I played
--Corran Smash--
60 Corran Horn, Jedi Master
28 Dash Rendar, Renegade Smuggler
22 R2-D2 and C-3PO, Galactic Heroes
18 Klatooinian Captain
18 Twi'lek Black Sun Vigo
11 Chadra-Fan Pilot
10 Jagged Fel
9 General Dodonna
8 R7 Astromech Droid
6 Mouse Droid x2
9 Ugnaught Demolitionist x3
(199pts. 14 activations)
I actually hadn't played Corran in a few months, but I played him a few times during playtesting for Vengeance and then in one tournament since Vengeance was released, and always did pretty well with him. He fits my playstyle like a glove and I think he can be the backbone of a brand new kind of tier 1 NR squad that doesn't require Han or Mara Jade.
Round 1 I played against Dave Stoecker, who was playing his Omega Squad with Rex. This was a hard match for him because my squad pretty much all had Evade and then Corran had Absorb Energy, plus R2P0 Disrupting him didn't help. He managed to kill my Dash Rendar with Rex and I only got to kill one of his Commandos with Dash (I think it was Fi that I killed), but in doing so he lost Rex and R2 to Corran. I was also able to assassinate his Republic Commando Training Sergeant with my TBSV, shooting past a bunch of Diplomats and characters with Stealth who weren't legal targets. There wasn't any way for the rest of Omega Squad to take on an Evading Corran, so I pulled out the 2 point win.
Round 2 I played against Les in my best game of the day. We played on Ravaged Base and I got the inside. The first round was basically just positioning, with him getting all into the Command Center and me just moving up the middle, making a wall of Uggies, a mouse, and Corran in the 3-wide entrance into the left side of the map and my Chadra Fan Pilot running into Gambit. The next round he towed his Mace up to the small room on the bottom side of Gambit and killed a Mouse who was on the left side of the leftmost door. I used my TBSV who was getting Twin from R2P0 to shoot at Mace, but needed 17s to hit. Luckily, however, I actually rolled a 20 and a 17, but he used Reflect and took no damage (and the TBSV took 10). But burning 4 of his Force Points was a really big deal. He moved Ferus in to Bodyguard Mace, and then was out of activations. I was then able to move R2P0 up and move my Chadra Fan Pilot 8 squares around to the other side of the room to base R2 and be within 6 of my R2P0, so I got the Twin Attack with Stingbeam to kill R2. Dash took his shots at Mace needing 12s now that he was Disrupted, but missed all 4 of his shots. Corran fared much better with his +22 Attack against Mace's 22 Defense, hitting all 3, all of which Ferus Bodyguarded, bringing him down to 10 HP. Mace also tried to Riposte twice, I used Force Absorb on one of them and just ate the other, but luckily it wasn't a crit so it was just 20 damage to Corran. I got a line on Mace now with my Klatooinian Captain, who missed Mace, but forced both Mace and Ferus to make a Splash 10 save. Mace made his, but Ferus failed his even with a reroll, and died. Next round I won init and did the move that made the game; my Chadra Fan Pilot based Mace and attacked with Twin needing 12s, I missed the first one but hit the second one and Mace failed his Stingbeam save to be activated, and had run out of Force Points to reroll it. This let Corran lay 90 damage on Mace which he had to take, then Dash based Mace and shot needing 8s and... missed all 4 again. >.< Foul towed GOWK up and they got in the middle of my group of scrubs, but that's about it. I luckily won init again, and just attacked Mace with Corran needing just 4s to kill him, did all 60 damage and took Mace out, after losing only a single Mouse Droid to him. It was basically just cleanup after that, and his SSM saves weren't spectacular and I had basically my entire squad still, so Foul and GOWK eventually went down and I got a 3 point win.
We had a break for Lunch, then I had to play Bronson after that. This was a slow paced game, because he only barely outactivated me and knew he couldn't leave Lord Vader out to eat attacks. He killed R2P0 early, knowing that he basically HAD to do that, but I got a Jedi Reflexes hit for it to deal 30 to LV. He then played very cagey with Vader, forcing me to take the initiative and move up, and I wound up having to use Dash to open a door for Corran so I could use GMA and Triple to hit an activated Jarael 3 times, who lucky for me but awful for him failed ALL 3 Parry saves (and I Force Absorbed the reroll). He then used Lord Vader to move up and put 60 on Dash (he had to spend both force points to move), then won init, killed Dash, and moved back away. I moved a Mouse Droid up, Corran used Knight Speed to base Vader and Triple attack him, did another 90 damage to him leaving him with just 10 HP, and then... Time was called. Arrrgh, I had killed Jarael and brought Vader to 10 HP and still had a full HP Corran Horn and all my backup shooters. I really should have played much more aggressively from the start, knowing that he would have had to play really cagey and safe. I had my backup shooters way in the back when what I really needed to do was play the full court press and just try to chase down Vader. Oh well.
Round 4 I played against Audri, who was playing Mandos. This was on Ravaged Base again and I was on the inside again. The first couple of rounds I did really well, taking out her Gunsmith, Uggies, lots of Mice, basically cutting down her activations. I got comfortable with that, though, and then played a few REALLY stupid rounds, not giving the Mando Scouts the respect they deserved. I saw the game slipping out of my grasp, and had to turn my "Run up and kill those scouts!" strategy into a "Retreat!!!" strategy, and strategically retreated back into Gambit. Then she made her fatal mistake in thinking that a pit was a wall, giving Dash no-cover shots on Jaster. I really felt awful for her because she had been playing so much better than me the last few rounds, but that mistake really clinched the game for me. I was in a much better strategic position, and without death shots (which would have basically let her trade pieces with me, and she had more) she didn't have much of a chance of winning. She did the super classy move of not dragging the game out unnecessarily when she knew I would win, which was totally awesome of her. Thanks, Audri.
That gave me enough wins to be in the top 4, where I had to play Graham. It wound up being one of the best games we had ever played, which is a very large sample of probably at least a hundred games. Once again on Ravaged Base, but I was on the outside now. Early on I ran my Chadra Fan Pilot up to try to hit Carth for some damage (my thought was that if I got him to 60, Corran could find a GMA opening to kill him without needing Opportunist) and maybe even activate him, but I didn't think far enough ahead and set up a piece close enough to get Gregarious, so my +6 attack missed. Corran tried to kill the Chadra Fan but failed the Pheremones save, then Kavar tried his luck and actually had to reroll TWICE to make the save and kill it. Go Chadra Fan! I had positioned Dash one square too far away from getting a really good set of shots into the hallway all his dudes were in, so I just moved him up a little farther. This turned out to probably be a little too far, because his Carth then ran in and killed Dash with a Senator shot next round. This let me base Carth with Corran and do 30 to him, though, which in my mind meant that I would be able to kill him if I won init. Kavar just ran up to base Corran (who did 30 damage to him with Jedi Reflexes) and there was more positioning. I won the init, but he used Surprise Move and moved Carth away, taking 20 on the AoO, but forgot about Melee Reach 2 and didn't move far enough, just getting behind Kavar. This let me still hit him twice to kill Carth and then attack Kavar, hitting him with a crit to bring him to 60. We both kind of thought that was the game, but then Kavar crit Carth for 50 damage and suddenly made it interesting again! Atton was able to move around farther and made both of his shots on R2P0, killing him. My backup shooters tried to do some damage to Atton, and I got 30 damage on him from the TBSV. I won init again (big one!) and Triple Attacked Kavar, hitting all 3. After the third he had to make a Lightsaber Defense save or die, failed the first one, but made it with the reroll, living with 20 HP. He then hit both of his attacks on Corran needing 10s, and Bastila finished him off. He was then able to clean up the rest of my squad pretty easily. Both of us made a couple of positioning errors, but it was still a really close game that came down to crits, inits, and saves.
Graham went on to beat Bronson of course putting me in 3rd place and David in 4th place. This is important because at the beginning of the day David and I made a slap bet over who would finish higher, meaning that since I finished higher than him I got to slap him in the face. We got it on tape in the parking lot afterwards, and it will be uploaded to YouTube for all to enjoy. Unfortunately since despite the fact that I ended higher than him, I still had a worse record than David since he went undefeated in Swiss, and that meant I lost the above-mentioned Scout Trooper on Speeder Bike bet. Oh well....
Thanks to the Owensboro guys for having such a great event and to Dennis for judging it, and it was great to see people from all over the place. Hopefully we'll see some repeat faces on May 19th for the Atlanta regional.