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This was the first constructed tournament at my LGS since Legacy. I figured we’d have a good turnout and we ended up with 16 which is pretty good. While trying to guess what would be the new “hot” idea everyone would want to try out, I guessed that I would see a lot of super-stealth and Vong (Vong even more so as I had won the past 4 or so 100 point tournaments using Luke and Yoda and the target on my back had grown rather big). So, figuring that Vong and stealth would be the squad du jour, and me wanting to try something completely out of left field, I went with what I thought would be a great counter: Kel Dor Super-stealth:
My Squad:
Moff Nyna Calixte 18
Kel Dor Bounty Hunter x6 78
Ugnaught Demolitionist 3
Map: Deathstar
Total: 99
Simple yet elegant, and far more dangerous than it looks. Against nom-bombs, my bombs are bigger, and against everyone else, the +12 attack (+16 vs. uniques) is insane on a 13 point piece. Using Calixte for the superstealth also gave the Kel Dors +10 damage vs. stealth which would also help against opposing super-stealth. Originally I had thought of putting Jabba and Mas in there for the cunning but decided to throw in two more Kel Dor instead. 1 rare and 7 commons, and I hadn’t even play tested it. I admit it was kind of a risk with all the It’s a Trap! and Disruptive out there now, but I figured it was anybody’s tournament anyways and thought I had a great chance against mirror matches. As it turned out, it was a more intuitive choice than I could have hoped.
First Opponent: Nom Bombs with a whole bunch of Advance Scouts
Pretty good player. Interestingly enough, though he said he had made a squad to defeat a Loda squad, he didn’t use a YV JH, as he said he’d rather have the cheap bombs than the big damage. Not my choice, but it didn’t matter as I wasn’t dumb enough to try to pull off Loda today (I would have gotten eaten alive). With both of us with bombs, this was going to be a long game of careful positioning and pieces going boom.
Death Star map, he took the hanger bay. We both made our way to the gambit area to sit in cover and collect points. After the first turn we basically had everybody next to everybody, but he had pushed some of his rear pieces out a little further than he should of, so that I could get line of sight on a few of his pieces out of cover. Nyna Calixte’s recon was working wonders and I could usually avoid the thud bugs (but not the booms) by killing his scouts first. On the first major combat of the game I got a few shots off by taking AoOs and getting line of sight on his unprotected units, hitting for 20. He saw his mistake and did his best to keep coming at me one on one to make every Vong bomb count. Unfortunately for him, it took two scouts to blow up a Kel Dor, so even though every Kel Dor had a little Vong buddy next to him, he used up a lot of resources taking each one out. After about 45 minutes of very careful positioning pretty much the whole battlefield had gone up in smoke and all we were left with was his Nom Anor vs. two of my Kel Dors and Calixte. Of course, I was hitting him easily at +16 for 20 damage and soon enough he was down to 40 hp. Because our game was really long, everybody was gathered around to watch the end of the heavy weight match. With Nom surrounded by my Kel Dors and with so little life left, my opponent realized he was dead either way. So he decided to go down in a blaze of glory, Playerin Bol-ing a Kel Dor and taking them both out. The explosion left me with two pieces to his none. 1-0 with a good opponent out of the way.
Second Opponent: Vong Jedi Hunter with shaper, Yomin, Officer, and scouts
Surprise, surprise, Vong again. However, this kid didn’t have Nom Anor, so no bombs and more more importantly, no super-stealth. Awesome. But he had a YV JH instead and I knew I had to be careful in not losing too many Kel Dors taking him out. I won map and side and took the right again. Since he didn’t have super-stealth I could shoot at some of his Vong, but he was making all his Crab Armor Saves (even the saves of 16 on the warriors). Early on he made a mistake of clumping a mass of Vong together. I ran a Kel Dor up to base about 5 of them and he had to move them away one at a time taking the AoOs before he could kill me. Long story short, he ended up losing about 4 Vong from that Kel Dor alone, between the AoOs and the inevitable explosion. With half his squad gone he did his best with the JH, but inevitably the 40 damage bombs were too much for him to overcome and I won with three Kel Dors still standing. 2-0.
Third Opponent: Elite Rebel Commandos with Strike Leader, Leia Hoth Commander, Dodonna, Lando DS.
Another good player with super-stealth, only this squad used the Elite Rebel Commandos with the Strike Leader. Had Leia, Hoth Commander to bring them back and Dodonna for activation control. All in all, a really troublesome squad if he won map, which of course he did, and we played on Cloud City with him taking the inside. I only had one ugnaught to blow doors open, and odds were he wasn’t going to last long enough to blow more than one. I had to make sure the one door I blew open was a good one.
When the game started he did the predictable in activating only 1 guy at a time to get me to activate out. I put my ugnaught in a safe place to get ready to blow the door up to the main gambit room. He couldn’t get to me and the next turn, I blew the crucial door allowing my Kel Dors inside. Of course he killed my ugnaught immediately, but he had done his job. Now that I was inside the gambit area, with plenty of cover to hide in, I set my Kel Dors up at two square intervals in cover to gain gambit points. To stop me, he would have to come into the room and attack me which he did not want to do. Obviously, I just stayed put. He spent the time locking doors shut so I couldn’t get to him either and trying to decide what to do. Does he sacrifice a piece to get me out of gambit, hoping Leia would save his piece, or does he just stay put?
Well after half an hour of neither of us doing much and trying to coax the other person into the open, my opponent made his decision. He decided to go after the heart of my team, Calixte, hiding in the room off the landing pad. As soon as he rushed some figures over in her direction, I sent a few Kel Dors to meet him. I based him and gave him the decision to either move away and take the AoOs, or kill my guys and take 40 damage. He decided to blow me up, and his Strike Leader and his Lando, DS both took 40. Then all it took was a +16 shot at Lando and a failed evade save to kill him off. Now I had a big point lead and he was no closer to killing Calixte. With me at a TON of gambit points, he decided his only chance was to use the Elites to kill my Kel Dors, and hope Leia’s commander effect brought them back to life. But by that point it didn’t matter as, after 11 rounds, I had 50 gambit points when I killed his Strike Leader and Leia didn’t save him. He had 44 points of characters left and I won on points with 2 minutes left. It was a crazy game. Never have I had that many gambit points in a game or have a 100 point game go that long. It was a difficult game for both of us, but I was now 3-0 and heading into the last game.
Fourth Opponent: Nom Bombs with ooglithed YV JH and cheap stealth filler.
You’ve got to be kidding me: Nom Bombs again. For the third time today I’m facing Vong, and for the third time I’m facing super-stealth. I guess it was inevitable that the battle of the 3-0s was going to be super-stealth vs. super-stealth (all the Vong players ripped up the Jedi players and saved me the trouble it seems). Turns out I chose the correct squad today. In fact, of the three people (out of 16) playing Vong, I played them all. That was actually quite fortuitous for me. However, despite the relative ease of the previous battles, this would turn out to be my closest game.
He won map and side on the hardback, which essentially hurt me from the get-go and gave him a much better chance. I had very little cover to hide in and couldn’t get into gambit right away. Lucky for me, since he set up first, I got to set up in a way to pick off his ugnaught on the first shot of the game. Small gains reap big benefits. I moved everyone into position as best as I could and waited for him to come to me.
Of course he did, but not with who I thought. He sent in his smaller bombs (grans, chadra fans) to attack me first, sacrificing low-cost pieces to take out a Kel Dor. When his Jedi Hunter rushed forward and took out a second one with little consequence, I was a little worried. One by one he made the most of his bombs, taking out Kel Dors with horrifying efficiency and forcing me to keep moving my guys around. The only good news was that I could routinely hit the JH since Nom had given him stealth (Calixte’s damage bonus at work).
Finally, with both of us close in gambit points, I finished off his Jedi Hunter leaving him with only Nom Anor against two Kel Dors and Calixte, almost a carbon copy of the first game’s final. I knew I had to survive for a few more rounds to win on gambit, but he wasn’t going to let me win that way. He attacked my Kel Dor in gambit, but in doing so took himself out of cover. That allowed me to shoot him with everybody I had, hitting and reducing him to 20 hp. He knew it was all over at that point and the subsequent killing of my Kel Dor blew him up for good. 4-0 and the tournament. Wow, that ended up much longer to write up than I thought...
Anyways, this one I have to chalk up to squad selection. Though I feel it would still do well against most squads, I was lucky to face all super-stealth, and even more lucky to not go up against Disruptive or It’s a Trap (which you guys know is in the new set in spades). People were running some of the new Jedi, but luckily all the Vong opponents I faced took care of them for me. All in all I like the little prune heads a lot, they bring a lot to the table for their 13 points. You can pump them up even more at the higher point formats, thought I’m not sure if I’ll try to pull them off again as I kind of tipped my hand. But in many situations they will be very tough to deal with and I expect to see a lot more of them in the future. Hope you guys find some good uses for them too.
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Good job!
