Vassal World Cup Pod Leia / back into typing blogs

Welcome Back to Me!

It's been a hot minute (cough, like 9 months) since I've been able to have the time to sit down and write some things about Armada. Moving across continents and settling into a new job tend to do that. I've still been able to get an occasional Armada game in, either online or in-person! I just haven't had the time to sit down and write about them afterwords.

So what better way to get into it again than with the Vassal World Cup! Brought to you by the great folks over at Blissfully Ignoirant Gaming. If you're reading this you're probbaly already aware of the Vassal World cup but for those not in the know, here's a quick sum up. Think World Cup (Soccer/Football) with a POD phase similar to the group phase. You get to play everyone in your POD and the 2 players with the highest scores move on and compete in a Swiss Round tournament, just like a normal Armada tournament. From there it goes to a sudden death/elimination bracket for the top 4ish players to finally crown a winner....who will not be me. But I'll have fun playing Armada and seeing how far my clones can get. So without further ado...

My Vassal World Cup Fleet

I am in the process of typing up the long evolution of how I came to this fleet. It will be linked at this !PLACEHOLDER! when it's finally done. Turns out tweaking and adjusting a list since the Venator and Pelta came out turns into a long write-up.

Let's hope this works

Without going into the details of my slowly-being-written fleetbuilding post, the list obviously revolves around the buzzsaw of a double/arcing Bail-powered SPHAT Venator that can do 3 commands at once, if it needs it. Implacable, is cheap and meant to help soak damage off of Tranquility while providing a general zone of, “Come near me and explode”ness. The Pelta's exist to provide chip damage and damage mitigation to keep the murder machines running. The V-19 screen has been tweaked a lot over the past year. It's goal: Die as slowly as possible to give the ships the turn or 2 they need to start the murder rampage.


In my occasional test games it seems to work well enough, but the major source of damage is definitely the Ven and if it dies, well, things go poorly from there. Though that should take long enough that you don’t really have time to kill much else.

The Vassal World Cup POD

My pod, POD Leia, is full of a bunch of winners (Geek19, Duckbird, BackSeatAdmiral) who I have had the pleasure of playing at least once before. They've always been either close or a decent pummeling for me. So it'll be a fun ride through these next 3 games! And part of that fun is that we are the REPUBLIC only pod.


There are a couple of other odd things in our pod that will lend it a unique experience. Everyone has at least 4 squads and we all have 4 ships. Take that pass tokens, I won’t forget to use you!! There are also some insanely massive bids, both Geek 19 and I built to 400, Duckbird built to 399, and BackSeat to a crazy 398. And to top it all off, there are zero defensive retrofits. So accuracies are going to be sticky here, which makes the 4 pt investment in Clone Gunners worthwhile. By the time I push publish on this, I'm sure I'll have played several of these games and will be working on the BatReps of them since typing takes time, and then proofreading too, bleh! Anyway, here's my hot takes/predictions on some of my incoming Vassal World Cup POD games.

Geek 19

Insert 'Why no Leia joke' here

So Geek is bringing a very squadron focused fleet with the goal being to hop Ahsoka around and use her ability to murder opposing squads and allow some Nevoota Bee rerolling ARC-170s to go to town on ships. Or at least that's what I would do with this fleet. We are also tied, so a roll-off will determine who gets to play their objectives.

Having played against Plo a handful of times, I personally would've put something defensive (Tranquility, Thermal Clam 2, ECM Pelta even) in there to help get the Plo trigger into position and stay there. Everytime I've tried it my ships evaporate just a bit quicker than I think they should, but Geek19 is no slouch so I wouldn't be surprised if he had figured something out about Plo that I haven't.

In terms of the actual game, I fully expect my screen to die, but hopefully with full use of Axe and Implacable they can eat 2 turns of anti-squadron shots. Then I can work my SPHAT Ven into a good double arc position to clean up the Nevoota Bee before it hurts me with it's bombers. After that I expect it to be a race of me mopping up Peltas and flaking squadrons, while they slowly pick apart my Peltas or Implacable. It should be a close-ish game since I expect his fighter ball to run outside my flak range when they start getting close to popping, so it'll really be how many ships I can pop before then.

Once it happens and I write it up expect a BATREP link here.

Duckbird

This looks eerily familiar

Duckbird is bringing a Luminara fleet that has a lot of the same pieces as mine. A Tranquility Ven, a Boarding Trooper Clam I, Proj Expert Pelta, and Munitions resupply and a 'take a while to die' fighter screen. Luckily, I'm pretty sure I know what most of this fleet can do but I know Duckbird's magical ability to Nav and play the game will surely do something unexpected to me during the game.

Some minor differences between our fleets. It's a Salvo Ven-I vs my SPHAT Ven-I, but with Proj Experts, Tranquility, and Implacable nearby it will be as tanky as mine, but it's damage output should be a bit lower as long as I don't shoot it. 4 damage salvo attacks are nothing to scoff at. I like the Mercy mission Clam and C70 combo though I'm a bit hesitant with having Lumi on a Clam-I, with no guaranteed way to keep her alive and kicking against accuracies. So I expect the Boarding Troopers to be more of a deterrent rather than a blunt object like my Clam-I. Also, Tranquility should be a good bodyguard nearby that can interpose itself between the danger and Implacable. I also like the C70 mercy mission as they can put out a lot of damage at red range and then scoot out of trouble to score points.

For the gameplay experience, Duckbird will get the choice of 1st or 2nd, so if she has some good scoring objectives I'll have to pursue her. SPHAT and clone gunners should help melt the Tranquility though it will still hurt taking all those salvos. A dream world would allow my SPHAT Ven to melt the Clam-I but I expect Duckbird to keep it out of harm's way until attacking it would redirect my fire from something already on fire. Also, I expect our squadrons will kill 1 or 2 of each other and then I would expect Anakin and Ahsoka to stick around and tickle some of my ships until the end of the game, but that should be mostly left to dice rolls, though Lumi will stop me from burning out their tokens so we’ll see. It should be interesting to say the least.

Once it happens and I write it up expect a BATREP link here.

BackSeatAdmiral

Clam and Squad Pack I Power!

BackSeatAdmiral is bringing another squadron focused list so this will be yet another test of how slowly my screen can die. A pair of Clam-Is with a Pelta and Armed cruiser support along with the exact contents of a Squadron I pack. Nevoota Bee will be a pain pushing those squadrons and will probably melt my screen in a turn. The flagship Clam looks to provide a bit of long-range chip damage and probably push any remaining squads while staying out of imminent danger with Bail keeping things alive and turning a bit longer than otherwise. The Pelta and Armed cruiser appear to be there for token support and to score some mercy mission points. I think this will again come down to how long the bombers get to burn into my ships and up to this point I think every game I've played against BackSeat has had less than a 40 MOV so I expect this one to go to the wire as well.

BackSeat's squadrons are all generics, so while I want to say flak can hurt them, 7 hull ARCs and 6 hull Y-wings don't care that much about it unless I can get them in 2-3 ships worth of flak and they have nothing else worth shooting. I am curious to see how Flt Controller & Swarm-enabled Delta-7 generics pushed by Nevoota Bee do. I would expect a good thrashing of my squad ball from them, 4 blue and 1 black with 2 rerollabel dice should kick most things. I understand the points constraints but I really do think I prefer the C70 red-dice mercy mission boat if possible. Even just 1 round of 3-4 damage before you scoot out of trouble can help, though the double blue flak isn’t bad, I don't think you want Mercy Mission boat hanging around to provide any flak support.

Again for the gameplay, I’m at the whim of BackSeat's choice for 1st or 2nd. In the end though, I think it will come down to a race between his bombers hurting my ships over rounds 3-6 and whether my ships can get into range enough to lay down some actual firepower on the crucial middle turns. With my ability to mitigate damage amongst the fleet I should be able to survive long enough to push into range, but it's making it back out the other side which is always the worrying proposition.

Once it happens and I write it up expect a BATREP link here.

Conclusion

The good thing about POD Leia is that no matter what at least 2 Republic Fleets will get represented in the Swiss rounds, the bad part is that everyone in the POD is fantastic and a very experienced Armada player. I think whoever can runaway with a big score once will probably take the POD as I don't particularly see any of these games as horrible matchups and everyone (I like to think of myself as decent from time to time) is skilled enough to make the games close and go off into the Swiss rounds.


Now to start cranking out those BatReps. As always thanks for reading!