4/17/21 Casual Tournament Report

Casual Tournament Report - April 17, 2021

 This was going to be the first Armada event we had run in months and months, outside of our casual Armada Mondays, which were reinstated about a month ago. Really quickly: for those unfamiliar with the typical format for Armada tournaments, we usually play anywhere from 3-5 rounds. Casual tourneys are usually only 3 rounds; the higher level, sanctioned events are usually 4-5 (as they usually draw a larger group of players). After each round, players total up their Margin of Victory (MOV; the number of fleet and objective points they and their opponent each scored) and submit that sheet to the tournament organizer (TO). The TO then compares the various MOVs to a tournament chart, which assigns tournament points to each player based on which bracket of MOV points they fall into (players can score anywhere from 0-10 tournament points in a round). Players are then matched up by the number of tournament points they have, with the highest-scoring players on the top tables and the lowest-scoring players at the lower tables. No two players get matched up with one another more than once, and at the end of the tournament, the players are ranked by their total number of tournament points. There can obviously be ties, so tie-breakers are determined by total MOV over the course of the tournament. What does this all mean? Why not just determine things by win-loss records? Well, there simply isn't enough time to play enough matches for win-loss records to determine a winner, so a point system is necessary. But the biggest thing worth noting here is that, in tournaments, it doesn't just matter if you win or lose - the way you win or lose makes a huge difference. For instance, I went 3-2 in a big tournament several years ago (U.S. Nationals at the NOVA Open), but I was never in contention for finishing in even the top quarter. Why? Because my MOVs were so small that I was earning nearly the minimum number of tournament points for each of my wins. Meanwhile, I only went 2-1 in a smaller, Prime tournament (lead-up to Worlds), but placed 4th. How? I lost my first match, but closed the point gap to the point where even though I lost, I had gained the maximum number of tournament points I could with a loss. Then I won big in my second match, and really big in my third match. I made up ground with my tournament points and catapulted from that first round loss. So when planning for tournaments, the more experienced players are often looking to win big or lose small, because that ensures enough tournament points to remain relevant. This is really important when considering how often you trade pieces, as well as which objectives you fly or choose. Anyway!

I debated between flying 3 different lists, and ultimately, my choice would depend on who showed up. If it was only the most competitive folks who showed up, I planned on flying my Tarkin fleet (as that is my tournament fleet, but I've not been able to fly it since the 1.5 changes). If we had more new people, I was planning on flying an Obi-Wan build (specifically because I don't want people showing up for local Armada events and thinking that it's not worth their time unless they've spent a year or more fine-tuning a fleet). If it was somewhere in-between, I'd fly the Palpatine fleet I listed below. Ultimately, the folks who showed up were the more competitive ones, but I thought the Palpatine fleet would be the one most fun to fly. The list is below.

Master and Apprentice (93/400/400)

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Cymoon 1 Refit (112 + 23: 135)

· Veteran Captain (3)

· Gunnery Team (7)

· Intensify Firepower! (6)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Quasar Fire II-class Cruiser-Carrier (61 + 50: 111)

· Emperor Palpatine (35)

· Flight Controllers (6)

· Veteran Gunners (5)

· Boosted Comms (4)

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 + 7: 61)

· Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)

Darth Vader (21)

Major Rhymer (16)

4 x TIE Phantom Squadron (4 x 14)

Rift Assault

Planetary Ion Cannon

Volatile Deposits

I'm not going through the fleet to explain the whole thing, as I do that over at It's A Trap - it's the (Re)building the Emperor blog post series. Ultimately, my goal is to level enough damage (and enough threats of damage) each round that my opponent is forced to preserve their defense tokens at the cost of damage, or burn their defense tokens because they can't risk the damage piling up in a single round. I've obviously got no bid with this build, so I've got to be comfortable enough with playing my objectives to punish my opponent for going first.

Can't really talk about the Emperor without thinking of this, though.

In the first round, I was paired with my friend Chris, who was flying a Raddus fleet. Chris is an excellent player, and I know from experience that whenever I play him, there's always a chance he can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Seriously, it sort of doesn't matter how big the point gap is between us or how good it looks for me: there's a good chance he'll end up just leveling me in one good round and then I'm scraping together whatever points I can to narrow the MOV. He was coming at me with a couple of CR90s, a flotilla, and his MC30 was carrying Raddus. His LMC80 was waiting to drop out of hyperspace right on my face. Luckily, his squadron presence was very small: Shara and Tycho were all that stood between my squadrons and his ships. And make no mistake: I would need my squadrons attacking his ships to have a chance in this fight.

He chose Volatile Deposits, but without much in the way of squadrons, the main advantage I'd have from the objective would be scoring points. Knowing he was planning on closing fast, Chris chose to deploy the dust clouds for cover from my red dice while I deployed the asteroid fields so I could score off of them. That is to say that I deployed one asteroid field to the far left of the board as a head fake toward my deploying in the corner. He set up his dust clouds accordingly, for which I was grateful. Yes, I'd only be scoring on two of the asteroid fields instead of three, but I know I cannot afford to split up this fleet, and I was hoping his dust cloud cover would not be as effective as he hoped. But I also made the mistake of deploying my Quasar a little too wide out to the left, which would end up costing me.

Ultimately, I ended up slow-rolling my Quasar while my Cymoon and Arquitens jockeyed for position to cut off the MC30 before it could reach the Quasar. This was pure foolishness, as there was never any chance that I'd beat the MC30 with Chris going speed 3 or 4 and also activating first. The result was an overcommitted Arquitens that would quickly become overwhelmed and a Cymoon that would be just slightly out of position. I did score a bunch of points off of the objective, and my squadrons made short work of the two A-Wing aces. During turn 2, Palpatine called out the Scatter token. When faced with the decision to either Brace or Scatter an attack from one of my squadrons, Chris chose not to Scatter because he didn't want to burn it. He decided to Brace instead. The next attack took down the ace because I rolled the necessary damage and accuracy. Eliminating his A-Wings early was really important, and so I was pretty happy with that development. But my Quasar and Arquitens ended up in the middle of a scrum between his MC30 and LMC80. Definitely NOT where I want to be. Especially because he managed to drop his LMC80 just outside the front arc of my incoming Cymoon. And I had not killed any of his ships at this point, though I'd put some damage into his MC30. My Commander is about to die, I'm about to have no way to push my squadrons, and the walls are closing in pretty swiftly around me.

This is where I get luck that I do not deserve, but will take. My aforementioned luck will come in two forms: the first is that, after killing off my Arquitens and Quasar, my opponent decides to activate one of his other ships before his LMC80 to maximize his damage. It was a risky move, but if it works, it pays off. Unfortunately for him, it didn't work. His LMC80 had previously just maneuvered into my Cymoon's front arc, so before it could get a second activation, my Cymoon rolls, literally, perfect dice from its front and side arcs, resulting in a very dead LMC80. So the dice were my second large bit of luck, here. The LMC80 only ever got a single activation, and so my Cymoon was clear to also take down the wounded MC30. Before we could see if it could also net the rest of his fleet, or if the CR90s would kill it off, time ran out and the round was over. It really could have gone either way, but had it not been for my luck, there's no way I get out of this round with a win (especially as Chris quickly began contesting objective tokens). This is, of course, part of the game. But it was a reminder that this Palpatine fleet would have a lot of difficulty competing if it could only win via narrow MOVs. I believe I walked away from this with a 7-4 win. I'm fine with that for a first round, but need to win bigger in later rounds to really be competitive. Here's the thing you should know about me and Armada: I love the competition aspect of it. Even if there's a lull between games or releases, what really keeps me interested in the game and messing around with different builds is the notion of optimizing builds and play for competitive events. So even while winning this particular match, I've got an eye toward whether or not I could use this fleet in a higher profile event and am evaluating the fleet and its performance through that lens. This match has left me pretty iffy on that possibility, as I really only took the win in the end because Chris chose not to activate his LMC80 first to put more damage into my Cymoon and get the ship into a stronger position.

In the second round, I got paired up with my friend Lewis, who was flying a Republic list. The new Clone Wars factions are limited by the fact that each faction currently only boasts 2 ships and limited upgrade cards. So I definitely underestimated his Bail Organa fleet list when coming up to the table. Lewis is a good player and builds some really creative lists. But I absolutely underestimated his triple Acclamator list because of its difficulty in maneuvering and the fact that each ship only has 3 defense tokens (and the same ones, to boot! So whatever Palpatine calls out can affect any single one of his ships in a given round!). Lewis chose to go first, and selected Rift Assault. I'm feeling even better about this choice, because now, I can score objective points as well as get some additional dice fixing via the objective. I'm feeling pretty good walking into this matchup, and so I deploy in a way that I think protects my Quasar, but ultimately ends with my ships getting tied up with one another.

Whenever I get cute in this game, I get punished for it. I'm much better at NOT being cute when flying my Tarkin fleet because I can fly it with my eyes closed on no sleep, and because I know exactly what constitutes "cute" versus "smart" with that fleet. So what ends up happening in this match is that I've essentially handed Lewis the high ground with obstacle placement, as well as given him a nice flanking angle on my Arquitens and Quasar. In my head, the Cymoon blitzes his flank while my Quasar scoots behind it at a lower speed, throwing squadrons the whole way, and the Arquitens cuts in front of the Cymoon to circle the battle, outmaneuvering the Acclamators and throwing red dice. Spoiler alert: it doesn't go this way at all.

I quickly lose a TIE Phantom because I overestimated its safety sitting on an obstacle. The squadron game went so-so for me. My dice were absolutely awful to start: I threw four squadrons (a total of 19 blue dice and 1 black die) against Kickback, and only landed a couple of damage. That's without the use of his defense tokens. Seriously. It was awful. It actually took a shot from Rhymer to kill him; not the best use of my only bomber, I think you'll agree. My Cymoon is doing what I need it to do, but his Acclamators are moving fast enough that my Arquitens is going to get caught in overlapping fields of fire that it simply cannot withstand. And my Cymoon is just ever so slightly ahead of where it needs to be that it ends up ramming into my Arquitens. That was a death knell for the Quasar, who couldn't quite scoot behind the Cymoon and got caught on the wrong side of it. The 3 Acclamators closed faster than I was anticipating, courtesy of help from Bail, but also just really good planning by Lewis. The man knows how to fly his ships! Anyway, my Arqs and Quasar get stuck in the middle of this cluster and are clearly going down, having only thrown a couple of attacks. I am now in real trouble, as my squadrons aren't getting pushed, and I'm down to one source of fire. I've damaged two of his Acclamators (one decently, the other barely), and that's not going to be enough. But the dice swing my way again: I end up killing not one, but two of his Acclamators. The first is Nevoota Bee (I had concentrated fire on that one because it was pushing his deadly squadrons), and the second is, incidentally, his flag ship. You know, the ship carrying Bail? His third Acclamator is in great position to flank and annihilate my Cymoon because he's first player.

Except with Bail dead, he actually can't turn as hard as he wants to, and he's tearing along at speed 3 as he's trying to take my flank. He wipes out my Quasar easily, but then gets stuck on an angle at my edge of the board. He is unable to slow down or change direction with Bail dead, and ends up flying off the board. That's his last ship, so I get the table for the win. I'll be honest: this is not at all how I like to win, because it feels cheap. It feels cheap because it is cheap. Again, Lewis played the odds here that Bail would survive for one more turn so that his last Acclamator could turn in hard on my Cymoon, wipe it out, and earn him the table. And honestly, at least 8.5 out of 10 times (a total guess on my part, but definitely good odds for him), my Cymoon does not roll what it needs to take out his flag ship. But much like it did against Chris' LMC80, my Cymoon comes through, finishes the job, and is able to unexpectedly fly off into the sunset. Rift Assault helped me gain a couple of points as well as some dice fixing. But honestly, most of the time I used Rift Assault, I was either making a lateral move or actually giving up a point of damage just so I could score the token. I'm not sure it was the right move, but the ten point tokens add up. And I never sacrificed a damage if it was the difference between a kill or not. Because I got the table, it ended up being an 8-3 win for me.

The final round was cut incredibly short, so it's honestly hard to write much about it. The store was closing, it was time to wrap up, and we were basically just playing for promo cards. Besides that, it was a casual tournament, so we figured we'd just move along. My deployment was better in this match against an Obi-Wan Kenobi fleet, and I chose to over-extend just so I could try and score some Superior Positions tokens to win in the...I want to say second round? Very little died; just several squadrons. So I ended up with a 5-6 loss, but can't give it much thought. I swung for victory tokens, didn't get them, and so lost by something like 20 points. Again, had the match gone on, I was pretty confident in my ability to make it a match worth flying.

I ended up finishing the tournament in second of five, which is obviously fine. But felt unsatisfying mainly because, ultimately, my wins felt very fluky. And amusingly enough, they didn't feel fluky because of my red dice, as one might expect. I mean, my dice definitely went off at the right time to kill what needed to be killed. However, some of my other dice were pretty cold, so overall, I think I rolled the average. No, the reason the wins felt fluky was because in the first round, Chris made a decision we both thought was kind of greedy, and it cost him the game when I unexpectedly killed his LMC80. The majority of the time, I think either that gamble pays off for him, or he just activates the LMC80 first. Either of those things happen, and my Cymoon is dead, and I'm tabled for a big loss. In the second round, I happened to get Lewis' flagship and atomize Bail before he could hand out the navigation dial his final Acclamator needed to not only survive, but kill my Cymoon for the table and the win. This was also some calculated gambling by Lewis, and the majority of the time, his gamble pays dividends. And over and over, I have tried flying this fleet and enjoy it overall! But it too often feels as though I'm balanced right on the edge of a knife, and don't necessarily deserve the 7-4 or 8-3 wins I get. Additionally, I've never scored above an 8-3 with this fleet, and most of the play-testing has not been in competitive circumstances.

So ultimately, this event really caused me to decide I was giving up on the fleet. I had experimented pretty thoroughly with my ideas about Palpatine, but ultimately, if the fleet isn't going anywhere competitive, then it's real hard for me to remain invested in it. So that's it! The experiment has come to an end!

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But you know...despite my issues with the fleet, there is just one more thing I want to try. I've actually shared that new Palpatine fleet here. I don't know when I'll get to test it, and I don't know that it's worthwhile. But I'll give Palpatine one more swing. After all, what else am I doing?