Massing at The Portland Game Store

Day 3 of Massing at Sullust weekend found me at The Portland Game Store.   This is a relatively new store in town with a small following.  There ended up being only 4 of us that showed up to play.  We opted for a 2 round tournament with the final after that.  I had considered trying Imperials this time around, but decided to just roll with the list I had been playing to see if I could go undefeated for the weekend.

My first opponent was Jesse, who was also playing Rebels.  He had 2 Assault Frigates and an alphabet soup of Rebel squadrons.  He chose to have me go first and I decided we would play Precision Strike.  The game went similar to how it often does for me recently when I play other fleets with 2 Assault Frigates.  The two fleets pass each other from to great a distance and no real shots get fired until very late in the game.  I'm going to need to adjust my tactics to account for this in the future.  Eventually he got in his own way a bit and I was able to catch his rear assault frigate.  The extra firepower from Salvation proved the deciding factor once again as it was in position to deliver the final blow.  

In the second round I played Paul who was relatively new to the game.  He had 2 VSD I's and a Demolisher.  As I usually do against Demolisher, I chose to go first and picked Advanced Gunnery.  He spread his fleet from the center to my left, so I positioned to pass him in the middle of the table.  He made some maneuvering errors, so I was able to take his ships apart one at a time.  He had not played against Assault Frigates before and so hadn't seen how effective their broadsides can be.  

That game meant that I had gone undefeated in the Swiss rounds at 3 Massing at Sullust events.  I was really happy with the change from the CR-90 to the Salvation, as the extra firepower was the deciding factor at the end of several of the games.  The addition of Wave 2 and the move to 400 points means that was likely the last time I would play that basic list, so I'm glad it went out so well.

So it was time for the final round and I opted to again take the MC-80 and Admiral Ackbar as my opponent was primarily an Imperial player.  I took fewer squadrons this time, but decided to try a CR-90 with Slaved Turrets in the fleet.  

After Setup - It was fun to create a battle line 4 ships long.  My opponent was Joe and he had opted to have me go first.  I chose Opening Salvo figuring we would get to throw some serious dice at each other to get started.

End of Turn 1 - I was thinking of angling my line between his ships, but he was closing too fast and so I just skirted around a debris field.  I sent Han off to play with his Squadrons, but he really didn't do too much other than take a long time to die.

End of Turn 2 - No shots fired yet, but it looks like it's about to be a bloodbath.  That Raider would die in the first salvo of the game.  The Assault Frigate was able to do something like 9 damage + 3 Accuracy results.  Lots of other shots were fired and shields stripped this round.

End of Turn 3 - The Assault frigate fired first and then got out of the way.  It had taken a beating the previous turn from the ISD.  His VSD opened up on the MC-80 with double arcs and hit is pretty hard, but I was able to redirect most of it to the shields and stop a crit with Contain.  I really think both the ISD and MC-80 will really want ECM.  It is just too easy to take away their one Brace token.  The MC-80 fired and then moved around the ISD and out of its front arc.  That left the CR-90 left alone in the front arc of the ISD, which blew it away.  The MC-30 was then in position to finish of the VSD with an Ackbar assisted broadsides.

The final round saw the MC-80 hit the ISD one more time, but not quite kill it.  It did get a crit in that kept the ISD from using Accuracy results.  That in turn kept the ISD from killing the MC-30, who survived the frontal blast to return fire and hit for 12 damage!  It was fun game and all I could really notice was the really large dice pools that get thrown with Ackbar and how much damage was being done at once.  Even still, the ISDs are tough and it took several volleys to finish it off.

I had a great, though exhausting weekend.  Three tournaments, undefeated, and 3 new ships to play with seems like a resounding success.  I also was pleased to get to play in some really fun games with some excellent opponents.  Sometimes in tournaments with big prize support you can run in to some poor sportsmanship as folks get really caught up in winning.  That wasn't the case for me, as everyone was really good natured and having a good time.  

All 3 events I played in were also really well run and supported by the TO's.  In each case they would like to have played, but chose to sit out so that there was an even number of players and there wouldn't have to be a bye.  They worked hard and earned the prizes that they took home.  Well done.

So, now to figure out fleets at 400 points....