VASSAL Fleet Exercise Round 4: Dave vs Biggs

After the third round of this tournament, I strangely thought we were done. I even deleted my list from my list builder. So, when I get paired on round four, it was a bit of a surprise. I was paired with Biggs, who was running a variant of the recent GenCon-winning list. He was running an Assault Frigate with Toryn and Flight Controllers, a Pelta with Asoka and IF!, LMC80 with Engine Techs, and had Garm safely tucked away on a CR90. His squadrons were 4 A-Wings, a Y-Wing, and Gold Squadron. I picked Contested Outpost, though Advanced Gunnery looked quite nice as well for my Kuat. Here is the setup:

In the first round, I jumped up to speed three on the Kuat without committing to either the Liberty or the Pelta/Frigate. Biggs stuck Gold Squadron out a little far and my squadrons happily took the bait and killed it. I’m not sure if he was trying to draw me toward that side of the battlefield, but I kept the Firesprays in reserve to be used against the Liberty. Here is the opening of round 2:

In the second round, I pushed Ciena into the A-Wing meat-grinder in order to tie them up. She went down and I sent an Aggressor to take her place. The Liberty moved in to flank the Kuat on the Pryce round. I agonized over which way to go with the Kuat until I finally decided to do attempt a speed two inside turn against the Liberty. Sadly, I failed to get my front arc into close range against the side. Here is the opening of round 3:

The third turn was the big one. I hit the Liberty with my Kuat (despite missing the close range front arc shot) and was able to wear it down quite a bit for my Firesprays. I also turned in against the Pelta/Frigate to do work on that side of the battlefield. I lost an Aggressor and sent IG88 in. Here is the opening of round 4:

In the fourth round, I activated my Kuat first and rolled a single hit against the Pelta. Thankfully, Screed gave me a hit/crit and that was just enough to bring it down. From the front arc, I laid into the Frigate with a mediocre roll and then blocked it in to prevent escape. The Liberty had the face-up that prevented attack against an obstructed target, so he waited to activate. I had a squadron command with the Gozanti, but failed to bring down the Liberty with the side shot and the two Firesprays, missing my statistically expected 4 damage. The Liberty was then able to shoot the Raider and managed to pop it, despite Brunson’s best efforts. Biggs then clipped an asteroid for the last remaining hull point. Here is the opening of round 5:

In the fifth round, I opened it up with a full frontal shot from the Kuat that resulted in a dead Assault Frigate. My side shot managed a very strong showing that knocked the CR90 down to a single hull. We called the game at this point as the Kuat was still going strong and my squads would have been able to handily finish the CR90. Very good game. Mistakes were made on both sides, but it was a fun one.

Here is what worked on my end: The Kuat with Screed, Pryce, FCT, HIE, and ACM. This setup let me set up for a really good hit on the Liberty at the start of round 3. Even though I missed the close range front arc shot, HIE still helped my medium range shot do serious work. It should be noted that I never got the magic HIE/ACM shot to trigger. My rolls just never allowed it. That said, I did use FCT to trigger ACM/Standard Crit and HIE/Standard Crit, which was rather nice. Of my squadrons, Ciena, IG88, and the Firesprays did very well for me. My strategy of indecision worked very well. I was able to soften the Liberty without being totally out of the fight. I managed to keep the Kuat in play the whole way through.



Here is what didn’t work all that well: My poor Raider helped to soften the Pelta, which was nice, but I used it mostly for area denial and 65 points is a heavy investment for something that pretty reliably pops from a single Liberty shot. Throughout the tournament, I felt like the Raider just didn’t contribute as it ought (probably my fault). Similarly, the Aggressors underperformed for their points. While four blue dice is nice, without rerolls, they generally had poor results and having only 5 hull made them a little squishy.