Grand Moff Tarkin versus Admiral Tarkin

 Grand Moff Tarkin versus Admiral Tarkin

After a month of being unable to play Armada, it felt really good to get some plastic on the table again!

I met my friend Kyle over at Miniature Market for regular Sunday open play. I always enjoy playing against him, because he's damn creative and I always enjoy our debriefs. Inevitably, we sit down at the table when we're all done and really dig through all of the nitty-gritty details. And as I'm a big fan of debriefs, these are the conversations I live for.

So I showed up at MinMart ready to try out my Wulff Pack Yularen fleet for the first time. But as it was Labor Day weekend, we were light on players, so it was just myself and two Kyles, one of whom had to leave after getting in a match before I arrived. The Kyle who stayed said I should fly whatever I wanted against his Republic Tarkin fleet, and while I had come prepared to fly Yularen, it had been a minute since I'd flown Grand Moff Tarkin, and I decided that was what I wanted to put on the table. I've mentioned it before, but I really adore the fact that despite having first built this fleet something like two and a half years ago, I still enjoy the hell out of it. And that ain't nothing. I have made a couple of changes from the list to which I linked above. Rather than APTs on my two Gladiator Star Destroyers and my Kuat, I switched to ACMs. I also replaced the Phylon Q7s on the Gozanti with the Suppressor title.

Kyle's Tarkin fleet features two tricked out Venators and 6 generic ARCs. I know I can't win the squadron game with IG-88 and Hondo; all I can hope to do is slow those ARCs down so they don't tear up my ships too early. So I start my two Glads and Kuat at speed 3 with my Glads flanking the Kuat. All three ships are deployed in the corner of the board on my right, angled inward. I set them at speed 3 because I am hoping to screw up my opponent's dials when they anticipate that my ships will come roaring in only to find that all of my ships will drop to speed 1 in the first round. I want to delay engagement because the fewer rounds of engagement with a squadron-heavy opponent, the more likely I am to win. It's unlikely to truly upset my opponent's plans, but I can maybe get them to waste a dial or two as they have to adjust their expectations as to when our fleets will clash.

Oh don't you worry - my Kuat will arrive in its own time...

Kyle has to go first with his two ship fleet, so he had me outbid and chose to go second. I picked Jamming Barrier as the objective because it was the most attractive of the three. I know he's happy for the cover on approach, but as my ships are all brawlers, I'm happy to take advantage of that protection as well. Since Kyle's Resolute (on a Venator-II) can easily command all of his ARCs with Triumphant as a node, he splits up his ARCs into two groups of 3. I ultimately decide that's a grenade worth jumping on a turn earlier than I planned. So IG-88 hurls himself at the closest group of ARCs and starts shooting during the Squadron phase in turn 2 or 3. He's absolutely going to blow up, but I'm hopeful he can buy me time. This means Hondo will be throwing himself on that other grenade and occupying the other three ARCs. I have no illusions that Hondo can blow up the ARCs, but he can activate one of them each turn and force the other two to try and take him down through 6 hull and two Brace tokens.

I'm able to approach, and my plan is pretty simple: my Kuat and outside Gladiator will focus on Resolute (his flagship) while the inside Glad will bear down on Triumphant. Once the Kuat and outside Glad had destroyed Resolute, the outside Glad will fly off while the Kuat turns its guns on Triumphant, which will be hurting after having to kill my inside Glad. By the time his ARCs have cleared out my two aces, his Venators will be dead and his squadrons will be irrelevant. It's a sound plan, except for two mistakes on my part that screw up said plan.

The first is that each of my three ships needs to be double-arcing, and I just cut my turns too sharply. It can be a bit of a balance to strike between setting up my double arc shots as well as only exposing my front arcs to return fire so I can best leverage 7th Fleet Star Destroyer to protect my fleet on approach. But I cut too sharply and didn't give myself the double arcs I would need to end the fight quickly on my terms. The second was that I let myself get caught up on the wrong side of the Jamming Barrier for too long while I was trying to take down Triumphant. His Resolute stuck its nose across, and so I knew I could destroy it. But Triumphant was on the other side, and so while his dice could only hurt me so badly, the same was true of what I was trying to do in return. And the longer the game went on, the more likely it was that his ARCs would get free of engagement and then turn their guns on my ships. At that point, I'm in a lot of trouble.

Now, these two mistakes don't necessarily cost me the game because while my Glads are taking fire, my Kuat is primarily untouched. Resolute is focused on the outside Gladiator, and Triumphant is throwing dice from the wrong side of the Jamming Barrier. So though this engagement is dragging out longer than I'd like, even if I lose both of my Glads, once Resolute is dead, Triumphant cannot possibly go toe-to-toe with my Kuat. Except for one thing: my black dice are absolutely awful. Between my initial attacks and rerolls, I rolled about 20 black dice against those Venators, and only rolled 2 crits. ACMs only went off twice, and given the lack of double-arcs and the smaller dice pools owing to Jamming Barrier, I needed my dice to at least be average. Average dice would have been fine. But cold dice? Nope. I couldn't survive the mistakes I made with my dice not rolling out average results.

So! There's a lot of ramming that keeps everyone on whatever side of the Jamming Barrier they landed on, Resolute manages to kill the outside Glad before the Kuat blows it up, and the inside Glad dies before it lands enough of a punch to make the Kuat's job easy. Now it's my Kuat and Triumphant. But the ARCs are about to become a problem, and even after I burn down his second Venator, he'll have the rest of the round to murder my Kuat for a simultaneous table. As he's second player, he'd win in that case. So I throw everything I've got at that Venator, rerolling black hits looking for black crits, and I just can't buy 'em. In the 6th round, my Kuat activates first, fires on Triumphant, and can't finish the job. So I ram him. This keeps me on the other side of the Jamming Barrier, thus reducing his dice pool. Jumping into his side arc is possible, but I'd be eating a full SPHA-T shot and not really escaping more than maybe two of his 6 ARCs. He fires back at me, and it hurts. The one really satisfying bit here is that my Gozanti has dialed up a Concentrate Fire, so when it activates and Kyle's Venator has no shields left, my Gozanti is able to roll out the killing blow. But then we get to the squadron phase. And it takes all six of his ARCs, and it comes down to the final roll, but Kyle only needs 1 damage to kill my Kuat and he rolls two.

And that's the game! Way more of a barn burner than I expected, but mistakes were made on both sides, we both had some cold dice (my ship dice were really cold as were his squadron v squadron dice), and ultimately, almost a bit anti-climactic because it came down to who was first and who was second. I know what my mistakes were, and while some of it was me shaking off the rust, they were still pretty basic mistakes. Close ones! But basic. The debrief was excellent, as always, as we discussed different ways that Kyle could optimize offensive output from his Venators and we talked about the board state at various points in the game. It was a good time, it was good to play some Armada again after a month away, and while I wanted the game to swing the other way, I know what went wrong and it's imminently fixable. Just need to play more Armada!