The Clone Wars continue
Clone Wars Round 2
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| Needs more rocks and Exogorths |
Round 1 was over and I ended up on 'Table 2' which was nice, but I was sure to face someone who would clobber me. Should've taken a picutre and yelled "Hey Mom, look at me!" I know where my crazy Armada schemes usually end up and this is still one of those crazy schemes. I was paired off against Sasska for Round 2, who also had a good game previously. While this game was lower scoring than both of our previous ones, this was an intense almost cat-and-mouse and "Can we save the Titanic" (at least for me) feeling to it. It was a lot of fun and Sasska was a great opponent.
My List
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| In case you forgot or are new here, then WELCOME! |
Sasska's list
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| A Muni Star Frigate! and plain jane Vulture droids! |
My first impression of this list when I was paired against was two fold.
1) Dooku - oh boy! Here will come the actual test of Clone Nav Officers vs Raid. Are they worth it?
2) Well, my squad ball should win but if those Muni's just keep their side arcs pointed at me, this is gonna be a rough game
A surprise 3) Slicer Tools! Well, I don't have anything to counter that other than lasers
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| Wrong, it was not a welcome one. |
I was impressed with the list and Sasska flew it very well. Each ship had their role and they all did it quite well. I'm looking at you Mr. Slicer and BoB.
Setup
Again, my opponent came in at 398 but this time decided to go second. Probably because of all the objective choices. They left me sitting staring at my laptop for 5 minutes figuring out which way I was going to get hurt. I ended up picking Infested Fields and figured I could pick up some points and hopefully dodge most of the asteroids and worms. As this is my go-to Blue objective for most fleets it seems, I should've known better.
Worms got placed in the middle to deter my ships and move rocks to the appropriate locations to cause the most chaos.
Finally, Dooku grabbed a Nav command and 2 Squad tokens for future Raiding shenanigans. Bail grabbed the usual 2 Nav's and 3 Eng's. In hindsight and looking at the setup, another Nav might've been helpful though I planned on Nevoota just Repairing through the rock damage as she took it.
I had a log file in Vassal to give a detailed Bat Rep (pretty picutes, maybe a neat gif) but Vassal crashed at the start of Round 5 and didn't save said log file. So you'll have to make due with my flowery vocabulary and sparse pictures. And hold on for a long ride with occasional sharp spikes in laser fire before dying down again. OH! and lots of rocks...have I mentioned those yet.
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| Start of Round 1 |
Round 1
Round 1 happened as most round 1's do. I took repair tokens because that is the only token CNO cannot pass around. Bail arced around at Speed 3 while the other two Clam's turned into the battle.
The Separatist's danced forward and towards the far right debris field with some masterful flying preventing any overlapping.
At the end of the round Plo hopped to the far left asteroid to get 15 points and everyone else shuffled forward out of worm range. Some rocks got moved, Luminara jumped on them to get some more points, and Nevoota started to look like she was going to have a bad day. Plo was looking badly out of position but he should be able to hop in, if a bit late on turn 3.
Round 2
Dooku Raided Navigate commands this round.
Here is where the cat and mouse game began. Usually there is some late round fighter Alpha strike or some fighter positioning throughout the round with scattered volleys of red dice. I started with Bail, used CNO to give Nevoota a nav token for future Raid clearing and moved him to anchor my line and threaten the Slicer tool Hardcell next round. BoB shuffled forward after throwing some squadrons into the middle obstacles to gather points.0 Next, Implacable went, used CNO to give get the token to clear the raid and turned in with the extra click to keep her position in the middle ready to absorb all damage.
Finally Nevoota went, spent a token to clear the Raid and then slowed to speed 1 to not run over the asteroid. In hindsight this was a mistake and I think what would eventually spell her doom. I'll explain later as the game progresses where this would've made a difference, hypothetically.
Finally, the Sa Naloor went and did a couple points of damage that Implacable would absorb and then Mr. Slicer tools himself activated. This is a slick ship. With Hondo and a Vet Cap, powered with some tokens from Parts Resupply on turn 1, it can power it's slicer tools 3 times for minimal points investment (8 total) and some of those points even help out other ships! I'm am going to be stealing this and all Credit to it's creator. Anyway, it activated and swooped in at speed 3 between the two worms and sliced Nevoota into that all valuable Con Fire command. So no squadrons next turn meant that Slicer Man is probably going to escape Nevoota's wraith.
Worms chomped only on the hero Vulture Droid who collects points, since Luminara's Delta-7 looked poisonous and guess what, at the end of the rock shuffle, there were more rocks in the way of Nevoota. Who would've guessed?!
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| Middle of Round 2 (courtesy of Sasska) |
Round 3
Dooku Raids Squads (unsurprisingly)
In the ideal world Nevoota would've activated and thrown V-19s and Ani (who was wandering around mostly useless the whole game) into the Hardcell but only a Con Fire and 4 red dice wasn't going to hurt it bad enough before it ran for the hills. So instead I activated Bail again and lumbered into a double arc (side and rear) of Sa Naloor. Tide of Progress went next and shuffled forward. Implacable activated, fixed her shields, and trundled at a slight angle again, but her nose was starting to point more towards the aft of the Separatist formation and not where she needed to be to get her Boarding Troopers to the target. Going to be a classic Clam problem there.
Finally, Mr. Slicer activated, made some ineffective flak and shot away into long range of the side arc of Nevoota. Nevoota then activated, took a token shot into the fleeing Hardcell and then Con Fired into the Sa Naloor with a bunch of accuracies. Sa Naloor used her brace as an evade to counter the single hit. Nevoota used Bail's last Nav dial to re-accelerate to Speed 2 but she still landed on rocks and a worm and could no longer resolve crits.
This is where I should've just taken the rock the previous round. If I had stayed at speed 2 previously and taken the rock, Nevoota could've accelerated to speed 3 and maybe dodged landing on 2 rocks and a worm this round. It would possibly have put her in a position to block in Sa Naloor. POSSIBLY. Or run away to fight another day as she could;ve cut across the rear of the formation. This is wild speculation but when we got to this point I remember asking myself why I didn't have a nav command available to speed up. While Nevoota would've probbaly still died because Implaccable couldn't have taken any hits for her. It also would've left a Bail Nav Dial available for Implacable or someone else to hurry into range and maybe get another BT off and wipe out defense tokens and actually hurt a ship. Allowing my squads and long range red dice to finish up the work. As the fleet is designed to do. Whoops!
Sa Naloor and BoB activated put a couple shots in Nevoota (which Implacable took) and a small shot that got redirected to the side of Bail. In general, both sides Red Dice were rolling accurate but not very heavy hitting. BoB did shuffle the Vultures off the rocks and away from the worms. With the Vulture on 1 HP heading to that last debris field that had an objective token.
Finally, some worms chomped at squadrons but did no real damage to squads. And even MOAR rocks got moved into Nevoota's path.
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| Sasska when rocks got to move! |
Round 4
Nevoota wasn't in a good position but she could finally start doing Squad Commands; however, all of her opponents had sneakily stayed at medium range. Compliments to Sasska here for putting Sa Naloor into a good position when I thought for sure that I'd have her in close range and at least get to pummel something. So I activated her, used the Sqd Token gained previously to clear Raid and then used CNO to get a token to prep for next round. Plo, and 2 V-19s managed to strike into the nearest debris field to go hunting for some Vulture Droids. They managed to damage 2 but not kill any due to some bad rolls. Therefore, Plo lost his hero status. Nevoota did a damage into the Sa Naloor took a damage in return from salvo and then moved forward and took 2 crits and a worm damage. First crit was projector misaligned so I lost all 3 forward shields and then lost the ability to attack at long range. Down to 4 hull.
Slicer tools activated and ran away even more, and after he was done activating my opponent realized his mistake as this let Implacable (who didn't have any shots) activate and move into range of Nevoota. Tide of Progress activated and threw some paltry damage into Nevoota that Implacable absorbed. Bail shuffled forward and used his CNO to throw a squad token onto Nevoota. Finally, Sa Naloor threw some Vultures into the V-19 Plo ball and the single Hyena into the unshielded Nevoota. The red dice held their standard all game and rolled two blanks which sucked. The Vultures went and killed 2 V-19s but then they got resurrected as Hull 2 V-19s as far from danger as possible and Sa Naloor jumped around some debris fields. Finally, BoB activated and put a structural damage into Nevoota with the accuracy stopping the redirect. Then ran into medium range.
The worms failed to kill the RHD'd 2 hull V-19 but the wall of rocks moved into the path of Nevoota ensuring her future death on the rocks since she was sitting at 4 hull and 3 shields spread over the two side arcs. The 1 hull vulture grabbed the final Infested Field 15 point token.
Round 5
Final Dooku Squad Raid
Nevoota had to activate first or else she'd die accomplishing nothing. Bail gave her a repair dial and combined with the token cleared 2 hull damage. At this point I knew I wasn't going to get enough damage to stick to a ship to actually kill it so I did my best to harvest all the points I could. Nevoota cast aside her token to clear the Raid and used her final CNO toggle to gain a squad token and push 4 squadrons to try to clear the sky of Vultures and Hyenas. Plo, Ani, and the healthy V-19 managed to put 2 damage onto separate Vultures. I was deliberately spreading damage so my black flak could pick them up even though it was obstructed. Then Luminara rolled in and rolled a perfect (no Adept required) 4 damage onto the Hyena. Nevoota then flaked to death and used her External Racks to kill the remaining in-range Vultures. Leaving a single Vulture who had moved to cover the increasing shieldless Sa Naloor. An attempted ram of the BoB didn't quite make it and ended up eating 1 faceup, 2 damage from a debris field, and then a worm damage. The faceup prevented Nevoota from spending exhausted defense tokens. So I'd only get one use each before she died. This left a shieldless 3 hull Clam exposed to the world.
Next up was Tide of Progress, and a average roll stopped the brace and let Implacable take 2 of the three damage. Leaving Nevoota at 2 hull. Then she scooted ahead and kept circling the center of the map. Implacable advanced and continued to repair her front shields in order to help her friends.
The final nail in the coffin, Sa Naloor activated and threw three damage (after a reroll into a double) and an accuracy into Nevoota. Stopped the Salvo (even though I finally would've gotten a black die attack at close range). Nevoota finally perished amid the dense worm infested asteroid fields.
Bail and the remainder of the Separatist ships scooted around with no shooting. Finally, Vassal started it's own mini-uprising and joined the Confederacy for a short time. Many thanks to Sasska for the patience of a reboot and telling me that the worms weren't hungry (a single Chomp on Anakin) and the rocks moved in such a way that they obstructed Bail's double arc on BoB. Which was the final nail in stopping the Clones form maybe killing a ship.
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| Sneaky rocks keep moving! |
Round 6
Oh boy this was a long game, but it was fun and somehow tense for the minimal amount of shooting we exchanged. That or it could be most of the shots didn't do that much, courtesy of the red dice being red. Well, Bail had to TRY and do SOMETHING...literally anything other than be a 100+ point comms net twice this game. So he took the obstructed double arc shot at BoB and made it burn it's evade but otherwise did nothing.
So BoB did what BoB wanted to do, she ran! Implacable activated and threw Anakin into the fray to kill the one health vulture and earn his points this game. Well, Anakin succeeded and Implacable plodded along and the game was out of my hands.
Only two things of note happened here. One, Anakin was on 5 health because worms got chompy in a previous life. And two, both Muni's unloaded into little Ani and ONLY little Ani. So the Star Frigate got to roll a red and black, then 2 blacks with LTT, and add a black courtesy of a Con Fire. So 5 hits later, little Ani is at 2 health. That's fine, I've got three dice coming at Ani from the next Muni and one's a red dice it'll be fine... and it was....a red hit and a black hit with the other LTT black a blank. Anakin's spinning was working.. but here comes the red die reroll to try. What are the odds? Like 1/8. Well, Anakin probably should've tried spinning more because the double came up and blotted him from the sky.
And that was the game
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| Final Board State |
Final Result
Some bad public math later and some objective points left me trailing 156-73. A 7-4 in favor of Sasska. As I said previously, it was a great game and Sasska was a great opponent if you get the chance. My choice of MVP for the game: sneaky rock throwing worms. That being said, the other objectives would most likely have left me in an even worse state, either by points or just having little control over how the game progressed. I think the worms (and their rock shenanigans) accounted for most of the damage and mostly nullified my ability to crush his fighter screen and get to bombing. So some great objective choices in there Sasska.
I knew Nevoota was going to be in pain with those rocks and I'm generally prepared to lose her each game, she just needs to do something more than kill 3 Vulture squads as she is a fair amount of points. But these are the things I learn and get to deal with when I have no bid.
Lessons learned
3 Bail Navigates might have been a better idea as Player 1 since I will have to move to engage (on my terms) with Clams. And as discovered you can not turn well at ALL (read: how to drive straight only) without some Nav Dial clicks to help point the end with the guns at the enemy. When I'm second player, taking 3 Engineering tokens is ok, since they will have to come to me, otherwise all those black dice and BT are just wasted points and a potential gift to my opponent as the Clams get squishy on the sides.
I was hesitant about the Implacable title at first but having her sit in the middle of the fleet and just being able to absorb shots for Nevoota while she charges in pushing squadrons has worked quite well. She has saved a fair amount of critical damage as well and is good for the first couple rounds of CNO token generation. Finally, she can push some squads in a key turn if required (you just have to plan that ahead). And I haven't even begun to use the ability to keep my never-dying V-19s alive through an intense squadron Alpha. Once the next Clone War waves emerges I will definitely be trying to have a Boarding Trooper Implacable escort and provide some light fire support, a close range deterrent, and Squadron pushing.
