Nick, Matt, and I started the weekend of Armada greatness with a party at Jamie Nasmyth’s house. We met and hung out with a bunch of Armada players from the Atlanta meta, ate some fantastic BBQ, and watched some pick-up games.
The next morning we had the traditional pre-tournament breakfast at Waffle House. Then, before the first round John Zuidema had us all drink a shot of Malort. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Malort is an herbal liqueur that tastes like a car crash in liquid form. I guess the philosophy is to start the day with the worst thing possible, so you can only go up from there!
The regional was held at Giga Bites in Marietta Georgia. Giga Bites is an incredible game store. It has a huge play space, with over 20 dedicated miniatures gaming tables. They also have a full café with tons of food and drink options. It was a great venue for the tournament, and I hope to go back there and play again.
Here is the list I brought:
Name: Big Darth's Used Ship Lot
Faction: Imperial
Commander: Darth Vader
Assault: Most Wanted
Defense: Capture the VIP
Navigation: Salvage Run
ISD Cymoon 1 Refit (112)
• Darth Vader (36)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Entrapment Formation! (5)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• Spinal Armament (9)
• Avenger (5)
= 178 Points
Arquitens Light Cruiser (54)
• Intel Officer (7)
• Slaved Turrets (6)
= 67 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points
Gladiator I (56)
• External Racks (3)
• Demolisher (10)
= 69 Points
Squadrons:
• Ciena Ree (17)
• Valen Rudor (13)
• Lambda Shuttle (15)
• Zertik Strom (15)
= 60 Points
Total Points: 399
I brought Big Darth’s Used Ship Lot to the Atlanta regional because I knew it could handle the matchup against 2-ship and could also do well against MSU and Big Heavy fleets. I thought that I would see a lot more 2-ship, but there were only a handful at the event.
My list is based off of the Darth Vader One of Everything list, which features Darth Vader riding a Cymoon ISD and 1 of each other small Imperial ship [Eric/editor note = I've been running that one on and off as a variant of the list Duck_Bird and Rasproteus did well with later in 2018 and it's been fun]. I swapped out the HIE Raider in that list for 60 points worth of squadrons. This helps me in the matchup against squadron heavy fleets. It’s a mostly ablative squadron ball that’s very difficult to kill. It also includes 1 Lambda shuttle for Strategic purposes.
Round 1 against Adam Davis- Adam was running Screed with an old-school style list with Vic-II’s, Demo, and Screed on a deluxe Raider lifeboat. We played Capture the VIP. We deployed our big ships across from each other and prepared for the major slugfest. Early turns I collected a VIP with my Gozanti, and Adam rushed his Demolisher in to try and assassinate mine. His demo did manage to kill mine, but he ran it off the board on the next turn. They Cymoon ISD won the fight against the 2 VSD-II’s, and Screed ran down the VIP shuttle and picked up the token. When the smoke cleared and points were totaled, I won 8-3
Round 2 against Dave “Sato” Stahl- This was a tough matchup. Dave was running a Sato list with a MC-75, a few other small ships, and a decent sized squad ball. I decided to go second since he had no bid and I suspected points farming shenanigans with VCX’s and crit farming. Turns out I was right. I played Capture the VIP for the second time that day, and we set up roughly across from each other. Dave’s fleet had 1 more activation than mine, so I was unable to wait out the MC-75. He put some serious hurt on my squadrons and destroyed my Arquitens with his MC-75. I took out a flotilla with Demolisher (lucky accuracy on the front arc), destroyed a hammerhead, and took out a CR-90. The last few turns were a chase between the Sato MC-75 and my VIP Shuttle. Dave was able to kill the flotilla on the last turn, but was unable to pick up the VIP token. I won with an extremely narrow 3 point MOV, 6-5.
Round 3 against Dennis Daniels- Dennis is a new player, having played just a few kitchen table games before going to Giga as his first tournament ever. He played a Motti list with some of the greatest hits of imperial list building: ISD-II with Intel Officer, ECM’s, leading shots, gunnery team, and Relentless. Fully-tricked-out Demolisher, a raider-1 with APT’s, a comms net Gozanti and the Slicer Supressor with ECM’s aka the super annoying flotilla of doom. Dennis chose to go first and picked Most Wanted as the objective. I chose his ISD-II and my flotilla after deployment. (This Gozanti gets the worst jobs, I swear!) Dennis rushed his Demolisher and Raider into my fleet at maximum speed on the first round, and the long-range firepower of the Vader Cymoon came to bear and shot them out of the sky. He followed it up with running his ISD-II into my ships. The combined firepower of a 5-dice Arquitens, a double-tapping Demolisher, and Avenger was enough to take down his last capital ship. I won 10-1.
Round 4 against Michael Perez- I can do this all day, let me at ‘em! Michael was running Thrawn on an arquitens, the Tanky Tech Triangle Interdictor, and a deluxe Demolisher. He also had a vicious anti-fighter wing. I chose to go second, and he chose Salvage Run as the objective. After the usual obstacle moving from the Interdictor, we were set up facing the station in the middle of the board. We each rushed to move the salvage tokens, and by the end of the game we each had 2. Michael made a few errors in assumptions about my list, and paid for them with destroyed ships. He admitted that he forgot that my Cymoon had Gunnery team on it, which meant death for his Demolisher. I was unable to take out the Interdictor, but I killed his Demolisher and Arquitens, as well as a flotilla. I managed to kill a few of his squads, but mine mostly just sacrificed themselves for the greater good. At the end of turn 6 I won with a 7-4.
With 31 tournament points, I managed to score 6th place out of a field of 38 players.
Major thanks to Jamie Nasmyth for running this amazing event. Thanks to Matt for ferrying us back and forth to the airport and for putting up with 3 extra nerds in his apartment over the weekend. And thanks to everyone in the Atlanta meta for being incredibly nice. I had so much fun at this regional, and it was largely due to the people I met there.
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