Ackbar 3-ship vs Thrawn 2-ship and his Bombers
Alright, leading up to Prime season I was testing lots of variants of lists based mostly on Objective play and scoring points from them. Below is the list. The overall gameplan is to harvest points while second player or forcing you to give me first player.
Insert lists here
My usual opponent picked Hyperspace Assault because its new and we were curious how it would play. Turns out you can get a lot of points if you play it right, spoiler alert, I didn't max the scoring opportunities.
Setup
I setup the objective tokens in the corners of the map on my side and prepared to trundle along to score points. Unfortunately, after deployment 1, I completely gave up everything about how the game would unfold. I built my battle line with he placed his Quasar and squad ball in the middle and his ISD on the far side to cutoff the trundling battle line. He set Pryce for round 2 i believe.
Round 1
I increased everyone to speed 2 this round, which unfortunately would move me to far from the Purgill to score whale watching points on all but the Assault Frigate. But it was an attempt to not get cutoff by the speed 3 ISD. Obviously there was no shooting but the next couple rounds were going to be bloody. My VCX went off to drag the purgill point closer for the next purgill. The assault frigate was in range after Ezra pulled the Prugill forward at the end of the round.
Round 2
Thrawn did his thing and the ISD launched the beginning of a a squadron swarm into the MC75. Then maneuvered to be in red range of the MC75 but just out of MC80 range. My whole battle line surged forward,stayed out of medium range of the ISD, and awaited the second half of the squadron push from the quasar. Which come it did. Maarek, Jendon and Bomber friends ripped the front and side shields of the MC75 to shreds and left the MC75 primed for pain. I score 20 points from Assault Frigate not shooting but watching whales...
Round 3
Thrawn launched another wave of fighters this turn. The quasar began and had Maarek & Co continue the destruction of the MC75, leaving it with only rear shields and a several damage cards. I elect to Ackbar with my MC75 as Walex runs to the airlock to get a brace back. I put 5 red dice into the ISD which strips his right shields, then I follow up with a LTT/Ex rack filled hate flak for Maarek Steele. The point defense missiles of 1 blue, 1 black, 2 Ex racks blacks, and 2 LTT blacksresults in 3 damage, which was nice but not enough. The MC75 moves into medium range of the ISD and says a prayer.
That prayer is not answered and the remaining swarm of bombers and a medium range shot bring the MC75 down to one hull remaining. Which ultimately gets killed with ram damage but keeps the MC80's side arc with a shot. It takes the Ackbar shot and manages to crush most of the remaining shields of the ISD. Ackbar then trundles forward to block the ISD in place and keep his side arc on him. Finally my Assault Frigate moves into position to finally shoot next turn and keeps scoring points form the whales.
Round 4
Thrawn uses his final dial and the quasar activates first to soften the MC80 up. Stripping the remaining right side & front shields and putting some damage into the MC80. Ackbar then focuses all his fire on the ISD and devastates the ISD putting 5 more hull damage onto the Hull and ramming the Quasar, The ISD finally kills the MC80 with some TIE bombers, his front arc, and a final ram.
The untouched Assault Frigate now has a clean double arc shot which he takes and leaves the ISD with 3 hull remaining. He then scores some more whale watching points and moves to block the ISD next turn.
Round 5
The final round! The ISD activates and repairs a damage card and moves some shields, and then shoots into the Frigate bringing the front shields to 1 shield. It then moves but cannot escape the double arc. Next up, the vengeful Assault Frigate activates and blasts the ISD to smithereens with a double arc and slows to speed 1 with his nav token. The quasar launches his final wave of squadrons and while it batters the shields to dust, it's not enough even with his own cannons. leaving the Frigate with 5 hull before the Quasar 'disengages' and makes a run for it as it flies off the board at speed 3. The remaining unactivated squadrons ding the Assault Frigate down to 2 hull but don't manage to kill it. Then the Assault Frigate scores more whale watching points.
Ends up as 460-292 due to my whale watching and lucky tabling thanks to some super cruising. The Assault Frigate definitely wasn't going to last another turn.
Lesson Learned
You absolutely cannot be passive if you are running squadless, which this basically is. Also, this list has only 3 drops and while if someone is accommodating enough to fly into the side arcs, they're dead, no one is going to do that. I practically drove off the board in an attempt to keep a broadside pointed the enemies way.
Also, Hyperspace migration can score an insane amount of points! If you can get 3-4 ships a turn scoring on the whales. that's 60-80 points a turn starting from turn 2, 3 turns of that and as long as one of my ships is left alive, the scores essentially make it a tie at worst if not a victory.
Overall, this list needs some tweaking and a better anti-squad plan than LTT's and flak for a couple of rounds.
