
+ Relentless (3)
Victory II-class Star Destroyer (85 + 50)
+ Admiral Motti (24)
+ Minister Tua (2)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Disposable Capacitors (3)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ Quad Battery Turrets (5)
+ Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
Raider I-class Corvette (44 + 7)
+ Ordnance Experts (4)
+ External Racks (3)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
 

Ciena Ree (17)
Valen Rudor (13)
Saber Squadron (12)
 

Most Wanted
Contested Outpost
Solar Corona

I decided to go with the Reinforced Blast Doors because I had thought there would be a lot of heavy carrier wings.  RBD does a bit better against fighters due to ECM having almost no chance to come into play for most attacks.   It also I think does better against some black dice destroyer builds due to the fact that they typically will be lacking a lot of accuracy generation (as H9s seem to have died down following the Lifeboat flotilla rule change). This would end up being pretty critical though, and making me think I need the ECM still on Vics.  I did think Cienna and Valen provided a good speed bump thanks to Valens ability not to get shot, and Cienna's obstruction, both along with scatters.

There were 5 total players at the store this weekend, which meant someone was getting the bye each round.  I was paired with a guy named Josh for the first round, who was running a similar list to mine but a second Gozanti instead of the Raider, and a few more squads.  He chose first player, and picked my COntested Outpost.  I deployed towards one corner, with Josh deplying similarly with his ISD further towards the middle.  He played his ISD aggressively forward, jumping on my Raider and destroying it early.  My counter fire was lackluster thanks to his ECMs keeping his braces going.  His dice were hot as well, as I think almsot all of his shots that he pulled with Leading shots cranked up the damage to 6 or more.  Josh had said his original list had an extra TIE, but he dropped it to get leading shots on both ships.  I made a mistake at this point, and slowed down my ISD to avoid a double arc shot from his ISD, and sheild my Vic a bit.  What I needed to do was speed up actually, and try to reposition my ISD after the beating it had started to take.  This would have allowed me to kill his Victory and second Gozanti, while keeping the station from scoring points.  Needless to say, the rest of the game continued with him wearing down my ISD and Vic and myself not getting to punch back hard enough.  Josh ended up with a 10-1, and I was sent to the bottom of the pile.

The second round saw me play my friend Rob with whom I had driven up with.  Rob and I had traded games back and forth the previous few weeks as we tweaked our lists and got ready for the tourney.  He was running a dual Glad, dual Raider list with a Gozanti and a variety of squadrons.  He tooled his Demo up a bit differently than I would have, choosing External Racks over APTs, and leaving one of his Raiders without OE to be able to get in Tempest and Gamma squadrons.  I had also convinced him he needed to fit in Maarek Steele to pair with Col. Jendon, which I was unhappy to now be facing.  I chose to be first player, and we played Rob's Planetary Ion Cannons.  I deployed all of my ships tightly, with his Demo and Raiders flanked out to my left, and Insidious to my far right.  I ended up sending my ISD to prevent Insidious from flanking me, and after a previous week where I was unable to get my ISD around quickly enough to counter Demo I decided I would just chase down his flanker.  A few key moments came when I removed Maarek Steele early in turn two, and then Rob jumped Demo up a bit early.  This allowed me to put the hurt on it, and then activate first the next turn and roll the exact amount of damage needed to pull him off.  This though allowed Insidious to escape, and left my Vic hurting a bit.  I then failed to get my Victory out of harms way by just barely clipping my Gozanti, which allowed the Raider with External Racks to strip shields and put on some real damage.  Rob ended up getting my Vic, but not until I had taken out another Raider and used some flak to clear most of his squads.  I ended up with a win by just 39 points, so I sat at just 7 tournament points.

I had a bye the last round due to my low score, but I got to watch both of the other games.  The other lists that were there were Jacob running a triple ISD 1 list, and Donovan who had an MC80 Liberty with an AFMk2 and a bunch of squadrons.  Rob ended up crushing down Donovan's fleet, while Josh made several pretty bad mistakes to take a 5-6 loss.  This meant Josh was still able to walk away as the champ, with Rob following in second, Jacob in third, myself in 4th and Donovan in 5th.  Everyone walked away with the range ruler and a host of other prizes.

Overall it was a really good day of Armada.  Everyone was friendly and looking to chat about the game.  I think despite the low turnout, the game is in a good place in terms of folks being excited about playing and getting better.  The store up in McPherson is also a first rate shop, with a friendly staff and a good clean atmosphere.

My takeaway was a need to be a bit more aggressive with my ISD.  I tend to run my ships a bit too closely together, which in both of my games made sure that I had tough positioning challenges.  I was happy with my Vic's performance, reinforcing my idea that the Vic 1 is dead as a ship but that Quad Batteries and Disposable Capacitors are making the Vic 2 an excellent fire support ship.  An earlier version of this list had Moff J as my Admiral, and I'm wonding if I should go back to him.  I missed the extra flexibility of those two clicks several times.