Kyber Cup, season 5, round 5: James (Separatist Alliance) vs Nébal (First Order) (battle report in English)

Kyber Cup, season 5, round 5! And a new battle report in English. Of course, I’m French, so I’m genetically designed to speak and write an awful English… Please be kind!

For this fifth round, I have been paired with James, a very nice player from the USA, who brought the following Separatist Alliance list:

Firespray-class Patrol Craft – •Jango Fett – 97

•Jango Fett – Simple Man (79)

•Count Dooku (10)

•Lone Wolf (5)

Contraband Cybernetics (3)

Belbullab-22 Starfighter – •General Grievous – 60

•General Grievous – Ambitious Cyborg (44)

•Soulless One (6)

Impervium Plating (4)

Outmaneuver (6)

HMP Droid Gunship – •DGS-047 – 40

•DGS-047 – Adaptive Intelligence (35)

•Diamond-Boron Missiles (5)

Total: 197/200

As for myself, I brought my First Order list, my take on a Malarus TIE/fo swarm:

Xi-class Light Shuttle – •Commander Malarus – 58

•Commander Malarus – Vindictive Taskmaster (45)

•Agent Terex (7)

•Hondo Ohnaka (6)

TIE/fo Fighter – “Scorch” – 33

•“Scorch” – Zeta Leader (33)

TIE/fo Fighter – “Longshot” – 31

•“Longshot” – Zeta Ace (31)

TIE/fo Fighter – Epsilon Squadron Cadet – 26

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (25)

Automated Target Priority (1)

TIE/fo Fighter – Epsilon Squadron Cadet – 26

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (25)

Automated Target Priority (1)

TIE/fo Fighter – Epsilon Squadron Cadet – 26

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (25)

Automated Target Priority (1)

Total: 200/200

BEWARE: RIGHT AFTER THIS OMINOUS DARTH VADER PICTURE, I WILL REVEAL HOW THE GAME TURNED OUT. IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS, WATCH THE VIDEO BEFORE READING FURTHER!

Victory for the First Order: 149-59! But I must say that the game was… pretty much unbalanced? For several reasons, not only dices.

As for many previous games, I didn’t know what to think of the matchup. Both lists had their strong points: I had the numbers for me, obviously, the agility once again, and many options to modify dice rolls, although on the other side Jango Fett at least had about as many with Lone Wolf and Count Dooku, and Grievous could also benefit from such advantages if he managed to strike me from behind, which is all the asthmatic cyborg is about. James, with both these pilots, had two very frightening heavy hitters, and pretty agile ones actually, and he had far more health points on each of his ships than me on mine (Soulless One and Impervium Plating seriously increasing the Belbullab-22 Starfighter's survivability; well, theoretically…); DGS-047 didn’t worry me as much as those two, but I certainly was aware that his Diamond-Boron Missiles could be dangerous for my swarm.

One key decision from the beginning of the game, on my side, was to choose a priority target. I had to commit on one of those ships, spreading my swarm wasn’t an option. And James perfectly knew that. I could go after Grievous, or after Jango; whatever the case, James would flee with the designated target, and hit me in the back with the other one. When I discovered James’ list, my first thought was to go after Jango: after all, the Firespray represented half of the whole list just by himself! But a training game (thanks again, pal!) made me change my mind: the fact is I couldn’t ignore Grievous; he mustn’t manage to go behind me. Plus chasing an evading Jango would be pretty much as dangerous as confronting him head on, because of his rear arc. So from the beginning of the game my primary objective was clear: I had to take down Grievous.

And that was the beginning of troubles for James. He was incredibly unlucky with Grievous: he lost his two shields on a random downtown attack from an Epsilon Squadron Cadet, which was quite unexpected, then suffered very early on a crippling critical damage, a dangerous gas cloud prevented him from boosting away from my swarm, then he suffered an even worse critical damage (Panicked Pilot on a Belbullab has so often been a death sentence in my own games that I totally felt bad for James here), and, yes, those were two pilot damage cards, so Impervium Plating didn’t apply… An awfully bad luck.

Although the Belbullab wasn’t actually the first of James’ ships to disappear from the board: that dubious honour belonged to DGS-047, who wasn’t my priority target, but those of my ships who couldn’t move so as to attack Grievous had good shots against the droid. Of course, agility 1 is an issue, but, even so, those eight health points melted faster than I (and James, obviously) hoped they would.

Statistics in the end showed that my red dices were good, very good even. James’ green dices were the issue: not the worst, but probably not as many evades as he should have had.

And then it was Jango vs the whole world, which is fitting in a way. A great pilot on a great ship, and pretty much unscathed at that time. He had already destroyed one of my Cadets, one-shot, and “Scorch”, whose mission was to end Grievous’ misery but who was therefore sandwiched between those two heavy hitters, only miraculously survived with one hull left.

So make no mistake: even if James had lost two of his three ships, and I had lost only one and a half of my six, the game was still on, James could win. He took a bit later half of “Longshot”, but the key point was that I had been a bit reckless with Malarus, and he almost took half of her. I had to flee with my commander, because her destruction would have actually meant that James would have taken the lead. My shuttle survived by running away as fast as she… by executing a dignified and strategically sound retreat, and then I took half of Jango on other lucky rolls (well, lucky for some). Then it was game; but I must say I sweat a little bit during those last turns.

(One thing here: because I’m an idiot, I’ve lost uncounted games by not running away, or too late. So maybe I’ve finally learnt something after all: thank you, Brave Sir Robin!)

But I was lucky, for sure. Not only with dices, I had some crazy maneuvers, not bumping when I was almost certain I would. But I must admit that I didn’t rely very much on Malarus’ rerolls, because I had most often than not painted dices. Which was great: not too much to worry regarding those strain tokens… because I didn’t have them. Actually, I didn’t rely too much on Automated Target Priority neither, during the whole game: I didn’t need to!

Nevertheless, if I had to choose one card from my list that was really effective, it would most certainly be Hondo Ohnaka. That crew is GREAT. And probably undercosted. Coordinating and jamming range 3 is simply insane. And even at a closer range, for instance when I jammed DGS-047, depriving him of the lock he needed to launch his Diamond-Boron Missiles, well, that was something.

Luck was on my side, clearly. Well played nonetheless, James, thank you for the game, and I wish you better luck for the remainder of the tournament and beyond!

...

So, this is weird: I have now four victories and only one defeat. Which must be some kind of error.

There is a final Swiss round before the cut, so see you next week for round 6…