Once a year, in Lower Hutt New Zealand, we have a tournament where we play our games over a period of time. As well as being able to play your games over a period of time, the other big talking point for this tournament is that you can use a different squad for each game. It leads to some fun meta-gaming predicting what your opponent will run, and you can bring some wacky squads that you probably wouldn't bring to a multi-round tournament, but which you think will work fine for a one-off game.

I enjoy seeing what squads other playgroups are using, so I figured you guys might want to see the squads we're playing. This year, we have a group of seven players in Lower Hutt who automatically qualified (based on performance in majors during the year and on current ranking), and we had a qualifying tournament to see which of the less experienced players joined us for the remaining three spaces in the pools; picking a different squad for each game is super fun, but it can be hard on players with smaller collections who always run the same faction, so not everyone was keen, which is fine. We have two groups of five, who will all play each other, and the 3 top qualifiers from each group will go through to the next round.

Qualifying Tournament
Conveniently, we just had three players for our qualifying tournament - so everyone qualified automatically, and the games were just for seeding. We had:
Hayden: Fringe, Talon Kardde IB, Embo, Dash, Shada Dukal, Jarael, Marn
Danny: Caedus SL, Atton Jaq, Dash, GARY, Ponda Baba GC
Henko: Lucien Draay JM, Atris, Echanis * 2, Brianna, Jedi Healer

Danny won both his games, so qualified top - he edged out Hayden in a tough, low scoring game, where he took advantage of Hayden's lack of door control. Hayden, however, did sneak past Henko in the final round to clinch 2nd. While the game's spread well throughout the North Island of New Zealand, a lot of the winners of national events come from participants in the Hutt Regional - nine of New Zealand's ten majors have been won by players participating in the Hutt Regional.

So the pools look like this:
Pool A:
Dr Daman (NZ National champion)
Sharron (2010-11 Hutt Regional champion, 1 major win)
Darth Moore (HaweraCon 2013 champion)
Danny
Hayden

Pool B:
Kezzamachine (made the final of the NZ National Championship)
Mike Moore Smuggler (2012-13 Hutt Regional champion)
TheHutts (2011-12 Hutt Regional champion)
Ian
Henko

We're set to kick off Pool B tonight at Kezza's house, so I'll let you know what happens.

OK - we've had a bunch more games. In Pool 1 we've had:

Dr Daman's report


Pool 1 Standings:
Sharron 5 (2 games)
Dr Daman 2 (2 games)
Darth Moore 0 (2 games)
Danny 0
Hayden 0

And in Pool 2 we've had:


Plus we've also had 4/1/14: Mike (Imperial Celeste) beat Ian (Resurrector, Fenn Shysha, 2 Protectors, Kelborn, and a Training Sergeant) 232-39 on Jabba's Palace.

Pool 2 Standings:
TheHutts 8 (3 games)
Mike Moore Smuggler 6 (3 games)
Kezzamachine 3 (2 games)
Ian 2 (3 games)
thePurplePhlurp 0 (3 games)

As a note, I got home from a party an hour ago, and over the evening I've had correspondence from about 4-5 different NZ players about the Regional. I just got a text saying "an Imperial Knight just put Cortosis Gauntlet on Ferus". It's a pretty cool format to run to get to try out all those cool squads you've come up with in a competitive setting.

In most recent news, Kezzamachine (Daala Snow Troopers) has just beaten Ian (Daala Scout Troopers) 89-76 on Jabba's Palace. Sounds like a Jorus/AniStap squad is taking on an Imperial Knight squad right now as well.

Pool 2 Standings:
TheHutts 8 (3 games)
Mike Moore Smuggler 6 (3 games)
Kezzamachine 5 (3 games)
Ian 2 (4 games)
thePurplePhlurp 0 (3 games)

OK - we've had a bunch more games in Pool 1. On Sunday we had:

Sharron v Danny 199-45 3pts-0pts simulation deck
Danny: caedus, atton, dash, GARY, Lobot, exar DFS, klat captain and filler
Sharron: solo charge variant

Dr Daman v Danny 199-14 3pts-0pts on simulation deck
Danny: caedus, atton, dash, GARY, Lobot, exar DFS, klat captain and filler
Dave: strike the right corde

Sharron v Hayden 215-82 3pts-0pts cantina
Sharron: solo charge variant
Hayden: talon, alto, nimbus x3, klat assassin, chiss captain and filler

Darth Moore v Hayden 168-102 2pts-1pt rhen var
Darth Moore: thrawn, Celeste, Mas, Ozzil, rak warrior x2, Lobot, slaver and filler
Hayden: talon, embo, dash, shada, marn, jarael, evazan and filler

Dr Daman v Hayden 209-14 3pts-0pts on jabbas
Dr Daman: strike the right corde
Hayden: talon, embo, dash, shada, marn, jarael, evazan and filler

Darth Moore v Danny 183-86 2pts-0pts on rhen var
Darth Moore: talon, dash, Celeste, rak warrior x2, Lobot and filler
Danny: caedus, atton, dash, GARY, Lobot, exar DFS, klat captain and filler

That leaves:

Pool 1 Standings:
Sharron 11 (4 games)
Dr Daman 8 (4 games)
Darth Moore 4 (4 games)
Hayden 1 (3 games)
Danny 0 (3 games)


With 1 games to play, the qualifiers are already decided. Each player carries through their points against the other qualifiers to the next round. So we have:
Sharron 5 (2 games)
Dr Daman 2 (2 games)
Darth Moore 0 (2 games)



Meanwhile, in Pool 2, I played Mike Moore Smuggler on Sunday. Mike won 184-43 on Rancor Pit. We both had Durge on Speeder/Geonosian squads - Mike had Grievous HoH and Spotter/Sniper, I had more Bombs + Whorm/2*IG-86s. The telling moment was at setup, when I was on autopilot with my Lobot reinforcement choices, and I forgot never to bring in an MTB against San Hill...... So Mike got an extra 10 Drones for nothing, which gave him the activation advantage. The activation advantage also allowed Momaw to charge in and take out a bunch of drones. The Spotter/Sniper combo is a really good addition to the squad - as well as many other things, it makes it hard for the opponent to play Momaw (a great Poggle bomb counter) without a good movement breaker.

Pool 2 Standings:
Mike 8 (4 games)
TheHutts 8 (4 games)
Kez 7 (4 games)
Ian 2 (4 games)
Henko 0 (4 games)

So the qualifiers from Pool 2 are:
Mike 2 (2 games) - as he's pointed out, he carries the least points through, despite winning the pool.
TheHutts 3 (2 games)
Kez 3 (2 games)

yes, agreed.

There are fundamental mechanics in this game that are very strong.

Activations (squads with Dodonna, San, Ozzel or a large amount of cheap grunts that can do things)
Movement breakers (swap, tow, levitate, SBM, master lift, free CE moves/attacks)
Mass killing (strafe, gallop, war throat, burst, UtF, blaster barrage)
Damage Negation (Soresu mastery, parry, evade etc)

I would also characterize them in those order of strengths. You can beat tempo control with speed, mass killing and damage negation (its the republics forte after all) but its hard and tempo control with movement is about as tough as things get.

WotC did far more with each of those than the Vsets ever have (damage negation is up to debate because of Zanna but GOWKS mettle really makes a better supplement of MotF2 soresu mastery than Lightsaber defense expert).

Vsets for the most part have just tried to fill in the gaps, there have been miss-steps along the way but the core mechanics of the big 5 factions have been untouched and should remain so.

When the central tenets of the main factions become weak verses the V sets, the Vset will have jumped the shark and failed in their design. However, its very hard to do because these central mechanics are very very tough.

Poggle was one of the miss-steps i spoke of. Seps didn't need it.

Sucks to be me right now...

OK, we've got one Super6 game to go, and we've found 3 of our 4 semi-finalists.

Tonight saw TheHutts bt Darth Moore158-28 on Bothan Spynet. TheHutts: Daala, lots of Snowtroopers, GARY, Piett, Snow Officer, Snow Commander, Raxus * 2, Ug * 3, Zygerrian, Pellaeon. Darth Moore: Strike the Right Corde (Cad Bane, Morrigan, Thrawn, Ozzel). I swapped out GARY for Ozzel so I got a massive activation advantage, which all but negated Darth Moore's squad.

That leaves the current standings as:
Sharron 11 (5 games)
TheHutts 8 (5 games)
Dr Daman 5 (4 games)
Darth Moore 5 (5 games)
Mike Moore Smuggler 5 (5 games)
Kezzamachine 3 (4 games)

Kezzamachine and Darth Moore are fighting out for the last slot - Kezzamachine needs to get a solid win against Dr Daman (reigning NZ champion) to force his way into the semis.

Has anyone else found Daala squads doing well in their local groups? I know I've said in earlier posts on this thread that some traditional squad types are very solid, but at the same time, we've been seeing Daala squads do very, very well. I think, in competitive play in New Zealand, we've only seen one result where a Daala squad has lost to a non-Daala squad (and that was me being outplayed by doug*platypus in a matchup I should have had a good chance in). The good thing about Daala is that there is a big diversity in squad builds with her (we've seen Dr Daman's 15 Raxus Prime Trooper swarm, 20hp Snow Trooper swarms, and more robust Elite Scout Trooper builds), but even so it's having a big impact on squad choices in our local group. The addition of Lancer counters in v-set 7 is going to help Daala too.

Oh wait, I get it now: Flim (ie, Imperial Officer). That way you're trading your 4pt Raxus for a 12pt Elite Scout. Makes sense now.

Move along. Move along.

I haven't lost with snowtroopers yet. I expect that multiple Daala squads will make the top 8 at gencon.