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Post by simran on May 19, 2016 22:58:16 GMT
As promised at the club Sam, I've checked the train times.
Leaving Victoria ___ Arriving at Bromley South 0707______0723 0722______0738 0737______0753
All 3 are the fast trains.
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Post by Eryst on May 20, 2016 9:49:22 GMT
My vote is for the 07:37 train, still gets us there 40 min before registration but could be convinced to make the 0722 if you really want to.
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Post by simran on May 20, 2016 10:16:03 GMT
Ok, the 0737 train works for me too. It means I can catch 0645 train from my station. Anything earlier and I have to be there at 0615...
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Post by Eryst on May 20, 2016 10:27:26 GMT
Great, see you at Victoria for the 07:37. Are you on the Whatsapp group?
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Post by simran on May 20, 2016 12:20:29 GMT
Not on the Whatsapp. My phone refuses to download some whatsapp update so it doesn't work.
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Post by simran on May 21, 2016 21:56:10 GMT
Just got back. I made some notes on my phone through the tournament and on the train home so I plan on posting a roundup of my games and a LONG post tournament analysis later in the week.
I won 2, lost 4. I don't know where I finished as the tournament results got deleted! More later. Congrats to Sam who finished 4th in Swiss and has made Top 8 (at time of writing). He also won 3 separate raffle prizes: £75 warboar gift voucher, a Mist Hunter, and some Star Wars books. He only bought 15-20 tickets and a 1000 were sold!!!
It was a long day with Sam and I arriving there just after 8am and the Swiss finished at 7pm. It then took well over an hour to go through raffle prizes with several unnecessary distractions included. They then announced the top 16 and discovered that they had inadvertently deleted all the results after printing out the top 16. That left them having to reenter the result of every game again and after sticking it out with most people (as I wanted my prize) for 30 mins, I left catching the 9pm train from Bromley...
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Post by simran on May 22, 2016 15:16:41 GMT
My list: Soontir, Carnor and Inquisitor all with Push the Limit and Autothrusters. Stealth on both Interceptors.
Game 1: Lvl 10 Vader, Whisper and Inquisitor. Killed Inquisitor early and then it was easy from there. Didn't lose a single hitpoint (100-0)
Game 2: Lvl 9 Forlon and 2 Uboats. This was the Uboat opponent I had mentioned facing at Woking. We had an enjoyable and tense game. Played the opening stages very well but lost Inquisitor when he decided to give up evading. Took out Forlon in return. When the air horn (yes, really) sounded to indicate time was up, I was 34-31 up. Had to play out that combat phase and lost both Soontir and Carnor. Annoyed does not cover it!!! Also, both U boats had lost their shields meaning 1 more damage on both would have got me half points each. After playing the opening so well, I got cagey and kept turning both Interceptors away from the fight when there were clear opportunities to reengage. My opponent ending up finishing 3rd/100 in Swiss. (34-100)
Game 3: Jesper with 2 Brobots. Having been too cagey in the previous game, I went the opposite way. The opening worked well with me focusing on IG-B (the Gunner one). After that, I played like an idiot. Instead of disengaging, I kept trying to keep up the fire and got blocked so many times. I am certain that if I had followed my advice sheet, this could have been different. Jesper won the final. (24-100)
Game 4: Lvl 10 Dengar and Lvl 10 Boba Fett with thermal detonator and engine upgrade. Continuing my theme of reactionary play, I went super cautious and didn't fire a shot for 20-30 mins. Instead, I had them split up and circle the board which got him to split up Dengar and Boba. Jono will be delighted to know that he caught Inq and Soontir with the bomb damaging them both and double stressing them... Once he had split up, took out Dengar and then half points on Boba. Stupidly, lost Soontir which stopped the 100-0 so then played the time out to make sure it didn't get any worse. (76-35)
Game 5: Lvl 10 Vader, Soontir and Inquisitor. This was my exact list from Woking! I lost the initiative roll meaning that both Carnor and my Inq were moving before everyone else and Soontir was moving before Rival Fel and Vader. Soontir lost his stealth device 1st shot by rolling 4 blanks and with Rival Fel and Vader moving afterwards died in short order. Carnor then lost his stealth device 2nd shot by rolling poorly. Despite that, I took out Vader and heavily damaged his Inq. Carnor had a range 1 shot to take it out with focus + evades disabled and failed spectacularly. Instead he got himself killed and my Inq eventually died just before time. (34-100) The loss of Initiative was crucial, but I felt I still played really well. Even with Soontir not showing up, I got myself back in the game and should have gone 2 ships to 1 up with Carnor. This was my favourite opponent as we got on very very well. Not surprising given we play the same list.
Game 6: 2 Uboats and lvl10 Cobra. Played the opening half perfectly. Avoiding torpedo arcs, Carnor disabling Uboat focuses. I had taken the shields off 1 Uboat and left Cobra on 2 hull when I barrel rolled and then tried to boost with Carnor to get him into range 1, round a small asteroid, when I should have done it the opposite way round. That cost me Carnor. Soontir then rolled quadruple blanks taking a direct hit critical and it was all over 10 mins later. (12-100) Played that 1st half perfectly and that 1 error simply cost me the game.
Result have been posted now I ended up 76th. Winning one more game would have put me in the 33rd-61st bracket and a good finish...
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Post by simran on May 22, 2016 16:08:55 GMT
Just some general thoughts now.
The field: It was much more varied than Sam and I were expecting. There were plenty of U boats (I saw 2 triple Uboats play each other) and they were spread throughout the field. But there were plenty of TIE swarms, Imperial aces (the triple kind, not sure about Palp), Ghosts, a few Decimators, plenty of Brobots (including at least 2 in the last 16 cut), and craziness like 3-4 B Wings and some nutter brought a Hawk (I thought of you, Chris).
Carnor: I thought he was "ok." He was very good against Uboats. After initially disabling the focus, both my Uboats opponents then began switching to Target locking instead of focusing around Carnor. That meant the TLocked ace could just waltz out of arc whilst the other 2 could operate in range 2-3 of the Uboat. It's just hard work and I found I could only keep it up for half a game. He also does less damage than Vader did which makes working through the Uboats tougher. On the plus side, his autothrusters made him more survivable against turrets. His ability did come in useful at times in the other games but not constantly as it's hard to get him into range 1 consistently against aces.
All Ace lists: I won the initiative roll in game 1 and lost it in game 5 reflecting the results of the games. Clearly, I need to be less than 100pts or take lvl 10 Vader. Having lvl 8 Carnor instead in those match ups definitely made it much harder. Having people arcdodge you is immensely annoying. I apologise to everyone at the club for what I have been putting you through for the last 10 weeks. The non-arc dodging 2 lvl 10 Scum list of Game 4 was nowhere near as hard.
Endurance event: Despite the mild and occasionally rainy weather on Saturday, the upstairs room at Warboar was hot, very very loud (at times) and so cramped I didn't get to sit down until after Swiss had finished. I played best for the opening 1.5 games and good/ok there afterwards. I suspect that playing a technical list like Imperial Aces is much harder than a robust list for these 6 game tournaments. Given you have all mentioned it to me, it's not a shock.
I plan on going back to Vader over Carnor with autothrusters, as there were a lot less turrets than at Woking. Also, the sheer number of Imperial aces that I saw convinces me that he is necessary.
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Post by jonob on May 22, 2016 16:43:54 GMT
Great writeup buddy. I would love to have seen that double bomb hit Carnor with VI is the more regularly seen version - that would give you a 2pt initiative bid. Would Vader, Carnor, Inq be a better bet to put the damage through? Inquisitor seems to have a similar end-game survival ability as Soontir, but I just don't think Soontir lays down enough damage.
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Post by simran on May 23, 2016 7:17:42 GMT
I'm not sure how an Interceptor without push the limit works tbh because it doesn't have the tokens to defend let alone attack. VI is interesting though. Dropping Soontir is heresy. Vader also struggles against turrets with no autothrusters. But now you mentioned it, I started to look at it last night.
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Post by deathwingmatt on May 25, 2016 20:54:48 GMT
Sounds like a good event - a couple of good wins and some of the losses sound fairly tight against some very good players.
Glad to hear that the field was quite varied - I think that's key to making sure the game doesn't get stale.
I'd agree with Jono that perhaps you want to run Soontir or Carnor, but not both in the same list as you end up with two glass cannons that don't inflict enough damage. Most Carnor lists I've seen have him as a nuisance to shut down opponent's tokens. The bulk of the damage then gets inflicted by other ships in the squadron. The Inquisitor I think stacks well (you can set up situations where opponents' ships can't use autothrusters, focus, or evade tokens). When I've flown Soontir before I find he doesn't always pack a punch unless you do something like swap stealth device for a targetting computer. Maybe try that or thing about swapping Soontir for Vader or maybe a defender when Imperial Vets comes out.
Perhaps with this list if you can manage it a 2-3 point initiative bid means that you won't have to worry about dice rolls to ensure your ships move as late as possible.
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