Yes, as Homer said, I had GREAT pulls in Kyp and Thrawn. I also pulled a mouse droid so I could get a mini swap. The rest of the squad was a Sandtrooper Officer (fantastic piece in this format) a sandtrooper, bespin guard, and an ewok, all mostly for activations. Obvious tactic would be to out-activate, swap in Kyp, and quad opportunist. So yes, I really couldn't have hoped for more in a sealed. I decided to use the Rancor Pit.
First game was against a kid with a lot of activations, mostly because his rares were Jerjerrod and Logray (ouch) and he had plenty of points left for filler. The one thing going for him was that he had a lot of stealth characters (I didn't pull any accurate shot) and had me out-activated. It didn't really matter that much however. I was on the left, and on round 1 I had swapped into gambit, and on round 2 Kyp had run up to kill two pieces, before being swapped away. When my opponent saw the tactic and realized he would never get to damage Kyp, he turned the corner and more or less ran right at me in a desperation move. The massacre was over by round 4. 1-0.
Second match was against Adam who had Arica and Leia, and again, lots of stealth. We were on the Rancor Pit again, and again I was on the left. Adam did a great job of keeping his figures in cover, and there wasn't much I could do other than set up for the swap. On the second turn I was able to position my mouse droid 7 away from Leia while staying out of LoS. He couldn't get a shot without exposing a piece. Then I ran up my ewok, based BOTH Leia and Mara, and decided to kill Leia first. I rolled terribly, missing two of the attacks and leaving her alive. He put a little bit of damage on Kyp in response, but with the auto-initiative win Kyp was able to quad at the beginning of the next round, killing Leia for good and putting 40 on Mara. He tried to do some damage to Kyp to little or no effect, and when I swapped Kyp out for the Sandtrooper Officer, Mara died soon after. All that was left was clean up duty, and once again, the game was over by the 4th round. 2-0.
3rd round was against one of the Vaders. Because we were only playing 100 points, he didn't have much else, and with only 3 activations, I had him severely out-activated. Still, with the reflect and the Djem-so, I was a little weary. Kyp would have to be money on his rolls. Once again, we were on the Rancor Pit, and again, I was on the left. My opponent did a great job of staying hidden, gaining force points. I was able to pick off one of his other activations early. Finally, when Vader showed himself, I swapped in to quad him, hitting on 2 of the 4 attacks and doing 60 damage. Vader made both Djem-so saves and hit back for 40. Somewhere in there I managed a 20 damage shot on Vader where he missed both the reflect and the dark armor. On the next round, the kid taunted that Kyp was about to get tripled and killed. I smiled, auto-won initiative, and then activated Thrawn to swap Kyp with my ewok sitting two squares further back. He just told me that was messed up, and took the AoO to move and attack Kyp. Kyp responded by hitting on his first two opportunist attacks, killing vader. 3-0 and the tourny win. My pulls really dictated how well I did, as each game was over by the 4th round, and I commented that the art of the release tournament is trying to win with bad pulls rather than perfect pulls. Either way, I still think I built and played it well, and it was really just up to me to not screw up. It's unfortunate we couldn't fit in another round for me and Homer to square off, since that would have been a fantastic game.
I didn't really mind the 100 point limit either. I ended up playing another sealed at my LGS on Sunday where we also did 100 and it worked quite well. Not sure if the outcomes of either would have been any different with 20 more points. Not that I want to detail the entire other tournament here, but this weekend was basically "A Tale of Two Releases Tournaments" for me. After telling people on Sunday about how good my pulls were on Friday, and that the only dissapointment was that I didn't have the challenge of trying to win with bad pieces, I got just that. I had the worst pulls of the Sunday tournament (they weren't horrible, but everyone else had incredible pulls). Fortunately, my LGS said all maps were legal and so with Arica and handful of stealth in hand, I took out dreaded Mustafar and was able to win that tournament as well, winning two of my games by scores of 19-7, and 5-0. So at least I backed up all my talk about "it doesn't matter what you pull, it's how you play.
So all around it was a great weekend for me: two release tournaments, both wins, in two wildly different ways.
Thanks for posting the recap Homer.