Vassal Tournament - After Action Report - Interview with doobleg

After the FFG Forums Vassal Tournament ended, I asked each of the top four players to share their thoughts about the tournament.  I asked each one a set of 8 questions:

1:  Describe your list for the tournament.
2:  What was your general strategy going into the tournament with your list?
3:  Did this strategy change during the course of the tournament?
4:  Describe your R1 game: What was your opponent?  Your strategy for dealing with them?  What went right, what went wrong?
5:  Same for R2.
6:  Same for R3.
7:  Anything you would do to alter your strategy going forward?
8:  Speaking of the future, With wave 2 coming out, how will what you know about the spoilers change your play style?

This time, we're talking with doobleg, the winner of the tournament.  Here are his answers in his own words:

Vassal Tournament - After Action Report - Interview with JJs Juggernaut

After the FFG Forums Vassal Tournament ended, I asked each of the top four players to share their thoughts about the tournament.  I asked each one a set of 8 questions:

1:  Describe your list for the tournament.
2:  What was your general strategy going into the tournament with your list?
3:  Did this strategy change during the course of the tournament?
4:  Describe your R1 game: What was your opponent?  Your strategy for dealing with them?  What went right, what went wrong?
5:  Same for R2.
6:  Same for R3.
7:  Anything you would do to alter your strategy going forward?
8:  Speaking of the future, With wave 2 coming out, how will what you know about the spoilers change your play style?

Here is the first one - JJs Juggernaut.  Overall 2nd place, and my 3rd round opponent who bounced me from a top finish.  Here are his answers in his own words:

Offensive Retrofits - Wave 1

Offensive Retrofits for wave 1 were somewhat few and far between - only two of them were produced and only two ships were built capable of taking the upgrades.  The ships involved were the two mediums size ships, the Assault Frigate Mk II and the Victory Class Star Destroyer.

This article is part of the Upgrades series.

Support Team Upgrades - Wave 1

Wave 1 gave us 3 Support Team Upgrades to use with our ships - and 3 ships that could use them.  The CR90, GSD, and NebB all can take the Support Team upgrade, and all make use of it in different ways.

This article is part of the Upgrades series.

Tournament Points and Winning - Part II - Squadrons?

The last time we looked at Tournament Points, we discussed why maximizing your points, and going for a 10-0 win would enable you to control your destiny in a tournament.  And we did so by looking at the winner of the US National's Tournament, the "GenCon Special" otherwise known as "VGGG".  We also looked at what a similar list would look like from a Rebel perspective.

To keep things simple for our calculations, we ignored squadrons from the equation all together.  No doubt, squadrons complicate matters.  They are worth nothing on the board if your list is tabled, and a viable strategy, popularized with the "GenCon Special" is to rush in at full speed and attempt to remove all enemy ships before your own are destroyed - against which squadrons are points that are not spent ensuring you have the hull left to survive a reckless attack.

But can squadrons be worked into the equation with the tournament points, and what would list with these squadrons look like?

Weapons Teams Upgrades - Wave 1

For Weapons Teams, Wave 1 gave us 3 different possible upgrades, as well as 3 ships capable of bringing them into the fight - the VSD, the GSD, and the AFII.  Today we are going to go over those upgrades, and talk about how they might be best utilized.

This article is part of the Upgrades series.

Officer Upgrades - Wave 1

In an effort to clear through the upgrades of Wave 1 before Wave 2 officially hits, today we are going to go over the Officer upgrades.  Officers are an upgrade that any ship can equip, but not all officers can go on all ships - like Commanders, some officers are named, unique cards that only can only be used by a specific faction.

This article is part of the Upgrades series.

Tournament Points and Winning

With the Vassal Armada tournament coming to a close, I've been considering the point system used in the tournament, and it's effect on the meta that I've seen.  I've been trying to figure out the "best" strategy to build for and strategize around in a tournament - do you go for the table every time or do you play a long game?  With these thoughts in mind, I crunched a few numbers, specifically tournament points and overall Margin of Victory.

Suppose you knew that with your list you could win every game, but only with a MOV sufficient for an 8-2 win.  Do you bring this list to a tournament, or do you bring something more aggressive, that will likely see a 10-0 win, but doesn't guarantee you a win every time?  Actually, it depends on the number of players in the tournament, and how many of them you expect will be bringing a 10-0 list.  Consider - if any 10-0 players are in the game, they will be matched with one another in round 2, and both will not win.  While an 8-2 list will likely be matched up against another list with a smaller victory.

For that matter, if you do decide to go the 10-0 route, how many points can you be willing to offer up to your opponent?  For sake of argument, I will be using the 300pt tournament rules, as the MOV for 400pt games is not available at the time of this article.

Building A Fleet - Ship Roles and WWII

Lately, I've been playing a lot of World of Warships, and thinking of how similar this game is to the concept, if not execution of World War II - the "Golden Age" of naval combat tactics.  World War II was the last gasp of big gun ships before missiles made them obsolete, and the beginning of air superiority as the dominant feature of a modern day navy.

In this sense, Wave 1 can correspond to the beginning of the war, or perhaps the period between The Great War (WWI) and World War II.  You also begin to see the strategies in design begin to diverge between the major players of the time.  In this article, we will be looking at the various ships of Wave 1, as well as the spoiled ships of Wave 2 to see how each fit into the greater strategy of the game.

Ship Types of World War II

The Corvette - The smallest rated ship, the corvette's main role in the WWII era was convoy escort or as a minesweeper.  Probably the closest real world approximation to a CR90 Corvette, or a Raider Class Corvette would be the British Tribal Class Destroyer - a destroyer equipped with a heavier gun battery vs the torpedoes favored on other Destroyer type craft.

The Destroyer - Originally conceived to protect battleships from even smaller ships making torpedo runs, the Torpedo Boat Destroyer (shortened to Destroyer) eventually evolved into the role of making the Torpedo attacks itself, as well as convoy guarding and anti-sub duties.  Armed primarily with Torpedoes, and light armament, the closest equivalents to these would be the GSD and MC30.

The Cruiser - Larger than a destroyer, but smaller than a battleship, during WWII these ships were classified as cruisers and had multiple mission roles, and covered a huge spread of ship sizes and armaments.  For the sake of arguement here, we are going to look at two "sizes" of cruisers, and three roles.

The Light Cruiser - Lightly armored and fast, the light cruiser excelled either as the leader of a destroyer squadron or as an anti-aircraft platform that required protection from other ships.  The Nebulon B Frigate fills this role fairly well.

The Heavy Cruiser - A heavily armored and large cruiser, not sporting the heavy armament of a Battleship, would fall into this role.  The AFII would probably be the best example of this in the game right now.  The role of the Heavy Cruiser was one of high speed, heavy armor, but relatively light armament compared to a Battleship.

The Battleship - The biggest ships on the seas, the Battleship is nevertheless split between "Pre-Dreadnought" and Dreadnought eras.

The Pre-Dreadnought - Slow and unwieldy compared to modern ships, with less armor, speed and guns.  The Victory Class Star Destroyer perfectly encapsulates this concept, having been used extensively in the previous war, but being outclassed by the newer, bigger ISD.

Dreadnought Era Battleships - The biggest things on the ocean.  Heavy emphasis on armor and guns mean that the ships could deliver a pounding and take one as well.  Both the MC80 and Imperial Class Star Destroyer fit into this category.

The Carrier - Here there isn't a really good analog.  Most of the ships are capable of being a carrier, but in WWII and modern navies, the Carrier ship is a dedicated platform for bringing fighter and bomber squadrons to the battle.  If a carrier is directly engaged, it has little defenses aside from slight AA.  For purposes of this exercise, we are going to ignore carriers and assume "offscreen" sources for carriers.

Here are some raw numbers that might be interesting.

Total Numbers for Each Faction:

Rebels:

FS: 1

DD: 1

CL: 1

CH: 1

B: 0

BB: 1

Imperials:

FS: 1

DD: 1

CL: 0

CH: 0

B: 1

BB: 1

Approximate Cost Before Upgrades:

FS:  45

DD: 60

CL: 60

CH: 80

B: 85

BB: 125

CV: 10 pts / Squadron

Vassal Tournament - After Action Report (Round 1)

To see my thoughts on my overall list, click here.

To see the FFG Forum thread, click here.

Round 1

Biggs IRL vs godofcheese  <- Click for Log File of the game to replay it in Vassal.

godofcheese's List:

VSDII

  - Admiral Screed

  - Gunnery Team

(Total: 118)  [Total w/ Most Wanted: 203]

VSDII

  - Intel Officer

  - Gunnery Team

(Total: 99)

GSDI

  - Demolisher

  - Engine Techs

  - Assault Concussion Missles

(Total: 81)

Looking over my opponents list, I knew my easiest path for victory was to destroy 1 of his ships, and only trade 1 of my CR90s in exchange.  With each of his ships pushing 80+ points each, but neither being naturally over 125, I knew dropping one of them would give me the win if I didn't overextend.  As I figured earlier, Big Boy needed to live, but everyone else was expendable if they netted me a bigger fish when they dropped.  He elected to go as 2nd player, leaving me to chose his objectives, and with the above thoughts in mind, I decided to go with Most Wanted, hoping I could use it to drop one of his ships slightly faster, and counting on the Big Boy's ability to outshoot whatever it couldn't outrun, or Jaina's Light's ability to outrun everything.

Vassal Tournament - After Action Report (Initial Thoughts)

For my list in the Vassal Tournament, my though process was to give myself multiple options every turn, with the theory that the more options I had to work with, the less likely I was to be in a situation where I had no chance of success.  For this I went with a list that focused on one Battleship style ship, an AFII-B kitted out as a flagship with Mon Mothma (better evades), Advanced Projectors (to use All of the AFII's heavy shields), and Enhanced Armament / Gunnery Team, to maximize firepower from the side arcs.  Well, the closest thing we have to a battleship in Wave 1 at any rate.  I christened this monstrous point-filled abomination "Big Boy", and he clocked in at 125 points, or 5/12 of my total list.  Losing Big Boy would basically be an auto-loss.