So, I had developed a number of pretty sweet squads for this format: using Resolnare to set up Durge for some sweet strafes on his Speeder, a swap squad giving Twin to Mace (that was probably my favorite), to another Dirty Daala squad (with Imp Diplomats and the Ithorian Commander and Han in ST Armor). But when I heard that Jim couldn't play in this event, we started sharing our ideas with each other; and Jim said he liked the Storm Commando squad the most, so that's what I went with. Thanks Jim!!

Anyway, here's how it went down:

Round 1 vs Tim's Imp/Reb Strafe squad: This was about as close to a mirror-match as you're gonna get in an event like this: we both had Weir, L&L on Speeder, and Crix. The difference was that Tim focused on more tech with his remaining points (init control and swap and override), while I had chosen to go with more attackers. We played on Smuggler's Base and I set up on the left. I set up my guys carefully so that Crix and Weir would be pretty safe, even if Tim was able to get off a big strafe. At the end of the first round, he parked his Twins next to my guys, and then next round strafed everyone...except Disruptive negated their Twin and their Cunning +20, so their damage output dropped from 80 per figure to 20...and that's if they could hit. Because not only was the damage output neutered, but Weir's Doctrine of Fear made things even more frustrating for him (in addition to Sarkli's +4 Def boost from Synergy). I think Tim managed to get 2 hits out of his strafe. By contrast, I was able to get several figures (including his ERC override guy and his basic speeder bike) with my own strafe, immediately following that. That pretty much decided the game right away.

Round 2 vs Matt's Rep/OR squad: His dice failed him. Bad. Basically, Mace did 20 dmg to the Twins (again thanks to Doctrine of Fear and Synergy), and the Speeder was able to not only make 1 strafe, but even survive the rest of the round with 10hp to make 1 more (dying to Revan's Counter-Push). If Mace had hit decently or even managed to crit my Twins to death, I think we would've had a much more interesting game.

Round 3 vs Jason's Rep/Vong squad: Dude...don't ever let Captain Rex attack at +20 for 50dmg!! We played on Ravaged Base and I set up on the left. For some reason, I decided to be stupid and not pay attention to the fact that he had both Doombot AND Foul Moudama. I figured I'd be safe from an incursion in the first round, so I positioned the Twins in the hallway to the west of the turbolifts. Jason lifted Rex out, who then used Glitterstim to damage Rex (triggering Scarification), and then proceeded to obliterate the Speeder. I failed a key deflect, but Rex also rolled a 1 on 1 of his attacks, so it was still the expected result. After that Jason just picked apart the rest of my squad 1 by 1, with Sarkli and Weir dropping fairly quickly.

Round 4 vs Laura's OR/Rebel squad: Basically, without Crix I'd be hosed in this matchup. Doctrine of Fear and Synergy came up big for me again too. I managed to get off a pretty sweet strafe, hitting about 6 of Laura's guys; that would've killed Jaq too, but he made his Avoid Defeat save...after the strafe Jaq charged in to blow the Twins away. Nevertheless the damage had been done, and it was mostly a matter of focusing fire on the rest of those nasty pilots, 1 by 1 until they dropped out of the sky.

Round 5 vs Bye: It was such a bad matchup that I won't even describe it.

Matt had managed to win his games vs both Tim and Jason. That one with Jason was really iffy there for a moment, after Jason made a key surgical strike to take out R2 (and leave Mace stranded) but then Matt made a good move with Revan-Mace to kill Jason's Rex, which ended up turning the tables back in his favor. Therefore, it was...

Finals vs Matt: We played on Smuggler's Base, since that was the map we had both chosen. I ended up on the left side. I knew the kind of range that the Revan/Mace/R2 combo had, so I set up rather conservatively in the first round. I won the 2nd round initiative, so I took a GMA-quad-Cunning attack with an Elite SC, targetting Aayla...she rolled out of the way, so I continued some shots on Foul, who also rolled away...sigh. Aayla then came in and used Force Pull to smash that Elite SC, leaving him at 20hp. I took a barrage of shots at her, but nothing hit. Both Matt and me had some utterly horrible dice this game! I charged out with the Speeder, knowing that I could put 80dmg on Foul and Mace, plus up to 40 on Aayla and Revan. Well, maybe not so much. I missed an attack on Foul, and Mace Reflected both of my hits (including a crit) back at me, so rather than dropping Mace to 50 or 70hp, he was still at full health. This was more than a little disappointing, because I was relying on the strafe to get a good start on killing Mace. However, I recognized that Mace was attached to Foul, and saw that he had the ability to Lift Mace all the way over beside my Crix and Weir...eeeeep!!! To prevent this I moved Kneesaa 1 space so that Foul would have nowhere to place Mace. This likely saved me the game. However, since that attack avenue was now closed to him, Mace just decided to obliterate the speeder (with a crit). I continued to pour millions of pointless shots into Aayla (who was now disrupted, so no more Rolling away), and finally Sarkli was able to put the last 30 dmg into her because of his Wounding shot ability. My Bothan Saboteur used Mines several times this game, and to good effect. The turning point of the match came the next round, when R2 towed Mace in to triple on Weir...with Quick Strike, Mace was making 3 attacks for 30dmg. I thought this would be the game-winning move. However, Weir's amazing Doctrine of Fear ability saved his skin...literally. It meant that Mace was down to +12 attack vs Weir's 19 Def, which meant that Mace needed 7s to hit...and yep, he missed 1 of his attacks, even after 2 fprrs (a 6, a 4, and a 2). So Weir lived with 10hp, which meant that my Storm Commandos got to keep their Twin and their Shields 2, which was huge. However, I still had a full-health Mace up in my face! Therefore, for the rest of the round I poured everything I had into him. At first my results were pretty dismal: my Elite SC managed to get just 1 hit out of 4. But then Sarkli managed to hit all 4 of his attacks on Mace (needing 10s) which accounted for 70dmg (10dmg hits, plus the Wounding Shots ability). My basic Storm Commando hit a couple of times, and gradually Mace's hp were starting to drop. However, Mace still had 2fp left for a LS Reflect, and Weir (+14 for 30s, Twin) was adjacent to Mace with 10hp. If Mace made his Reflect and I failed my save (that has a 25% chance of happening), I'd be in a world of trouble. I had been trying to avoid having to make Weir shoot at Mace, but he was my last shooter. Mace failed his Reflect though, so I was safe. After that it was mostly cleanup, because Matt no longer had the means to reach Weir and so all 3 of my SCs were effective. In the end, it all came down to Mace only hitting 2/3 attacks on Weir. If he'd been able to roll a 7, I surely would've lost.


Personally, I loved this event! It was refreshing and invigorating to think outside the box and come up with so many fun and crazy squads in preparation for it! However, by the end of the event today we did notice that, of the 10 games that were played, there was only 1 game that had a 1pt loss...all of the others were 3-0 wins. That's because the combos and synergies were so broken and unbalanced that matches tended to be rather one-sided once a key play happened. I wouldn't want to play a format like this in a high-stakes event with significant prizes, but I thought it was a pile of fun for an afternoon/evening of exciting minis gaming! Thanks for playing, everyone!