Regionals !

The first of the two regional tournament of The Hague was held this last Saturday at the Tabletop Kingdom.
I was there with my Soontir Fel, two Sigma phantoms list and even if I did not fare so well (22 out of 26) I enjoyed it.
There is a compressive article about the whole tournament, with lists, stats and all that here.
I played my first game against John and his Rear Admiral - Soontir list. It was a very interesting match up as so far I have used my list only against rebel two ships lists, never before against imperial two ships lists. However I did two critical errors in the very first turn that cripple my possibilities of doing anything. I placed my phantoms in the middle. John placed his Decimator also in the middle. Both Soontirs were facing each other on my left side of the board. My idea was to go with all my ships against his Soontir and take him out of the equation and than try not to lose any ship while trying to fight the admiral. I moved my phantoms something like 2 or 3 forward and they cloaked. He moved the admiral and boosted almost in front of my cloaked phantoms who where not able to fire on him. My Soontir went 4 forward and boosted to get a range 3 shoot on the admiral but with the idea of being more free and less obvious on the next round I did not push the limits for the usual evade+focus+stress (aka turtle Soontir). He moved his Soontir a slow 2 forwards and let him there. I fired on the Decimator without any success, John fired on Soontir also without success and then I opened my big, honest mouth and said to him something like: "You still have gunner, right?". He had forgotten about it ! So, he says thanks, pick the dices, rolls all impacts, I take the evil green dices and roll all "eyes". We both look to it, we realize that I have no focus and that my Soontir is just space dust. We stop for a second or two. It was unbelievable. The rest went hill down, down, down to a 100-0 victory for John (well deserved). He finished second of the best eight but unfortunately did not manage to get further.

The second game was against Erik B and his IG-88b and four binayre pirates.
Here I did a bit better. He placed his four pirates on my right facing his center, so rotated 90° with respect to me. His IG was on my left also facing his center. It was clear that he was going to join then and turn towards me, the only doubt was when they were going to turn. I assumed that the pirates were going to turn immediately on round 1 and that the IB will follow the round after. I moved my phantoms again like 3 or 4 forwards towards an asteroid that I have placed there as cover and cloaked. Soontir, this time was able to get undisturbed to the end of the battle field and started firing on the sides and rear of the pirates. There was a bit of clogging in that area as the pirates were blocking the IG and themselves on purpose to try to remain there. Soontir collided once before just doing a K-turn and approaching again from the other side. I managed to take out two pirates but in the fight with the IG, I also managed to get the two phantoms destroyed...

After the lunch break I played against Sjoerd and his Corran Horn - two B-wings list. This I managed to win by destroying the two B-wing even if my initial idea was to concentrate on Corran. He destroyed one of my phantoms, although. The game was very good and very funny. The best moments were on the final two rounds. First I cornered one of his B-wing between a phantom and Soontir and it escaped with only one hull left and in the round after, he cornered one of my phantoms between his Corran and one B-wing, but the phantom also managed to survive (even with Corran double tap). The critical moment came when I rolled only one hit on my 5 dices final attack against the wounded B-wing and he rolled a blank. It was a great game, with tension until the end.

After I played against Kim and his Firespray - IG88b list. This list was nice, well, not the dummy IG but the Firespray. A friend of my who was not able to participate in the tournament, when preparing for it, was talking about taking precisely that Firespray (Emon Azzameen) just to be able to drop bombs all over the place. The game was insane. I managed to "eat" all of his bombs, the three of them. It was funny, alas costly for me.

One moment of the fight against Kim's list

The final game was against Olivier and his YT-2400 - Han Solo list. The game was a bit weird as both of us were tired. I managed to get his YT-2400 within firing arc of all my three ships and it barely survived the attack. On the next round(s) I was able to finishing it off and I started trying to regroup to look for a way to corner Han Solo. However, he was determined to hunt down Soontir, which he managed at the end. So, it was a modified victory for me, 43 to 32.

It was a nice tournament.