Interdicting a Tournament

I got the chance to play in a Summer Kit tournament with the Interdictor fleet that I had been testing over the weekend.  I had a great time and was really pleased with the fleet overall.  I think Interdictors will definitely be effective in highly competitive tournaments.  PLus, they are a blast to play with!  Read on for some quick battle reports.




I made a change to the Interdictor Fleet that I had been running.  I dropped Howlrunner down to a regular TIE Fighter and used the points savings to add in the Interdictor and Relentless titles.  I felt like my anti-squadron setup was already plenty effective and wanted the extra flexibility that both of those titles would bring.

The tournament was lightly attended with only 6 players showing up.  Kinda typical for summer time as everyone seems so busy doing other things.  There 5 Imperial players and only 1 Rebel.  Three of the Imperials had brought Interdictors and the Rebel had a Mon Karren Liberty, so the new ships would be well represented.

My first opponent was Chris, who I had made the trip to GenCon with.  He is also attending Worlds and was practicing with his GenCon fleet, but modified with some new Wave 3/4 upgrades.  He had Screed leading a fleet of 4 Gladiators, one of whom was Demolisher.  All of the GSDs had APTs equipped, which can be problematic.  He brought Howlrunner, Mithel, Dengar, and some Interceptors as his squadron compliment.  I informed Chris that Vader had found Screed's lack of faith disturbing and they would be having a little chat.

I had the lower bid and chose to go second.  I wanted to see if my objective choices with the Interdictor would pay off.  He chose Dangerous Territory as our objective.  I was able to use the Grav Shift Reroutes to set the obstacles in convenient places for myself and generally out of his reach!

We closed on each other fairly cautiously while our squadrons duked it out.  Fortunately for me the squadron scrum was in the midst of my ships and I was able to lend enough anti-squadron firepower to help turn that fight my direction.

Eventually we closed and he chose to really concentrate on the Interdictor.  The combination of Repair commands and the Targeting Scrambler helped keep it alive for a really long time.  It took a considerable pounding.  Targeting Scrambler laughs at Screeds ability and makes APTs much less frightening.

I made an error with the approach angle of my flanking Raider and managed to get it killed for little return effect.  I tried to fly it too much like a CR-90, which I should no better than to do.  The Interdictor managed to get a nice double-arc on his GSD with Screed on board.  Unfortunately, even with 2 rounds of double-arc firepower I didn't bring it down.  That really came down to a bad roll and choosing to block the wrong defense token in one case.  So, Screed survived temporarily and I lost the Interdictor.  Eventually the ISD got rolling and with some encouragement from Vader, started wrecking ships right and left.  It killed 3 different GSDs over the course of 2 turns.  Thanks to the Relentless title I had Nav commands queued up to get swung around with the big ISD.

Even still it was a close result.  I won by a little over 100 points, with much of that coming from the 4 objective tokens that I grabbed.  The Interdictor had helped push the result from a 6-5 to a 7-4 even without killing a ship!

My next opponent was Will, the only Rebel player.  I was excited to play him as I hadn't used or gone up against Mon Karren yet and wanted to see what the hype was about.  He also had an Indpendence, Bright Hope, and some B and X-Wings all led by Dodonna.  Vader also found Dodonna's lack of faith disturbing.

He chose to go first and after looking at my objectives chose Advanced Gunnery.  He declared Mon Karren as his objective ship and I chose my ISD.  I used the Grav Shifts to try and put some asteroids in his path, but didn't quite have the range for it.

After losing my Raider so quickly last game I kept it closer to my other 2 ships for this game.  Otherwise I decided to send my ISD and Interdictor straight at the Mon Karren to see if I could kill it quickly.

I even jumped the ISD up to speed 3 to really pounce in there.  This was a case where the Targeting Scramblers were again really useful.  I only could use one defense token, but could still force re-rolls to mitigate some damage.  The Interdictor shot first and with some "encouragement" from Vader got a crit that allowed the Ion Cannon Batteries to strip an extra shield.  The ISD then unleashed 2 volleys into the front of the Mon Karren thanks to Advanced Gunnery.  In both cases Vader's "encouragement" allowed me to get the accuracies I needed to shut down his defense tokens and wipe out the Mon Karren.

All 3 of my ships were then able to coordinate an attack on the Independence with the Raider playing road-block.  The Interdictor pasted the Bright Hope along the way and my TIEs were making good work against his squadrons.  Combined firepower from my ships brought down the Independence to end the game with a 10-1 for me.  This win was ALL Vader.  The re-rolls boosted my damage across the board and helped me kill his ships much more quickly.

My 3rd opponent was Henry who also had an Interdictor, this one led by Motti and flanked by Warlord and Dominator.  I chose to go second and he selected that we would play Dangrous Territory.  What was interesting here was that we both had Grav Shift Reroutes.  As first player, his would kick off before mine.  This ended up with all of the obstacles really spread out into odd places.

I angled my ships to hit one end of his line and decided to use the Raider to simply grab tokens.  It managed 3 in the game, which more or less earned its keep.

We approached fairly cautiously, but he eventually managed to block my Interdictor with his Warlord and kill it.  But, this allowed my ISD to get around behind his line and kill his Interdictor as well.  I came close to getting Warlord, but it managed to get away.

So, we traded Interdictors, but his was worth more as Motti was on board.  My squadrons had been able to wipe his out with minimal losses, which was also a plus.  That plus the objective tokens gave me another 7-4 win.  Vader had obviously found Motti's lack of faith disturbing as well.

24 points was enough to win me the tournament and some new swag.  I really like the art work on these cards.

Some final thoughts:

• I think the Interdictor is a really solid ship and can well in a tournament setting.  It's firepower just isn't great for its point cost, but it scores you VPs in other ways.  Those Dangerous Territory objectives were much easier with the Grav Shifts help.
• Ion Cannon Batteries are definitely the right choice to boost the firepower of the Interdictor,  With Vader's help they went off nearly every time the Interdictor shot.
• Vader was the MVP once the game started.  All 3 of the ships I brought really benefit from Vader's re-rolls.  Once the Arquitens arrives it would replace that Raider in this fleet.
• I'm have my doubts about Mon Karren.  It rolls enough dice that it can get accuracies enough to accomplish the same effect.  Which means you need SW-7s, which just adds to the cost.  I think XI7s will be just fine for the ship.
• I didn't miss Howlrunner much , but both titles were really useful.  So, I am glad I made that switch.
• Targeting Scramblers are really amazing and will be something that has to be accounted for by fleets that want to fight at Close range.  Makes APTs much less reliable.
• I still need more practice with Imperials, but was happy with how I played overall.
• Grav Shifts are game changing.  Really fun to play with and interesting to play against. 

Thanks for reading.  I had a really fun time and 3 great opponents.  I'm not sure what I will want to play around with yet, but I think I need to get some practice with all the new squadron boosting upgrades.