Well another Gencon come and gone and time for the write-up.

This story starts way back at Frostycon when I brought a Cin/Serra squad and managed to avoid the bad matchups, punish the Vong with their own Blastbugs and tire out Mace and Obikin. I talked to Trevor at that event and said at that point, I was thinking of running Gungans at Gencon. We talked a bit about it, and since I wanted to play a different squad at PA (and was busy so didn't have time to make a new squad) I ended up running Gungans there. A win there showed the gungans true colors. They just weren't good enough. Should have lost to Cin/Serra (IMO) and certainly should have lost the finals. None of the games were blowouts and I didn't feel all that confidant even in the games I was supposed to win.

Fast foward to the other regionals where I was just on fire with a myriad of different squads (Obiken/Ewoks/EmperorVader/Yobuck/Handmaidens,Darth Os squad). After playing Marn the whole season I realized (and even talked about this on SHNN) that he often times wasn't worth his points. After the whole regional season, I decided on Yobuck (with Emperor/Vader as my backup) heading toward the big day. I also decided that I didn't need Marn and dumped him with little fanfare to add in more swap fodder. I made a last minute change (because I had the point left over) to swap in 2 Spaarti Clones for just a little extra Door control. This left me with 16 acts which I felt was more than enough, but more importantly left me with 6 rodians and 2 clones as swappers so that I could just keep bashing and bashing with Yobuck. The version with Marn had fewer swappers so ran out of gas faster.

Onto the tourney report
Final Squad
Yobuck, Skywalker, Dash, Panaka, Mas, R2, 6x Rodians, 2x Spaarti, 2x Ugo 16 acts

Rd 1 Vs Greg and his Cin/Serra/Quinlin
I already knew how to beat this and the matchup was in my favor as my squad was better than IN, and I had dispatched a very similar squad in the Top 4 there.

Rd 2 vs Bryan and his beefier Vong
This was much more difficult with the 50HP guys, but Bryan made a tactical setup error, putting the Yamosk in the double doored Vault area and taking swap. Thus if he wanted to use swap, he had to open both doors and expose his commanders. He chose not to do that for the majority of the game. I basically kept pounding in with Kybuck and leaving a rodian in his place. This game single-handedly reinforced the decision to drop Marn. More swappers meant I could keep away longer and just wore his guys down 1 gallop at a time 2-0 6 pts

Rd 3 against Lou and his very innovative Cin/Serra/Quin/SKYWALKER squad
This is a way different matchup than regular cin/serra. The extra beefy attacker and more importantly the fact that Quin and SErra do 80 on the move is a huge advantage for Lou in this matchup. He basically just ran to Panaka and smushed him. I did start working over his guys, but the makashi he had meant it was slow work and he did damage faster than I did. I did manage to get 1 pt, but it was still a pounding. 2-1 7pts

Rd 4 against TJ and his super tank Warb Null
I didn't really realize how tough Warb Null would be to take down, and he was quick to just tank down the field with his squad. The distraction made it almost impossible to get damage through and from there he just hunted me down with Aing-Ti and Sith Battle Manipulation. I was able to score a point, by killing some stuff, but not nearly enough 2-2 8pts

I figured, I would make T8, but was very on edge when I learned the matchup would be a rematch of my last game.

Top 8 vs TJ rematch
I played this game much more like Black and Blue and tried to play keep away as much as possible. I tried a couple times to kill the force ghosts to no avail, and TJ stumbled out of the gate with some early mispositioining so he had to wait a round or two to advance like he wanted to. That extra waiting (even though he used every force point he saved up) was costly to TJ. I had slightly better position, and was able to keep everything away as best I could for quite a bit of the game. Eventually time was called (we did play 6 or 7 rds and I had more Gambit than TJ), and I eeked out a close game with 10 or 20 HP left on all my guys. We did call the judge over to double check and make sure we shouldn't play another round or anything as it was super close and another round would have meant that TJ would win unless he rolled a bunch of 1s. In all likelihood, that early mispositioning error on TJ (which cost us 1 round of engagement) was probably the deciding factor. If we had been engaging for one more round, TJ probably has another round of Gambit and more than likely kills one of my remaining pieces which more than likely would have been enough to give him the victory. Onto the Semis

Semis vs Tim and his lovely ladies
Unfortunately, this was a fairly boring game. Tim made a great move early as I left my guys in grenades formation around R2 (yep all 4 guys adjacent and adjacent to green) and he traded Mira for 40 damage on all my guys. From there it was cat and mouse vs cat and mouse. Neither one of us could cross the big tree in the middle (even with swap) to make an engagement worthwhile. So we just sat there spinning our guys accross the big tree from each other trying to make sure the other guy couldn't do something cool. Time ended and I won 59-56 I think (I know it was by 3 pts).

Finals VS Trevor and his prison break
Trevor pretty much sums up this game. I made the all in move to push sabine into the pit, it fails, then I lose Skyguy on a failed grenades (with FPRR), and a failed Defense save. Pretty much ended it right there, although there was another init later that had I won, I could have done some damage with. I still managed to kill most of his guys in the end, just not quite enough juice to get there.



Deri, Tim and I won the Royal Rumble Tourney. I played (Cin/Saba, Luke Hero of Endor/Caedus, and Revan/Satele). Cin Saba looks good on paper, but was pretty awful. The other 2 squads were good and quite fun to play.

Regular Team tourney with Lou I was running Vader/Emperor and Lou was with his champs squad (cin/serra/Quin/Skyguy) There were 4 teams, so we just played round robin.

Rd 1 was against Giles and his OR goodness
Giles had the WORST dice, I have ever seen. He made some great moves, but couldn't hit anything, and anything he did hit, I avoided with Shien or with Evade. And to make matters worse, I couldn't miss any attacks. Vader and Emperor just chewed through his guys. Lou played against Randy and the final round of their game was Serra needing to hit both to kill Cad Bane and missing 2 of 3 (with a FPRR), and then Cad killing Serra to end the game. Sounded like an epic game of minis for sure (and much better than mine and mikes)

Rd 2 vs TJ and Daala
I ate 14 of the 20 snowtroopers, and if I hadn't made a placement error with the emperor (letting TJ get him with no cover instead of making him shoot at Vader), the outcome might have been different. Either way, I scored 1 pt vs TJ while Lou was busy taking care of Alex and his SIth mines squad he was borrowing from TJ. My game was actually really fun and I do think that Vader/Emperor can stand up to Daala.

Rd 3 vs Tim and his NW Ohio regional squad.
The big thing here was we were on Rhen Var and with Battle ready, Surprise move, and going first, I got Vader all the way to his backfield and took out the swoop before he moved a character. I made sure to blow 2 of the doors to the gambit area so I couldn't get locked out, then made another good move to lightning Crix, effectively ending the game as 20 damage attacks weren't going to be able to win the game. I kept surprise moving to get vader in better position and eventually chased down and zapped the speeder to death to secure the 3 pt win. Lou was busy getting 1 pt vs Bryans Vong squad of death and we ended up winning the Team Tourney when Mike and Randy didn't sweep.


Surprise Tournament.
This was Brad's baby and each round was a different era (all theme of course AND balanced) so each player was playing different squads.
Rd 1 I was one of the KOTOR squads vs the other one (I had HK, Exile, etc and he had Zaalbar, mission Vao, revanchist, etc)
I lost too many inits, and missed too many attacks leaving people alive and Jak really started using his squads synergy to take me down.

Rd 2 I was Kenobi on Boga and he was Grevious on bike.
After we each killed the others fodder, I Realized that I really couldn't win since he had more pts and it was very unlikely that either of us would be able to kill the others guy. We both had gallop and wallclimber, but he could shoot, so he could shoot and run away through the middle to the other side, and I couldn't get there to attack.

Rd 3 vs GIles. I was Luke Young Jedi and Gamorrean BG and he was Rancor
One of the highlights of the weekend, we moved over to the prize (a 3D Rancor Pen) and played our game on that. It was awesome. Our game lasted exactly 4 minutes. We both ran in (he had savage so had to). He killed the gamorean, and I was hitting the rancor. Another round of trading hits left us both at 40HP with init coming. I won the init and killed the rancor. If he wins init, he probably kills me but even if he doesn't he regens 10HP so I can't kill him that round.

Rd 4 vs TJ It was good GA (with Mara) vs bad GA (with Caedus)
Came down to another key init. I based his Caedus at the end of round and did some damage with Mara setting up the big init. He won the big init, Aing Ti - He crit and I failed the block, then used Shevu to come up and finish mara off with cunning and momentum (and I couldn't block). From that point on it was just mop up for him for the most part.

The Surprise was a blast and it seemed that everyone else who played it also had fun.