Tarkin versus Leia Battle Report

Tarkin versus Leia Battle Report

A showdown between the two commanders who gained the most from 1.5 point changes!

I was really excited to get in a game of Armada after having not had a chance to play in a couple of weeks. I genuinely had every intention of getting one of my Venators to the table, and was leaning toward my Bail fleet (Resolutely Plo-wing Ahead). I figured I had time because it was a Thursday night, and my kiddo is in daycare on Fridays. So even if I equivocate over stuff (and I will, because the fleet, ships, and upgrades are so unfamiliar to me), it would be no big deal. But then daycare fell through when they had to close at the last minute, which meant I was going to lose an entire day of work and chores. It also meant I would need more sleep than I planned, because I need more sleep to be a good parent than I do to work or do chores.

So I kept my plans to fly against Ted, but decided to go with a fleet I thoroughly know so I don't take forever to make a decision on a night when I can't afford the time. So I decide to fly my Tarkin fleet (Ain't Tarkin 'Bout Love) for the first time in a 1.5 world. It hasn't changed *that* much with the changes in rules, but it's enough that I want to see how it works. I had a ton of points to work with in the wake of 1.5 because so much went down in cost rather than up. So I replaced the Strategic Advisor on the Kuat with Defense Liaison, replaced all of the Assault Proton Torpedoes with Assault Concussion Missiles, replaced Comms Net with Parts Resupply (so my Gozanti could use its own Tarkin token and dial; makes me a little less flexible, but it's so much better for this fleet), and stuck the Phylon Q7 Tractor Beams on the Gozanti in case I got lucky and could pin a small ship in place long enough for my Kuat or Glads to beat it up and take its lunch money.

Turns out that while I do know this fleet inside and out, it's been quite some time since I've flown it, and the tractor beams are new enough that I forgot them ALL GAME. Not sure they would've done anything for me in this particular match, but I really don't feel good about forgetting them instead of deciding not to use them. With my bid now at 6 points and Ted running a fairly full Leia fleet, I had my pick of first or second. I briefly considered going second, but he had me out-activated 6-4. If it were 5-4, I'd have absolutely been happy to take second. But at 6-4, I couldn't afford a devastating first-last from Yavaris. So I went with first. I knew I wasn't taking Superior Positions because I would basically be giving away objective tokens and getting exactly zero back for my trouble. I thought about Surprise Attack because Tarkin is well-equipped to handle that with minimal setbacks in my fleet. But I ultimately decided to go with Fleet Ambush instead because the drawbacks seemed fewer. I could still execute my standard gameplan with Fleet Ambush, I just needed to be more thoughtful about navigation.

*Spoiler alert: I wasn't.*

I ended up deciding to deploy my Gozanti and one Gladiator in the ambush zone and keep the other Glad and Kuat back. I figured that if I made bad decisions, I might be able to salvage the match with the remaining two ships (plus, I figured my Gozanti would probably be fine because I knew I'd be basically keeping him in place for a turn or two at speed zero). I decided to be aggressive in my deployment and put everything but the Gozanti at speed 3. Normally, I'm trying to delay engagement when faced with a fleet featuring heavy squadrons, but in this case, one of my Gladiator Star Destroyers was already far enough ahead and engagement was coming whether I wanted it or not. I might as well set the terms close to black dice range so I could start doing some damage. My deployment was pretty good, but my first two turns were a bit of a mess. First thing I always do is hand out engineering tokens with Tarkin so that my Gladiator Star Destroyers can dial up engineering and take full advantage of Auxiliary Shields Team in the first round. With their shields topped off at the start, they can fly into battle with a little more confidence. But I started to worry that my plan was a poor one, and so I tried to compensate by dialing up navigate commands as well as handing out navigate tokens to everybody with Tarkin.

Forgive the wonky deployment recreation: I didn't take pictures that night and just wanted to give y'all an idea of what it looked like without real scale or anything. And I had Everdell set up for solo play and didn't feel like tearing it down for one picture, so I just pushed it aside.

Predictably, this bit me in the ass. I say it every single time I play Armada: "Don't get cute, or you will get hurt." I got cute, and I got hurt. More specifically, my forward Gladiator did. My Kuat and my second Gladiator continued to charge forward, and the result was that my first turn and tokens were entirely wasted. Nobody needed to make a two speed change, so the dials would have sufficed. And now, I am getting closer to engagement, and still don't have the additional shields on my Gladiators, which is the whole ever-loving point of Auxiliary Shields Team (AST) in this fleet, right? Extra protection so they can get into close range, and maximizing the use of Tarkin tokens. Ok. Not great, but it's still ok. After all, those two shields probably won't make the difference with three Hammerheads and Jaina's Light all forming up on it. Right? Ugh.

Thankfully, Yavaris is split out wide. If I play this right, the forward Gladiator will unload for a turn, and then run. It's not the best use of the ship, but with Ted's fleet effectively lined up for the mulcher, my Kuat and second Glad can come in and kill his things one at a time instead of having to deal with them all at once. Ted's squadron positioning leaves me with an opportunity, and I end up taking it in the second round. It wasn't a good choice, because it'll end up costing me my forward Glad before it can really make a difference beyond being bait in a trap: I know I want my forward Gladiator to push Hondo and IG-88 to jump arguably his most important squadron. So it's another turn of NOT adding shields with AST just so IG-88 can do 1 damage to Luke, and Hondo can hit the lead Hammerhead for two damage. Talk about trading down. Especially because I could've simply triggered Parts Resupply when I activated the Gozanti, but I didn't. Honestly couldn't tell you what I was waiting for.

Ultimately, the first Gladiator ends up doomed, and it's because I DIDN'T STICK TO THE PLAN. I needed to be able to block one more damage, and had I used AST, I could've prevented 2. The only reason it has lasted this long under withering fire is because I made sure I was obstructed by the station, which prevented his squadrons from unloading on me in addition to styming his Hammerhead attacks. 7th Fleet Star Destroyer was big here, too. LOVE that title. Now things are about to get real interesting, because Yavaris is on approach, one of my Glass is dust, and IG-88 is dead, but Ted's gun line is now running directly into my waiting Kuat and second Glad. So it'll be tough, but I can basically erase one ship a turn with the Kuat. The questions are: how relevant can I make my second Glad, and can I get my Kuat to double-arc anyone? 

My Kuat easily deletes the leading Hammerhead on the same turn that Ted kills my Gladiator, and then vaporizes the second Hammerhead on the next turn before it has a chance to use External Racks, and now it starts taking fire from...well, everyone. Luckily, I'm just out of squadron range, so Yavaris spends another turn not actually triggering its ability. At this point, Hondo has been taking fire, but is miraculously still alive (due to average dice, my two Brace tokens, a focus on my Kuat, and obstruction from sitting on the station), which means he also pulled some fire from the Kuat. Yavaris had no choice but to enter close range, so I send Vader boarding teams in to tear off the Yavaris title. It's still a threat, no doubt, but not the death sentence it otherwise would've been. Especially as Ted did a good job of keeping me from shooting it in the side. I do big damage with my Kuat, but he can Brace it, so I was never going to one-shot it. My Kuat is wilting under fire, but overall, my defense token usage is fairly smart, and I lose my Contain and a Redirect, but end up with something like 7 total damage on my hull going into the next round. That sounds terrible, except Jaina's Light is now basically out of the fight, and his flotilla has to run. The squadrons no longer pose a threat because I go first and can outrun them.

I do have to deal with one more turn of potential bombing, and if I don't stop it, there's a good chance my Kuat explodes, and I surely lose. During the squadron phase, Hondo throws himself on the grenade: he uses his ability to move an X-Wing away from himself so he can leverage Grit to leave the other squadron behind (I think it was Norra), and plunges into the remaining squadron ball. The Kuat resolves am engineering dial and token, discarding two damage cards, blows away The Nebulon-B Formerly Known As Yavaris, throws a couple of ineffectual dice at Jaina's Light (because flak won't help at this point), and then runs for the hills at speed 3, bearing down on the flotilla. It takes two of Ted's three remaining squadron activations to kill Hondo, which means only Luke gets to shoot at the fleeing Kuat. He hits for one facedown damage, and then the flotilla runs out of squadron range. At this point, we called the game because it was unlikely anything else would die. It was possible my Glad would catch up to his flotilla and get a shot off because I was first player, but I was willing to call it good, since I needed an Accuracy to do it in anyway. The final score was 185-119, a 7-4 win for me.

I was very frustrated with how I flew my forward GSD. I ended up with the win, but a) it's not as close, and b) it's possible I'd have posed a bigger threat to Leia for the table. Looking back, I think taking Surprise Attack would've been the stronger choice for me. My Kuat would've been leading, Tarkin would've made it easy for my Glads to catch up and fly in formation, and the rest is killing as much as I can. I'm guessing he'd want to isolate my Kuat so he could pummel it first, then mop up the two Glads. So I'd set my Kuat to speed 2, my Glads to speed 2, then hand out navigate dials and tokens to start. My Tarkin tokens can clear the Raid tokens, my dials will allow my Kuat to slow down and my Glads to catch up. My Gozanti hands out the repair tokens that first round before anything else happens so I can get those side shields up earlier than later, and now I'm basically set. It's possible that I guess wrong on what the remaining two Raid tokens end up being, but as long as I can stick the landing on that first round, I should be fine for the next two rounds because I really only ever *need* the benefits of navigate dials (the extra tick is obviously huge). Any other dial I use is basically a luxury, given Tarkin's tokens, as well as the tokens from Parts Resupply.

Finally, I know the tractor beams on the Gozanti were brand new in the fleet at the start of this match. I also know that this is not a match in which they would've contributed much because all of Ted's ships were equipped with Leia. So if his focus was on hitting me and running instead of sticking around to try and take me down, 5 of out of his 6 ships have a command value of 1 and totally could've gotten away, tractor beams or not. PLUS, it's not like he was holding onto tokens with his Leia fleet. So this match wasn't necessarily a good measure of the usefulness of the card. Nonetheless, I went back into the fleet builder app after the match and messed with some different upgrade configurations.

I ended up keeping Parts Resupply instead of switching over to Munitions Resupply because it was perfectly useful throughout this match; I simply neglected to use it a turn earlier, the way I needed to in order to support my forward GSD. However, I decided to ditch the Phylon Q7s. It's totally my fault I was forgetting them, but it's one more thing to keep track of, and as I mentioned, there will be games it helps, and games in which it doesn't. I chose to equip my Gozanti with the Suppressor title instead, as it is a passive ability, can trigger more than once in a turn, has no size requirements, and increases my bid to 8 points from 6. Looking forward to flying this again! Honestly, even after all the downtime and even with all of the new things, I have learned that I still get excited about flying this Tarkin fleet, and that feels really good, since I've never had a fleet I enjoyed this much before.