You Rule.

I like how you tell the reader they can bring a squad from any era and play, but they... "will see new things".

Best wishes for a great tourney. I'll be there if I can, but you probably shouldn't expect me.

Hella cool poster.

If only I lived in NZ I would have attended... Guess I won't :P
Good luck though!

I think an international plane ticket might be a BIT out of our budget....

I hope I'm not stealing Kezzamachine's thunder by posting, but my wife's out and my daughter's asleep and I have a window of time to write.

First of all, congratulation to Kezzamachine for a great tournament! We had 19 players, all 9 factions represented, and great prize support from UrbanJedi (thank you!).

I ran Weeks' Roll The Bones squad - http://www.bloomilk.com/Squad/117045/roll-the-bones. It's nasty - tons of damage output with Twin, death shots, Bravado +20, and Opportunist, plus the mobile from Amidala is great for clearing out the blockers in the way. I had a pretty nice run through the tournament - I missed out on playing both Bastila squads and the Corran/disruptive squad, all of which could have caused me problems.

1st game - vs Whorm, Sora Bulq, IG-86*2, A-Series *2, Destroyer Droid II
This was pretty straightforward - I out-activated him, so my guys could run 8 squares and base his guys, and if they survived the initial attack, if he tried to move or kill them, they got attacks of opportunity or death shots. Sora Bulq and the Destroyer Droid are often good damage absorbers, but not against pieces that shoot adjacent twins for 40s. 1-0, 3 points.

2nd game - vs Sidious, Lancer, Savage Opress, Nightsister Mother, Nightsister Sith Witch, Poggle Bombs
This was easily my toughest match of the day - my main saving grace was that he was using an open map (Jabba's Palace), so I could pick off most of his drones early - otherwise he could have gone through with the Lancer, taking my guys down to 10HP, then finished them off with Poggle Bombs. I also forgot Savage had Force Repulse, so I lost three Pilots who all had to use their Death Shots on him. It ended up as an ugly 1 point win. 2-0, 5 points.

3rd game - vs Jaster, Pre Vizsla, Quartermaster, 4*Death Watch Saboteurs, 2*Death Watch Mercenary, Mando Captain, Scout (bought in with reinforcements)
I had some problems here too, as I'd never played on this map (the restricted one from Map Pack 3) or against Cloaked Death Shot before, but on paper this was my game to lose as my guys were cheaper, and whenever I based one of his guys I could get a good trade. The game ended with me only having one Pilot left, but with my commanders still intact, against a few of his commanders, meaning I got a win by about 20 points. 3-0, 7 points.

4th game - vs Darth O with Mace, Tarpals, Foul, Darman, Evazan, Lobot
Darth O cleverly bought in Salacious and Figrin, so I spent a bit of time trying to take them out with Mobile shots before I went for Mace - honestly, Figrin survived about 15 shots, between me rolling 2s or him evading, before he went down. After I cleared out most of his guys, I bought my commanders up to take some shots - I was careless, and Mace ended up basing my Panaka, but didn't crit him, and even at that point I think Mace wasn't going to survive against 5-6 Naboo Pilots, even without their twin. 4-0, 10 points.

5th game - vs Sharron with Warmaster Tsavong Lah, Quednak, Jedi Hunter, that guy who hates droids, AAO, and Workers
I was already in the top 4, and this was a awful matchup for Sharron's all-melee team. He took my deathshot CE, but it was still a pretty quick game - I think it only went 3 or 4 rounds. I towed one Pilot to his Quednak, while Tsavong Lah, who is generally a pain to kill with 20 damage hits, didn't last long against 40 damage twins. He did pull of a sweet move where he traded a worker for two Pilots, but even with that, it was still one sided. It was tough on Sharron, who's normally a perennial finalist. 5-0, 13 points.

Semi-Final - vs Dr Daman with Yobuck, Mace, Panaka, R2, Lobot.
Dr Daman bought in two distraction pieces as well, but really all I had to do in this game was (a) camp in gambit and (b) keep Mon Mothma safe by shielding her with some pilots. It's pretty tough to beat death-shots when your two main attackers are melee.

Final - vs Weir, Mitt'Thrawn, Pallaeon, 4*Storm Commandos (Pallaeon bought one in for Nyna), Grand Moff Tarkin, Lobot
I played against Tim, who's a young guy from Auckland, who impressively went through Swiss unbeaten, but who I avoided up to this point as he got five 2 point wins. We started the game at 18 activations each - I think in hindsight, he should have bought in Ozzel, and bought in an extra override with Lobot. Because of my speed, I was able to capture gambit, and it wasn't that much of a game, as he was horribly unlucky with his rolls, and anything that did hit I evaded, and once I whittled down some fodder I was able to start basing his Storm Commandos and taking them down. To add insult to injury, I hit 20s for Reserves in the 3rd and 4th rounds, bringing in 2 more Pilots each time, so I ended up with more Pilots than I started with.

Great recap and congrats! I'm happy to see the Naboo Pilots do well as I really like them. congrats again!

So the naboo won. I see you didn't run into the standard sith squad, that would have made things interesting. Was one run?

Congratulations to The Hutts. The Naboo Pilots have proven to be a tough squad and the best overall deathshot option available right now.

Congrats Hutts! Great write-up too.

Kudos to Kez and all involved. Sounds like it was a really great tourney.

It was so awesome. I had an epic time, and coming 6th out of an impressive 19 was sweet. (a thousand kudos to Kez for the turnout!)

This is what I played, home map Rhen Var:
Healthy Mace

I don't have the patience or the memory for a huge rundown of my tournament, but here goes.

1st round vs Stuart on Cantina (Red Squadron Ace x5, Han in STA, Dutch, Klatooinian Captain, Rieekan, Juno, Dodonna, uggie x3)
This was a scary matchup with 5 guys running up 16 and doing 80 damage. I was sorely outactivated, and used my reinforcements to bring in Ponda to bodyguard Mace. With my double override and Stuart's lack of override, I managed to keep a couple of doors locked until I could kill Juno with Darman, taking out Disruptive. After that, I unleashed Momaw's double War Throat and did 20 damage to 3 pilots (I think), Dodonna, and an uggie. He killed Momaw straight after that. I managed to use Dr. Evazan's double surgery to take out another pilot, and Mace killed the rest. He got some damage on Mace with one pilot, but it wasn't enough. I killed his commanders after losing Momaw and Darman, maybe R2. 1-0, 3 points.

2nd round vs Dave on Rhen Var (Mace, Yobuck, Panaka, Dr. Evazan, Doombot, Mas, filler)
I set up in just the wrong place, so Yobuck could gallop in the first round when hardly any of my guys had activated. Unfortunately he missed Salacious with a 1, and I could pin him down and kill him with Evazan and Darman. I then sent my Mace after his, and they had a BIG scrap. He managed to heal his Mace with his Evazan, while I damaged his Mace with my Evazan I made like 4 consecutive avoid defeats with Evazan which really put a downbuzz on the game. The game ended with me ahead with just Panaka to kill. Oh, and my Doombot killed his with Electric Shock. Always wanted to do that! Rolls proved to be Dave's downfall, and I almost felt guilty taking the win from him. 2-0, 5 points.

3rd round vs doug*platypus on Throne Room (Bastila, Atton, Carth, JBM, Jedi Seer, Lobot, OR Senator, filler)
I brought in 4 brutes, Salacious, and an uggie with my reinforcements, so I outactivated for the only game in the tournament. doug*platypus brought in Wicket and mice, evidently hoping to block off mace. Unfortunately I towed Momaw in and used war throat to take out all his mice and crucially the senator. Atton and Carth fell to Mace after lifting him in, and the game was pretty much over then. I surrounded his jedi and hunted down Bastila for the 3 points. He got 94 points, so close to the 1 point! 3-0, 8 points.

4th round vs TheHutts on Bothan Spynet (Roll the Bones - Naboo Pilots with death shots)
Help. I was 3-0 with two 3-point wins and faced essentially the best player with the best squad against mine. TheHutts used his pilots very well all game, and despite his horrible rolls and my perpetual evading with Figrin, the game ended 200-28 in his favour. 3-1, 8 points.

5th round vs Minitank_HT on Rhen Var (Single Bubble Storm Commandos with GM Tarkin)
This was the scariest game, because whoever won this got into the semis. We both made our mistakes, and both had bad rolls. I towed Momaw in and unleashed the double war throat to damage his storm commandos and Weir and Nyna. He then killed Momaw. I moved into gambit. I locked a door with R2, which we both forgot about despite marking it on the map. This meant that after shooting at Darman, he realised that he needed to have moved another storm commando to blow up the door at the end of the round, which I let him do. Darman survived and used double grenades 40, which killed the unactivated commando. Mace killed the other one, so he had one left. Darman was killed by that one in a well-orchestrated move in the first activation of the next round thanks to Grand Moff Tarkin. His Greedo BH had a shot at Lobot with some obscure LOS, but rolled a 1. In the last round he decided to run away with Weir, putting him next to Thrawn and Lobot. Unfortunately he didn't realise that Doombot could just tow Mace around a different way, and I based all three. I COMPLETELY forgot that Weir had taken 20 damage from Momaw, so I went for Thrawn instead, thinking I could get the extra 4 points easily. BIG. Mistake. I got a crit on Thrawn, and wasted the flurry on Lobot. I then proceeded to miss the other two shots on Thrawn (darn doctrine of fear and 1s) and pretty much just lost from there. I didn't quite get the 100 points because of my oversight with Weir, so I missed out on the top 4. 3-2, 8 points to finish off.