Tournaments

Armada Prime 2020 – Redmond, WA

The Prime in Redmond Washington was the other Prime close enough to consider driving to. Spokane was a little far for a day trip, Redmond is just a long day of driving.

I picked up fellow Vancouver Armadaites Duke and Matt starting at 7:30am and we drove 3:15 hours down the way to barely make it in time for an 11am event start time. I don’t love cutting it that close.

I pulled out the brand new Starhawk that I had opened up on the drive down and plugged it into my lovely display tray. Many ooohs and aaahhs were had. Even though Armada doesn’t have a good hobby culture, Star Wars nerds enjoy Star Wars swag.

My Fleet

Z7 Starhawk 1/torp/biggs (79/397/400)

Starhawk-class Mk.I (140 + 51: 191)
+ Kyrsta Agate (20)
+ Expert Shield Tech (5)
+ Walex Blissex (5)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
+ Unity (10)
MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 + 19: 82)
+ Lando Calrissian (4)
+ Ordnance Experts (4)
+ External Racks (3)
+ Admonition (8)
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 + 5: 23)
+ Leia Organa (3)
+ Comms Net (2)
GR-75 Medium Transports (18 + 4: 22)
+ Wedge Antilles (4)
Biggs Darklighter (19)
Jan Ors (19)
VCX-100 Freighter (15)
2 x YT-1300 (2 x 13)
Advanced Gunnery
Infested Fields
Capture the VIP

I’ve been iterating on a Starhawk list for a while, and this was the final. I’ve tried Mk. II, I’ve tried the Scout Frigate, I’ve tried a couple different squad balls, I had the tractor beams at one point, and completely different objectives.

On Friday afternoon I was agonizing over my Yellow. Days earlier I had Hyperspace Assault, because Admo is quite nice in there. But play testing against James, he easily choose it, and it lost me some deployment advantage and activations as well and I felt it wasn’t worth it. There are many good choices, but I wanted one I didn’t have to practice, thus Capture the VIP and a VCX. That was my biggest regret about the fleet, although there are many things I’m going to change for the next iteration.

Mr. McChonky!

Game 1

15 minutes after arriving, I was matched against Shmitty. Yes, the same Shmitty who is Armada-famous for writing for Steel Strategy. Yes, the same Shmitty who 10-1’d me from 4th to 8th in the Vancouver Prime. Yes, the same Shmitty who made me write this prophetic text to Duke at 6:30am:

“Can’t sleep, shmitty will eat me”

While he tabled me last we played, I had no expectations going into this game. I had practiced with this fleet, I knew my plan, I knew what I was going to do. He is an excellent player, but even excellent players have bad days.

He tabled me again.

Set up. We played my Capture the VIP, after I choose to go second.

While I made a number of mistakes in this game, none of which were good, one stands out — I dodged Admo on turn 1. I did a little Z-like forward move out, because it was getting to far ahead of Unity and I wanted them together to give multiple targets his Starhawk could get a shot on. It’s so subtle as to not necessarily be noted as a mistake, but it is why I lost this game. (although I could have lost still, with having not done this).

This ended up putting Admo to far out to keep in the front arc of his Starhawk without putting myself into a double arc, so I put Admo in his side. This seems like a fine choice, until a turn later Admo is like 3mm away from being able to double-arc black-dice his Starhawk.

In hindsight, first turn, I should have just moved straight forward and accepted that he was going to 4-Red dice Admo and taken it on the chin.

That was, I think, the game losing move. But a couple other small things:

  • While trying to get Admo away at the end, I was worried about running it off the table so I turned in a bit, which brought it to close to his Pelta and gave his Pelta a final shot to table me. That was a really stupid mistake.
  • He had been ramming my flotilla with the 50-point VIP token, and I knew what he was trying to do, but I changed my game plan to react to this to slowly. I set a Repair dial, to get a Repair token, then next turn do a Repair command to get a hull back 1 turn to slowly.

Between these two things, I think I could have brought it to a 9-2 instead of a 10-1, which would have made a notable difference to my final tournament score (see “Results”, below). The score was 400-48, because I killed 3 YT-2400s. Interestingly, no one got the VIP token, because he killed the GR which dropped the token and then he tabled me, so there was no turn 6 and he didn’t get a chance to get it! He wisely decided to kill Admo and for-go the token.

Both our Starhawks rammed 3 times. It overhangs so much we had to take mine off. His had 4 hull left at the end.

Game 2

After getting spanked down to the bottom of the bracket, I prepared myself to play against my fellow 1-pointers. My opponent was a fellow named Chase who had brought a very minimalistic fleet:

  • 3 ISD-IIs.
  • All with: Leading Shots, Proximity Mines and Gunnery Teams
  • Admiral Motti

That is a lot of hull. Apparently he got 10-1’d by an SSD that somehow managed to table him. Wow.

I choose second player and he picked Capture the VIP. I bait-deployed with my GRs and squads, as he only had 3 ships, so I put Admo and Unity in position to flank and make him bump himself. He did ok with Nav commands and managed to bring them around, but I got mostly what I wanted, which was to only take on one at a time.

I tried to flank and rear with Admo because I didn’t think it would be able to survive in his overlapping Gunnery Team front arcs, but this decision led to Admo chasing after speed 3 ISDs as second player, which ultimately left it not doing anything useful.

He tried to put proximity mines all around the VIP token, but because I had the VCX I dodged in to put it somewhere safe and picked it up and ran away with it.

I got one of his ISDs plus the VIP token and he got one of my GRs which ended with 175-24, an 8-3 for me. I felt like I needed a 10 out of both of these games to be get somewhere near 3rd or 4th or 5th pace overall, so while it was nice to win this one, the 8 left me out of any kind of position to achieve the goal I’d set out for.

That is to many large triangles.
One ISD down, 2 to…wow, it’s turn 5 and there’s just no way.

Game 3

Last game I got up to the middle of the pack. I was setting up and having social banter with my next opponent when I say something about not being much of “something” around here (I don’t remember what “something” was). I meant around this tournament, but he thought I meant the regional area of Redmond, so he responded “I’m not from around here” and I asked “Where are you from?” and he says “Abbotsford”, and I say “Andrew?”. 😛

He’s a local Vancouver-area player who I’d seen on the forums a bunch. He and I are pretty sure we’ve never met, but Duke says we have!

He’d brought 2 ISDs and an Onager Testbed, so very similar list as my last opponent, but with a longer stick. I choose second player and he picked my Infested Fields. I had learned from my previous opponent and did better with Admo, bringing it to a decent spot and allowing my opponent to shoot at it, in order for me to ExRacks+OE his first ISD. I was happy with that, but I’d managed to turn his fleet into a conga-line (no good for Imperials), so I went down the line and cleared the Onager and then the final ISD. Both the first ISD and Onager I got a lucky last shot that did exactly the right amount of damage to remove it. Efficiency!

At the end of this game I had an epiphany about getting tabled by some of the best players in the world, vs the middle of the pack players. The best players I think have a skill at bringing a sufficient “weight of fire” to a focus. In this game, Andrew was firing 10 damage Onager shots at my SH every turn, and every turn I had enough defense tokens to tank it. Other games, I’ve been chucking tokens left and right trying to stop damage from incoming!

This one finished 460-39 for me, a 10-1, and one that ultimately jumped me to the top of the list of players who had 19 tournament points (which there were a few).

Usually you go to events like this to play people who aren’t local to you, but I’m super glad I played Andrew so we could meet!

Results

There were 24 (25?) players at this event, and I came up 7th with 19 tournament points. Even though it’s a similar placing as my last event, this one felt better because it there were a lot more people playing, which means I had more competition for the spot.

I’m probably misremembering, but I think they started calling 19 points at 14th or so, and I was a little disappointed that I was going to be 13th. Then they went through 7 people who all got 19 points, and because I had such a huge MOV on game 3 I got first among the 19 point players. I got 3rd in the Rebel faction too!

This was my largest Armada event, and the largest event I’ve played in since I stopped playing Warhammer or Malifaux, so that’s pretty fun.

This was a great day of rolling dice and moving plastic space ships!

Other Fleet Stuff

I think I’m going to continue on the Starhawk train for Adepticon. That event is a month away, and while I could try a few different things, I really like the Starhawk and I think I’m pretty close to making it work for me.

Although Admo is a great ship, and has been a great ship for me, I think it doesn’t have a place in this fleet. It’s an excellent first player ship, and I’m vying for second. I got to choose first/second every time (with 397 bid!!) in this tournament, but Admo could have helped ensure I get given 2nd, but I think there are better ways for me to spend those points.

The Biggs+1300 ball was pretty effective, but as I only played 4 YT-2400s across all games all day, it’s hard to judge it. Several people who did very well with the Starhawk played with 2400s, so I think I’m going to head in that direction instead.

This lets me save points on Wedge as well. Wedge is a great Officer, but I don’t think I used him as well as I could have. I actually forgot him in my Shmitty game, which then ended up with him overlapping my 1300s which gave them way more movement than they’d have had with Wedge. 🙂

Capture the VIP was the right choice at the time, but is a lame objective that I think I can do better than. That let’s me get rid of the VCX as well.

I’ve got thoughts on some fleet changes!

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