European Championship 2019 Kraków

Now that Euros in Kraków is over, its time I put my writing hat on and start to put some thoughts and recollections into writing, and too much time has past since. Sit back and indulge in some pictures [a huge crapload] as I go through what was the FFG European Championship of 2019 for Armada.

This place doesn't look that promising in this photo, but shes got it where it counts. To be more specific, inside

Also that we had a nuclear(?) power plant next to the Expo made it slightly more exciting :)

Rebellion in the Rim: Upgrade cards

Someone over at Echo Base posted spoliers for the upcoming Rebellion in the Rim Campaign and a big thank you to Mike Doench over there is in order. During the time of writing this, Cannotgetyourshipout Armada blog posted better pictures. These I re posted are good enough and perfectly readable so I wont change them at this time. The waiting has been long but it is soon coming to an end! This expansion holds more promise of rearranging the meta than the Wave 8 ships!

I want to take a nosedive right into the cards and try to prophecies if they will be of use or wasted points. So much fun things will happen with the game when this expansion comes out!

Sorry, I couldnt find a better pic to put here, so have Vader with a dove...

New Ships! Part 2

New Ships and Cards: The Empire edition

And so we arrive at the Imperials new Ship. The Onager, and the commander that follows with it, General Romodi.

I only smile when I shoot something behind something

New Ships! Part 1

New Ships and Cards: Rebel Edition

It finally happened. Over a year of waiting and new ships are finally announced!

I am just has happy as these people.

After a long time of silence from FFG with news and announcements for the game, FFG revealed during GenCon 2019 two new ships. The Nadiri Starhawk and the Onager Stardestroyer, both completely unfamilliar to me...

This post will deal with the Starhawk and the Onager will get its own post in due time.

European championship 2019: Pre tournament

Having been in a long lull from the game since the Battle at Gothcon [link] where Ackbars Exodus Fleet ran the gauntlet and emerged victorious. Now it's time to prepare for the next big tournament. This time the Euros will be held in Krakow and I got the green light from the Fleet Commander (my wife) to attend this time, which I am eternally gratefull for. And here are my woes...


Having done some playtesting with a Rieekan Ace fleet that I now judge "not good enough" due to time constraints. Learning how the fleet behaves and to make suitable adjustments with it before putting it down on the table against a stiff and serious competition simply is not possible. My goal is to score better than how it went in Birmingham with my Rieekan MSU back in 2017 where it got completely movn' down nd i landed on place 42. Things learned from that trip was:

• MSU is difficult to play. You have many movable parts that needs to come in at the right time and the advantage with having the superior number of activations dwindles the more you start to loose ships. Also with more moving parts comes the possibilities of more mistakes being made when fatigue starts to set in.

• Its easy to lose small base ships in this day and meta with Kuat's being a thing and average damage being higher than in eralier waves. Loosing 2 ships/turn is not uncommon. 

• I managed to beat my own list after the tournament with an imperial hodgepodge consisting of Motti on a VSDII, demolisher, 2 Gozantis and a lot of TIE-fighters and IG-88.

The Rieekan list I conjured in my mind was as following:

*Assault Frigate MK2B
Rieekan, Boosted Comms, Electronic Countermeasure, Flight Controller, Adar Tallon.

*Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette
External Racks

*Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette
External Racks

*GR-75 Medium Transport
Toryn Farr, Comms Net, Bright Hope,

*GR-75 Medium Transport
Bomber Command Center, Boosted Comms,

*Squadrons
Luke
Wedge
Biggs
Dutch
Nym
Gold Squadron
Dagger Squadron
HWK-290

It all comes down to 400pts, with a maxed out squadron wing of 134pts.

Some photos where taken from the games.

Game 1

Rieekans opposing list were "the good one", with an ISD, GSD Demolisher, 2 Gozantis and a Arquitens. No Squadrons so a walk in the park you might think.

Setup

Setup was solid, but mistakes were made :)

Round 2

Only sending one squadron after Demolisher is not a great idea while the rest mill about among the rocks

Game 2

This game went better, but it was the "In-my-mind-bad-list" list.

The plan with the hammerheads is that they shield the more important parts of the fleet and when they die they get zombied by Rieekan. This, I realized, in hindsight is a bad way of constructing a list. It's generally a bad idea to include things that have the role of simply being a meatshield, ie. give points to the opponent, and that don't use the hammerheads to their full potential.
Also this list likes being second. And that is also anathema to what a torpedo hammerhead wants.
Only testing a list 2 times does not show the true potential of the list, but as I mentioned above, time to waste is now a luxury I can not afford due to being a parent.

My squadron game has not been on edge and this time it was abysmal at best so I'll spare my brain the headache of having to trudge through possibly 5 games all in one day with having to think about the optimal positioning for Biggs or if its worth sacrificing Jan just to get Nym to land one more hit into a ISD and how to spread out your squadrons so Mauler can't get to all of them.

So in short. This list gets shelved untill I can pick up the squadron game again.

"Bring what you know how to fly" are important wisdom regarding this game. I have seen people netlist and loose badly, not having the knowledge of the lists strenghts and weaknesses and how to fly with it. What comes naturally is the Ackbar list from GothCon. But with a few adjustments from last time. That is a list I have a clear idea of how to fly. Just needs to make some suitable changes to it.

Tournament summary: Gothcon 2019

Every year a game convention is held in central parts of Gothenburg with participants from all over Sweden. It's been going for 43 years now, and it just gets bigger. All board games imaginable and unimaginable are played for 4 days. It's crazy fun.

Sadly the practical things aren't up to the events size. The queue for the food they serve is painstakingly slow and even if you prepaid and booked your tickets in advance prepare for a long line and waiting time, so being there in time is of utmost importance if your games are scheduled early.

But it is still a very good convention. Friendly people, fun games and fresh accommodations for a reasonable price. It's more family friendly than I remember but that might be because I now have a kid that I notice these things.

Enough blabbering and straight to the tournament report!

Had a hard time keeping my marbles together

Ackbar Double Dragon v3

"Prepare the Fleet, we will join the cause of the rebellion"
- Admiral Ackbar

Did some changes to the Ackbar list again. Now the 2-ship configuration is shelved, replaced with a Strategic Adviser and 2 more flotillas to fill out activation. Also the duo Tycho/Shara feels like I can do without. They have their place in other lists...

We playtested the list again against a competitive Sloane-ball and the results were better than last time so to say...

Ackbar "double dragon" vs Sloane

All craft, prepare to jump into hyperspace on my mark!
- Smelly Fish Man

Ackbar tries this time to take on Sloane just to see how bad it can go against the (IMO) worst matchup! I had had previous success with this Ackbar list against Thrawn and Raddus. The following battle report will provide the details....

My opponent had on my request brought Sloane. I belive this list got second at the Regionals at Uppsala, Sweden (a bit of scrolling required) earlier in february this year, so it was to say at least competitive. And the mind behind it is experienced and knows how to effectively use a list like this.

Ackbar Double Dragon V2(.5) - Ackbar vs Thrawn!

After some playtesting with this setup I did some of the changes in the previous post.



The latest battlereport with this list is also presented.
Now the list concists of the following upgrades:

Ackbar Double "Dragon" V2: Changes to the list

After another round of testing this list, some things needed improvement. I like many things with it since the objective suite fits Ackbar very well. The lack of squadrons don't matter as much when there is strategic squads that can do some nasty things.

Double VSD!

I'm not saying that in this day and wave the game is in right now, double VSD is the way to go, but I will anyway...