I’ve been passionately observing the last invader leagues and the recent local Legion activities made me actually participate this time. I tried the following Luke Partybus setup:
799/800
10 Activations
Rebel Officer
R2-D2 (Comms Relay, C-3PO)
Luke Skywalker (Jedi Knight) (Force Push, Jedi Mind Trick, Saber Throw, Tenacity)
2x Fleet Troopers
Rebel Troopers
Rebel Commandos (Strike Team) (DH-447 Sniper)
2x Wookiee Warriors (Bowcaster Wookiee, Tenacity)
A-A5 Speeder Truck (Unorthodox Tactician, Reckless Driver, Onboard Comms Channel)
Son of Skywalker•, You Serve Your Master Well•, My Ally Is the Force••, Full of Surprises••, Return of the Jedi•••, Smoke Screen•••, Standing Orders••••
Major Offensive, Hemmed In, Advanced Positions, Roll Out
Recover the Supplies, Hostage Exchange, Payload, Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators
Fortified Positions, War Weary, Hostile Environment, Supply Drop
Round 1: Thomas (Separatists)
Maul, Bane, T-Series, 6 B1s and Probe Droids. This list has style and also some tech to it. After the initial fright of the tech, I identified setups that I liked and we endet up playing Intercept the Transmissions on Roll Out with Fortified Positions
The Bane Tokens surrounded the large hill on my side of the center. During deployment I could already clear the „bomb“ with the A-A5 (without taking damage). For the other ones I had a solid plan: Put Wookiees into the van. So my first activation in round 1 was disembarking with the Wookiees in a position where I could see both tokens. Bane was to the left. Using the free clamber action I charged the bounty hunter and using the aim from the tactitian cleared him off the table right away. Good start!
The Wookiees got some heat from B1, reducing them to 2 models. Finally Luke entered the bus and moved forward with it, covering the poor Wookiees.
Round 2 Maul played „At Last“ and R2 played Smoke Screen (without the smoke), giving the Wookiees a small nudge to savety and relaying his own order to the bus and Luke. Now the bus was under „heavy“ fire. Slowly but steadily the B1s dealt damage. After 4 or 5 shots and a repair in between the bus was on 1 health left. Time to hit the road! Recklessly I moved into the one B1 not yet activated … without dealing damage.
The attacks on the bus stopped and my Wookiees were targeted again and were finally finished off by Maul (who took a wound to himself in order to do that). Brave Rebel Troopers found an angle to shoot Maul in the open, dealing him another wound, which was promptly healed by a med bot.
Now it was Luke’s turn. His heavy attack of 7 surging black dice resulted in 1 hit. At least the save failed.
We both played 1-pips in round 3 (You serve your master well VS I’m your worst nightmare). I lost initiative and shortly after the bus. I took my chances with Maul having 4 wounds remaining. Luke took a swing (no aim allowed), only 3 hits. Maul was not allowed to dodge due to his stance, so 2 wounds. I pushed Maul away and moved into the snow crater to give the Wookiees on the hill the fire order: with a little help of an aim token due to the tactitian, Maul died and my opponent conceded.
Good start. I didn’t „feel“ my list yet. A solid gameplan and the positioning mistake with the Bane tokens gave me a good headstart. Still there is a lot to learn for me using this list.
Round 2: Richard. (Rebels)
This was the match I dreaded the most. Double Airspeeder, 12 activations. I actually had a plan for an aggressive attack on bombing run. But the objective was the one vetoed by default. So we ended up on Payload, Danger Close, War Weary. I had a huge dense forest on my side, blocking deployment for the A-A5. So abusing the deployment rules for oblong bases, I started very close to the opposite bomb car.
Most of round one was positioning, where I put my corps units on the top behind the next line of sight blocker on the path for my cart and my opponent moved away from my Luke-bus. I could not use usual standing orders on the bus round one, but Smoke Screen both gave the A-A5 with Luke an order and pushed a unit of Wookiees a bit further. I still „lost“ priority, which is the main goal for standing orders anyhow.
The A-A5 only needed one move to get close (taking a dodge and standby with the other actions), so Luke had his full activation. Some extensive measurements led me to believe, I could base a Mark II. This was very unfortunately not the case …
Very unfortunate. This left Luke exposed for 2 double aimed Airspeeder shots. He had one dodge and received „only“ 4 wounds and dealt one back. The A-A5 used its standby to deny Bomb Cart movement.
At least I won the priority roll in round 2 and could get Luke into safety, parking in the Mark II with a standby that he used soon after to follow the withdrawing gunner.
Richard gave up on his objective and went for in interception route (that conveniently alse led him away from Luke). Airspeeders and critical weapons dealt with the A-A5 and also one unit of Wookiees took damage. I started to shoot the T-47s which took a lot of damage, but got repaired twice.
In round 3 Luke finally caught up with the opposing army, „parking“ in R2 and subsequently killing him and 4 naked Vets and scaring another unit of Vets away the following round. Now I had a really good feeling about the match. Richard was up on killpoints but definitely would not score in the game. So I had 2 roads to victory: Move my bomb cart one more time in Rounds 4-6 or score R2 who was pretty much unopposed.
Or that’s what I thought. R2 got hit once by an Airspeeder, dealing 3 wounds, repairing back 2. At that point I highly misjudged the offensive potential of the one Airpeeder able to still attack R2. What I should have done as the second action was to calculate odds to keep the suppression for next round and then „bubble wrapping“ R2 with Wookiees during his walk over the finish line. What I did, was just move out of the way. First activation next round I lost R2 to a spiking T-47 shot. The Airspeeder died soon after, but the damage was done.
Still there is another flank left. Unfortunately I was not cautious enough here either. While trying to finish off a damaged T-47, the officer peeked out a bit too far, so two opposing snipers could shoot and kill him in the open. That would have been a very helpful activation for pushing the cart. Another unit of mine died to a critting forward peeking sniper, who killed the remaining unit leader of Fleet Troopers behind the round building.
So there was really only one option left to still drive the game home: a lucky Luke. I played Full of Surprises, charged away a sniper team sitting on my cart and pushing a unit of Vets into Luke for temporal safety. He had to survive the round for a chance of winning. Richard unfortunately found a corps token in the bag right away, which of course he used to withdraw. I then took 3 hits from an Mark II and a T-47 shot. The first wound Luke received was from the Officer. Of course. A unit of snipers rolled 2 hits causing the last 2 wounds. Now there was really no way left of moving the cart. GG.
This was a really good and challenging game. When analysing the lists of my opponent, I did not really expect to win the match. Seeing how close it was, I’m quite satisfied. I learned a lot and I don’t fear the matchup as much any more as I did before the game. It’s still bad though. Also there was no room for error during Round Robin any more. I had to win every other match if I wanted to proceed to the playoffs.
Round 3: Landoro (Rebels)
Officer, Sabine, Clan Wran, Mandos, Wookies, Bus, Corps. 9 activations. Nothing to be too afraid of, but Luke needs to be careful to not get a beating of all hitters at once. We ended up with Recover The Supplies on Danger Close with Clear Conditions.
Large LOS blockers prohibited a round 1 box grab with Luke and also a cheesy advance as in the last game. By playing standing orders I had the final 2 activations which should be enough for all kinds of setups for round 2. My opponent made a bold placement with Wookiees in the bus alone on the top left flank. Without orders and an unlucky draw of Wookiees before bus, they were essentially stuck. The bus also was too afraid to even move forward into my Wookiee Standby „Fortress“.
Landoro tried to focus on hitting my bus with Rockets. With 7 rockets and 8 hull points the bus was never in danger of going down. I saved the statistical amount of 2 and repaired 2 wounds with R2, leaving the bus at comfortable 3 damage.
Sabine decided to go for it and went to the center box to grab it next round. My final two activations were moving closer with the bus and dropping off Luke for some shenanigans: Luke disembarked and pushed Sabine into both Wookiee standbies (3 shooting Rebel troopers were unable to strip one of those before) and then charging Sabine. Sabine had now 3 wounds (dodge and nimble on a 3+ save is a pain) and Luke was resting in melee and in base contact with the center box. Everything is going according to plans.
In round 2 the opposing Wookiees disembark and start shooting my Wookiees. They get the countercharge. The fight will go on until round 5, where my Wookiees ultimately win.
My other Wookies get shot by Clan Wren until they too counter charge. Once the generic Mandos join the fray, Luke figured he found his ride. He picked up the box, pulled the Mandos towards my table edge and charded after (dealing 1 wound). Sabine charged the Wookiees, leaving one model alive.
This one model managed to survive Sabine’s unaimed swing in round 3, leaving Clan Wren trapped with the Wookiee, preventing them from pursuing my back lines which were taking the boxes to unreachable spots.
Clan Wren had to kill off the remaining Wookiee and only got one move towards my back flank. After the generic Mandos dealt one wound to Luke (hello tenacity!), I pushed them in the direction to intercept Clan Wren. I charged after the Mandos and to my suprise, they all died.
Landoro gave up on chasing R2, giving me an unpreventable Objective point. Sabine and Clan Wren tried to chase aftery my box carrying corps units. My bus was running in circles, not killing units it drove over. Luke pinned Sabine down in melee and with the first activation in round 5, he used You Serve Your Master Well to both finally kill off Sabine and pin Clan Wren in melee.
At this point, my opponent conceded as there was no way left of bringing this game around.
Round 4: Dropout
We had a lot of dropouts in our group. The replacement of the replacement unfortunately (or fortunately however you want to spin it) didn’t make a game, there was no replacement left and so everybody got a win with minimal margin.
That resulted in the situation where I was definite #2 and ready for elims before playing my final game. But there were still some stakes due to the fact that with a good margin, I might get a round 1 bye in elims. So ofter some real-life struggles interfering with our schedule, we finally played the last game a few hours before the deadline
Round 4: cupcake_hunter (Rebels)
With members of both of our families needing taking care, we started the most rush game of my Star Wars Legion „career“. We played Recover the Supplies with Minefield on Danger Close.
I started with a sniped Mando in the top left unit. In return I received 4 wounds on my Wookiees from Clan Wren. I moved those Wookies to the left, didn’t see the mine they were running into and received another 2 wounds (on the leader due to LoS). They hit a full 5 saves block from the Mandos and got gunned down heavily (only surviving luckily with 2 wounds after round 1). My other Wookiees also went that route, trying to get the box, killing the Mandos and clearing the way for R2.
Both my box grab units in the back ran into double exploding mines. One got wiped afterwards from Mando Rockets. The opposing bus tried to block R2’s way to the left, but the droid could just barely squeeze trough. Also my bus found a way and Luke charged out into the Mandos on the building, leaving one model alive.
Round 2, Sabine got initiative. She thought about hunting my box grabbers but then decided to jump into Luke, dealing 1 wound (hurray tenacity). At this point my opponent conceded due to real-life interference.
It feels a bit wrong to get a 3-0 win from that game. Thinking it through from this state, a 4-2 win would not be unreasonable. Good dice might have changed it into a 5-1 (cap at difference of 3) but bad dice or poor play on my side and/or good play from the opponent might have even resulted in a defeat. But it is what it is, now I can focus on single elimination. I still need to wait for the final pairing, where I have a 4/7 chance of getting a bye for round 1. Fingers crossed.
SailorMeni Saves The Day 