I didn’t know what to expect coming into this tournament since I’ve been away working for a number of weeks and I was out of practice. Still, I managed to get a few days off and decided to attend last minute (with 10 minutes left to register) flying a build close to something I had tried before.

My list:

Corette A

Rieekan

Tantive

Corvette A

No upgrades

Nebulon B Support

Salvation

Slaved Turrets

Nebulon B Support

No upgrades

MC30 Scout

Foresight

Ordinance Experts

Advanced Projectors

Turbolaser Reroute Circuits

Dash Rendar

Jan Ors

2x X-wing squads

Opening Salvo, Hyperspace Assault, Superior Positions.

399 points

I had given the high activation list a try before and really enjoyed it. Having 5 ships to move around really opens up a lot of options and naturally pairs really well with Rieekan. I knew the two naked ships would be important in all the games for blocking key targets and ramming. I fell in love with the MC30 when it came out and its just such a nasty ship, its the only ship that i feel can go head to head against demolisher and win. Normally the rebels prefer the distance game, and demolisher just steamrolls over everything, but not the MC30! I didn’t realize until my final game that I made a mistake of putting Advance Projectors on Foresight (because it seems kind of redundant), but that saved it in the final match.

For fighters, this is basically my go-to list now, its a jack of all trades. Jan and the X wings fly together and go head to head against any large clusters of fighters. I dont try and win the fighter game, just try and keep the opponent busy, and Jan gives a lot of survivability to the X wings. Dash is definitely my favourite though. Rogue, bomber and the re-rolls just make him good at everything, this time he was my run and gun bomber, but he can more than take on a TIE cluster and knock out TIEs with his re-roll ability.

I’ve never been much into initiative builds for either X wing and Armada so my goal was to create a well rounded fleet that can handle anything decently well, and hopefully my opponent takes takes first player and chooses my objectives, all which favour the large amount of small ships. I actually tend to view being first player a huge disadvantage: I’d rather take more points and hand over my choices of objectives and take the second player advantage, and also the first player often has to move their ships into range first.

Round one

We had 7 players show up, so being the last guy to show up, I had a bye. What can you do.

Round Two

Zombie Rieekan Vs Zombie Rieekan

I didn’t know what to think when I had to go up against another Rieekan list. He was a slightly different build, running a AFmk2 A, a corvette A, a MC30, and Neb, with Jan, 4 X wings…… and maybe some other things i didn’t remember. I was happy when Opening Salvo was our objective, particularly because I had a Salvation title and he did not, and as second player I could add two black die to my pool.

The opening of the game was quite messy, there were 9 ships and 10(?) squads on the board. My two Nebs went head to head against his Neb and AF, while my generic corvette when around everything at speed 4. My MC30 met his corvette, with my flagship Corvette just behind it feeding it tokens with Tantive. His MC30 hung back just a bit.

By the end of round two, our two Neb clusters had met face to face and rammed, my MC30 and Flagship had taken his Corvette off the table. Having the salvation title gave me the upper hand in the Neb vs Neb battle, and the other generic Neb blocked the AF into both front arcs.

Ill admit, by memory I dont totally remember what happened next. At some point the AF went down, taking his Rieekan with it. By the end, only his MC30 and a pair of X wings remained. He manage to destroy both my Nebs however.

I was awarded a 7-3 score. It was a very good game, and a lot of fun to see these two similar lists.

Round 3

I didn’t think I would make it to the final table, but we had a few drops, and Tom had torn apart his previous two opponents. Tom had previously won the A Muse N Games X-Wing store Championship, and scored two full 10-0 games in the first two rounds, so needless to say, I was a bit nervous going into it.

Tom brought An ISD II with Devastator, Intel officer, ECM, SW-7 ions, Gunnery team… and maybe some others, Two Raiders, one with Instigator on it, Demolisher, and a pair of regular TIEs. All commanded by Screed.

I was surprised when he chose Opening Salvo as the objective. Those black die opening shots helped a lot.

I thought I’d totally botched the placement. On my far right side were my flagship and both Nebs, and on the far left were my other Corvette and my MC30. Tom placed his ISD and demolisher right opposite my MC30 and his two Raiders to the other side of the ISD.

In the opening round the corvette and ISD headed straight for each other. Demolisher stuck to one side of of the ISD, protecting its one side while my MC30 went way around. The two raiders turned inwards towards the ISD, while the rest of my fleet creeped in. All our fighters lumped in just ahead of the ISD.

In the opening of the second round, the ISD just obliterated the corvette ahead of it. I think it was 6 red 5 blue die. (4 red + 2 red for opening salvo, 4 blue, +1 for CF). But it went zombie and they rammed. I used my 3 other ships far on the right to delay my MC30s activation, as I wanted Demolisher to come to me. Eventually he did, and scored 10 damage to the MC30… Luckily I had the Advanced Projectors by mistake. Demolisher stripped every shield but 1 off Foresight. It shot back in full force, scoring two big hits to strip its front and side hulls down and delivering 4 hits. Dash later moved in and delivered the final blow to Demolisher. Also in the squadron phase, both my X wings got lucky rolls and each took down a TIE squad, so from here on, all my squads were free to bomb.

Toms ISD hooked to its left to engage my Nebulons, while his Raiders moved towards my squadrons to try and engage them. Unfortunately this exposed one of them to my naked Neb, but it had a crappy roll and didn’t do much damage. My MC30 got a few pot shots in with TRC. Then my squads all got to bomb.

In the next round, the ISD ripped apart my bare Nebulon. Thanks to Rieekan, it was still able to get its two shots off on the front hull zone of the ISD, and then rammed into it. Later, my flagship corvette still had its opening salvo token managed to burn a lot of its tokens, and then Salvation unleashed a harsh attack (3 red, +2 black for Opening Salvo, +1 Red for Slaved turrets, +1 black for CF). There were enough crit symbols on the die to end the ISD.

We played another round , and one of the Raiders got a bit to close the the back end of the MC30 after it moved and took just enough damage to take it off the board as well.

It was a good match, which I thought was against me from the beginning. Points wise, it actually ended up being pretty close, as the Objective awards half points for each ship with at least one damage card, which my 3 surviving ships all had.

Conclusion

I learned a few good things walking out of this tournament. I’ve been on the road for work for the last 6 weeks so I’ve spent some time on the forums and saw quite a few Rieekan lists doing well at tournaments. I faced two 4-ship fleets, only one ship less than my own, but I’d have to say if you’re first player and your opponent has more ships than you, avoid choosing Opening Salvo. The second player advantage, in my case, added 10 black dice to my opening shots, thats not including if I had a CF command on the dial. That’s a lot of extra damage to soak up as first player!

As for my fleet, I don’t know if there is much I’d change. I definitely enjoy many small ships as opposed to medium or large base ships, and it favours Rieeken to have a few “disposable” ships on the fleet. I feel like if you’re taking Rieeken as a commander, you’re already tossing out the idea of winning 10-0, so having a few ships with no upgrades makes sense. In both matches, my bare Nebulon served greatly as a blocker for Salvation, both in offence and defence.

I toyed with the idea of making a Mothma fleet instead, but felt like Rieekan was the way to go. The only major change I may make is to the Advanced Projectors on Foresight. In the final round, it saved it me a few damage cards I suppose, but I think Redundant Shields would have been the way to go if I could find the extra point to fit it in. The Foresight title already gives the MC-30 excellent defensive capability, and the Redundant Shields would help repair it up after going against high point targets.

In the future, I may dump out the bare Corvette and Neb and take an Assault Frigate instead, but then I’d lean towards Mothma as a commander for that fleet instead. Those that play with me in the X-Wing community know that I almost always play Rebel, and odds are there are Keyan Farlander or Jake Farrel in my list, so I suppose when I find certain things I like to play I will almost always play them. Expect slight variations on this list until Wave 3 comes out!

It was a good day of play, thanks to A Muse for hosting. Quite a few new players were at the tournament, so I hope to see the Armada community here grow.

All tournament photos courtesy of A Muse N Games, located in Winnipeg.