Screed Kuat & HIE Raiders vs Madine Liberty

For this match, I brought a different sort of Screed list: Kuat & Demo with ACMs, and a pair of DCap Raiders with HIEs. I had the light fighter cover of Valen & Ciena. On the other side my usual opponent, Andy, brought his Madine list from the previous week (with light modifications): Liberty, ET TRC90s, Comms Net flotilla, and Shara/Tycho + 2 generic A-Wings. He had a heavy bid and chose 1st. He selected Most Wanted and I made his Liberty the objective ship his side and the left Raider the objective ship on mine. Here is the table at setup:

In the first round, he moved forward rather tentatively. I turned to the left to move up the board and prevent a flanking maneuver by the Liberty. This left his right-most CR90 free to do its thing. Here is the close of round 1:

I unfortunately missed the second round photo, but I sped up and in round three turned inward while he maneuvered around my formation with the TRC90s and turned his Liberty to flee. In the third round, he made a critical error and ended up with the Liberty in range of Demo’s post movement shot thank to his flotilla being right in the path of the Liberty. Had the flotilla been moved first, he could have used Engine Techs to get out of the threat range, but I think he was concerned that I would activate Demo and land some solid hits on him in the meantime. I had foolishly queued up a Concentrate Fire Command on the Kuat for round 3 instead of Navigate and was unable to turn as sharply as I would have liked. I’ve managed to fork him with Demo on the Liberty and the Raider on the CR90 - both have the double arc. Here is the close of round 3:

In round four, the Liberty went first to escape Demo. I destroyed the CR90 with the Raider. The right most CR90 was then out of range to contribute. Demo continued to cling to the Liberty, which had taken pretty significant damage by this point. Here is the close of round 4:

In round five, I managed to snag a DCap/HIE hit with my left Raider and then follow that up with Demo, who landed the killing blow. We called it at that point, a solid victory for the Empire.

This was a quick game and it fairly quickly went against Andy. Choosing Most Wanted really put him on the defensive and prevented him from committing his heavy hitter in a meaningful way. On my side, I knew that I could drop the Liberty very quickly if it made a misstep, so I committed my fleet to its demise. My fork of the Liberty and CR90 at the start of round 4 cut down his firepower significantly and gave me more activation advantage. Also, forcing the Liberty to activate first meant that his Strategic Advisor had no meaningful effect for most of the game.

Looking at the setup, we both agreed that it was a bad move to choose Most Wanted, but he was sick of playing Contested Outpost, so that’s understandable. With Demo, it just does not work well to turn away from it. The best move is to fly past it, taking a volley along the way. It is maneuverable, but it can’t turn around quickly enough to give chase.

Lessons Learned:

- It is generally best to Navigate with the Kuat on turns 3 and even turn 4, especially against highly maneuverable fleets.

- When going up against Demo, if you can’t eliminate it, flying by is better than turning away.