Fun With MC-30s

It was Armada night again at the FLGS, which meant that I had a couple of chances to try out a list featuring Mon Mothma and a pair of MC-30s.  


 
I talked about the list that I used in this post: LINK

I was definitely eager to give it a a try.  My first opponent was playing to VSD Is, Demolisher, and a massive Rhymer-ball full of aces.  With my measly 4 squadrons, I did not anticipate doing very well in the squadron game.  I chose to go first and selected Intel Sweep for our Objective.  I figured I had the mobility to attack his objective ship early on and get the advantage.

We setup mostly to one side of the table, he selected Demolisher for his objective ship, while I opted for my CR-90a.  As I had him out activated 5-3, my basic plan was to use my late activations to setup ambushes for his fleet as he moved forward.

I forgot to take a picture of the setup, so this after the Neb had activated in turn 1.

I moved up fairly aggressively in turn 1.  I made one major error in moving my CR-90b up before he had activated his demolisher and took a beating for it.  Both of our Objective ships moved forward to grab objectives in turn 2.  I generally felt good about my positioning, although I was still unsure about his squadrons.

I really goofed by moving the CR-90b too soon.

Turn 2 saw the shooting get started.  The CR-90b was able to hit Demolisher with Overload Pulse and damage his shields pretty well with a double arc.  Unfortunately, it then ended its move in front of the middle VSD.  He activated that VSD with a Squadron command to jump my squadrons and then slaughtered the poor CR-90b before continuing to move forward slowly.  The flanking Neb was the able to get a long range shot with Concentrate Firepower on the Demolisher.  Thanks to the Overload Pulse he had to burn tokens to not take serious damage.

A couple of more ships moved forward before the 2 objective ships activated and grabbed tokens.  Demolisher had to move first, which meant that the CR-90a could hit it at long range with a TRC boosted shot that chipped away the last of his defense tokens.  The MC-30 Torpedo then moved up to Double Arc the Demolisher at the start of the next turn.  I knew it was going to be in a bad spot, but wanted to see what would end up happening.

The MC-30 Torpedo is making its kamikaze run.

I goofed with my maneuvering of the MC-30 Torpedo and only had the Demolisher in my front arc...oops.  However, it was so beaten up already that with Ordnance Experts and Assault Torpedoes it still took down the Gladiator.  I was then left with no choice bu to fly between the 2 VSDs and couldn't escape the front arc of the one to my left.  It still took quite a beating, only dieing to the combined efforts of both VSDs and some bombers.  One less damage and it could have lived.

The squadron fight was going poorly for me, although Jan Ors was ensuring that if nothing else I was losing slowly.  Even though he had killed 2 of my ships to only losing one, I was still ahead by virtue of the objective.  I had 2 tokens to his 1 and his objective ship killed assuring me of getting the 75 points.  He was now also at the point of having to move into my firepower and I was more or less safe from his squadrons for now.  The combined firepower of my 3 remaining ships started doing some heavy damage to his VSD.  The Turbolaser Reroute Circuits were really increasing my damage potential.

End of Turn 3.  Time to start working over his Flagship.

In turn 3, he was able to finish off my squadrons, but not before I killed Howlrunner.  I am sure that was a moral victory or something.  Mithel ended up being his biggest source of damage in the squadron game.

The combined firepower of my 3 small ships took down his flagship, with TRCs again providing some big boosts.  He was able to start swarming the Neb with bombers.

The Neb was in a lot of trouble, and eventually went down to the Bombers.  It got some shots at the last VSD before it died and I was able to use the TRCs again to start working it over.  I ended turn 5 with the CR-90a double arcing the VSD and the Foresight in position where the VSD would have to move into its black dice.

Turn 6 went as planned and I was able to nuke the VSD before he could do any real damage with the Squadrons.

It was a close and really bloody game.  I felt like I was able to use my activation advantage to force his VSDs to keep flying into the teeth of my MC-30s and TRCs.  The squadrons were a big advantage for him, but I was able to use my speed to mostly keep away from them.  I made some positioning errors, but felt pretty good about it for the first time out with a fleet.

Game 2 - My second game of the night was against another Imperial player.  Henry was looking to get a feel for Wave 2 ships and had 2 Raiders with Rapid Reload, Demolisher, and a heavily upgraded ISD II led by Motti.  He opted to go first and picked Superior Positions.

I setup again to try to ambush him with the MC-30s.  We both set at fairly high speeds to start, ensuring the game would move along quickly.

I had the CR-90b and both MC-30s form a line where I felt sure I could ambush him.  The Neb was set to come in late as a 'trailer'.  He split one Raider to head off my line, while the other parts of his fleet rushed to flank me.

Turn 2 saw the start of the shooting.  His Raider overshot me a little bit and took a beating from the CR-90a and Neb-b.  Motti managed to keep it alive though.  I made a risky choice and chose to have my back MC-30 bump the one in front.  I wanted to delay their activations so the ISD would have to fly inot my gun range.  It didn't work....

It actually would have worked, but he mistakenly bumped his ISD when moving it up as he wasn't used to how much the big ships fishtail when they turn.  Oh well.  At the end of turn 2 I had the CR-90b in place to go for an Overload Pulse on the ISD-II and other ships ready to pound it afterwards.

My squadrons had his pretty outmatched, with Jan ensuring that the X-wings were soaking a lot of damage.

He zipped the damaged Raider out of the way before I could kill it.  It wouldn't take part in the rest of the game.  The CR-90b unloaded to arcs on the ISD-II.  I rolled 6 blue dice and got 6 accuracy results...oh well.  His other Raider moved up and started getting shot up as well.

I was winning the squadron game and starting to strip the shields off of the ISD.

At the top of turn 4 he led with the Demolisher who flew up and hit my Foresight with a 5 dice broadside thanks to Rapid Reload.  He rolled 10 Damage!!  An Evade brought it down to 8, which stripped off most of my shields.  I was able to keep pounding away on the ISD, but the Foresight was forced to end in its front arc.

He hit the Foresight hard at the start of the turn, but it still nearly survived.  I pulled a Structural Damage crit that finished it off.  From there the rest of my fleet was able to finish off the ISD pretty easily with a couple of double arc shots.  The Demolisher ended up out of position and flying off of the board.

Another solid win for the fleet.

All in all I was pretty impressed with how well the fleet did and how much damage I was able to pour out.  The overall maneuverability of the fleet made it easy to have 3 or more of my ships hitting the same target each round.  Some other thoughts:

• I don't know if you need to be first or second with the MC-30, but having extra activations is a big deal.  Using my late activations I was consistently able to get an ambush position with them.

• I am not sure what to do with the squadrons.  None of the ships really do well with Squadron commands.  I may need more Rogues, but only own one R&V pack.  4 YT-2400s might be perfect though.

• The TRCs are amazing!  They didn't conflict with Mon Mothma much as I was able to use the activation advantage to feel confident about spending the tokens.

• I'd like to up the firepower on the Nebulon-B.  Alternatively, I could replace it with another CR-90a with TRCs.  Of course I only own 2 of each and would have to buy more for that.

• I really like this fleet and may spend some time tuning it for a tournament later his month.