Wow. So, my last post was BY FAR my most visited and most read post. So far, I’ve averaged around 400 views for each post in the first 3 days. In the same time-frame, my first Republic tournament report has gotten nearly 2,500! That is INSANE! Thank you all for reading!

As I said before, I was hoping to get in 1 more event before I disappeared for a while, and I pulled it off. There was another Friday night event, this time at Discordia, and I wanted to continue learning about my Wave 3 faction of choice: The Republic.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is my favorite Star Wars character. Han Solo is a close second, but nobody quite triggers the nostalgia of being in high school and watching Revenge of the Sith, with Ewan McGreggor’s portrayal of the character stealing the show. I knew I had to get him on the table. I liked the 7B configuration on Anakin and Ahsoka, so that was an obvious add. Looking at the dial, in order to perform as a true ace, the Aethersprite needs it’s 1 and 2 speed turns to be blue, and the R4 Astromech fits that bill perfectly. To fill out the points, I added a little side of beef to my I5 ace, in the form of 3 104th Battalion Pilots.

I lose the Initiative bid against Resistance Cloud 5s, and against anything Initiative 6, but the ARC arcs should keep those aces honest. Kenobi’s ability itself isn’t likely to get much use for me, but his higher Initiative on the Delta-7 chassis is enough to win me over, and he’s significantly cheaper than his Padawan. I will likely never use Plo Koon’s ability, and it’s worth the 2 extra points for an ability I might use (or just to fly Kenobi.)

7 people came, giving us a bye (Kyle got it first.) There was my Republic list, a Separatist Swarm, a Resistance Poe’s Angels list, a First Order Aces list, and 3 Rebel lists (Han and B-Wings, Han and U-Wings, and U/B/B/X.) As usual for Discordia and Dragon’s Hoard, Jim was recording one of the tables, and I happened to play there for the 1st and 3rd games. For those, the links are above my opponent’s lists. Pay little attention to the health trackers, as they aren’t being updated in real-time most of the time.

Game 1: Jim Kelly

Round 1, the Separatist Swarm, flown by Scum-enthusiast Jim Kelly. Jim’s swarm is a bit more buffed than Travis’ from last week, but loses a ship for the improved Initiative. He set up to joust my Arcs, and I started doing math to figure out my engagement range. I wanted to get Kenobi beyond the first Vultures on the initial engagement while still getting shots on the back row, to force Jim to either split his fire or ignore my Ace through a straight joust. There’s a lot of thought process to go through.

The Delta can go any speed straight 2-5 without stress, and can boost afterward to choose to go 2 more. The Vulture can go 2-5 straight as well. To game the rule of 11, if the either ship goes 5 straight, the other gets shot if it goes 4 or 5 straight. I lose the Range 3 engagement, due to number of ships and their Energy Shells. If he goes 3 or slower, I can safely move 5, and be in range to zoom past. If he goes slower, I will want to move faster, to try to get closer but still outside range for the first turn. If I can guarantee 9-10 movement on turn 1, I can dial in a 3 straight on turn 2, boost if he goes slow, and guarantee the engagement I want.

I dial in the 3 straight, and Jim reveals 4 straights with the droids. We ended JUST outside Range 3 of one another. One ARC and Dooku traded a useless shot, and we moved to round 2, where Kenobi dialed in his 3 straight. The droids revealed their 2 straights, and 1 boost later, Kenobi is exactly where I wanted him.

Jim takes his frustration out on one of my ARCs and nearly downs it, but only 3 droids were capable of firing, as Obi-Wan downed one in a single shot. The 3 ARCs combined, however, failed to down the second, leaving it on 1 hull. The medium based ARCs prove to be great for blocking, and the Droids are unable to turn around as they would have wanted to. Kenobi downs the wounded one and the ARCs continue to ignore the Scimitar to focus down the missile-carriers.

The final Droid died here to a Loose Stabilizer after it’s 2-hard to remain engaged, leaving Dooku alone against 2 half-pointed ARCs, a full ARC, and Obi-Wan, who still hadn’t been effectively shot at. Bumping and swapping out the targeted ARC for another kept all but 1 of them from death, and when the clock sounded, I had 1 shot on Dooku, which dealt the 1 damage needed to bring him down, ending the game 200-63 in my favor.

Game 2: Kyle Smith

Rebel anti-stress mechanic with B-Wings that want to be stressed seemed a little weird to me at first glance, but then I realized that they could simply do linked actions after their hard moves to get their stress anyway, and I saw the beauty of the list. That, combined with their higher-than-my-Ace Initiative pilot, with equal squad attack strength and nearly equal health meant I was in for a brawl.

The initial set-up has Kyle’s lower ships in a corner with Wedge facing the opposite board edge behind them, set up to stop Kenobi’s flank. I realize on turn 2 that I have borked it up and don’t really have an out to get out of Wedge’s arc, but I can guarantee 2 shots on him from ARCs for my trouble, and decide to risk the trade.

Wedge rolls sub-optimally, and Kenobi blocks with his 1 dice, resulting in the loss of 2 shields. He then fires back and drops 4 damage on Wedge, which is backed up by the closer ARCs, which confirms the kill on the X-Wing. For their part, the rest of Kyle’s list nearly dropped the closest ARC to them, but it wasn’t enough for the kill. I then set to work mucking up their targeting priorities like before while trying to focus down 1 ship at a time. Ten Numb was closest, so he was next, and died the round after Wedge, after he took down the bleeding ARC.

Magva positioned herself weirdly, moving forward on a turn I figured she would stop and rotate, so she became target #3, and was brought down somewhat shortly thereafter. Both of my ARCs were bleeding by now, but only 1 was nearly dead. Unfortunately, it was the one I had been using to joust, then block, the ace B-Wing pilot, and was now in front of him.

The turn after a Sloop, Kenobi slides into a bump neither of us were sure would actually fit, moving over the ARC to slam into Braylen. He did enough damage to end that 104th pilot, but time was running out for the B-Wing. Another 2 turns after this, Kenobi brought him down with a Range 2 shot for a 200-84 win.

Game 3: Mike Fortman

Mike’s list, like all lists with 1-2 TIE/sf and an Upsilon, had me nervous. I can’t really ignore the shuttle, because it does too much damage; but I also can’t ignore the TIEs, because they ALSO deal too much damage, and everything has more health than I feel comfortable leaving until the end-game.

Luckily for me, the exhaustion of flying this style of list against 2 other tough opponents, coupled with the hiatus Mike had just come off, caused a mis-dial on Backdraft. Rather than have him tear off toward his support, showing me his backside the entire way, Mike turned Backdraft into my list, at Range 3, through a scrap.

I was internally torn, as my first instinct was actually to let him do the correct maneuver. In a non-tournament game, I would have basically insisted. However, at the top table in even an event as small as this, attention to detail is important, and he admitted his mistake before moving the ship. Backdraft didn’t die this turn, but he did go down the next, while QD sped off to recover with his squad-mates.

My engagement with the rest of Mike’s list also went in my favor, with the lead ARC blocking Tavson, Scorch flying through a gas cloud and ending up with no action, and QuickDraw unable to turn hard enough to get a shot in. I threw everything I had at the TIE/fo and did… 2 damage. The ARC that couldn’t shoot Scorch takes 2 of QD’s shields at Range 2. Mikes shots tore through the shields of a second ARC, putting 2 of my blockers on half points.

A turn later, my front-running ARCs K-turned to put their bigger guns back in the fight, and the formerly rear ARC continued to block the coordinating shuttle. I continued to pour fire into Scorch, and still miss every shot, while QD unloads on my 2 already wounded ARCS, bringing both uncomfortably low. Scorch finally dies the round after that, after a grand total of 3 Kenobi shots and 6 ARC shots. QD loses his other shield in another round where he has no return-fire shot, as the ARC he would have shot had already died.

Mike puts me in another math position, where if he 3-sloops with QD, the correct answer is to 1-hard with Kenobi to have an action. If he does ANYTHING ELSE, the best answer I have is to 1-bank down toward the rest of my squad, to either cause a bump or to have a shot on QD. Instead, I dial in a 2-sloop down, figuring that it may block while also having a shot if QD sloops.

QuickDraw chose the Sloop, and while he does a couple of damage to Kenobi, it’s not enough to half-point the Jedi, and the ARC lands the killing blow through the scrap. Shots of opportunity throughout the scrum have also brought Tavson pretty low, and the next round is enough to end him as well, though he takes another ARC with him. A third win, another 200-84.

3-0 is enough to win the event, with Jim coming in second with his flock of droids and the Han/Renegade/Renegade squad piloted by Rob Cardwell takes 3rd. All told for 2.0 before my break, I end up 33-13, for a 71.7% winrate. This is far higher than I would have expected, and has me looking forward to my return and the major events (a Campaign Against Cancer and 2 System Opens) that await when I do.

The ARC 170 impressed me that night. It’s not a particularly impressive ship on its own, but the area denial and consistency of shots provided by a group of them is something to watch out for. 3 of them flying cover for an Ace is scary-effective, and I can’t wait to do it again.

As for Obi-Wan’s ability, I had 2 opportunities to set-up to use it, and both time it was better simply not to. Once, I was defending with a focus token and a single eye result, and I chose to simply spend the Force to take less time swapping tokens around. The other was after I had attacked and spent a Focus, there was a possibility of 1 shot coming in, but I had 2 Force remaining, and the shot didn’t come my way anyway. Except for the occasional movie quote, I might as well have flown Plo and saved 2 points.

Next time: See you eventually!