My tournament report.
Ok, so first off, need to explain what I was trying to do with the squad. I was aware that a bomb centered Vong squad had already done well at one regional, but in all of the DotF tournaments I've seen, no one was running straight up Vong melee. And as a designer, I really wanted to see how they would do. I think against the top meta squads, there are good match ups and bad (droids are almost an auto-loss). But against many of the jedi builds, and generally mixed squads (often called jedi interference) vong do quite well. So I wanted to try and run my favorite vong melee and see how i'd do. I wasn't expecting to have much more than a decent shot at top 4, and wasn't expecting to win with it, unless I got really lucky in terms of top 4 match ups. It also served as a designer test, because test games are one thing, actually seeing the real issues a build faces in a competitive tournament with everyone trying to win, is completely another. So here's the squad.
--Chicago Vong-- 30 Shedao Shai 27 Lobot 27 Nen Yim 60 Yuuzhan Vong Jedi Hunter x3 15 Yammosk War Coordinator 11 Advance Agent, Officer 11 Yuuzhan Vong High-bred Warrior 4 Peace Brigade Thug 9 Mouse Droid x3 6 Ugnaught Demolitionist x2
Preferred Reinforcements: (Lobot) 10 Rodian Trader (Lobot) 4 Peace Brigade Thug (Lobot) 6 Mouse Droid x2
(200pts. 19 activations)
The idea is straightforward. Use the RT to give my scrubs heal 10 (like heal 20 on vong figs) and try to stay alive as long as possible. Typically, I use a 4th JH in place of the HBW/thug/and 2 mice, but Matt needed my fourth JH for his Nom/JH/OG squad, so I decided to try out the HBW.
The results came out pretty much like you'd expect. In the first round, I faced Boba BH, TBSV, Obi JG, R2, Lobot (new). Generally a squad I'd expect to beat with the Vong. But this one went terribly wrong. On the first init, he rolled an 11 and brought in Xizor. Now his TBSV has a +4/10 on his GMA double attacks. I still wasn't too worried, and used the first two rounds to move into position. I set up within 6 of Boba with two JHs, then within 6 of the TBSV with another. On a won init, I would use cunning to put 60 on Boba, if I lost init, he would use Boba to and likely only get 40 on a JH then move away, allowing me to kill his TBSV. Either move was good. What I didn't count on, was him not only winning init, but winning it with another 11!. That brought in two more TBSVs and an Aqualish Assassin. Now I'm in trouble. Boba did his 40 to the JH and flew out of range. But now, if I try to kill the first TBSV, there are two more that will toast my JH. Worse yet, my healing train isn't caught up yet. So I have little choice, but to attack what I can, and try to get the healers up there. But remember, TBSV with Xixor now attack at +13 for 20 with jolt, so as soon as I moved my two figures, he killed the JH, then was able to jolt the remaining one - ugg. So I move Shaedo to the front with healers and kill off R2, and attempt to kill Lobot. I get R2, but Lobot gets away. It's then just clean up for him. Boba and Obi hang back, and the scrubs do the work. I last a lot longer than expected thanks to the heal gimmick, but the end is inevitable. Also key, was I didn't win a single init, which with a cunning based squad really hurts. Twice I had the chance to damage Boba, and lost it to init. 0-1 full loss.
Round 2. So my first round loss puts me in a bad spot, needing to win game two, but I end up facing one of the worst match ups possible for vong, heavy damage shooters. I'm playing Sithborg with Lando DS, Dash, Atton, Bastilla, Jarael and the Revanchist. He moves up, and I get as many healers as I can going before we engage (end of round 3). He used Bastilla for the +10 dmg for his guys and the battle begins (Spynet map) in the middle just outside the tunnal area of the right. I rightly try to avoid attacking Jarael, so I ping away with thud bugs as I advanced staying out of los. He engages with Atton and the Revanchist to take out my screens. I move up to kill atton, should be easy, JH needs two 3s. I roll a 2 on one attack. Now I either need to kill Jarael to hit atton again this round, or kill the Revanchist, but I've got a JH and Sheado in range. I can also choose to ignore atton and take out Lando. I choose to wait him out. He moves Lando away, leaving me the RC. So at the end of the round, I move up for my 2 sets of twin, Shaedo hits both doing 80, but again JH misses... Leaving him alive, as well as preventing a thud kill of atton, and keeping his +8 tact alive for another round. I lose init, atton fires, kills a JH and damages another. I kill the Revanchist and thud Jarael. He attacks with his stuff, I with mine and we go to the critical init. He wins, and instead of Atton dying yet again, he gets another double cunning off. That puts me down to Shaedo and support. I try to rally the healers as best I can, take out Jarael finally and working on the shooters. But at this point, he's got too much fire power, and I have too few attackers. One round I have to use Shaedo to kill an ugnaught blocking my path lol because no one else could kill it. So he cleans up 0-2 for me. Also did not win an init for a second straight game.
Round 3 I get the bye. Really didn't want it, as I wanted another test game, but what you gonna do, at that point I was officially in last place.
Round 4 I play Engineer, running a jedi tank squad with GOWK, Lumi, Atris, etc. As expected, this is no contest. I kill Atris first, making his lone handmaiden useless, and Baris second before she could make an attack. That pretty much seals it. The rest is quick clean up, didn't lose more than 15 points of figures. So 2-2, and ending in 9th place out of 13.
Now, learnings from this. Unfortunately, I didn't learn as much as I'd hoped, because I faced what ended up being (remember the reserves changed the first squad into a terrible match up in round 3 the worst match ups in the first two rounds. Had a good chance though to win the second match, if I had killed Atton and RC in the expected rounds. But that's a normal part of non-force using figures, sometimes you don't roll the number you need, even if low, and you can't reroll it. Then I smoked a jedi build with very little trouble. I did get to see some issues with running melee vong however. For example, I recognized that they really can't beat heavy shooter squads without a movement breaker (I was aware of this, but wanted to test it out). People also tend to run very few Yam useful CEs these days (a good protection to be sure), so the stealing of CEs isn't as helpful in that regard as you might expect (although stealing GOWK's in the final round was fun). In the age of expanded tactician, the AAO is hard to make use of. Sure, I tended to get off cunning on the second target, but as it worked out in this tournament, that was often not what I really needed. Vong melee need another way to up their attack (I use the AAO for the +4 more than the +10 dmg by a wide margin). Shaedo is totally worth his cost, and is the best fighter the Vong have. Healing just made him the last to die in each game, and last several rounds beyond any other figure in the game could do. Even Boba couldn't finish him for 3 rounds in the first game. He really is a great figure, and I'm glad we made him like we did. The Yam and Nen Yin really help the Vong and worked as expected. Melee Vong are close, darn close but still in need of a couple of tricks to be competitive. Finally, the HBW is a decent figure for his cost. I didn't have a ton of buffs to him in this squad, as he was a throw in that I primarily used for Razorbug. But I liked playing him. It gives me some ideas for future design, so for those purposes, this tournament was a success.
_________________
http://www.bloomilk.com/Squads/Search.aspx?UserID=29
|