VASSAL Fleet Exercise Round 3: Dave vs The Jabbawookie

In the third round of the tournament, I paired off against The Jabbawookie. He was running a Raddus Rogue list with a pair of Slicer GR75s, a fairly naked CR90B with Raddus on board, and an MC80C with HIE, ET, QBT, EWS, IO, and Defiance. His squadron component was simply Shara and 7 YT2400s. He outactivated me and I knew that the squadron play would be a key factor, so I took first player. I picked Fighter Ambush which is always my default pick if it’s available. Here is the setup:

In the first round, I pushed ahead conservatively, though I certainly misdeployed the Raider a bit too far forward. The MC80 hyperspaced in at the beginning of round 2. Here is the post-drop positioning:

In the second round, I activated the Raider first. I was able to get into the front arc of the MC80 and place myself in a blocking position. This would have allowed me to close with the Kuat if I could just keep it in place for a mere turn. Unfortunately, the MC80 had a squadron command to push his YT2400s in and soften the Raider a little. This allowed the MC80 to roll perfectly to pop the Raider and move away. At that point, I knew that the game was essentially over. On the squadron front, I was able to pop a YT2400 and work Shara down to a single hull. Here is the opening of round 3:

In the third round, I focused my attention on the squadron game. It was close, but I was able to bring the Kuat to bear in support. Here is the opening of round 4:

In the fourth round, I did more squadron work and set the stage for a kill-shot on the last two YTs in the following round. We called it at this point. I conceded defeat by a mere 6 point MOV. Here is the final board state:

This was obviously a really close game. Jabbawookie played it very well. One of the tough things about fighting against Raddus is that the Raddus player is able to hit and run so effectively. Keeping my combat ships closer together is absolutely imperative. I separated them in the hope that he would drop on the Kuat and I could use the Raider as an emergency blocker, but that involved banking on a mistake, which was unwise. Here is my primary mistake during the game: I should have done a squadron command with the Raider on turn two. This would have allowed me to place IG88 in front of the MC80 to provide squadron cover and prevent the three YTs from softening the Raider’s aft shields.

After these last three games, I have some general thoughts on my list. The HIE/ACM Kuat is fun with Screed, but a BT Avenger Kuat with JJ may just be more cost effective and of course maneuverable. It would also perform better against the upcoming SSD with DCO. The Raider II underperformed in all three of my games. It seems to have a rather niche role of "whale hunting". It is great against ISDs, but is otherwise unimpressive. My squadrons had mixed results. Boba and Ciena are solid, but the Aggressors, including IG88, also tended to underperform. Having only 5 hull and a speed of 3 was tough. The single token on IG88 leads to trouble. My original list had Decimators (Morna included) with Dengar and Mauler. This would have been a significant improvement over the Aggressor/Firespray mix.