First off, I want to thank everyone who assisted me in making this happen for me!
Bill and Matt
Bryan Hole
Eric
Needless to say, without these 4 I was not even coming up to 24 hours out, so I had very little time to come up with and practice a squad. I went with:
Mira Cannon
Mira
Dash Rendar, RS
Bastila Shan JM
OR Senator x2
Gha
Mouse x5
R7 x2
Map: Theed Palace
First Round I faced Mike Giles and his Mando Squad of Jaina and a bunch of cloaked figures. I reinforced with Rodian Trader and 5 more mice. He won map and chose Jabba's Palace I took Right side to eliminate as much green/red as a I could. I jumped out to an early lead killing something small (R7?) and kept his twin disrupted. He went bold in the next round and GMA'd Jaina to Mira to at least put 60 on her, but he crit. From that point on I was playing for a 2 point win on either side. Dash was able to finish Jaina off to put me back in the lead but only with 10 hps. I then spent the rounds positioning Bastila and using my mice to heal Dash, until I could kill some more pieces. We played 7 or so rounds, and I don't remember the final score but I'm guessing he had 92 (Mira plus 7 rounds of Gambit) and I had about 117 (& rounds gambit plus various Gunsmiths and Scouts).
Second Round was against Ben who eventually made top 4. He played Revan SL, Exar Kun, Bandon and 5 mice 4 uggies. I wasn't expecting to outactivate anyone this badly so I borrowed a Lando from Les and added another mouse. He won map which was Cloud City, I chose left. and set up mainly in the far room in the middle.
First round he had me go first so I spent a FP to move Mira 14 onto the 4 squares of cover that allowed me to draw LOS to his starting area. He moved the mouse away and then moved Revan to the door swapping in a ugo for Exar to Transfer into. I moved a mouse 12 and spun a Diplomat so I could shoot the ugo out from under him. I think that left him mispositioned because the game kind of stalled for a few rounds after that while we both collected Gambit in the second round. He just didn't play this squad aggressively enough against me IMO so I was able to slowly pick off pieces by throwing myself outside of the building and nabbing Bandon and putting some on Revan before Mira died. Dash and Lando finished off Revan which gave me a significant enough lead that by the final round(8 or 9)even though he had killed all of my damage dealers I still had a points lead.
Third round was against Bill and his gunsmiths/scout death shot. I brought in a the rodian trader and 5 mice again. He won map which was Royal City and I chose right. I figured I was pretty much screwed at this point as I have never beaten Bill in
casual play and typically in tournaments I am in the other bracket
. I first few rounds were entirely positioning and me dishing out grenades to my mice. Outactivating him I was able to match a lot of his overrides which kept his cunning out of play and his Scouts were missing a lot of shots even when they did get opportunist. I was able to use Mira's Accurate to shoot whom I could and at least get splash damage on his scouts , which he failed a lot of. I did lose Mira but Bill saw that I had the game and sped up the pace to give me the three point win.
4th round was against Jason and I won map. He deferred and I took right spreading out my pieces (but not my damage dealers, which was my mistake). For the first few rounds I was skirting a fine line between not engaging and stalling. If I had put either Dash or Mira up on the top part of the map I think I could have more easily engaged him, where I was he had too many places to stay out of LOS. As is there was no beating this squad, so in Round 4 I finally just moved using the force and a Senator to take out a Lancer while I lost everything else. The game "continued" a few more rounds while I brought Bastial up for him to kill. There was one point where as my final activation I spun Bastila and used ABM (fearing I'd lose init). However I won and could have used her in the first round, thus still having it in that crucial 4th round. Even if I had lost he still would have had me go first, so big mistake on my part when I already had an uphill climb.
So the two point wins in the early rounds were enough to knock me out by 1 point and I took 5th, but walked away with enough pieces to do my own "Power Ranger" custom.