Learning to Fly: Carnor Jax

TIE interceptors, there is no middle ground, either you love them or you hate them. I am in the first group :)
They are nice, quick, deadly and fragile; an interesting combo.
When people think about TIE interceptors, they usually think about almost-all-mighty Soontir Fel. I like him a lot. He is the best; so simple; no further discussions.
However, there are other named TIE interceptors there who are also very good and in the right hands can be even better than Soontir (yes, this is a contradiction of my previous statement, but the universe is a place full of contradictions :D ).
Once of those potential heroes of the Empire is Carnor Jax, a 26 points pilot with a PS of 8 and a nice special ability: "Enemy ships at Range 1 can't perform Evade or Focus Actions, nor spend Evade or Focus tokens" which will potentially cripple the options of his enemies. The key, of course, is to stay alive and at range 1 which being a very fragile interceptor maybe is easier said than done.
I have played with him only two or three times before, so I am still learning to fly with him. Last time it was a bit disappointing, this time was a bit better but still, I think that for the upcoming regionals I will take Soontir Fel. I feel better flying with him :)
Anyway, the lists.
My list was the usual stuff:

• Sigma Squadron Pilot (34) x 2 - TIE Phantom (25), Recon Specialist (3), Sensor Jammer (4), Stygium Particle Accelerator (2)
• Carnor Jax (31) - TIE Interceptor (26), Royal Guard TIE (0), Push the Limit (3), Autothrusters (2)

My regular opponent list was quite different of the usual two ships list he was flying lately (100 points total):

• Keyan Farlander (37) B-Wing (29), Fire-Control System (2), Stay on Target (2), B-Wing/E2 (1), C-3PO (3) 
• Etahn A’baht (40) E-Wing (32), R2-D2 (4), Stay on Target (2), Fire-Control System (2) 
• Arvel Crynyd (23) A-Wing (23), A-Wing Test Pilot (0), Chardaan Refit (-2), Stay on Target (2)

My main problem with Carnor is that I forget to use his ability and that I am not flying him in an optimal way to be able to use it. Both issue are, of course, heavy related. You can not optimize for something you keep on forgetting :)

I was having initiative, so I placed the first big asteroid :)

Set Up

Set Up
Keyan Farlander, the B-Wing, has the ability to use stress token as focus tokens, so for him, being stressed is very good. My opponent loves Stay on Target to be able to correct his planned movement, so he was equipped with it instead of the more common Push the Limits. To try to put some more stress on the game, he took Debris Clouds, three of them, as obstacles. I continued using the three biggest rocks :)
I deployed my Sigmas behind the asteroid on my left with the idea to move right behind it and decloak left or right depending on my needs.
He placed his A-wing to my left, alone, and the other two ships close to the centre.
So, I decided to place Carnor on my left to try to go for the lonely A-wing to destroy it on round two or three with concentrated fire.

1st round
As planned my sigmas moved 4 forwards behind the rock and cloaked (I did a mistake here as I placed the dial on 3 straight but my opponent let me correct it)
All his ships moved 3 straight and focus, approaching the centre at a slow pace.
I hit the gas with Carnor and he went 5 forwards, boost to his right and focus.

1st round end of movement

Carnor was able to shred 1 shield from Arvel, who was not able to hit him with his return fire. The special ability of Carnor did not play any roll here due to his range limitation.

2nd round
It was clear to me that his other two ships were terribly close to the centre and that they will join there before Carnor could move there.
I just discovered that I do not have a picture of this round. Maybe the presence of other people talking to us distracted me and I forgot...
Anyway, the phantoms decloaked left (no surprise here) and one moved 3 forwards whereas the other did a 3 right bank, both of them did barrel roll in opposite directions to block the path of the A-wing.
The E-wing did a 3 right bank and focused. The A-wing did a 5 K-turn and the B-wing did a 2 right bank and focus.
Carnor avoided the centre and did a 4 straight with boost right.
There was heavy fired involved as my opponent targeted one of my phantoms with concentrated fire but luckily nothing happened.

3rd round
The phantoms moved to block. Number one did a 1 right turn and barrel roll right; the other one did a 3 right turn and focused.
The blockade was successful as the E-wing tried a 3 K-turn which made him to collide with my phantom. The A-wing went after Carnor with a 2 right bank and focus. The B-wing did a 2 right turn, avoided collision and barrel roll to the left to face the other phantom.
Carnor decided to hide to live another day and did a 1 left turn followed by a barrel roll to his right which left him behind the rock.

3rd round end of movement

The exchange of fire between the phantom and the B-wing went in my favour as the B-wing lost 3 shields and the phantom escaped undamaged.
Here I was able to fire with the phantom either at the B-wing or at the E-wing. I decided to fire at the B-wing even if it has a higher durability due to the regeneration of the E-wing due to R2-D2. I was not going to be able to kill it before it would be able to regenerate for sure one shield, at least two and with bad luck even three :)

4th round
Here I was having no idea what to do. My two phantoms were blocked in the middle of the fight, Carnor was lost behind a rock and without easy way to come back. I played with the idea of disengage totally, have Carnor fly to his right, out of business for a round, try to regroup and come back; but that will let my phantoms without clear flying options.
My opponent was facing similar problems with his forces.
Difficult to see the future was ;)

The phantom which had collided with the E-wing on the previous round did a 3 left turn and cloaked. The other phantom did a 2 right turn and also cloaked. Both of them were just buying time for the crowded fight to dissolve.
The E-wing did a 2 right turn and focused, right behind a phantom and outside his firing arc. The A-wing tried to go again after Carnor but this time went for the block with a 5 forwards. The B-wing did his 2 K-turn and Carnor trying to do a 3 left turn collided with the expecting A-wing.
This was perfectly done by my opponent !
At the beginning of the game, as we were looking to our lists, we were discussing that precisely this situation was the best for Arvel, that is, when he moves and uses his action for whatever (here it was a Target Lock) and then, his opponent collides with him, losing actions and being unable to return fire.
Great move :)

4th round end of movement

Arvel was able to hit Carnor and caused him 1 damage (luckily).

5th round
The phantom in front of the rock decloaked left, did 2 left turn and a left barrel roll which let him between the initial positions of the E-wing and the B-wing.
The other phantom decloaked to his right, did a 1 right turn and a barrel roll to the right, trying to close the gap so that the E-wing will be not able to fly away.
Here, my opponent revealed a 2 right turn as his idea was to impact with my phantoms but to stay behind them. After looking to the position of the ships he decided to Stay on Target for a 2 right bank. We place the template, look to the final position, blocked by the phantom on the left, start moving the E-wing backwards and, surprise!, it fits in between the phantom and it only overlaps the one on the left, letting the one on his right able to fire at point-blank. Both of us were without words. I took some pictures trying to get a close up of the final position as it will cost my opponent the E-wing.
The A-wing did a 1 right turn and collided with Carnor, whereas the B-wing did a 1 right bank by-passing the phantoms and the E-wing and barrel roll right. Carnor did a 3 left turn and collided with the asteroid also by a millimetre (Karma in action).

5th round end of movement

You can see the millimetre gap between the phantom on the right and the E-wing.

Close up

 And here the overlap (now touching) with the other phantom.

close up, other angle

The phantom fired 5 attack dice at the E-wing for 3 shields and 1 critical damage, damaged cockpit, reducing his PS to zero.

6th and final round
The E-wing moved first due to his PS 0 and did a 2 left bank, which been green gave him 1 shield back.
I was still with the idea that my phantoms were to move first, so both of them were suppose to try to (pre)follow the E-wing; therefore, the one on the left did a 1 right turn and focus, whereas the other did also a 1 right turn but collided with the E-wing which suddenly was were it was not supposed to be.
The A-wing did a 3 K-turn to get into position for another pass on the next round which will not take place. The B-wing did a 2 K-turn to engage the phantoms and Carnor did a 2 straight over the Debris cloud.
Here I was considering focussing on the B-wing instead of on the E-wing as the K-turn of the B-wing was the more obvious movement and I was afraid of collisions between my own ships on the narrow space behind the E-wing. Also, in case the E-wing collided with my ships under the wrong assumption that he was going to move after my sigmas will have left him behind them and outside of firing arc.

6th round end of movement

The final exchange of fire was enormous. Carnor removed the shield of the E-wing. The B-wing disabled the shields of the phantom on the left and damaged him once. However, the final fire of the other phantom did 4 damage to the poor E-wing, more than enough to reduce it to atoms.

End of the Game

Aftermath
This time I was more consistent in not forgetting my Sensor Jammer with the phantoms but still not really aware of the ability of Carnor. I have the impression that I lost the possibility to use it a few times during the game. This is very probably not correct but, still, it is my impression and impressions are very difficult to remove :(
As I said previously, for this Saturday regionals I will come back to Soontir I-am-the-best Fel and see how I fare there.
I will try to report afterwards, but being five games, one after each other with a very strict time limit, I am afraid that I will not be able to have such a complete picture overview of the games...

Carnor Jax, maybe you are in, maybe you are out :)

Following some brain storming about phantom based list on the FFG forum  there was the suggestion to use Carnor Jax instead of Soontir Fel in the list I have been running those last weeks.
This time I gave it a try against basically the same Han Solo - Wedge Antilles duo I played last time.
My list:

• Sigma Squadron Pilot (34) x 2 - TIE Phantom (25), Recon Specialist (3), Sensor Jammer (4), Stygium Particle Accelerator (2)
• Carnor Jax (31) - TIE Interceptor (26), Royal Guard TIE (0), Push the Limit (3), Autothrusters (2)

My opponent:

• Wedge Antilles (40) - X-Wing (29), R2-D2 (4),Predator (3), Engine Upgrade (4)
• Han Solo (59) - YT-1300 (46), Stay on Target (2), C-3PO (3), Luke Skywalker (7), Millennium Falcon (1)

Both list are 99 points, so we roll for initiative again, but it only affected to see who was placing the first obstacle as all my ships will move before all the ships of my opponent.

I got it so I placed one of the big asteroids right in front of the centre of the deployment zone of my opponent to try to block his Falcon. After distributing all the obstacles I placed all my ships on my centre; he placed his on my right.

Set Up

I was afraid of the combination of Han Solo and Luke as it will allow my opponent to potentially roll his attack dices four times in his quest of destroying my ships, so I decided to go to the left to pass between the asteroids and maybe come back to the centre also between the asteroids. However I was not really seeing my flying paths today as I crossed my ships in funny ways all the game.
In the first round, one phantom did a 2 left bank and cloaked, no surprise here, however for no apparent reason with the other one I did a 3 left turn, almost colliding with the previous one, and of course cloak.
Carnor Jax did a 3 left bank and a boost forwards, no push the limits to keep the options open for the next round.
Han moved 3 forward and focused whereas Wedge went 4 forwards and boosted right. He got Carnor in firing range but his attack failed.

1st round, end of movement

 For the second round I decided to face Wedge and to try to take him out of the equation as last time.
One phantom decloaked right, did a 2 right turn and focused facing Wedge. The other phantom I was afraid was going to block Carnor so I decided to take him for a walk and decloaked right, turned 3 to the right and cloaked somewhere on my left side of the board.
Carnor did a 1 right turn, forward boost and evade, also facing Wedge.
Han approached by performing a 3 right bank and focused, whereas Wedge moved carefully 1 forward to avoid any potential collision and target lock the phantom.
My opponent had also considered to K-turn with Wedge but this was very dangerous as if a collision would have taken place, then there will be no K-turn, no actions and one stress as outcome of the bargain. However being in front of two of my ships was also not good either.

2nd round, end of movement

Han fired on the phantom and removed 1 shield. I have to say that this game I was forgetting all the time that my phantoms have Sensor Jammer and that was very annoying as several times we needed to back track the dice rolls. Also, its use against Han-Luke combo is questionable because if you avoid the damage of the first shoot totally, Luke will allow for a new attack with a soft focus. Along the game we realized that this second attack is very good if your Falcon is stressed (therefore no actions) or has taken other action than focus. In this case, your second attack is actually better than the first one because of the soft focus of Luke.
Wedge removed the second shield of the phantom but then Carnor was able to disable both shields of Wedge and the phantom was able to destroy it. Just like the previous game. For me it was so far, so good.
However, one of my ships was far away of the action and my positioning for hunting down the Falcon was not optimal. As I already say, my flying was erratic today.

On the 3rd round, the wounded phantom did a 3 left bank and landed on an asteroid !
My idea was to disengage the Falcon and regroup for a second pass, but I fail miserably.
The other phantom turned 3 to the right and focused, still cloaked.
Carnor turned 2 left between the asteroids and boosted right.
Han advanced 2 forwards and focused.

3rd round, end of movement

Han was having a golden shoot on the phantom on the asteroid which he could not fail. The phantom was vaporized out of existence.

So far I had not been able to fire on the Falcon so I tried to bring my remaining two ships into attack positions.
The phantom turned 1 right and focused, whereas Carnor did a 3 K-turn.
Han performed a 2 right turn to confront the phantom and managed to remove one shield.

4th round, end of movement

On the fifth round, the phantom decloaked right and turned 1 left to block the Falcon. It also focused.
Carnor Jax moved 4 forwards, did a barrel roll to his right and boosted right but was not able to get the Falcon in his firing arc.
Han moved 4 forwards and collided with the phantom.
No shooting this round :(

5th round, end of movement

On the next round, the phantom turned 1 left and focused, whereas Carnor turned 2 right, boosted right and barrel roll left trying to point in the general direction of the Falcon. However, Han "stayed on target" and turned 1 right avoiding the collision with the phantom and moving outside of the firing arc of Carnor.

6th round

Han removed the last shield of the phantom and caused him one damage.

I do not have a picture of the last round, but basically the phantom turned 1 left trying to go after Han, Carnor did the same by turning 2 right and barrel roll right, and Han just moved 1 forward and fired on the phantom destroying it.

End of the game.

Aftermath

I was not able to fly well with Carnor. Maybe it was just today or maybe it is that I have been flying exclusively Soontir when I fly interceptors, but I was not able to get results out of Carnor. Yes, I destroyed Wedge, but I did that also with Soontir and also in the second round. Yes, Carnor helped with the negation of evades and focus but the thing is that I am not used to have to fly into range one of the enemy and also I was missing the extra focus from Soontir after a push the limits.

As we were playing and discussing the game at the same time, we realized that I was not able to surprise my opponent with the movement of Carnor, or the other way around, he was able to (more or less) predict his movement and this is the pitfall of any player on this game, when your opponent is able to rightly predict where are you going to move.

Was I disappointed with Carnor ? not really, maybe more with myself. I was really unable to deal with the Han - Luke combo and for some reason I was constantly forgetting the Sensor Jammers on the phantom. I think it was not one of my best days even if Wedge died again very soon in the game.

My opponent was thinking of using Wedge with something else, not a Han Solo build, but maybe two other small ships, maybe even another two X-wings. We will see... :) :)

Lack of green

Another game with my phantom list:

• Sigma Squadron Pilot (34) x 2 - TIE Phantom (25), Recon Specialist (3), Sensor Jammer (4), Stygium Particle Accelerator (2)
• Soontir Fel (32) - TIE Interceptor (27), Royal Guard TIE (0), Push the Limit (3), Autothrusters (2)

This time against another friend who was flying:

• Wedge Antilles (44) - X-Wing (29), R2-D2 (4), Advanced Proton Torpedoes (6), Veteran Instincts (1), Engine Upgrade (4)
• Han Solo (56) - YT-1300 (46), Stay on Target (2), C-3PO (3), Chewbacca (4), Millennium Falcon (1)

He has been flying imperial recently, specially Col. Vessery after another game between us where I was flying him together with a Lambda and two bombers. There are previous posts here with the list and the games of the tournament I used it.
The point is, he decided to fly Rebels because he knows that I favoured Imperials and he tried to emulate Col. Vessery based lists by using Wedge with engine upgrade as high mobile ship with a nice attack special ability.
The idea was/is great, however, it was not his day with the green dices. He never rolled evades, any evade, in the whole game. Seriously. It was the more karma deficient game I was in or watched.
I won the game, obviously, but the merit of my victory was his rolling of nothing on the green dices not any extraordinary flying from my side.

Set up
We rolled for initiative as both list were 100 points and I won the roll. Here I decided to get initiative to be able to shoot first with Soontir versus Han, and that was, I think, an error. Thanks to the Simultaneous Fire rule, even if Han manage to "destroy" Soontir, he (Soontir) can return fire before dying, alas with any critical effect from the attack from Han applied to him. Therefore, It should not make so much of a difference in the attack phase who of the two has initiative over the other.
However, in the activation phase, it can be important who moves first. My choice makes that Soontir moves before Han, therefore he can collide with him and lose his actions. This happened in this game :(
On the other hand, I could use Soontir, a PS 9 ship, as blocker! Which I did once in this game :)
Obstacles: we both took the biggest rocks :) and put them more or less symmetrical on the battlefield.
Deployment: having Initiative, I deployed all my ships before him on my right corner, phantoms on the front, Soontir in the centre back.
He angled Wedge towards Han, and both were facing to open lane between the asteroid on the right side.

Set Up

This time I was writing down our movement and actions and we also timed the game to one hour after Set Up.

First round:

All my ship did a 2 bank left, and the phantoms cloaked, Soontir focused just in case. Han moved 4 straight and Wedge 3 straight. This was a minor surprise for me as my opponent used to move always slow on the first round, which is why I moved also slow.

1st round after movement

Second round:
The phantoms did a decloak forwards and a 3 bank right going for a blocking position against Han. One of the phantoms recloaked, the one I was expecting to collide with Han; my idea here was that as he was not going to be able to fire on Han, it was maybe better to have him not firing at all but well protected against a possible attack from Wedge. The other one got double focus and readied himself to take fire.
Soontir did also a 3 bank right, followed by a boost and a barrel roll to get in a nice firing position close to the rock (set up picture: the one on the right back from my point of view; the picture for the 2nd round is turned 90°, the rocks you see on the right are actually the ones making the back line).
Han did a 2 bank right to avoid being blocked using Stay on Target and Wedge moved 4 forwards to get into a nice range 1 firing range with focus.

2nd round after movement

Combat:
Wedge first, he managed to get 1 shield off the uncloaked phantom. Soontir attacked Wedge and removed 2 shields (beginning of the green dices disaster). Han did no damage and the phantom managed to land 1 hit and 1 critical hit on Wedge; the critical hit turned out to be the double damage and Wedge was dead.
Both of us were without words. His whole list concept was Wedge as Rebel counterpart to Col. Vessery. He has put the Fat Han there just to fill up the list and Wedge was gone in the first round of combat!
It was a freaking moment, seriously. We paused for a bit to talk about what just has happen and decided to finish the game anyway. After all, Han should be able to take care of himself, even if he was only "filler" on the list.
Note: Yes, I know that this sounds crazy, a Fat Han as filler, but if you stop a second to think about this, it makes sense. You are going to fly a two ship list, fine. One of those two ships is one that you have already used  in the past and which have a more or less fixed configuration, the Fat Han. Then, you can focus all you experiments in the other ship of your list. Therefore, Han is the filler, the guy with the permanent job; Wedge is the new guy on the team, the one you will like to play with and see what he can do. Well, that new guy was gone in the present case; so, maybe stop the game and reset it was not a bad idea, actually with the intention to try Wedge. However, we moved on :)

Third round:
Again the picture is turned 90°.
The cloaked phantom decloaked forward and performed a 3 left turn and cloaked again. The other one did a 3 left bank and no idea why it does not have any tokens on the picture, I am sure it took an action...
Soontir did a 2 left turn and barrel rolled right to get close to the initial position of the Falcon.
Han did a 1 right bank, moving around the rock and clearing the stress from the previous round.

3rd round after movement

 Combat:
Very brief this time, Han did nothing and Soontir removed 2 shields from him. Really, the green dices were cursed.

Fourth round:
Both phantom decloaked forward, one did a 1 left turn and the other did a 3 left turn to close on the Falcon, both did also double focus.
Soontir did a forward 2 and barrel rolled right, again trying to close as much on the Falcon as possible before it moves away.
Han went 2 forwards and evade.

4th round after movement

Combat:
Soontir took away another 2 shields from Han, whereas the return fire from Han did nothing. The first Falcon removed the last shiled and did one damage to Han; the second one did four damage to him.
It was terrible to see so many blanks on the green dices, really. We were both of us first stunned than laughing about it as we both were not able to believe. It was ridiculous.

Fifth round:
One phantom did a 3 right turn and took double focus, the other one did a 2 right turn and a barrel roll to the left trying to get back to the fight.
Soontir did a 2 left bank and collided with Han, losing his actions.
Han was not sure what to do and Stayed in Target to do a left 1 turn. This was the first intention of my opponent, he changed his mind to a right turn and in view of the position of my phantoms decided to go back to the idea of turning left but the stress he got from that change of plans was terribly difficult to get rid off as there was an asteroid just in front of him which he was not going to be able to by pass with any green movement.

5th round after movement

Combat:
Soontir did nothing to Han (finally!) and Han placed one critical damage on Soontir, the one reducing his Agility in one.

Sixth round:
The phantom closest to the back of the Falcon did a 3 left turn and collided with him. The other Falcon did a 2 left turn and a left barrel roll still trying to go back to the fight.
Soontir did a 1 left turn to avoid collision with Han followed by a boost forward and a barrel roll to the left to get into a nice firing position.
Han did a white 3 right bank as the green 2 will have him on the asteroid or at less flying over it, so he is still stressed from the previous Stay on Target.

6th round after movement

 Combat:
This round was crazy. Nothing happen ! :)

Seventh and last round:
The phantom on the back of Han did a 3 left bank and double focus, the other one a 3 left turn and barrel roll to cover a possible 1 left turn from Han.
Soontir. Well, this was a moment of craziness for me. I was looking to Han and Soontir on the battlefield and wondering how to manage to get Soontir close to the Falcon without colliding again with it when suddenly I realized that I could use Soontir as a blocker !
This was for me an eye opener moment as I would have never considered a PS 9 guy a blocker, but when the other guys fly after you, does not matter which PS you have, if you fly first, you can block; new golden rule for me: first to move, first to block :) :)
So, the baron moved 2 left turn and barrel rolled right, short, and right in front of the Falcon.
Han tried to clear the stress with a 1 left bank and collided with Soontir. Stress was gone but also any possible action.

7th and final round after movement

Combat:
Han fired on the phantom on his seven without success and the return fire destroyed him.

Game over

In retrospective:

My red dices were on fire, as I got several times a lot of impacts and the green dices of my opponent were, well, greener than never. This was a pity as diluted the experience, but after a while it was so incredible that stopped being annoying and started being crazy-funny. I do not take any merit on this victory.

Stay on Target reads "When you reveal a manoeuvre, you may rotate your dial to another manoeuvre with the same speed. Treat that manoeuvre as a red manoeuvre". This card is a very good one but has a few pitfalls. First, the manoeuvre is red, which means that you cannot use it if you have already a stress token as a ship with a stress token cannot perform red manoeuvres (cf. core rules) and of course once performed, gives you a stress token which can be not so easy to remove. I liked the card a lot, it gives you a lot of flexibility (you pay for it, of course, but the flexibility is there). In the past I played a Fettigator (Boba Fett and Navigator) just because the flexibility it offers. There was a theory about this combination being a good way to counter pre-FAQ phantoms (using also Veteran Instincts to push Boba into PS 10). Maybe it could be combined also with him or even in a named phantom for extra options...

Blocking with phantoms is still a thing I will like to consider more as I'm still not so sure about my idea of cloaking when I expect the blocking phantom to be collided with. In this game I lost a shoot on Wedge for this reason. Yes, in this particular game I did not needed it, but that is not the point. From a strategical point of view maybe is better not to recloak and be able to attack.

Cloaking-Decloaking: this is something I still need to work on. I still have times when my phantoms are cloaked and I need them to decloak to be able to fire but doing so will put them in not so optimal positions to attack. This can be annoying and a serious problem.

Soontir: as good as usual, but recently it was suggested to me to replace him with Carnor Jax (Enemy ships at Range 1 cannot perform focus or evade actions and cannot spend focus or evade tokens) with the same upgrades which will make the four/five attack dice of the phantoms even more dangerous. I think this is a great suggestion and I am looking forward to try it, although I have only used him once and I am not so sure how to fly with him. I think I will miss the stress-focus from Soontir...

What if:
I am very curious about a parallel universe where on the second round of this game, Wedge and Han managed to destroy one of my phantoms on that single round, before he was able to fire, letting me with a cloaked phantom and Soontir at the end of round two.
We need to play again with those same lists :) :)