Armada night Monday and upcoming X-Wing...

Armada Monday…  Have a few builds set up, but It mostly comes down to either a 2 or 3 ship build.  With the 2 ships, it is 2 big heavy ships outfitted with pretty much everything possible to do what they have to.  3 ships, I have the Heavy Cruiser, a Frigate and a Corvette…  More ships to activate, more maneuver and probably a better chance to do most of the missions…  The Heavy Cruiser/Assault Frigate build is very unsubtle…  Move up, shoot like you are voting in Chicago, early, often and hopefully for the same targets… 

So, here’s the 2 ship build:

Faction: Rebel Alliance 
Points: 400/400   

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery 
Defense Objective: Hyperspace Assault 
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep 

[ flagship ] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 points)
-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points) 
-  Raymus Antilles  ( 7  points) 
-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points) 
-  Redundant Shields  ( 8  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  Enhanced Armament  ( 10  points) 

Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
-  Gallant Haven  ( 8  points) 
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points) 
-  Gunnery Team  ( 7  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points) 

1 Dash Rendar ( 24 points) 
1 Tycho Celchu ( 16 points) 
2 X-Wing Squadrons ( 26 points) 
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points) 
1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points) 

Fleet created with Armada Warlords

And here’s the 3 ship build:

Faction: Rebel Alliance 
Points: 400/400   

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery 
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes 
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep 

[ flagship ] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 points)
-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points) 
-  Raymus Antilles  ( 7  points) 
-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points) 
-  Redundant Shields  ( 8  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  Enhanced Armament  ( 10  points) 

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (57 points)
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points) 
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points) 

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
-  Jainas Light  ( 2  points) 
-  Leia Organa  ( 3  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points) 

1 Wedge Antilles ( 19 points) 
1 "Dutch" Vander ( 16 points) 
1 Dash Rendar ( 24 points) 
1 YT-2400 ( 16 points) 

Fleet created with Armada Warlords

The 3 ships does provide some more flexability with Jaina’s Light and Leia being a flanker to hide in behind the Heavy Cruiser or terrain and take pot shots…  Though with Ackbar, the side shooting it almost as good as an Assault Frigate…  And being able to set Dice to either the 2 Hits or Critical face at the cost of an Evade…  Might be a gamble, or she might well not be getting shot at in any case…  Guess I’ll choose when I get there per usual…

Otherwise, looking like an Escalation tournament coming up at Titan in Jan…  Format is odd, 4 games, but different point values in each game: 60, 90, 120 and 150.  And it is a build up, so you keep everything through the games and cannot swap out cards, etc…  Guessing I’ll run a variant of what I ran in the last event with Vrill’s YT-2400, Poe’s T70, a few Y-Wings and likely a Z-95 to fill in points…  A few weeks out and then that…  Store Championships will be coming up as well…  Supposed to be in the 1 January to 31 March range, no clue when they’ll hit here…    Thinking my current build will get modified when Wave 8 hits…  Wound up with some credit at Titan, so the Ghost will be coming home from there.  NOT playing Imperials, winning the Imperial Raider was about how my luck goes  Get the big prize, but it is not really what I was expecting/wanting J…  But I’m patient and so that win translates to the Rebel ship for me, albeit a few months later…

All in all, the FFG games are looking like they’re here for a longer run and are still quite fun…  Getting in a small bit of painting on my Warmachine stuff, but overall not a lot happening there.

League final AAR

So, had the last part of the League at Titan today…  Did fairly well, went 2-1 and apparently the loss was not so bad of one and I wound up in the top 4 somehow…  Weird, I had my stuff all packed up because I assumed that lacking a 3-0 I would have missed the cut, but apparently Poe living during my one loss kept the MOV low enough to pull a 3^rd place…  The list did really well, flew:

VrillPoeGrey (100)

Eaden Vrill — YT-2400	32
Intelligence Agent	1
Anti-Pursuit Lasers	2
Ship Total: 35
Poe Dameron — T-70 X-Wing	31
Veteran Instincts	1
R5-P9	3
Autothrusters	2
Ship Total: 37
Gray Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing	20
Twin Laser Turret	6
R3-A2	2
BTL-A4 Y-Wing	0
Ship Total: 28

Eaden Vrill was REALLY good…  I forgot how annoyingly maneuverable the YT-2400 really is…  The 1 hard turn and barrel roll or the bumps to put that big base in the way for the APLs to do a bit of damage here and there, especially to the TIE Interceptors I faced…  So, thinking this will likely be the Store Championship list for the next go around…

First game was against 2 B-wings and Poe...  Shot down the B's first then chased down Poe...  

Game two was Joel who played  a Shuttle with Emperor, Vader in TIE advanced and a TIE Phantom...  Killed the shuttle early, he got my 2400 and Y...  I had his ships damaged, but not quite dead...  Loss, but not a complete one...

Game 3 was against 4 TIE Interceptors...  Fel, another Ace and a pair of PS 1 ships... This one is the list mine was the best against...  The 2400 was a rock star and Poe of course was good... Lost the Y, so not a complete victory...  But enough to get me in...

Great tournament, 18 players and fun...  Very laid back.

Armada post game thoughts...

Well, got in a good game of Armada…  Tested a build of the MC-80, MC-30, Assault Frigate and Han Solo in the Falcon…  The MC-80 Assault Cruiser is REALLY good, though I skirted too far to the outside of the field with it.  With Admiral Ackbar and the +2 Red Dice for just shooting broadsides it is pretty easy to get up to an 8 Red attack with re-rolls…  So need to just walk up to the other fleet and dare them to come at me.

Looking at the Assault version of the MC-80 which surprisingly seems to fit my play style quite well…  Raymus Antilles, Engine Techs, Redundant Shields, ECM and Enhanced Armament…  154 points though…  But With Ackbar and firing broadsides?  8 Red Dice WITH a reroll assuming you used the Gunnery command of course…  So, that is just counting the long ranged shots, there are 2 Blues in there on the off chance they get close enough to fire…  Probably round out the Fleet with a Nebulon and Corvette…  Both of which can fire broadsides at 3 Red Dice to a lot of peoples surprise, so not bad for support ships meant to keep fast movers off the Cruiser.  Leaves me up to 6 Squadrons, but with the named ones being expensive and REALLY good…  Looks like there will not be so many…

One thing I noticed in the last game I played, I had essentially NO fighters, and Joe had 6-7 I think…  His lack of the Bomber key word meant that for the most part my ships had nothing to fear from them…  Yes, he did the one critical damage to the MC-30, but frankly it would have died to the second arc firing from the Victory in any case, I should have turned away on turn 6, even if it landed me on a rock…  Would have lived, so lesson learned.  Though the Turbolaser Reroute Circuits were AWESOME changing 2 blank Reds to both with the 2 hit facing…  ALMOST killing the Victory Class…  Certainly something to be WELL aware of…

End of the Titan League Sunday…  My list is set, would like a bit more practice, but time being short…  Have yet to set up Vassal on the new laptop, so even virtual playtesting is out…  Ah well J  I think I have it mostly down, the list is made of things I have been playing since I started playing X-Wing, so just need to remember what each is supposed to do in the list and not just charge in firing away…

Armada Monday and X-Wing Next Sunday...

So, have Armada Monday...  Looking like I'll fly this if we are still at 300 points:

Chappell week 4 

Faction: Rebel Alliance 
Points: 300/300   

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery 
Defense Objective: Hyperspace Assault 
Navigation Objective: Superior Positions 

[ flagship ] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114 points)
-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points) 
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  Redundant Shields  ( 8  points) 
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points) 

Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
-  Gunnery Team  ( 7  points) 
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points) 
-  Enhanced Armament  ( 10  points) 

1 Dash Rendar ( 24 points) 

Fleet created with Armada Warlords

At 300 points this list is really just broadsides with Red dice for damage...  Not a lot special, just broadsides...

At 400 points it gets more interesting...  We'll see what level we play at.  A LOT more squadron action there, and with the release of the Wave 2 fighters, there are a LOT of really good things out there...

For X-Wing I am going to fly the following:

VrillPoeGrey (100)

Eaden Vrill — YT-2400	32
Intelligence Agent	1
Anti-Pursuit Lasers	2
Ship Total: 35
Poe Dameron — T-70 X-Wing	31
Veteran Instincts	1
R5-P9	3
Autothrusters	2
Ship Total: 37
Gray Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing	20
Twin Laser Turret	6
R3-A2	2
BTL-A4 Y-Wing	0
Ship Total: 28
Looking like the Regenerating Ace in Poe, Vrill with the turret and blocking/APL...  Turret getting the +1 dice for Stressed targets...  The Grey is just there to stress things...  We'll see how it works out...

STAW vs. X-Wing, not really a contest anymore...

So, another STAW event in the books…  Went 2-1 and lost the last game due to “TKO”…  I had the only actual ship kill, but due to the incredibly poorly written scenario rules and the other player bringing a build to reap the benefit of that…  No ill will there, the other guy had a completely legal list, and had we more time my bog standard Romulan list would have cleared the field.  But this really highlights why I have moved almost completely to FFG’s systems (X-Wing and Armada).  The eternal Weyoun discard CPT allowing him to use a card with “discard to do ’X’” every turn is just silly.  Ideally, Wizkids would errata the card to say “disable to prevent the discard of a Dominion Crew card”, but as it stands of course, it disables to prevent ANY Crew cards discard…  So a lot of fairly expensive one use things get to be used every turn.  As I’ve always said, having things in a game that break the basic rules of the game will always begin to unbalance it.  Individual things may be small and inconsequential, but bigger problems always seem to start off that way.   The precedent has been set, so this thing breaking the basic framework of the game is really not that different than that last thing, etc…   Yes, in my younger days I was a min/max player (Champions/ Hero system rules) and a game tester for a number of systems…  I am really good at math and can see a lot of the combinations that have better than expected presence in the game…  I say younger days as I think I tend to avoid the obviously OP things these days, and why I do not play certain things anymore (Circle In Hordes or Eldar in 40K for example)…  For the most part, it is just boring to me.  As it happens I am fairly good at small unit tactics and the like, so the “Easy Button” stuff is just insulting to me.  But that’s just me I guess J…  For a long time in Warmachine there was the mantra of “everything is broken, so nothing really is”.  On one level, true, however…  Not everything was equally broken, there were some things that were REALLY broken (over the top over powered) like Khador’s Cdr Sorsha and Cygnar’s CPT Haley that just made the game completely un-fun to play on both sides.  Then MK2 hit and things were good…  For a while it seems.  I am not 100% sure, have not played for a while myself and playing a somewhat silly fringe faction that has very little “new” coming out I don’t really keep as much up with the stuff as I should I guess, but…  The power players are using a VERY small subset of armies and pieces again, so like Hagrid said “it feels like last time”….  Yes, I have Ogres (Ogrun) in my faction as for whatever reason the Ogres and Dwarves get along quite well…

So, mostly just a touch frustrating trying to play a game with such huge gaping holes in it…  In contrast, X-Wing is MUCH tighter as a rule set, and FFG actually answers questions, makes revisions as needed, etc.  With another Worlds in the books and some almost 300 players travelling to Minnesota in November…  Given the size disparity between the STAW and X-Wing Worlds fields (fewer than 12 for STAW IIRC?), and watching the continued ability for FFG to simply print money by releasing more and more of their stuff….  And seeing a fair bit of STAW still sitting on shelves…  Though some of the more recent things are being bought, so it is NOT dead…  Just not so focused I think…  SO many factions and so many completely useless ships/cards vs the now 3 factions in X-Wing and pretty much none of them being useless…  Yes, some are seldom seen (TIE Defender, M3-A Interceptor, TIE Bomber maybe?) but a lot of that has to do with the ordnance rules and/or slightly less useful pilots…  But overall, there are SO many different builds that are actually viable that it goes well beyond a rock/paper/scissors thing…

Looking like I’ll play this on the 6^th of December when Titan closes out the Fall League:

EadenYPoe (100)

Poe Dameron — T-70 X-Wing	31
Veteran Instincts	1
R5-P9	3
Autothrusters	2
Ship Total: 37
Eaden Vrill — YT-2400	32
Intelligence Agent	1
Anti-Pursuit Lasers	2
Ship Total: 35
Gray Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing	20
Twin Laser Turret	6
R3-A2	2
BTL-A4 Y-Wing	0
Ship Total: 28

Simple enough, the T-70 is my Ace with Regeneration to actually dogfight and close in for kills.  The Grey Y-Wing is the Stress Hog piling up Stress and maybe even a little damage, especially to low Agility targets.  Vrill in the YT-2400 is there to shoot Stressed things and with the Intel Agent/APL combo and Barrel Rolls on a maneuverable ship to block and potentially cause damage without attacking…  Swarms being a thing, and of course a number of the Ace types need to be a Range 1 to cause their effects to go off…  No problem, I am fine daring them to close on me and working in close like that.  Low PS, so I will move before a lot of the things I am worried about and I’ve always been comfortable with close in work J…  Akido and Ju Jitsu being what I studied in my youth and all… 

Mind, I have no illusions of winning it all, but this list should at least be competitive with pretty much anything out there…  Lacks a bit on raw damage output, but it WILL be fun to fly…  Besides, I’m moving up from the middle of the pack in the league…  But overall the league has lost a bit of the harder/competitive edge it had last league, so it has been MUCH more fun, almost the same vibe as the last tournament run by Bill over at the Gopher…  So fun competition rather than high stress… 

Ankle is almost back, I can walk for a bit and starting my “prison workout” again…  Getting stronger by the day, is good to see the slight changes as my shirts get tighter in the arms and looser across the gut…

STAW Monday then Month 4 of the League for X-Wing in a few weeks...

So, another STAW event coming up Monday at the Gopher and X-Wing in a few weeks for the final event of the Fall League at Titan… 

Will probably run Federation or Romulan in STAW, guess I’ll pick up the Romulan fighters…  For Romulans,

List Name

Resource: Fleet Captain Independent (Dominion) (5)

Scimitar (38)

Salatrel (3)

Interphase Generator (2)

Polarized Hull Plating (1)

Ship SP: 44

I.R.W. Avatar of Tomed (34)

Mirok (2)

FleetCaptain (0)

Cloaked Mines (2)

Ship SP: 38

Scorpion 4 (24)

Cloaked Fighters (4)

Hidden Formation (5)

Ship SP: 33

Total Build SP: 120

Generated by STAW Builder

http://www.dracossoftware.com/STAWHome.html

Just need to pick the free Elite Talent I guess…

Feds I am not done with:

List Name

U.S.S Thunderchild (28)

Jean-Luc Picard - Tech (5)

William T. Riker (3)

System Upgrade (2)

Multi-Adaptive Shields (5)

Ship SP: 43

U.S.S Excelsior (26)

Mr. Spock (4)

Montgomery Scott (5)

Dmitri Valtane (3)

Quantum Torpedoes (6)

Ship SP: 44

Fighter Squadron 6 (24)

Ship SP: 24

Total Build SP: 111

Generated by STAW Builder

http://www.dracossoftware.com/STAWHome.html

So, a few more things to add…  Systems upgrades and the like I guess… 

Have to admit that the more I play them both, the more I like X-Wing over STAW.  STAW does allow a LOT more mixing and matching, has a LOT more cards, factions  and ships…  All of which can for the most part be deployed ala carte and you can play your all-stars or “dream team”.  The problems I have with that and the game itself is that there is absolutely NO balancing of abilities to point cost.  Jean Luc Picard’s first card in the base set the standard for the most OP CPT card giving an awesome ability to whatever ship he is deployed on, free action (extra action) to get a Battle Station, Target Lock, Evade or Scan whether or not the ship to which he is deployed can actually DO any of those actions.  And for the same cost as any other skill 9 CPT…  So, at their heyday, there were a LOT of Borg ships being captained by JLP, getting around the lack of several of the actions he provided, more actions to their uber ships and a skill 9 CPT…  For +1 point over deploying it to a Federation ship?  Silly NOT to take it if you have the points…  The ship points are the same way, the formula is simply: add all of the stat numbers and multiply by 2.  For most ships, the “named” version has +1 shield, so is 2 points more expensive than the generic one.  Gets abilities and usually additional upgrade slots for free.  Mind, in a lot of cases, the abilities are “meh” at best, but comparing the iconic Galaxy Class Federation cruiser to the Enterprise-D?  The Enterprise gets a 360° firing arc (limited to range 2, and starting at 3 Dice).  The Excelsior gets a free Scan action (if there are no enemy ships at Range 1)…  So, again, kind of silly NOT to take the named versions if you have the points…  Exception for me being the Klingons with their ships being cloaked a lot, so the extra Shield is useless and a lot of the abilities there are less useful overall.  Typically my Klingon fleets are maximum attack dice on fragile ships for the “win big or die in battle”…  Then you get to some of the silliness like Fighters and Cloaked mines…  So many long rants out there, so I’ll not add another.  Just say that the best point to damage ratio I have used in about any game is the Cloaked Mines at 3 points.  And with the right resources, even less…  I typically use the “Fleet Captain” to add slots to ships and reduce the point costs.  Silly, but… 

Compare this to X-Wing….  Everything is well balanced, Pilots are limited to the ships they fly…  Yes, Crew cards can go to the ships that HAVE crew slots within their own Faction, but there is no crossing that line.  I have heard the game described somewhat despairingly as “Yahtzee in Space”, but do not agree in any way…  Yes, this year’s World Championship game hinged on a single turn where the #2 player rolled 5 blanks for his Defense roll and lost his ship to that damage combined with the killing blow late in the turn.  The contention was I think that it all hinged on that one roll…  Of course, STAW has the same thing magnified with the ability to trivially get 10+ Dice attacks with loads of quality (fixing, either via conversions or rerolls, etc.) where the Defense roll is “less relevant”.  Joe’s Dominion fleet usually has at least one BB, BC or heavy cruiser set to come in and alpha strike for the say 8-10 guaranteed hits.  My cloaked Klingon ship can roll its 4-7 Defense dice, but no shields while cloaked usually means that at least 4-6 are going through no matter what I roll.  With Romulans I can buy time with some tricky cards like Interphase Generator to just take 1 Damage…  Once.  Then I’d best have that ship dead before he lines up another shot because Joe’s setup is NOT a one-time thing.  So, not Yahtzee but a game won in the build with certain things just being THAT much more powerful and unbalanced.  X-Wing does have the “rock-paper-scissors effect” with a few powerful build types, but there is not one that beats everything else.

J  Kind of why I am in the “paint my army” mode for Warmachine…  my current main force is Rhullic, so Dwarves and Ogres…  Amusing, but definitely NOT OP in any way.  Yes, still have Cygnar and Circle armies, but looking at those I am more concerned that they are a lot more powerful and easily OP in some builds/ways…  I’d much rather lose a fun game than win with an overpowering list…  Why I stopped playing Circle in 1^st edition.  Had a squad of Wolf Riders who were able to ignore coherency, could attack, kill something then move and attack again…  Stopping only when they failed to kill something.  So this small squad with a few buffs and bonuses could table an opponent in a single turn if they brought Light Infantry which was a fairly common thing back then…  Was unlikely to kill the other Caster which ends the game immediately, but they usually cleared 50-75% of the force in one turn setting up the killing attack…  Yes, these things don’t happen in 2^nd edition, but it left a very bad impression for me, so I’ve avoided that force since.  “Rumor” has them working on the 3^rd edition of the game, and as I see the things played, it is looking a lot like it was at the end of 1^st edition…  So, I’ll just get my lads painted up I guess and see what happens in a few months…

Looking at running this for X-Wing:

EadenYPoe (100)

Poe Dameron — T-70 X-Wing	31
Veteran Instincts	1
R5-P9	3
Autothrusters	2
Ship Total: 37
Eaden Vrill — YT-2400	32
Intelligence Agent	1
Anti-Pursuit Lasers	2
Ship Total: 35
Gray Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing	20
Twin Laser Turret	6
R3-A2	2
BTL-A4 Y-Wing	0
Ship Total: 28

So, Stress will be a thing for me to throw out there…  Not 100% sold on the Intel Agent and APL on the YT-2400, but it is amusing to get in among things and see what bumps me for immediate damage…  360° firing arc, large base and a maneuverable ship…  Likely to die of course, but should do damage on the way.  The Grey Squadron over the Gold for PS 4 and shooting before the mass of PS 1-2 stuff people are bringing, and to be less vulnerable to Predator and the like…  Poe, either keep as is or swap the VI and R5-P9 for R2-D2 and get the Regeneration effect on the reveal of a Green, so even if bumped or the Stress is piled on, I can still get Shields back…  Limits it a lot though, I REALLY like the focus on him in any case, so…  Amusingly staying with the Y-Wing, my favorite ship from the early Star Wars stuff, the YT-2400, the first ship my wife got me last year and an X-Wing…  Not what I thought I’d end up with, but it might work at least against the things I expect to see…

Month 3 AAR (X-Wing) and Armada

AAR for the Month 3 Tournament…  We came, we saw and we got our asses kicked J…  Wound up playing the Poe/Miranda/Stress Hog list:

KYT70 2 (100)

Poe Dameron — T-70 X-Wing	31
Veteran Instincts	1
R5-P9	3
Autothrusters	2
Ship Total: 37
Miranda Doni — K-Wing	29
Twin Laser Turret	6
Tactician	2
Ship Total: 37
Gold Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing	18
Twin Laser Turret	6
R3-A2	2
BTL-A4 Y-Wing	0
Ship Total: 26

And I ran up against the one of the top 4 first (Will) running a REALLY well balanced “Brobots” list with a pair of IG-88’s, B and C.  Found where this list struggles mightily, it is the 3+ Defense dice with tokens.  Had both of his ships with a pile of Stress (at least 4 each at one point), got into Range 1 with Poe and pot shotted with the other two…  Poe blanked out on a 4 Dice attack…  It went downhill from there J…    Miranda was disappointing as she died first and I think without causing a single damage in the maybe 2 turns she was alive…  HLC hitting for 4 and no Defense dice rolling for me meant no shields then the second cannon hit (Mangler IIRC) for 3 including at least one Critical…  So, 37 points of “Meh”.  Poe was a rock star with his T-70, and easily the best ship I’ve flown in quite some time…

Second game was against something Tyler ran last Month, 4 TIE Advanced.  Slight difference, the 3 with the free Accuracy Corrector (21 point ships) and a Skill 10 pilot (Juno with VI) who had the Advanced Targeting Computer…  Not bad, I at least killed 2 of his ships, but it highlighted the real deficiency of the TLT…  It has a REALLY hard time dealing with solid ships throwing 3 Defense Dice…  Miranda did almost nothing again…  The Stress Hog killed Juno more or less on its own due more to dice flukes (hot Red dice, cold Greens).  Poe was dogfighting with the remaining 3 then 2…  He was full health due to regeneration of course..

After this, not a lot, had a Bye round 3, so got to watch the other games…  Watched a 4 Y-Wing (TLT, Unhinged mech) get tabled by Poe…  Yes, the rest of the Squadron died, but Poe was unharmed at the end, highlighting the TLT weakness against agile high PS fighters…  Brobots were a thing, at least 3 sets of them.  My Stresshog was one thing that should have dealt with them, but of course, lacking the quality dice J…  There was not as much variety as I expected honestly.  Poe was on a BUNCH of tables one side or the other, the YT-1300 was still popular.  One or two Scum Firesprays, a few hordes of Z-95’s and the TIE swarm or two… 

Going forward, Poe is a keeper if I fly Rebels 6 December…  S&V is a bit more open, I suspect the KavillKK build might be fun…  Or maybe I bring back a bomber Firespray…  Ordinance is probably something to look at, but needing to do steady damage to things that can dodge well will be the key I think.  Something to think about…  But I suspect the K-Wing will not be in the Squadron in any case…

Got in an Armada game last night as well…  Played against Mike running a pretty good Rebel list with 2 Nebulon-B’s and a Corvette backed by 5 Fighter stands…  Named B-Wing, Named X-Wing and a few generics.  He used the title that allows you to fire twice if you give a Squadron command, was pretty decent, but not going toe to toe with my Assault Frigates…  I had “Gallant Haven”, Weapons Liason, Gunnery Team and X17 Turbolasers on the Flagship.  Enhanced Armaments, Gunnery Team, ECM, and Intel Officer were on the other ship.  5 Fighter stands including Dutch (Y-Wing), Wedge (X-Wing, was also in Mike’s list) and Tycho (A-Wing).  Mission was one I had, but will never use again for this list I think, “Superior Positions”…  I guess I could get it, but the AFs are more or less built to circle the area and shoot broadsides at the enemy with no real thought about trying to go fast and get behind them…  If I bring more A-Wings, perhaps, but the Gallant with a Fighter screen was pretty darn good.  Kept my own Squadrons alive a LOT longer than they should have been, guessing he would have wiped most of them by turn 3 otherwise…  Instead, it became something of a draw on that with each of us having 2 Squadrons survive the fight I think.  The Corvette got killed early coming too close to the AFs, getting into range of both and ramming with its last hull point to do damage on the way out… 

Asteroids in this game are BRUTAL…  Hit one, got the double damage card and with the ram, the ship was half dead…  But I had planned for damage control, and with Garm Bel Iblis as Admiral, had extra tokens to perform good damage control over a few turns to get out of danger…  So getting the hang of the game I think, and Wave 2 should be shipping next week we are told…  This will eat up the last of my store credit at the Gopher, but well worth it…  Got rid of ancient Magic Cards and got an entire new game that I am really enjoying…