Space Slugs TTS League Rd. 2 Battle Report!
I am having such a blast with this league. Having the opportunity to play with different people from all over the country has been wonderful. I am looking forward to the rest of my games and joining many future leagues!
As a reminder, here are the links to the League information and the TTS mod made by RichMidGaming:
This week I was paired with Grif "Pigeon" Castle! Pigeon and I have chatted many times on the SWP Discord but this was the first time we had the pleasure of playing a game with each other. Pigeon was a fantastic opponent and this was absolutely one of the toughest games I have ever played. Good luck to Pigeon in the rest of his games!
Strike Teams
In case the thumbnail didn't make this apparent: Pigeon and I played very nearly identical lists. The only difference was that he had Chopper and I had Zeb.
This is what I played. I have had an absolute blast playing with the Spectre units so far. They are easily some of my favorite units in the whole game. I think, and Pigeon agrees, that Hera is currently being a little bit slept on. Her value is not as apparent at first glance but now that I've gotten lots of time with her on the table, I am in love. Kanan, of course, is Kanan. He is one of the best new units in the game and I think I can say he is my new favorite primary (sorry Obi).
Sabine is good. I like her a lot because she is consistently solid, not generally super flashy but also rarely a dead or useless activation. Ezra, I feel different about. He's almost the opposite of Sabine. He is either very good or bad, but mostly good. He is capable of some seriously big swings but also capable of doing a whole lot of nothing. I like them both a lot. I think having Sabine to fall back on is nice when I need a consistent but not swingy activation and Ezra is good for when I need a huge swing.
I love Zeb. I prefer him to Chopper right now, but they're both very close in power level. Zeb's Lasan Honor Guard ability, three durability, and his double advance are the reasons I chose him. He can hit like a truck and shove like a Jedi but he's mostly just very good at moving around and holding points. For this game, I sorta decided on a whim to play the Rebel Commandos. They are very good and I wanted to see if they could work without Han or Chewie. Normally, I prefer to play lists that fit in my overall premier style lists but not this time. Their CF damage is very handy for the Spectres, who generally don't do a ton of damage. I also think they fit nicely with Hera's cover [1] ability. With all of that said, I think in my premier list, they will be sticking with Han.
This was Pigeon's list. Very similar to mine but the Commandos are with Kanan and Hera has Chopper. There's not a ton to say here that I didn't say in the last section. Pigeon prefers Chopper for his Protection and condition immunities, and I think he mentioned the Jump as well. Otherwise, we both seem to like all of these units for the same reasons.
Since we're here anyway, I'll just reiterate a little bit: Hera is VERY good. Kanan is VERY good. The rest of the Spectres are VERY good. Thank you for combining to my TED talk.
The Game
The first step was the map. We chose randomly and got the Imperial Hangar.
Pigeon won the roll-off and chose to play Shifting Priorities. I had not yet had a chance to play Shifting with the Spectres, so I was a bit nervous about how it would go. We both had almost Identical deployments and we BOTH made the same mistake while deploying.
As you can see in the picture below, we both set ourselves up as if we were playing Sabotage Showdown instead of Shifting, and sadly, it didn't go well for either of us. Before we flipped the first struggle Pigeon remarked about our mistakes and said something like "I think as long as it's not the big plus sign, we're both good." Well...
...it was the big plus sign (aka Steal the Secret Plans). :/ That's okay, brainfarts happen.
This map made it particularly annoying to grab screenshots, so my apologies. He deployed Kanan, Ezra, and the Commandos in the top right, and I responded with Hera, Sabine, and the Commandos in the bottom left. He put his Hera in the top left and I put my Kanan in the bottom right. Overall and pretty solid deployment for both of us, even with the bad flop.
His first flip was Hera, who he reserved and replaced with Sabine. She was able to give a dash to one of the commandos and move herself so that he was contesting top-middle and middle-left. I then also flipped my Hera, but I decided to go with her, which I think was a mistake. I had a pretty subpar activation and only ended up winning one point this turn, which put me behind off the bat. He wounded my Commandos very early on, I think his 2nd or 3rd activation. We went back and forth for a pretty long time, both gaining very little ground. We both scored 3 points back and forth for what felt like almost an hour. Eventually, he was able to have a massive swing with Hera by activating her with his Shatterpoint card. She was able to heal damage and conditions off of every unit on his team except Ezra, who had none to begin with. All of the work I had been slowly putting in just disappeared like that! It was at this point that I knew I had no chance of winning this struggle.
We went through, I think, about a Deck and a quarter before he won it. He had wounded just my commandos and I had wounded just his commandos. We then flipped struggle two and got We're Going to Need a New Exit.
As you can see, we both were actually pretty unhappy with this objective. All of our fighting had been on the middle three points so neither of us had anything contesting any of the new points off the bat.
My first flip was, luckily, Sabine. She was able to dash Ezra to score bottom right and she was able to move and score bottom left. Scoring three off the top made this struggle feel a lot better for me but it was still fairly back and forth. He pulled his Kanan next and contested the top middle, followed by my Kanan who did the same. I was able to score four points at the point so I was sitting in a good spot for this struggle. This was a short struggle but during this struggle, we wounded each other's Kanans. That was tough on both of us, but with Heras on the board, I don't think either of us was too stressed here.
This struggle went a lot quicker than the first one but even though I won it, I was not happy about my overall position. Pigeon had a very solid hold on much of the map and I was not sure how I would fair in struggle three.
We flipped Comandeer a New Ride. I think of all of the options, this one was the best outcome for me based on where he positioned his units at the end of the second struggle.
^This image is a recreation of how we remember the board at this time because I forgot to screengrab the top of this struggle.^
The struggle started with me on the middle-bottom point with Commando and the rest of the objectives uncontested. This struggle was also very back and forth with a ton of flipping and flopping of the points. At this point, my Sabine was wounded and pushed far away. The first few activations were very back and forth. He wounded my commandos. We both had our Kanans and Ezras on the middle point and because of the way Ezra's tie-breaking ability works, neither of us was scoring the middle. Eventually, I was able to use Hera to wake up my commandos and win the bottom-middle objective and the middle objective in one go. Towards the end of the struggle, I was able to wound his Commandos with my Ezra, netting me two momentum.
He went with his Hera and moved some stuff around, but did not move her to contest the middle point. Pigeon later admitted that move was a mistake. I think, his only mistake. Not scoring the middle there was what allowed me to maintain board control and score all four objectives near the end. He flipped one objective the following activation but it just was not enough sadly. Struggle three ended with my Hera wounding his Sabine and me scoring for the win.
This was the table at the end of the game. It was an incredibly tough game for me. Pigeon is an excellent player and a wonderful opponent. He had me fighting from the backfoot the entire time. There was no single moment where I really felt like I could win, purely due to his exceptional piloting of this list. The middle of the table was a serious scrum and there were a lot of funky puzzles for both of us to figure out throughout the game.
Funnily enough, at the end of the game, we realized...
...we both wounded the exact same units the same number of times. The extra funny part about this is that the majority of these wounds were done at very similar times to each other.
The game ended 2-1 and 4-4 to me.
Thank you, Pigeon for being such an incredible opponent and allowing both of us to practice this tough mirror-match. I hope we get to play again soon and I wish you the best of luck in the rest of your league games!
Thank you for reading!