Hi all, it's been a while since I posted again (work and school!) but here is some coverage from a recent Firestorm Armada tournament we hosted. Dindrenzi, Sorylians, Directorate and Works Raptor all battling it out in an escalation format. My Dindrenzi had a close game against Directorate in round one but a lucky explosion sank their battleship. Directorate have some nasty medium range firepower under the new rules. Lesson learned! Round two saw me face the Sorylians. Along with being down 30 points in round one, I held back from adding much this round in order to have as many points available for the third round in order to squeeze the dreadnought in. I was down about 150 points this round. My opponent caught me off guard when his gunships opened up with nuclear ammo on my cruiser group! This is basically a huge template attack which causes additional damage to nearby ships. It basically took out one cruiser immediately and caused critical damage on another. I didn't hold out much hope of keeping the game close. However, careful deployment led my opponent to commit his battleship and battle cruiser to my battleship which was moving up the left flank. I began retaliating on his central gunship causes two crits in reply and then finished it off at the top of turn 2. This would lessen the return fire. I also spread all my remaining squads out to minimize nuclear damage. My battleship put a crit on his battlecruiser from distance so that I could turn my attention to his battleship. His return fire didn't do much turns 2-3 although I lost another cruiser so only 1 regular one remained. my heavy cruiser were spared any damage the first few turns. I noticed he was holding is squad of 5 frigates toward the rear, being really timid with them for some reason. I moved my frigate squad up into the center and managed to kill off three of his five frigates with some awesome dice rolls. His squad also failed their break test! No pack hunter to worry about - whew! As his gunships came into firing angle of my heavy cruisers I began focusing on one gunship to knock it out. Another turn of shooting saw a snake eye result take it down with a crit to his remaining gunship and my heavies only taking a damage in return. His remaining frigates put 1 damage on my frigates and were then wiped out by my frigates and remaining cruiser in turn.
My battleship was in for a tough fight as his BB went broadside against me but luckily I escaped with just a damage. In return I double critted his battleship which really reduced his return fire significantly. Another crit against the battlecruiser with gunracks saw the Dindrenzi take the upper hand. I was a bit worried though because he would be able to get behind me with his next activation. My plan was to drop a mine and use my full move to pull away and line up for more rail gun fire. Luckily, the utter destruction of his frigates and neutering of his gunships caused my opponent to concede. Dindrenzi victory despite being down 150 points and getting hammered by nukes turn 1. Previously, I had only thought Terrans could get nukes. Pays to know your enemy! Never give up though! After the game, I pointed out a few mistakes he had made and how his deployment really allowed me to fight the battles I wanted. Some helpful hints will hopefully see the Sorylians come back stronger next time! All in all, this was one of my favorite battles ever!
