Admiral Yularen versus General Rieekan

 Admiral Yularen versus General Rieekan

I hadn't seen this guy in a long time. And my life had been better for it, honestly.

I was talking to my buddy Josh the other day about Armada and while I knew it had been awhile since I'd had the opportunity to play, I hadn't realized just how long. I checked our conversation history and saw that the last time I'd played was August 15th. Over two months! Woof. Too long. I could go several days without playing and feel as though it had been *forever.* But now it had actually literally been FOREVER. I was so glad I could finally get back to an open play! The last time I had flown was a Yularen fleet I'd considered for awhile, but hadn't flown before. So I had to review the list and sort of review exactly what I was planning on doing with it. The fleet has changed since I originally posted the idea here, so I'm including the updated list down below for reference.

Wulff Pack (123/397/400)

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Venator I-class Star Destroyer (90 + 24: 114)

· Clone Commander Wolffe (6)

· Ruthless Strategists (4)

· All Fighters, Follow Me! (5)

· Ordnance Pods (3)

· Resolute (6)

Pelta-class Medical Frigate (49 + 40: 89)

· Admiral Yularen (24)

· Clone Navigation Officer (4)

· Parts Resupply (3)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Projection Experts (6)

Pelta-class Medical Frigate (49 + 22: 71)

· Bomber Command Center (8)

· Reserve Hangar Deck (3)

· Projection Experts (6)

· TB-73 (5)

Luminara Unduli (23)

Anakin Skywalker [yrep] (19)

Axe (17)

2 x V-19 Torrent Squadron (2 x 12)

4 x BTL-B Y-wing Squadron (4 x 10)

Precision Strike

Jamming Barrier

Superior Positions

My Tarkin fleet was all about unpredictability. Tarkin and my various upgrades (Skilled First Officer, Auxiliary Shields Team, Reeva, Vader boarding team and squadron Hondo) were all useful in various capacities, but weren't necessarily predictable. Will Hondo choose to shoot or activate your bomber? Where will I regenerate my shields now that my Glads can have up to 3 shields on 3 of their 4 arcs? What upgrade will Vader rip off, when will Reeva refresh one of my defense tokens, what command tokens will Tarkin distribute to augment next turn? But with this fleet, every action I take will likely be perfectly predictable and transparent, but simply inevitable. It's the boulder rolling downhill that my opponent can't stop. Ideally, anyway. It's how I've tried to build it, but I need to get better at flying it that way.

Below is *most* of the list my friend Kyle built. I say most because I know his bid was 398, which meant I got to choose who went first. But I just can't recall which other upgrades were included. Sorry, Kyle!

Kyle's fleet (68/387/400)

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MC80 Battle Cruiser (103 + 44: 147)

· General Rieekan (34)

· XI7 Turbolasers (6)

· Endeavor (4)

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 + 14: 77)

· Ordnance Experts (4)

· External Racks (4)

· XI7 Turbolasers (6)

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63 + 14: 77)

· Ordnance Experts (4)

· External Racks (4)

· XI7 Turbolasers (6)

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)

Hera Syndulla (23)

Wedge Antilles (19)

2 x X-wing Squadron (2 x 13)

I feel good about my chances here because the last time I flew this fleet, I managed to wipe out nearly 100 points of X-Wings over a turn and a half. And those 100 points included Biggs. So I'm confident I can spring my Y-Wings fairly quickly. But I am worried that those black dice from the MC-30s will add up quickly. That said, my decision about first player is actually a decently easy one: my fleet is designed to kill one ship at a time with my Y-Wings, which means Kyle will get to use Rieekan every turn something dies. So alpha striking isn't nearly as valuable, since whatever I kill will stick around until the end of the round anyway and none of his squadrons is really a threat worth resurrecting instead of one of his ships. I don't like handing Kyle a first-last opportunity with those MC-30s, but I decide I'd rather try playing this match on my own terms and see if I can remain patient with my squadrons. I choose to go second and Kyle selects Jamming Barrier as our objective.

Time to shake off the rust!

I didn't necessarily love my deployment, but I didn't want to hem and haw over it when the truth is I should've just known better. After all, his entire fleet was deployed before I had to deploy my Venator and my flagship Pelta. So, you know, no excuses here. My plan was to keep the Pelta's just inside the jamming barrier (as indicated by the two objective tokens), thus preventing Kyle's LMC80 and outside MC-30 from crossing it and leveraging their full dice pools until I was ready to run on by. The Venator would keep the other MC-30 honest through threat of force. Either Kyle would bounce it outside, basically taking it out of the game for a round or two, or be forced to go inside where he'd either sail on through or blow up.

Kyle chose to bump up his speed on the MC30 and go inside directly at my Peltas. I made the mistake of activating All Fighters, Follow Me! at the top of round 2 in case he wandered close enough that I could toss some squadrons at him. It didn't happen, so it was a waste of a squadrons token. Plus, I'm running over some of my squadrons. Not awful, but not ideal. I'm still feeling decent about my plans, but I also know I'm not going to chase the MC30s. If they're within convenient striking distance, then great! But I also know that most of my plans hinge on what that LMC80 ends up doing. If it slow rolls toward that jamming barrier, then I can afford to let my squadrons chase the lone wolf MC30 a little bit to see if I get it because they'll have time to bounce back into position. If the big guy kicks up his speed and turns in hard, then I absolutely need to take down that flagship as quickly as possible.

You can see that round 3 is where the action starts to pick up. Since Kyle had the first-last, he dumped off a quick shot at medium range of my Venator before scooting that MC-30 right into the midst of my fleet and would go off like a bomb at the top of the third round. So Kyle unloads into my Venator and my non-flagship Pelta (TB-73) before jumping Yularen's Pelta and landing on the other side of my fleet. I knew it was coming and was pretty well-prepared for it. You can see here that Kyle's LMC80 has indeed sped up and is threatening to bound across the jamming barrier. If I chase that torpedo frigate, I'm dead. There's no way I kill it (even with my full complement of bombers) before he activates it first at the top of round 4 and rabbits. Or he lets it stick around and activates something else first, I kill it, then he resurrects it with Rieekan and it gets to unload on me anyway before dying. I know I can't be greedy here. So I take convenient shots at it, but only when I have no other choices (the port side arcs of my Peltas and the starboard arc of my Venator). Otherwise, I send a V-19 and Luminara to tie up his X-Wings for a minute while I get my other squadrons into position for the next round. Resolute has used its Squadron command dial, so it can snag the token without needing to rely on my flagship to use Clone Navigation Officer to get it. Both Peltas are ready to do some Engineering, and that's pretty key, since TB-73 got hit with a really nasty Power Failure crit, reducing its Engineering from 4 to 2. Kind of a big deal if I'm planning on either tossing shields to another ship or tanking so I can stall that LMC80.

Somewhere in these two rounds pictured above, I chose not to spend the Squadrons token from my flagship so that I'd have it to refresh Parts Resupply. This might've been the best decision I made this entire game. It only would've gotten me two more squadron activations. Which might've absolutely helped me clear out Kyle's X-Wings (as my Venator was too far to use Ordnance Pods or Ruthless Strategists to clear them out, so I had only killed one generic so far with my conservative efforts - they weren't threatening anyone except my V-19s and possibly some positioning; I wasn't in a rush to kill them so much as I was in a rush to use my Y-Wings to kill stuff), but would've left my Peltas in an even more precarious position, given that you can see I didn't fly near enough to the Jamming Barrier to block Kyle's ships from advancing across it. Ruh-roh.

Healing meant I could move shields around and keep my Peltas alive. So when Kyle began the fourth round by activating the LMC80, unloading on my flagship, and then jumping into my midst, my ships could each dink and dunk on it in addition to the Y-Wings bombing it into oblivion. Only possible because a) both of my Peltas were alive and b) he hadn't cleared out my Bomber Command Center. Over these two rounds, my Venator activated a total of 10 squadrons, thanks to Yularen's boosted squadron tokens. 9 of those were Y-Wings (one of which was Anakin) and not one of them missed the LMC80. My dice weren't outrageously good, but they were consistent. I never rerolled upon rolling a single damage with one exception: Anakin rolled 2 damage between his two dice, so I got greedy and rerolled his red die with Adept. It came up as a crit. Rather than reroll again with BCC for the double, I kept it, forcing him to spend his Contain token. Once the LMC80 was done, it wasn't worth keeping around or it would clog up where his other MC30 wanted to go.

We had to call the game here as Game Nite was closing for the evening, but we were closing in on the end of meaningful engagement anyway. I had killed his flagship and one of his X-Wings, and he had killed one of my generic V-19s twice, but I'd brought it back with Reserve Hangar Deck both times. I was confident I could get my flagship Pelta out of there, which meant his only meaningful targets were my Venator and TB-73. It's possible he'd have gotten TB-73, but I thought the Venator was very unlikely. Especially as my Y-Wings were still free to do as they wished and I was finally going to start killing his remaining X-Wings. Overall, I was happy with my fleet! I definitely made some unforced errors, such as not flying my Peltas close enough to the Jamming Barrier to force Kyle into only throwing half his dice each time and running my Peltas into one another. I probably should've had my Venator on the inside so it could have taken out enemy squadrons and run interference for the Peltas. But if I'd done that, I'm not sure I could've forced Kyle's outside MC30 to move through the battle instead of just sort of hanging around and harassing my flank. But it was a good way to come back to Armada.

If I knew how to make this meme with Yularen instead, I would. But I don't. So just...I don't know, picture his face instead of James Cromwell's, I guess...