First tourney of March!
Played a quick 150 pointer yesterday at YottaQuest. We only had 6 people show up.
I decided to run something a little less traditional, but use a few pieces I hadn't really touched yet.
Panaka
JWM x2
Roron Corrob
Jolee Bindo
Mas
R2-Astromech
Gran x2
Ugo
I'd never played Roron before, but I like his stats, and Jolee and Panaka I've only used once or twice. Jolee actually made Roron quite survivable (and the JWMs too for that matter). I chose the Train Station as my map for the tourney.
First match, I'm up against Jedispyder, and he's playing Billiv15's 'Rainmaker' squad, but with an EVO Trooper and a Gran instead of the Human BG and the 2 Ugos. We play on his map, the Jedi Praxeum. First round or two is a lot of positioning and jockeying. He moves Nyna a bit too far forward along the top of the map, and since we have similar activations, late in the 2nd round I two a JWM, and then Assault Nyna for the kill. Then with my last phase of the round, I swap the JWM for a Gran, who has cover and can't be shot by anyone at this point. So, that gave me a cushion of a lead. The next round, I found a LOS for Panaka to pick off the Czerka late in the round, but this sort of left some of my pieces exposed, so I used a JWM as a shield. With cover, they were a 25 Defense because of Jolee's Valor CE, so I didn't take much damage at the beginning of the next round. So, I towed up that JWM, and assaulted the unactivated Storm Commando, and wouldn't you know it...missed one of my attacks. So, that left that JWM stranded and wide open, and he died quickly. Luckily, time was winding down, and I managed to pick off his Gran Raider and deny him gambit in the final round, and then I ran Jolee up 12 squares, then swapped in Roron to do Repulse and kill the EVO Trooper, securing my point lead. Lobo 1-0
Second round I face Erik. He's been playing for maybe about a year, but it's been several months since I faced him, and man has he improved. His squad was uniquely set up to be a real pain for mine. He had Jabba CL, Mon Mothma, Cmdr Gree, Lobot, 4 KDBHs, an Ewok Warrior, and then brought the MTB and 4 Ugos for reinforcements. So, against my melee squad...Ouch time. We played on the Train Station map, and we quickly converged on the middle of the map. He used his Lobot in the second round to open a door and take some pot shots at me. Even with Jolee's boost I had a hard time avoiding the damage from his Cunning shots. Luckily, he gave me a minor opening and I took it. I Tow Cabled a JWM up to set up for a swap, and clear an Ugo that was in one of the train cars. This let me get a shot on his Lobot with Panaka, and I took him out with Opportunist. Then I swapped in Roron and used Repulse, putting 3 of his KDBH's adjacent to each other, and keeping him from using the MTB to auto-destroy one of those the following round. At this point, he had 1 KDBH at 20 HP, and two at only 10 left. This allowed me to save R2 as well. The following round, R2 overrode a door open, allowing Roron to rush through and kill the MTB, which was a big key. Panaka helped pick off two of the KDBH's over the next two rounds, I continued swapping to try and keep my HP up on the Jedi. In the final round, I managed to lock a door with R2, which cut off Jabba and Mothma's CEs from reaching the last two KDBHs. So, I killed them, just eating the SD40 damage, and winning the game. Lobo 2-0
Final game of the tourney was against Mike, Wingscribe. He was running GOWK, Queen Amidala, 5 Star Corp Troopers, and some Ugos. This game...well, it just wasn't pretty. We played on Train Station, and both advanced in the first round through our respective train cars. He opened up the 2nd round with a shot at one of my Jedi, but the 25 in cover, even with his 13 attack, he just couldn't hit it. And at this point, he had basically set me up for the perfect attack. I towed a JWM up the center, then moved 6 and used Sweep to hit 4 of his SCTs, and every attack hit, not that I really needed them to. He answered back by putting 60 damage on that JWM (failed Deflect), but it really didn't matter. The way he was set up, I swapped in Roron, used Repulse, and killed all 5 SCTs, leaving only Amidala, GOWK, and his 2-3 Ugos to face my entire squad. At that point Mike conceded. Lobo 3-0.
Overall, I REALLY liked how this squad played. I've always been a big fan of the more melee centered squads for some reason, so this was SO much fun for me. I hadn't realized how strong the Panaka swap could be, honestly. I've played Thrawn swap a ton of times, and I really enjoy the Storm Commando squads in particular. So, playing Panaka with melee had to be run completely different. That kind of threw me off in the second game, and I really kind of felt bad about it at the time. We finished the game in about 40 minutes, but there were at least 2-3 times where I took a good minute or more counting and re-counting things, or trying to figure out how to kill Erik's KDBH's without getting myself annihilated in the process. 40 damage from Self Destruct and then another 20-30 from the death shot was just not easy to deal with. Luckily he only got 1 Death Shot from a KDBH before I was able to kill the MTB. So, I still need to brush up with using Panaka a bit, but I definitely have a lot more interest in what the Republic swap squads are capable of now, and I like the fact that I didn't depend on Rex or Yobuck.
