The week before Adepticon is here and I decided to get my first true rep in with the list I’m bringing. That being said I’m just doing the casual event so I would’ve shown up with zero reps and not cared. I’ll be trying to master Plo/Padme over the course of the weekend. My opponent is going to be doing Vader 1/ Asajj at Adepticon but before I knew that I had asked him to maybe not bring Vader1 or Jango because I’m so tired of seeing those models every game and just wanted something casual to refresh on the rules. Now, though, I realize that I was being rude and should have let him practice for Adepticon as well. BUT, I don’t feel THAT bad. Dude is in like 2 TTS leagues and probably doesn’t need the practice lol.
So I ended up facing cad bane/dooku with all droids and …. Honestly this was worse than seeing Vader 1 or Asajj….
I had a not so short tangent just now that I almost made into a completely different blog post but the long and the short of it is that I think clones are the baseline power level and everything else in the game is pretty much just better and that makes me sad. I decided to delete it though because it was getting preachy and I shouldn’t complain when Hunter is coming out and has clone support.
Nothing special with deployment. I was talking to my opponent and neither of us really see any reason to deploy in any manner that isn’t just try and be in contact with all three back points from the get-go. I don’t know how they would do it but I really would love to see something that really makes you think when it comes to deployment kind of like malifaux.
First activation I drew Padme. Not what I would have liked to have seen but if we’re being honest I have no clue what I would have liked to have seen. Plus in general I end up being force starved. So I decided to not waste the force here to reserve her. It wasn’t bad though she used her own ability to get up onto the middle point. Eventually the clones got brought up and took the other point. I guess this is probably too aggressive of a move the hello there cast is always saying clones should sit on back points. My thinking with the list though is that it’s so fragile that I have to be going full speed scoring or I just lose so I really thought they needed to come up and take a point to not waste an activation and put me behind. Dooku then activated and immediately murdered them so it didn’t matter.
Now that I see this photo, I realize that maybe the B1s activated and murdered the ARFs. But who knows maybe it was a stiff wind I don’t remember. However, then I went with snips who got to move Padme who was on her faith and diplomacy side and let the ARFs count as being on the point. This is kind of how the list is designed, to be aggressive with the troopers they inevitably die because they suck and then rely on Padme to still score points with them and get that utility. Although even whilst I was doing this my opponent said to me I hope you know that just because this is working this time doesn’t mean it’ll work most times. I thought this was hilarious because I know he is absolutely right but I’m going to still live in my fever dream delusion of this being a good concept. It was also at this point that we both realized that we way over committed to this side of the board.
His B2s came up the other side and started to harass the handmaidens and Plo on the center. Cad bane is hiding behind that building for cheeky shots left and right. The extra damage he provided ended up being disgusting and just helped take down so many things that would have been left on one health. Sabe was sitting on the leftmost point soaking up damage as well.
I ended up taking the first struggle barely. I was hoping for a proof of concept of scoring quickly with the list before they started taking too much damage and I did not get that. I got going just a little bit before him and because of Padme was able to squeak it out but I didn’t prove anything and I still have no idea what this list needs to be doing.
Second struggle was when I really started to see the droids that I know and hate take full effect and do the droid thing. When played right, which I’ve never seen them played wrong, you can go with kraken or kalani and just rearrange the entire board take multiple shots and just flat out kill things. That is entirely what my opponent did and to great effect. I found myself holding on to dear life with most of my models and because of an overcommitment to the right side, I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to teleport across the board.
Fun facts this was the exact moment I realized that Sabe gives herself her own bodyguard which doesn’t make sense to me but gosh darn am I glad that’s how it works. She actually had a ridiculous amount of defense dice between the terrain the hunker which she might not have in this photo but she had one most the game and the bodyguard cover. My opponent kind of put himself at a disadvantage because his B2’s literally just cannot claim that point because they don’t fit up there. I asked if you wanted to change some things and he said no I realized it when I was setting up and then decided not to do anything about it. So, if that point wasn’t set up that way he probably would have taken it ages ago.
Everything I said before you can basically just ignore because after holding that point for most of the game, kalani decided he wanted it and very easily took it away from Sabe. I used up pretty much all of my force to get Ahsoka across the board to the point but couldn’t shove him in a way to get him off this is when I really started to lose the momentum (figuratively).
This was the spicy struggle really. As much as I’ve talked about taking all these disgusting hits and all this extra damage on units that just can’t absorb damage like that, it was still very close. In my opinion there was a four-turn spread during this struggle that decided the game. There was a point where I owned all three of the points. The track was heavily in my favor and I really did think I had the game. My opponent then went and had a less than stellar activation. I was like okay this is it I’ve got this now. Then I went and couldn’t do anything meaningful. He then proceeded to go with Kalani, rearrange the board and shoot with himself and the B2s. I tried for a little bit but then realized I couldn’t recover too many of my things were finally starting to go down. So, for the first game ever I decided to try and let my opponent take the struggle and attempt to set up for the last one. That being said, I don’t have the struggle layouts memorized like some people so I didn’t know what points to be targeting. My last activation was the ARFs and I just moved them each on to separate points that weren’t occupied this ended up being really not helpful at all and just kind of took them out of the game. I still don’t think it was the wrong move, and even after when I was talking to my opponent he was saying that instead of passively giving him the struggle I maybe should have even actively tried to give him the struggle. So, I could have actively moved people off of points instead of just letting him take points. He had observed that a large portion of the damage came whilst I was just passively waiting for the struggle to end. And if I had aggressively tried to end it my people would have been healthier going into the last struggle. He akined this to ewoks and how if you’re not going to win the second struggle with them you really need to quickly lose it. This is something I will definitely test at Adepticon. Needless to say at this point, but my opponent took this struggle.
I was able to gain some figurative momentum going into this third struggle by using the handmaidens to take the back point. In a subsequent activation,I thought I was being cheeky by putting Padme back on the point but then I looked down at her card, and remembered that she was wounded. Kalani would go on to hold this point the rest of the game.
There isn’t too much else to write about here. The board just wasn’t set up in my favor as far as where my pieces ended up. Even if they were, they were mostly all wounded at this point. In the second activation of the struggle my opponent just went with the b2’s and easily took that back point for me he would end up holding all of the points pretty easily and the last struggle went pretty quickly. Reflecting back on it now I really don’t know how I feel. Instead of Padme going up early I really wish it had been Plo. He didn’t really seem to have any effect on the game which is disappointing. However if I hadn’t gone up with Padme I wouldn’t have gotten the sweet faith and diplomacy which is better than winning anyway. There’s a lot of coordinating fire in the list and none of it seemed to matter because everyone was wounded or injured and most of the time it just did not seem worth the extra force in a list that seems to constantly be force starved. I’m cautiously optimistic though, I enjoyed the game a lot. It renewed a lot of hype for me, going into Adepticon. However, I did start to feel a little bit of the I guess meh-ness creep back in. I just always feel like I’m on the back foot with Galactic Republic. Last time it got so bad I just moved on to a different game. Which seems pouty but I think that’s what you need to do. We’re in this hobby to have fun and if we’re not having fun you got to try something different. That being said I could have just tried a different faction in the game but I’m a game hopper so I just tried a different game. Most people are hoping for all these crazy announcements at Adepticon, but for me personally I just want an update to the original clones to where they don’t have to rely on all these secondary abilities on the Jedi and random other units to be good. I just want them to be good in and of themselves.
Huge shout out to my friend for inviting me over though. His nerd basement is absolutely amazing. The table we played on was amazing. And the whole setup and atmosphere was dope. Hopefully all of my games I Adepticon are this fun.