NA Championships Day 1

Here's a quick recap of my first day at the GenCon North American Armada Championships.

After getting into the exhibit hall I had been able to pick up the new Wave 3 & 4 ships, which is great.  I'd also gotten some shopping done at a few other booths as well.  While in the FFG booth I had a quick conversation with Anton, one of the FFG employees that I recognized from past GenCon videos.  I asked him about the Corellian Conflict and he said they only had a mockup and that the designers were really excited about it.  He gave a couple of other hints that I'll share in another post.

Anyways, once the tournament got under way I was paired with Ed in my first match.  He was running a Rieekan Aces list that I didn't feel very good about the matchup.

I tried to maneuver my fleet out in front of his Assault Frigates to try and engage them at long range.  It worked to a point, but he did a couple of things really well.  He used the station and Gallant Haven to keep his squadrons alive for much longer than I would have expected.

In the end, he was able to use Luke to good effect to pound my MC-30.  Luke managed to kill it with a Structural Damage through the shields.  The bummer of this was that I had forgotten that I had Lando on board.  Oops.  That might have made a difference.  I was able to put a beating on Gallant Haven, but I came up one damage short of killing it one turn.  That meant it got its full effect on the next turn as Rieekan kept it alive.  This kept his squadrons around long enough to finish off mine and ended up causing the doom of my Assault Frigate.

I lost 7-4.

This was my second GenCon tournament that I started with a loss.  I had been determined to get off to a better start this year.  Oh well.

So, nervous that I wouldn't make the cut I went on to my second match against Jeremy.  He had an Ackbar build with an MC-80, 3 CR-90s and some squadrons.

We played Superior Positions and I was able to gang up on the MC-80 with my fleet and beat it down.  He was angling to get his CR-90s into my rear for token shots, but I cranked up my speed and largely dodged them.  This time I remembered that I had Lando, which kept the MC-30 in the game.  I ended up tabling him to earn the 10-1 game.

So, now I'm 1-1 with 14 points.  My guess was that the cut would be around 21 points, with 20 being possible on a tie.  So, I know I need a win in the final round to make the cut and play on Saturday.

My final opponent was Alex, who was running Motti, 3x VSDs, and an impressive Rhymerball.  We played Most Wanted and I lined up in the middle with him directly across from me.  The obstacle placement made it seem obvious for me to go to my left.  So, I led off with Jaina's Light moving to my left.  He responded by turning his outside VSD that way.  I then shifted the rest of my fleet and went right.  This took that 1 VSD out of the game completely.  Even with Boosted Comms, it barely contributed.

So, the next step had my MC-30 having to last against the Rhymer ball for 3 rounds of fire.  It just kept hanging on.  This allowed my mis-deployed squadrons to get over and start chewing through his.  I had intentionally pulled his Rhymerball towards me so that I could hit it with combined ant-squadron firepower from my ships.  It worked as I was able to grind his squadrons down slowly. 

The combined firepower of the MC-30 and Assault Frigate killed Motti's VSD before the MC-30 eventually died.  He had been focusing on it as the Most Wanted ship.  When Mottii died I was able to switch fire to his middle VSD that was my Most Wanted target.  By this point Jaina's Light had snuck around behind it and with a couple of rounds of double arc shots killed with some help from the Assault Frigate.

I also managed to kill his squadrons while only losing 2 of mine.  In the end I earned a 9-1 win moving me to 23 points.

Final Standings.  There were more players than this, but lots of dropouts.

As I had guessed, the cutoff was 21 points.  So I was in good shape in 3rd place with 23.  I don't know how good 23 points will be overall until tomorrow's results are available.  BUt I was really happy to still e in the game.  They handed out the plastic VSD cards to all who made the cut and also the players with 20 points as they had a couple of extras.

I didn't get a chance to look around at other lists much, but there seemed to be some solid diversity.

Tomorrow I am taking a break from Armada to play in the Dropzone Commander tournament.

I'll try to post up the results of day 2 though.