Time to actually do a write-up after saying that I would for pretty much every tournament ever…
Whatever reputation I have is probably as “that guy who plays Yobuck all the time,” but I think some relatively subtle changes to the meta have made it less effective. I spent probably six weeks trying to figure out the best version, putting in everything from Bossk TH to Senate Commandos, and David still pulverized it on Vassal. So clearly it was time to steal a good squad from someone else. Tim’s single-lancer squad really impressed me at Gencon, and his newest iteration (Gunray’s Gladiators) seemed really strong. I didn’t mess with it much except to pull out Nute Gunray because I found myself playing San Hill almost 100% of the time and just killing him with the MTB if he became problematic. Plus Nute’s stupid CE was making it too hard for Gha and Sidious to get to the lancer, which sounds ridiculous but was still so annoying that I started using the MTB to kill
him too. San and Nute probably didn’t appreciate this cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis.
I played on Ravaged Base because I know it much, much better than any other map, and because it has a ton of difficult terrain that the lancer can ignore. Plus I knew that it would be a popular map choice, and getting to force my opponents to set up outside because they won map roll is brutal.
The squad list (click for link):--Nute's Moot--
36 Darth Sidious
30 IG Lancer Droid
27 Lobot
20 General Whorm Loathsom
32 IG-86 Assassin Droid x2
12 Gha Nachkt
10 San Hill
8 Battle Droid Officer
7 R7 Astromech Droid
18 Mouse Droid x9
Preferred Reinforcements:
(Lobot) 8 Muun Tactics Broker
(Lobot) 12 Mouse Droid x6
Round 1 was against Nick Stearns’ Veers hologram, shadow stormtrooper, and Nyna Calixte squad on Rancor Pit. Nick won the sportsmanship award for patiently showing several of our youngest players how to beat him and be good at minis in general, and he knew that this wouldn’t be pretty. Out of incredible paranoia, I flew circles around his Palpatine Sith Lord to make sure the lancer didn’t betray me, which seemed like a really good idea when one of my IG-86 droids rolled the one and turned later on. The other IG-86 executed him for his impudence, and that was pretty much it. Nick was fun to play against and didn’t complain at all about getting such an insanely bad matchup. Can’t lie, I was glad to get a straightforward W to start out.
Round 2 was against Greg, who is something like eleventy billion and zero against me in regional games, with the average length of said game being about 26 minutes and the average number of his dead pieces trending asymptotically to zero. He does lose from time to time in our casual games, but has some kind of Joe Montana gear that he kicks into for the big games. Well, maybe Dan Marino would be a better example since he never actually wins the whole thing (sorry, Greg).
Anyway, Greg was playing his Solo Charge variant from Maryland with Dash and Jagged instead of Anakin and Lobot, on Ravaged Base. I won map roll (dammit!), but then Greg took the outside (hooray!). That particular sequence of results will probably not happen again. First turn we positioned around the middle. Second turn, I thwarted his attempts to advance by locking doors (I brought in an extra R7 with Lobot for that reason), so he pretty much put his entire squad in a nice straight line. I obliged him by strafing everyone in his squad except for one R7, then doing it again. I felt pretty good with a 3-1 override advantage and all his ugnaughts dead, but he executed a clever Ganner levitation and used Han to snipe my BDO (whoops!) and Lobot. Evidently distraught by the death of his best friend, the lancer proceeded to roll a spectacular cavalcade of misses, including whiffing on Dash twice, then twice more for good measure. On the plus side, the cumulative strafes were eventually too much for Han, which made it possible for me to build a huge mouse droid phalanx and stick my IG-86s next to a Lobot bodyguard so that Mara Jade could only get one of them. Dash killed the lancer and MJ got an Iggy, but Sidious and the other IG were enough to take care of business. After a very one-sided beginning, Greg definitely turned it into a game by the end.
Third round I got matched down against Nick Ferguson playing an interesting squad with three T-21 bulk loaders, GGDAC, and a geonosian overseer. He set up on the inside of ravaged base and put his commanders in the cubbyholes, but a squad where everyone has heavy weapon is not a good match for lancer. It took a lot of strafes to get them all, but that was pretty much it.
Fourth round was against Ricky, who lives in Greg’s neighborhood and started playing five or six months ago. He picked up the game at lightning speed and has developed his own inimitable style, so the ATL Krew wasn’t surprised to see him standing at 3-0. He played a squad with Lord Vader and no other attackers, but eight rodian brutes and Pellaeon. He won map (Bothan Spynet) and brought in four nobles.
A short aside – when I tried Tim’s lancer squad out, I lost to Ricky playing the prototype version of this squad, which had Lobot and old Jabba. He brought in some ungodly number of mouse droids, put them in the jail cells so I couldn’t strafe them, and beat me handily. That game, more than anything, convinced me to pull Nute and shoot for pure activation edge.
After setup, he used Pellaeon to swap Lord Vader with Scourge of the Jedi – interesting! I brought in the MTB to counter Thrawn, outactivated him by several, pawned the lancer to one of the many doors on Spynet, and then flew through about half of his scrubs. I managed to miss two brutes, but killed several more and flew away to safety (and avoided Vader completely). That last bit was fortunate when I also rolled a one for initiative! Despite the dice fun, the game was pretty straightforward. Ozzel turns into a giant lead weight when you don’t outactivate, so Ricky threw him in front of my squad and set up a pile of swap fodder behind him. I managed to fly a double figure eight to kill Ozzel and his regular fodder first, then circle back for the nobles, which put him in a very difficult position. Vader came out and got shot by Iggy smalls (Iggies small?) until he died while Iggy large chased down the stragglers. Basically it was the opposite of what happened when he outactivated me the last time. Go metagame!
Despite being the only 4-0, Atlanta loves minis and we elected to play on for a fifth round. I got matched up against Matt Spry playing straight-up Skybuck on Smuggler’s Base. I won map but choose his for kicks (that turned out to be A GOOD IDEA) and ended up in the upper-right corner behind the crates. The game only lasted 27 minutes of clock time, but so much happened so fast that it felt as though we had gone the whole hour. I opted out of the MTB and brought in an R7 and a human bodyguard, and the crucial point of the game was then he struck deep with Yobuck to kill San Hill, swapped with Anakin, and then ran off to attack the IG-86 that had the bodyguard draped over him, instead of the one that didn’t. Pure brain fart on his part, and the result was dead Anakin. The next time Yobuck came down he didn’t make it back, and the lancer finished off everything else.
First round of the playoffs turned out to be the exact same game – literally. His map again, same sides, same reinforcements, same setup, let’s go! I badly botched some positioning and basically spent the first turn moving guys so he couldn’t just kill whatever he wanted while he set up in the middle, forgoing the first-round strafe. He towed and struck with Yobuck, killing some small stuff and putting damage on the lancer, I think (which the bodyguard took). I didn’t want to activate an IG-86 to attack only to see him swap in Dash and kill it, so I too-cleverly pawned it instead to put I think 30 on Yobuck. He swapped for a brute instead, leaving me with no chance to strafe his guys. Oops.
I killed the brute and moved up Lobot and San Hill ahead of everyone else to try and bait him into going after them. By then I definitely wanted San Hill dead! He actually took the bait, taking 60 damage on Yobuck from Iggy small on the opp attack to gallop Lobot (dead), and San… except he rolled a 1. My heart fell at that – instead of handing me a huge opportunity to kill Yobuck and put him in difficulty, all I could do was shoot him some more. My numbers don’t quite add up somewhere, because the net result was that instead of a having a good chance to kill him, 60 health Yobuck swapped out in favor of Anakin, who stood still and killed the IG-86. I attacked with the other, but he defense one attack, leaving him with 70 health. I strafed him with the lancer next, after all the scrubs in the army shot and missed him (including the bodyguard, now adjacent to Anakin). The lancer hit once and missed once, and Anakin made the Djem so save (with a reroll) and attack, which I bodyguarded. Now, I had landed adjacent to him, but with Anakin still at 50 health I did not want to risk the successful double-Djem and losing the lancer. In retrospect that was a pretty insane thing to be afraid of (the odds of hitting both, then him Djem’ing and hitting both back is .9%), but I was absolutely playing scared at this point. For the same reason, I used Sidious to cast lightning on Anakin instead of going for the kill with a pawned Iggy small.
That was a truly stupid move, which became apparent when he won initiative and swapped in a gran raider.
Still, Anakin and Yobuck were pretty messed up, so Matt started advancing Dash and Panaka to try and finish me off. I still had enough activations (with San Hill, ironically) to wait him out, set up a mouse droid outside of the gambit room, override the door open, and pawn-strafe through his guys, killing Lobot and Doombot. I made
another huge mistake counting squares, setting up a situation where Matt could have run down the lancer on a won initiative, but I lucked out and won it, letting me strafe Panaka and Dash again, killing Dash. He went ahead and finished off the lancer with Yobuck, then set up Panaka next to Anakin. Sidious had been steadily advancing (speed 6 is good!) and walked into the gambit room from the top right at I think full health. I set up the remaining full-health IG-86 behind and above so that anyone who wanted to do 60 damage to Sidious was taking 60 damage back.
But instead Matt out-clevered me by using Anakin to
push Sidious back, which let Yobuck get to the IG-86 in… 16 squares. Dead Iggy small. Sidious got revenge by lightning-ing Anakin to death, then standing next to Panaka and waving threateningly. Matt swapped Yobuck for Mas, whom the BDO killed spectacularly by rolling a crit, in what was literally the only successful attack he made all day. More importantly, Gha Nachkt rolled a critical against Panaka, taking him down to 10 health. That let me run Whorm Loathsom into the room and take a no-cover shot that finished Panaka off. Uh-oh - it’s a game again!
Yobuck finished off the rest of my crap in the upper-right corner while Sidious focused his chakras and Whorm dispatched Matt’s solitary remaining ugnaught. At this point it was 60-health Yobuck against almost dead Whorm Loathsom and surprisingly hale Sidious holed up in the gambit room. Matt charged in with Yobuck to kill Whorm, retaking the points lead, but eating a lightning from Sidious in the process.
One thing that doesn’t come across from the write-up is how frantic the last two paragraphs were. All that happened in five or six minutes of game time! We both played at lightning speed, the lead was changing not just every turn but practically every
round, and those two huge criticals let me save the necessary Force points on Sidious to have a mathematically way to win the game. Plus the other playoff game was over, so we had a dozen silent, deadly intent people watching everything we did. It was crazy.
With about one minute on the clock, Matt rolled initiative – an 18. But proving that it is often better to be lucky than good, I rolled a 20, and Sidious zapped Yobuck down to end the most exciting game I have played in a long time. Matt had me on the back foot and disadvantaged most of the whole game, pushing me into unforced errors and playing with relentless aggression and great panache. Only by getting strong – some might say miraculous – contributions from my backbenchers did I even have a chance of pulling off the win. Kudos for an amazing game!
Anyway, now that most everyone has stopped reading, the final game was against none other than Ricky, who defeated David Weeks in their semi by thwarting Mara Jade and Kyle Katarn with Pellaeon’s ysalamiri (!!) while Lord Vader whittled them down. I brought the same reinforcements as last time (MTB and mice) while he switched to rodian brutes. Drawing on our previous match, I actually choose his map instead of mine; he responded by packing the jail cells with brutes and leaving Vader Scourge in the squad box.
We were only a few activations apart, and I had to kill something with the MTB every round, so I knew I had to at least whittle his scrubs to keep parity. Ricky locked the door closest to the middle of the map and packed most of his squad in the corridor behind it, so I chased down the one piece I could hit (an ugnaught!) and actually landed adjacent to a brute and regular attacked it. Next round Ricky fed one scrub after another from that corridor to the right side of the center, which was where I had retreated the lancer and where the rest of my squad was. I killed them as long as I could, but eventually ran out of shooters and he swapped in Lord Vader. Now, I had erected a mouse droid wall across the hallway and around the lancer, and actually positioned my Iggy smalls pretty well, so he couldn’t get at any of them this turn. Instead Vader leaped through those guys and based San Hill, the MTB, and an R7 droid. My attackers had already gone except the lancer, and using it to put a mere 20 damage on Vader didn’t sound like that great of an idea, so I strafed most of the rest of his available scrubs.
Next round Vader swept my activation shenanigans guys, meaning that the situation abruptly went from me autowinning initiative and outactivating him to the other way around. I figured that it was better than losing attackers or Whorm, and that I could kill Ozzel at my leisure if I had to. Instead what happened is that the Iggy smalls rolled three hits and one crit, and Vader failed three of four dark armor saves, even with rerolls. So, uh, dead Vader.
Send me lucky generals!
With the loss of his only real attacker, and the lancer still on the table, that was pretty much it. It was kind of a bummer that the game ended so suddenly and so one-sided, especially when Ricky had a legitimate shot at winning the first serious tournament he entered. But, honestly, after the previous game against Matt, I was gonna take whatever win I could get.
So that’s the Atlanta 2011 regional, in a mere… twenty-six hundred words! Thanks to Daniel and Ryn for judging, Chuck for running the matchups even when we ignored the software and kept playing at the end, and everyone who drove down from Charlotte for making the trip. Serious props also to Kyle, Chuck’s son, who showed up to hang out, built a squad in ten minutes to give us even numbers so that we could avoid having a bye, and then almost played his way into the finals, finishing fifth! Everyone had a good time, got some awesome prize support, and laughed for another two hours in IHOP afterward. And that’s really what the Atlanta regional is all about.
Oh, and because he’ll give me #$(* if I don’t mention it – thanks, Daniel, for not playing.