Wave 3 & 4 Regionals Analysis

The past weekend marked a break in current Regionals season.  When it picks back up in January, Wave 5 and the Corellian Conflict will be legal.  Which makes it a good time to look at the Regionals data where it sits right now.

Vancouver, WA Regional

For the second time this year I will be running an Armada Regional at Dice Age Games in Vancouver, WA.  Based on pre-registration it looks like we should have a pretty solid turnout for the event.

I always enjoy TO'ing events, but reading all of the recent reports from Worlds has me wish I was playing in this one.  Of course, I've been so busy with life lately that I haven't had much time for games so I am woefully out of practice.

I will post some pictures and updates from the tournament here and will also be starting up collecting data from the regionals season and getting that posted as well.

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.

NA Championships - Final Day

I headed in to the final day of the NA Championships with a 2-1 record, 23 tournament points, and 4th place overall.  I was certainly surprised to be in that spot after my first round loss.

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.

Wrapping Up the Regionals Data

For the past couple of months I have been compiling and comparing results from the various Armada Regional tournaments.  This last weekend marked the end of the Regionals season in the USA and it seemed like a good time to look back and see what, if anything, I learned from all of this.

Tacoma Regionals

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to play in the Armada Regionals in Tacoma, WA.  After running the Regional Tournament in Vancouver, WA this was my only chance to play in a tournament in the local area.  

I didn't know I would be able to play in the tournament until the night before.  I had been on the east coast the previous week and was fighting some major jet lag, but opted to make the 2.5 hour drive north for the tournament anyways.  Despite some hiccups I'm glad I made the trip as it was fun to meet a bunch of other players and get some games in.

Keeping an eye on the Regional Armada Tournaments

I've continued gathering data on the Armada Regionals and have been posting the results on a Google Spreadsheet.  Take a look at this link.

The Imperials have continued their overall domination of the events having won 8 of the 10 where we know the results!  Most of the Imperial wins seem dominated by Admiral Motti, Major Rhymer, and the Demolisher.  It has been impressive.

What do you think?  Why have the Imperials been doing so well?

Armada Regional Live Blog

I am TO'ing the Armada Regional at Dice Age Games in Vancouver, WA.  Check here for a Live Blog of the event as it unfolds.

Regionals Results Data - April

Over on the FFG Community discussion boards I have started collecting the results from the various Regional tournaments an collating the data.  Already some interesting trends have started to appear.

Spring Kit Tournament

This past Saturday, Dice Age Games hosted a tournament with the new Spring Kit from FFG as prizes.  As I will be judging and not playing in the Regional tournament there in 2 weeks, I was looking forward to getting some games in.

Regionals Prize Kit

The FLGS where I will be running a regional Tournament for Armada got their prize kit in today.  I stopped by to take a look as I wanted to see if there was anything special in the rules that I needed to know about.  The only thing that stuck out was that the players who earned a Bye at a Store Championship don't receive any additional points beyond a normal Bye.  This is a significant switch and may cause some players to not use their Byes.

I think all of the prize support looks really good for this event.  I REALLY like the dice and may attend a Regional that's about a 2 hour drive away just to try for another set.

2016 Dice Age Store Championships

Yesterday I had the opportunity to both play in and TO the Armada Store Championships at Dice Age Games.  This is the first tournament season for Armada and with wave 2 out there, I was really curious to see how everything would play out.

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.

Massing at Dice Age - Final Round

My opponent for the final round was Chris, making this our 3rd game in the past 2 days.  I grabbed the Rebels and he the Imperials.  We both opted for 3 ship builds.  I took:

MC-80 

Home One

Admiral Ackbar

Leading Shots

MC-30

Turbolaser Redirect Curcuits

AF MK IIB

Enhanced Armaments 

Gunnery Team

Han Solo

YT-2400

Tycho

2x A-Wings

Massing at Dice Age

After winning an ISD last night I was ready for another day of Armada.  I opted to play the same list as last night.  I've learned from enough tournaments that showing up with an unpracticed list often leads to frustration.  Also, I was really happy with the maneuver I had  figured out with the Salvation.  I wanted to see if I could make it work well enough to be worthy of a name.  

Massing at Red Castle Games

The first Massing at Sullust event that I was able to attend was at Red Castle Games in Portland, OR.  I headed over for the event after a tiring week at work feeling pretty worn out.     

I'm prone to making errors when I play games while lacking sleep, so I adjusted my expectations accordingly.  As with everyone else, my goal was to finish in the top 4 and win a wave 2 prize.  But, given my mental state and the fact I haven't played much the past couple of weeks, I was feeling okay if this event was just a warmup for the other 2 Massing events I would play in this weekend.  

GenCon 2015 Tournament Report

This is a repost of my tournament report from the 2015 GenCon Nationals tournament.  I thought i'd post it here to make it easy for me to find again.