Adepticon Aftermath
First, I must apologize for not posting for the last few months. This WILL be different going forwards. Every Saturday morning I'll post something, even if it's short. Right now, I'm waiting to fly out from Chicago, after spending the last three days at Adepticon. Here's a quick summary: Thursday: Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders Tournaments. Placed third & fourth, and had a great time. Also played a 2-player card game with Robert (from Firebase Delta) Friday: 12 hours of painting, because I wanted to field two completely different lists at the Firestorm Armada tournament. Ultimately, this was a waste of Convention time, but I don't really regret it. I painted to a decent quality: 2 Assault Cruisers RSN Carrier and Large Token 4 Buckler Escorts 1 Retarius Escort (used as Corvette) Finished my modular Cruisers/Heavy Cruisers Granted, there is a lot more to do before they're "finished"... I still need to learn how to use my airbrush effectively, so I can paint a nice engine glow effect. Because the painting competition entries were due that night, most people at the painting tables were professionals doing some last minute touch-ups. It was pretty awesome being in that crowd, seeing their amazing work become more amazing. Winners announce tonight; I expect to see some of their work win. Saturday: 4 1000-point games of Firestorm Armada, each lasting 2.5 hours. Game 1: Completely new Scenario (Armistice Failed), which wasn't reflected in the Primer packet in any way. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of questions on the rules, and many Scenario mistakes were made across the Tournament. For my game against Nolan and his Sorylians, I'm pretty sure it would have been a close game if we had played the Scenario correctly, as I would have destroyed his Dreadnought carrying the Objective before it Shunt Escaped. I also tried my Assault list for the first time, and it sorta worked as designed. At least the game went 5-6 turns. End result, crushing defeat (suffering 20+ successes from 12 non-exploding dice killed my Carrier before it could escape) Game 2: Played against Sean's Terrans in Defense Network, basically the same as Primer mission. Tried the Assault list, made some mistakes with deployment and targeting... But having 1/3 of my MFV in Reserve until Turn 4 basically cost me the game, as we only played 4 turns. (I don't know why, but this game played very slowly) End Result: Crushing Defeat, maybe one Tournament point Game 3: Had the pleasure to play against Matt (of Firebase Delta, "Balor" on the Spartan Forum, and frequent guest on The Hub Systems Podcast) and his Works Raptors in Echoes in the Dark (semi-blind deployment). This game was very interesting in how it played out, because he massed in one corner. His strategy completely threw me off, but makes sense. Maintain distance for as long as possible to take advantage of Difficult Target, High DR, and Stealth to plink at me with Torps, then try to Assault all at once when Stealth is no longer viable. So while I mostly massed in the opposite corner (I generally want distance too), his first two activations taught me I needed to close quickly or get slaughtered. Fortunately for me, the 5 Interceptor Praetorian was a hard counter to tis strategy, and I was generally able to cluster my fleet within the 12" diameter PD bubble and stay safe to close. The Heavy Cruisers were extremely lucky with their PD and DR 5, and were generally able to defend themselves. I still lost one without doing much with them, but clustering my fleet prevented a game-losing situation. I think my game-winning move was peeling off my Cruiser Squadron on Turn 3/4, to flank around a Debris Field and meet his fleet head-on. The Cruisers took a lot of fire, but were able to inflict 2 Crits on his Admiral's ship, and my surviving Frigates, Corvettes, and Escorts were able to finish it off. This was the second Capitol ship lost, and quickly turned the tide in my favor. Matt proceeded to maul my Cruisers, but despite several attacks and one boarding Assault (which, despite Special Forces, I was able to repel) he couldn't kill the last one, which allowed my Fleet to knock out a WR Battlecruiser. Unfortunately, the game ended due to time, but I think we played 5 Turns. Despite having most of my fleet, I wasn't in a position to do much more after this. I think Matt would have torn me apart the next turn. He still had 530 points of models on the table... Hmm, I think we did the Battlelog wrong with the Battlecruisers. Final Battlelog should be: Admiral Assault Carrier: +6/-4 Battlecruiser: +2/0 Corvette Squadron: +2/-1 Reform Corvettes Turn 1: 0/-1 Cruiser Squadron: 0/+2 Corvette Squadron: 0/+1 Frigate Squadron: -1/+2 Final Battlelog: 9/-1 (Maybe my Battleship lost 5 HP, but I don't recall). I also scored 5 Tournament points. Game 4: My final game was against Dale, "Dalek Unz" on the Man Battlestations Forum. This game was one of those crazy games I was sure I would lose, as he was able to Battle Shunt his Relthoza Carrier + Banes onto the Objective Turn 1, earning +4 Battlelog at the end of Turns 1&2. This put us at 10/-1 Battlelog at the end of Turn 2. However, my Cruisers once again heroically sacrificed themselves and double-Crit his Carrier after performing a Reserve Entry in its rear-Arc, then quickly crumpled to his Battlestations guns and 2-3 Bombing Runs. This resulted in a net 3 Battlelog in my favor, as well as removing the Carrier's 6 Bombers and 2 Interceptors from the Objective. My Corvettes and remaining Frigate Squadron also arrived to outflank his flanking Destroyers, and were able to finish them off with multiple crazy-good rolls landing rear-Arc double-Crits. Heck, my Corvettes managed to land a Crit with Boarding after destroying one Destroyer with their guns. My dice were simply hot, while Dale's dice turned cold. At the end of Turn 7, I managed to destroy the last Relthoza model (the Battlestation), which secured the Secondary Objective, netting me 6 Tournament points. Final Battlelog was 15/2. Overall, despite my abysmal performance in the first two games, I had a lot of fun during those 12 hours. That's how many games I get to play in a month if I'm lucky. Aftermath - NOVA Open I have mixed feeling about attending Adepticon this year; I certainly did not use my time effectively during my 3 days there, because I painted instead of experiencing everything available. I also wish there was more time to socialize with the 20-ish other Firestorm Armada players. The good news is, I will use this experience to inform decisions on running Firestorm Armada events at the 2016 NOVA Open near Washington, DC, and held on Labor Day Weekend (September 1-4). NOVA is very similar to Adepticon, so if you enjoyed Adepticon or any gaming Convention, or wish you could have attended, I strongly suggest you look into NOVA. Every week, I will be posting status reports on our FSA NOVA development, and will be placing resources in the new NOVA section of this website. We will be posting our Scenarios ahead of time, as we will have table spaces dedicated to Firestorm Armada all four days. I also expect to discuss our NOVA Open Events on a few Podcasts as well. The next 5 months will be busy!
2 Comments
Ryjak
4/16/2016 04:57:17 pm
I had two wins and two losses, but didn't obtain many Tournament Points. I also had three games called for time; two were basically over at that point anyway though.
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AuthorStarted playing Firestorm Armada December 2014 Archives
December 2016
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