Grievous versus Tarkin Battle Report

 Grievous versus Tarkin Battle Report

Technically, this is Imperial Tarkin and my batrep is from a match against Republic Tarkin, but if that's the reason you quit on this blog post, then I'm not sure how much you'd have gotten out of reading it anyway...

I finally took an opportunity to fly some of my Separatists this past Monday night during open Armada play at Game Nite (a Friendly Local Game Store here in STL)! Specifically, I decided to use my Grievous "Wolves Amongst Sheep" list (linked here). My friend Kyle really wanted to test his double Venator fleet, led by Admiral Tarkin, and I was all too happy to oblige. We'd discussed some ideas ahead of time, so this match was about exploration more than anything else. So we spent our turns debating the wisdom of some choices before making them as well as sharing our different plans for gameplay ahead of executing them. I like these sort of meta games because they really help us dig into the nitty gritty choices we might forget about if we don't discuss strategy until we debrief after the match.

So, friendly match with much disclosure means very few surprises, but still a good match and good intel on each of our creations. Kyle was messing around with the following:

Kyle's Tarkin fleet (98/382/400)

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Venator II-class Star Destroyer (100 + 63: 163)

· Admiral Tarkin (30)

· Ahsoka Tano (6)

· Flight Controllers (6)

· Flak Guns (3)

· Thermal Shields (5)

· Assault Proton Torpedoes (4)

· DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)

· Resolute (6)

Venator I-class Star Destroyer (90 + 31: 121)

· Adi Gallia (3)

· Ordnance Experts (4)

· All Fighters, Follow Me! (5)

· SPHA-T (7)

· Assault Proton Torpedoes (4)

· DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)

· Triumphant (5)

Odd Ball (23)

5 x ARC-170 Starfighter Squadron (5 x 15)

Kyle has the bid by design and so chooses to go second. Luckily, my choice out of his objectives is easy: Fighter Ambush. His squadrons have me outgunned, but I've got him slightly outnumbered, I've got the edge in speed, and I'm going first. If he deploys his ARCs forward, I'll jump them. If he doesn't, I don't have to worry about him gaining a benefit from that aspect of the objective. Since he's only got 2 Venators and HAS to deploy his squadrons last, now I will know exactly where his Venators will be, and he has to deploy them both with only the knowledge of where one of my Hardcells and two of my Hyenas will be. His ARCs have to deal me damage cards before he can score points off of me, so I was willing to take my chances with that compared to the other objectives I could choose.

I deploy my Hardcell right of center (from my perspective) on an angle toward center. He deploys his Triumphant first basically at center facing dead ahead. I proceed to drop two Hyenas, and he deploys Resolute to my left of Triumphant (so basically, Triumphant is between my Hardcell (the Battle Refit that is only sporting Slaved Turrets, as that's my least valuable ship; not on points, but with regards to value to my fleet and my plans). So a bit of a decision point for me: I have a thought to sacrifice the Hardcell and deploy everything else on the side of Resolute so I can just murder his flagship, then try and get Triumphant on the way out. But now I'm splitting up my fleet in going after the flagship. Plus, while I know Venators can have difficulty getting around because they want to do more than one thing at a time, Tarkin and Resolute will help with that. Plus plus, I know Kyle is quite good at navigating his ships into the position he wants, and so he has deployed centrally with the intent to wheel and meet wherever the rest of my fleet deploys. There will be no easy kills today. So I deployed the rest of my fleet alongside the first Hardcell, with Grievous trailing and my Providence on the outside so it can keep the Venator honest (I'm confident there's no way Triumphant can keep my Providence in its front arc, so I should be able to wheel around and harass whoever I want).

Ultimately, I think Grievous was a really bad matchup for what Kyle had put together. No matter how big the shot his Venators could take, as long as I wasn't double-arced by the closest Venator, and as long as I could keep the ARCs locked down, he could never hope to do enough damage to kill me. His dice definitely turned out to be cold aside from one good SPHA-T shot on the Providence, but I just didn't mind spending defense tokens because my squadrons being outgunned meant I could count on getting those tokens back.

The long and short of it is that his ARCs couldn't kill my squadrons fast enough to really impact the game, so my Providence and Hardcells blew up Triumphant and escaped from Resolute before it could exact revenge on my forces. His ARCs ultimately ended up fighting to something of a stalemate with my Hyenas and Belbullabs. They did get one or two shots off on my ships, but not anything meaningful (no real threat to me and no victory tokens), but otherwise, spent the game bogged down with my squadrons because of a combination of cold dice and Screen (which I'll get to in a minute, here). I ended up killing "Odd Ball" and 4 of the 5 ARCs. He tallied up all my squadrons except for either one Hyena or one Belbullab; I can't remember which squadron he couldn't finish off.

A couple of things that really stuck with me in the wake of this match:

1. Screen: I hadn't encountered Belbullabs up to this point, and I don't know that I've flown against non-unique Aethersprites, so I hadn't had to deal with Dodge before. When deployed well (or even just decently, honestly!), Screen is absolutely brutal. All but one time I used it resulted in less damage to me. I even Dodged my way out of two damage a couple of times. I valued Screen in theory, but this really proved to me just how nasty Belbullabs can be.
2. Kyle and I have discussed Venators quite a lot lately, and we've talked about how they really do need to kite and double-arc in order to be effective. We all know they're not ISDs and if we fly them like they are, they will die. But it became that much more clear to me in this match when I was able to load up in Triumphant's front arc and just unload. He was placing his Ignition token in the front arc and didn't have Gunnery Team equipped, so he took a big shot each turn at my Providence, but it was all Triumphant could do, short of ram a Hardcell. Resolute was on the other side and so could only throw two red dice at the Providence. With so few dice coming in, it was easy to weather the storm, even if those rolls had been better. I think that every turn SPHA-T is firing from the front arc of the Venator is a win for the Venator's opponent. Outside of perhaps the first one when enemy ships are still at arm's length. I think Gunnery Team on a Venator is usually a recipe for failure, given that the ship really can't throw many dice from range outside of SPHA-T. In this case, I was happy for my Providence to eat those front arc shots before skirting around to the Venator's flank without having to fear SPHA-T.
3. Grievous and sacrificial units: I wrote in my post about this list that I always run into issues with how to build a squadron contingent that includes Belbullabs (generics, but Grievous) because if I fly against a squadronless list, my squadrons are basically useless unless I've got Hyenas in my list. But I feared Hyenas are not good cover for Belbullabs. Turns out my fears were unfounded: the Hyenas provided more than enough cover. It's true that they're not as effective against enemy squadrons as Vultures or Tri-fighters. But they have one more hull with which to eat damage, and they still throw two blue dice at enemy squadrons (which I used more than once). And the threat 4 Hyenas with Bomber Command Center pose is just too much to ignore. I was all too happy to see these droids fall on grenades to bring back the Brace for Providence after I had burned it. And my Belbullabs lasted way longer than they had any right to, courtesy of Screen. Being able to use defense tokens with impunity without really stressing whether or not *now* is the right time to burn them is just awesome.

Overall, the match likely would've been closer had Kyle's dice been better. That said, I'm not sure I could've flown much better than I did. I would have preferred to have gotten Grievous' Hardcell into the battle earlier, so I probably shouldn't have sacrificed its command dials to feed tokens to the Providence via Rune Haako. But overall, everyone was in the fight, the squadron battle went better than I anticipated, and I didn't lose any ships.

I really appreciate that Grievous rewards aggression! Just remember that you do need to count on your opponent to oblige you by killing your units. I had my Hyenas attack the ARCs because I wanted them to eat Counter damage. I was accelerating their demise when it suitedy needs. But Kyle could have chosen not to Counter. I'm not sure it would have suited him to make such a choice, honestly, but I can't necessarily count on my opponent to choose to shoot my ships and squadrons when it's convenient for me. My list is obviously full, but it makes me wonder if I would be better served by finding a way to fit Ruthless Strategists in there. I don't have an easy way to make that happen, but it's a thing I might consider moving forward...