First (Small) Tournament with the Republic

Sorry for the delay in getting articles up!  I had one ready to go about my preferred Imperial list, and the day before I was going to put it up, they announced the points changes.  Kinda makes my thoughts on things like Strike Team snipers a little less accurate in the current rules.  Oh well.  Hopefully, this will make up for it, at least in part. 

The tournament in question was a small part of Recruits, a gaming con in Lee's Summit, MO.  This was the first year Legion featured as part of it, and all the credit for that goes to Matt Overstreet for working his butt off to get it done.  The prizes were excellent, the tables looked good (I sadly didn't get pictures of all of them, just the ones I played on), and it got a lot of attention from people passing by as part of the convention.  The one major downside of the event was the size.  Counting the TO, we had a total of 5 people there to play, down considerably from the 9 or so that had signed up.  That certainly does limit the scope and scale of this write-up, but hopefully, it'll still shed some light on how the Republic did at the tournament.

My List: 

Obi's Crew (799/800)

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Force Reflexes, Hope, Aggressive Tactics, Endurance)
Phase I Clone Troopers (DC-15 Phase I Trooper, Recon Intel)
Phase I Clone Troopers (DC-15 Phase I Trooper, Recon Intel)
Phase I Clone Troopers (DC-15 Phase I Trooper, Recon Intel)
Phase I Clone Troopers (DC-15 Phase I Trooper, Recon Intel)
Phase I Clone Troopers (Z-6 Phase I Trooper, Phase I Clone Trooper, Recon Intel)
Phase I Clone Troopers (Z-6 Phase I Trooper, Phase I Clone Trooper, Recon Intel)
BARC Speeder

Commands:Ambush (1), Hello There! (1), Push (2), Knowledge and Defense (2), Assault (3), General Kenobi (3), Standing Orders (4)

Deployments: Major Offensive, Battle Lines, The Long March, Advanced Positions
Objectives: Key Positions, Intercept the Transmissions, Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators, Breakthrough
Conditions: Rapid Reinforcements, Minefield, Limited Visibility, Clear Conditions

Obi's Crew, ready to go!

As there are not exactly a ton of options for the Republic at the moment, none of my units should come as much of a surprise.  My choice of upgrades is where the debate really lies.  We'll start with our Civilized Warrior, General Kenobi.  Young Ben here is the centerpiece of the army.  He's the one that has all of my Pierce, Impact, and heavy-hitting command cards for the list.  His attack is relatively weak (in my opinion) but he makes up for that by being incredibly defensive, and by being the best "commander" (role, not unit type) Jedi in the game.  I've found that Force Reflexes should be stapled on to him, as you almost always want at least 1 dodge token, while Endurance helps considerably in keeping Kenobi from getting bogged down by suppression.  Finally, Hope, while limited, is one of the only means the Republic has at damage mitigation and should be considered for that reason alone.

For my Clones, I tend to prefer the DC-15 over the Z-6.  While the ceiling of the Z-6's damage output it higher, it is far too variable for my tastes.  I can't say how many attacks I've made with the Z-6 where its dice contributed nothing to the ultimate result, while double blanks on the DC-15 are rare.   That said, the Z-6 is very effective using Fire Support, especially if it can do so with a unit that has offensive surges.  For that reason, I include a mix of weapon types in my army, rather than double down on one or the other.

Game 1

The first round was against Scott, who was, oddly enough, also playing Republic.  This was my first Republic mirror match, and Scott's first game ever.  Fittingly for our armies, we were playing on a Geonosis themed table.  Though I didn't get the details of his list, he was using 4 troopers and 2 BARCs along with Kenobi.  We played Breakthrough with Clear Conditions and Long March, so the game rapidly became a slugfest, and we both deployed our guys roughly on line.  Recon Intel naturally gave me a bit of an advantage here, as I could push up into some defensive positions, and generally be ready to engage him without having to move all that much. 

Geonosis Battlefield, the start of round 2

I won't try to give a blow by blow account, as I didn't take the notes I should have.  Few tidbits are that fire support can be brutal when it's going both ways, and catching squads in the open becomes crucial.  Token sharing is also a huge deal for Clones, and something to be considered at all times.  With the Empire, if I had a chance to use an Aim token, I took it, to reroll however many dice I could, or to fish for crits at times.  With the special rules of a Clone trooper, however, you have to think about that.  Why spend it now for a single die when you can wait and use it on your next attack?  Being able to stack aims really helps a Z-6 attack earn its points back.  Still not guaranteed, but it can come in handy.

Never fun to stare down at Fire Support waiting to happen.

One little anecdote I will report was on the epic, Obi vs Obi fight that went down pretty much smack dab in the middle of the battle.  We both knew what was going to go down, so we both played "Hello There!".  I won the roll, but activated a different unit instead, hoping Obi would get to use his free attack from the Standby token he gained from "Hello There!" decided to charge in, and attack, which I was able to mostly block, and even dealt a wound back to him through Soresu Mastery.  I then triggered my own Standby, and dealt another wound on him, but took one myself from his Soresu Mastery.  When both sides have it, it's no joke.  I waited for a few activations before going back at it with Obi, (I didn't want to leave my Kenobi out in the open waiting to be shot) and was able to land another pair of wounds, but the fight wouldn't wrap up until the next round, when my General was able to finally finish his evil twin/clone.

There can be only one!

The game went to time and came down in my favor.  Aside from the points disparity, my BARC had somehow survived and slipped into his deployment zone, scoring the only VP of the game.

Game 2

Game two was against Josh, and it was both a blast and one of the closest games I have ever had.  He was playing as Rebels, with Leia, Chewie, two Vets, and Mk. IIs, two Z-6 squads, two 1.4FDs, and a single AT-RT.  Boy was I out activated!  Worse yet, we ended up playing Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators, and he had won the roll to be Blue Player!  Thankfully, we had Advanced positions, so I was able to combine that with Recon Intell to pretty quickly close the gap from the get-go.  We also had Rapid Reinforcements, though I'm not sure if that helped or hindered me, since we mostly played only half of the table. 

I'll admit, I was more than a little bummed to play Vaporators.  I tend to think it is the most lopsided objective card, as the Red player has to be extremely aggressive, while the Blue player kicks the can, and holds tight.  As someone who prefers to play defensively (or at least advance methodically) this one is a hard game for me.  I mentally tried to brace myself for losing from the beginning of the game.  I had played Josh once before at an RPQ, and he's a solid player.  I wasn't going to be able to out activate him this time, which had helped me in our previous game, and I wasn't going to be to try some flashy tricks to confuse him.  So, I decided that I had lost the game before round 1 started, but I was going to try and see how close of a game I could make it. 

Main engagement area, early game, I'm fixing my Vaporators, and pushing towards his.

Thankfully for me, we decided that the tuffs of trees were LOS blocking, which meant that we both only had narrow firing lanes with which to shoot one another.  As he had the longer-range weapons (his DirectTV cannons)this helped me considerably and kept him from being able to focus fire any one unit.  The game didn't start well.  I tried to take a Vets unit out from the beginning, but after getting it down to one guy, I just wasn't quite able to finish him off.  Worse, I started taking casualties pretty quickly.  I was able to rush the Vaps, and get one of them fully repaired by the end of the first round, but the squad repairing the other started losing guys.  It was down to half strength (three guys) by the end of the first round.  I deployed my Clone Paras to act as meat shields for the guys fixing the Vaporator, and they served that role admirably, but barely lasted into the second round.  Josh used his activations wisely, and almost succeded in taking the squad out that was fixing the generator.  In fact, if he hadn't pointed something out, he would have eliminated the squad.  As I mentioned above, the squad was down to three guys, and he rolled three hits.  My defense die turned up two blanks and a surge, and while I had a surge token, I actually forgot that there were three guys in the squad, and said they were dead, and grabbed the two guys by the Vaporator as casualties.  I was just starting to complain that I had a surge token but it wouldn't help to use it, when he pointed out that I still, in fact, had a guy one the table.  Whoops!  Spending that surge (which it had curtesy of Aggressive Tactics) allowed the squad to live long enough to finish repairing the generator, tieing up the game.  Excellent sportsmanship on Josh's part, and one reason I enjoy playing him.  We both tend to be a bit more understanding of flubs like that, as earlier in the game he had forgotten some triggers with his Rebel Vets, and we had belatedly applied them.

  Already down two activations by this point., but both of my Vaporators are fixed.

With the game tied, it was down to a slugging match.  While Clones generally shine in this, I was by this point down two activations, I had a squad almost dead, and my BARC was on its last thrusters.  Thankfully, Josh got a bit too aggressive here and had a squad run into melee with Obi-Wan to try to tie him down.  I played Hello There, and gave Obi a very nice stack of tokens, including a standby.  Thinking Obi was contained by the trooper unit, Josh pushed Leia and Chewie up to attack my troops, and hurt one of my remaining units pretty badly.  However, that was all I needed for Kenobi, who used his standby to kill the troops (actually a squad leader and an astromech) he was engaged with, and then, on his activation, aim, and charge Chewie.

With the squad engaging him dead, Obi charges into Chewie.

Obi was able to deal several wounds to Chewie and left him at two health.  Meanwhile, my clones decided to introduce the Princess to their blaster bolts, and they almost had her down to nothing by the end of the round.  Chewie valiantly took one for her, but that left him with only a single bit of health left.  The enraged Wookie tried to take down the Jedi Master he was engaged with, but Obi's expert defense (and a stack of dodge tokens) only allowed a single hit to get through. Early the next round, Obi finished off Chewie.  Josh's plans took a bit of a hit when Kenobi had eliminated the troopers he was engaged with, and then attacked Chewie, but the next round he at least had a plan.  Before Kenobi could finish off Chewie (I intentionally waited until there were few units that could shoot at Obi) Josh activated his remaining trooper squad and had them standby, saving that action for Kenobi.  I expected him to try and shoot at me, but Josh didn't want to run the risk of losing guys to Kenobi's Soresu Mastery, and the free Dodge I had, so instead of attacking, he pulled his guys back they wouldn't get engaged.  Instead, Obi merely walked up to the Vaporator.

With Chewie dead, Josh spends his standby to run away from Obi.

Meanwhile, my Clones had finished off Leia and were now engaging Josh's AT-RT.  My BARC had absorbed entirely too many activations, but it finally bit the dust.  Now it down to just Obi and a handful of clones.  One unit was down to a single mini, but it could still generate tokens, so I hid him behind a sand dune, and started aiming and dodging with him.  That helped get a few wounds on to the AT-RT, and kept the troops alive a bit longer.  The final round began, and ended, with me playing Ambush, and activating Obi-Wan.  He repaired the Vaporator and then charged into melee with the rebel squad.  As soon as it was clear that I could get into melee with them, Josh conceded the game.  He was down a VP by that point, and his last chance to do anything was the single trooper squad now engaged with only a slightly wounded Jedi.  While he may have been able to finish off Kenobi (which was a pretty big if) he likely wouldn't have been able to do that and damage the vaporator again.

The game-deciding move: Obi repairs damage on the vaporator, and charges into combat with the last Rebel trooper squad.

And with that, the tournament was over.  Though originally intended to be a three-game tournament, the lack of players had reduced it to a two-game, last man standing type tournament.  I ended up with the first-place prize, and Josh took second.

Me (left) and my amazing opponent, Josh.

The prizes, a tournament try and a gold Challenge coin.

I love this coin.  It's so over the top I love it, and the Latin text makes it feel suitably cool and silly.

Conclusions

The last game was closer than I would have preferred (credit to Josh, who played a great game) and really came down to that last, abortive round, and his unfamiliarity with the Republic as a faction.  I think Republic players (as well as CIS players) will benefit from that unfamiliarity quite a bit over the coming months, but it'll wear off eventually.  It's only a matter of time before counters are developed for the Republic, and that's going to be a tough challenge to overcome without more units.  As it stands, there's not much I can think of that I'd like to change on my list; everything works the way it was intended to. 

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!