Great tourney as always - I took Brakiri:
1 Kaliva
6 Brikorta Carriers
Given that the odds gave 1/2 the games to be Assassination, I figured a big target (the Kaliva) needed to be tough enough to survive while the rest of the fleet punishes the enemy. I thought the Brikorta (with their 2 AD AP, Beam, DD Forward Arc Medium Lasers and supporting Pulsars should cause some serious damage....I was wrong!)
Round 1 - Greg Smith's ISA (4 WS, 2 Vaarls's, Wing of T-bolts) - 7 - 13 loss
Was a bit worried about the Nials, especially with the ISA CQ bonus to dogfighting, but figured the anti-fighter turrets on every ship I had (+ the interceptors on the Brikorta) should give me the edge...
After a struggle we ran out of time after I lost a couple of Brikorta and most of the Falkosi to the ISA and I managed (just) to take out one Whitestar - The WS was just really hard to hit with my weapon selection and I have a lot more respect for its survivability. Likewise the Brikorta really impressed me for their sheer resilience and the Kaliva was like a walking behemoth...it didn't get to fire much but, despite taking immense amounts of fire and crits, was not skeleton crewed or crippled...shame I couldn't do much damage to the ISA though. It was a marginal victory for Greg in the end but I dare say he would have pulled through in the end.
Round 2 - LBH's ISA (5 WS) - 13 - 7 win.
White Stars and Nials again!!! Well, pretty much a repeat of my first match, except this time I just managed to get a win (by 1 VP) - I only lost 1 Brikorta this time but again the Falkosi (or free VP for the enemy as I like to call 'em now) made it really close. We ran out of time again (about turn 5 or so) but it was very close - no idea who would have won out in the end.
Round 3 - Alexb83's Minbari (he posted his fleet) - 13 - 7 win
We lost a bit of time at the start as Reaverman took like half an hour to move his Narn bat squad off the table (lots of ships) to go to his next game so we could actually play! (I suggest Mongoose invest in a forklift to let Reaverman transport his fleet from table to table...probably need two for Triggy
)
Anyway this was a fun game - a case of spot how much horrific damage hordes of Nials with insane dogfight bonus can do! I sort of knew deploying ANY Falkosi was a bad idea but figured it was just unsporting to leave 'em in the carrier cause I was scared of the big bad Nials and boldly sent em out to face the enemy...the Brakiri quartermaster wasn't happy
Anyway, I managed to pull through thanks to some incredibly lucky stealth rolls (I think I rolled a 6 for about 5 stealth rolls in a row!) which edged me over a few points for a marginal victory...another close game though and we also ran out of time. I think if we played a full game then Alex would have won through so again the time limit saved me...I was knackered though.
Round 4 - TGT's Minbari (Veshatan Gunship x 2, Tiagra?) - 0 - 20 loss
Again with the boneheads! I was knackered for this fight (having just 2 hrs sleep before the tourney to get things painted was not a good idea!) so about turn 2 I just had to concede, not very fair on my opponent but my opponent was gracious enough to let me appoint a champion (Burger, who arrived too late to take part in the tourney due to a last minute work commitments) to use my fleet in my stead . I accepted though that this would mean a 20 - 0 loss for me but wondered how my fleet would do...not very well as it happened! The Veshatan squadron had to assassinate my Kaliva and did so pretty much in one shot!
* Sigh * Oh well, it was fun and games and seeing Tank win a medal for second place was great - he's not allowed to moan about ACTA *ever* again!
