-geek
How to describe the Golden State Games Worlds Qualifier?
Car’s got broken into, collection’s stolen, Leia Hammerhead MSU was dominating, and ships were flying off the board. It was a recurring conversation point that the whole tournament just felt… strange. Which is not to say it was a bad tournament, just a strange one.
With that out of the way, let’s dig in. For those of you who know me, my ambition is limitless. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kelorn and I am one of the hosts of the Armada Podcast and admin of the Armada Tabletop Simulator discord server.
After a fair bit of soul searching and the Endor tournament, I chose to bring a Sloane list to GSG in my bid for a world’s invite.
Name: Piotr sloane copy
Faction: Imperial
Commander: Admiral Sloane
Assault: Advanced Gunnery
Defense: Hyperspace Assault
Navigation: Superior Positions
Imperial II (120)
• Admiral Sloane (24)
• Captain Needa (2)
• Local Fire Control (4)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Electronic Countermeasures (7)
• SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
• Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
= 172 Points
Quasar Fire I (54)
• Commander Vanto (7)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
• Boosted Comms (4)
• Squall (3)
= 77 Points
Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Comms Net (2)
= 25 Points
Squadrons:
• Colonel Jendon (20)
• Darth Vader (TIE Defender) (25)
• Maarek Stele (21)
• Mauler Mithel (15)
• Saber Squadron (12)
• 2 x TIE Interceptor Squadron (22)
• TIE Fighter Squadron (8)
= 123 Points
Total Points: 397
This is a fairly old school take on Sloane, but with some fun tokens on the ISD2 and Commander Vanto on the Quasar, both of which are fairly crucial to how this list works, which you’ll see in my various games.
Game 1 - Cory Benson (aka Ardaedhel)
Cory and I split a room for the tournament, so clearly RNGesus states that we must be paired for the first round. Cory was flying Cracken CR90’s with some light squad support from Tycho, Shaara, and a couple of generic A-wings.
I had the bid and chose first player, along with Cory’s Infested Fields objective. I center deployed my gozanti along with the squads, forcing Cory to split up his deployment some. He opposed my ISD and Quasar with a CR90B, CR90A, his Cracken flagship, and slicer tools GR75.
The key for me here was trying to avoid getting multi-arced by lots of CR90s and not getting sliced by the GR75. Accordingly, I spent a fair bit of effort on turn 1 and 2 to eliminate the Slicer Tools GR75. This was unusually difficult because of Bright Hope’s ability to reduce incoming damage from squads, but in the end, I did manage to kill it before I got sliced, from a lucky Vader 2x double roll, rerolled one dice into another double.
I paid a bit of a cost for this, as I ended up fairly surrounded by CR90’s, and my quasar went down to concentrated fire.
I managed a nice move at the end of turn 3 that kept my ISD in only two arcs, but my pride was not to last. Turn 4 I activated the ISD first, killing two CR90s with my squads and guns, but promptly flying off the board by a couple of millimeters. Even with all the damage I did, I lost 204 - 475, for a 2-9.
At this point, I was surprisingly not despairing. The day before, I’d listened to Fox and Jason on the podcast talk about how going on tilt was the worst thing you can do after losing your first game. I took this to heart and set out to claw my way back up the standings.
Game 2 - William Anderson
As I had dropped to the bottom of the standings, I played Will, who had lost 1-10 in round 1. Mad props to Will, as we had a great comradely game, but I knew I had the upper hand and set out to get a 10-1 to bootstrap myself back towards contention.
Will was playing an Interdictor/Harrow fleet with a medium squad ball. Will had bid and chose to go second, so I center deployed and chose his most wanted objective. His squads were ahead of me, and he chose to deploy to my left, which would delay engagement some.
I came in at speed 3 with the ISD, moving my quasar slowly to the outside, away from his ships. At the top of Turn 2, I was far enough ahead that I sent my squads in to kill his squads, killing all of them on that turn.
Will dove in his victory and Interdictor, trying to kill my quasar and gozanti. The Gozanti died, but the quasar used Vanto to speed up to 3 and run away. Meanwhile, the ISD barely edged out a double arc on the Interdictor and between the squads and the ISD’s guns, the Victory and the Interdictor quickly perished, leaving me with a 10-1 (400-51).
I’d like to emphasize that Will was an amazing opponent. We had a very casual type game; laughing and enjoying ourselves. Will really exemplified the ideal of an Armada player and I hope he continues to play for a long time.
Game 3 - Edward Han
I hadn’t met Edward before and I nearly had a heart attack when he said he was playing Sam’s double interdictor/Onager list. He had the bid at 394 and chose second, leaving me with some fairly awful choices to make. His objectives were:
Ion Storm
Abandoned Mining Facility
Doomed Station
AMF is a very dangerous objective, especially against an interdictor with Grav shift reroute. Ion Storm can be very dangerous and allow 2nd player to farm points virtually at will. Doomed station means moving obstacles and lots of points for 2nd player, but there was the hope that I could get some station points late in the game. So Doomed station it was.
Edward put the station and the G7X token to the left, forcing me into the center and needing to go around the Rift to get to him.
At this point in the tournament, I knew that if I lost here, it was likely all over. So without much to lose, I shoved my chips all in and charged his ships. His flagship interdictor was on the inside, offering me a fair bit of points if I could crack the tank, which was not at all certain.
The thing here is that both interdictors have Point defense ion cannons and targeting scramblers, plus his flagship had Needa Officer, giving it an evade. He could reroll and reroll my squad dice. Persistence here was critical and I was able to delete the redirect token on the flagship interdictor relatively early. Getting damage to stick was more difficult, but turn 4 and 5, my ISD was finally in position to give it two front arc shots. Turn 4 I got a little scared, as both my quasar and Gozanti were destroyed, but turn 5 I was able to kill his Interdictor and the Onager. Turn six I grabbed the Gozanti with my squads, and held on for a 304-202 victory (7-4).
Edward was a great opponent and used his rerolls, but at the end of the day I was very persistent in just piling damage into the interdictor flagship until it died, which paid dividends when I was able to kill three of his four ships. He got 5 doomed station tokens to my 1, but for all that, it could have been very different if I wasn’t able to take anything down.
Game 4 - Sascha Strait
Going into game 4, I knew I needed a 7 to have a chance to make it to day 2. An 8 was probably a guarantee, given my high MOV from the 10-1. Sascha was playing an Agate liberty list with a medium squad ball in support. He had the bid on me and chose to go first. He chose my Hyperspace assault, and I left three of my squads plus the quasar in hyperspace.
I was fairly badly out-deployed, but that didn’t matter as I knew my quasar wasn’t going to die. I brought the Quasar in at the top of Turn 2, leaving it the rear arc of the MC80, which was barreling at me at speed 3 + Engine techs.
I used my squads to destroy Jaina’s light and start working on his squad ball. The MC80 sidestepped the front arc of the ISD and I was setting up to clean up his squads and GR75s. At this point, one of the downsides of the MC80 came into play and Sascha flew it off the board when he couldn’t get enough yaw to stay on the board and prematurely ending the game.
This unexpectedly gave me a 10-1 and vaulted me to 29 tournament points. I was fairly certain I was going to get an 8 without killing the MC80, but the big win put me in 4th place.
The big takeaway here was that even though I lost badly in game 1, persistence paid off and I was able to come back and make it to Day 2.
I will say that I very much enjoyed meeting people at GSG. On Friday night, I had dinner with Karneck and met Patrick, Phoerix, Corsec, and others for drinks afterwards. When I got back to my hotel, Taserface and his crew were playing warm up games in the lobby, Saturday morning lots of folks met for breakfast before the tournament started. Saturday night, we went out for dinner with another crew. Overall the camaraderie and social aspects of GSG were amazing and even though I didn’t end up with a world’s invite (spoiler for day 2) I was very happy to have met everyone.
Friday night group:
Friday night hotel warmups:
Saturday morning breakfast club:
Saturday night Dinner crew:
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