Well, last night was our first chance to play constructed matches with the new pieces.

I decided to try out the 'Swiss Army Knife' squad that TheJumpingFlea posted last week. I'd played the 100 point version, and the 150 point version with Boba Mercenary previously, and had already identified the Noghri Commando as a good addition to that type of squad when Flea posted his build. It was pretty much right on what I had been thinking towards, I just hadn't finalized the fodder activations in the squad yet.

Anyways, I chose Rancor pit for my map of the night.

There was quite a bit of the new stuff running around for the night. Two different Vong heavy squads, one with 4 YV Jedi Hunters. Two squads had Han GH. There was a squad with Kyle JBM and Boba Mercenary Commander (new player, has very few pieces, so we let him combine them, as he didn't have any other Mandos anyways). And then there was my first opponent...

Round #1: Against Kyle, playing a Trooper swarm, on his map, Death Star. And I mean a swarm. He had Ozzel, Vader IC, 3 Ugos, Hologram Veers, and 12 Stormtroopers. I went "Oh crap" when I first saw it. I knew Veers would wipe away my super stealth, so it was going to be an interesting game. First couple rounds were mostly positioning. End of the 2nd round I started popping out with the SCs and with all my various commanders to start picking off as many of the Troopers as I could. It was basically a game of attrition. Luckily for me, Kyle didn't know how to run Holo Veers as well as I thought he might, so I had to explain the abilities to him a couple times. He got the hang of it quickly, but in the end, still only got to use Fire Mission Support once or twice. By Round 5 I had him down to only a couple of Stormies left. One round I managed to activate 1 piece using Tarkin's CE long enough to force him to burn Veer's CE, and then I killed the Trooper, so that was fun. In the end, he had to move Vader up, but without Deflect (thank you, Thrawn) he dropped pretty quickly. Lobo w/ SAK 1-0

Round 2: Against Josh, playing what ended up being my toughest game. He had 4 YV Jedi Hunters, a Shaper, an Advance Agent Officer, Lobot, Lando DS, and some Ugos. Luckily, I won map and side on Rancor Pit, and set my Storm Commandos up with crossing lanes of fire down the bottleneck. The real kicker in the game was at the beginning of round 3, I managed to use Wall Climber with a Raxus Prime Trooper to jump past two Jedi Hunters and an Ugo, and base his Shaper. A quick swap and, BAM, dead shaper. From there it was a game of how many times could my SCs hit the JHs. He only failed 2 Crab Armor saves the whole game, but both times, it was on saves that would've left the JH with 10 HP left. So, the SAK proved it can take down the YVJHs without too much trouble. It was a bit nerve racking, but ended up just fine. Lobo 2-0

Round 3: Against Joshua, and again on Rancor pit, but this time he got the pit side. Didn't matter to me though. He was playing Nom Anor, a Shaper (ooglith), Yomin Carr, Advance Agent Officer, a YV Jedi Hunter, a couple Elite Warriors, and a few Advance Scouts. The super stealth made it tricky, but I just made a point of wiping out the Elites first. Late in the game I swapped the Noghri to wipe out the YVJH, and then next round swapped a SC into place to finish off the AAOfficer and one of the Adv. Scouts. From there it was pretty much done, as he only managed to kill one Raxus Trooper and my Gran by that point. Lobo 3-0

That was all the regular DCI games we played for the night, as several people had to leave, but I stuck around to play another quick game against my buddy James. He was running Han GH, Boba BH, Dodonna, Lobot (Wicket, 4 Ugos). I also lost map and side roll (Death Star, I started in the Hanger). Having super stealth was fun as I guaranteed I got gambit on the first round using one of the Storm Commandos. But that was about where my luck ran out. I lost every single key initiative...Han GH's NTMTO is a PITA, lol. And I wasn't even trying to swap near Han until the very end of the game either, so Disruptive didn't bother me at all. The first critical init that I lost, he flew Boba up far enough to get a clear LOS on Nyna and killed her. This meant Boba was able to stay up in my face, while Han sat back and shot at everything else. Now, Boba was stuck there, and I'm thinking, well that's fine, you sacrifice Boba to kill my Nyna? OK. Nope, I not only couldn't hit Boba much (20 total damage from all pieces that round) but he won the next init as well, Boba killed a Storm Commando and proceeded to retreat. I finally did kill Boba, and later on I swapped my Noghri close enough to run up and hit Han once. Of course, I then lost initiative AGAIN, and Han killed the Noghri. So....3 or 4 different times in the game if I'd won init, it would've gone VERY differently.

So it was close, but not having Thrawn's MT made it near impossible to perform up to par with this squad. I'm almost wondering if it would be better to work in an Opportunist attacker for late round swap damage, or in cases like this where you're up against NTMTO. That way you can get big damage either at the beginning or the end of a round.

Cool. I haven't seen Flea's new SAK squad, so I should check it out. Good report lobo.

For reference, this is Flea's SAK build here that I ran. But I used 3 Raxus Prime troopers instead of regular Stormtroopers.

I personally think that for a build like this, the Wall Climber and 1 higher Attack makes a very nice difference. I did quite a bit of scrub killing with the RPTs.

Nice report Lobo. Good to hear that squad performed for you.

Yep, Han GH is a real pain. Disruptive and evade alone make him tough to kill while you are using the commandos. Against him I'd just focus on taking out his support and controlling gambit, but that is easier said then done.

I think that this squad is quite good at taking out Vong due to the high damage the commandos can induce in single shots. That coupled with initiative control really makes the VJH's fall quickly.

Well, I was trying to do just that. Except that in this case, Han's 'support' was Boba BH, and an uncanny ability to win key initiatives. Still ended up being a somewhat close game. I'd like to play-test against it some more. I need to be more careful next time, and keep Nyna better hidden. Winning the other side of the map certainly would have helped with that.