Space Slugs TTS League Rd. 3 Battle Report!
That is round three done! This league continues to be a ton of fun. Not only am I having a blast playing with a bunch of new folks, but I am learning a ton of neat tips and tricks to share with you all in the future! After this League, I will move towards more general strategy articles.
As a reminder, here are the links to the League information and the TTS mod made by RichMidGaming:
This week I was paired with Magiknik, one of the previous overall winners of the League! He placed first in Episode 3 of this very same League. He was an amazing opponent and our game was a ton of fun. I learned quite a bit during this one, so let's get into it.
Strike Teams
I have already talked at length about Han+Kanan so I won't say much here. I tried Ezra instead of Sabine and I'm still on the fence. Ezra's Tie-breaker is obviously very good and super helpful when it comes to being a body down, but it makes him such a priority target that I'm not sure it's actually all that great. Every game I have Ezra he is one of the first to go. Sabine on the other hand is maybe better overall, in my opinion. She doesn't win Ties and she does not do the fancy two-momentum wounding thing. Other than those two things, I think she is the safer bet for what I am looking for. Again, not 100% sure about that yet though.
Magiknik ran some scoundrelly stuff! I like this list a lot.
Maul is fantastic. His ability to conserve force is incredible, especially when you have other stuff that can be particularly force-hungry. In addition to that he also hits like a truck and then speeds off like one too. He can advance three times in an activation with almost 100% certainty. He is one of the speediest units in the entire game and an overall amazing primary.
Lumiara is also great. I admit, I do not have as much practice with her personally. She just does not particularly excite me, but that does not mean I can't recognize how good she is. If I remember correctly, Nik took her in his premier list last Episode of the league. Her Identity is absolutely insane. All of the stuff it provides is amazing.
Wrecker and Crosshair are both good. If you've read my unit guides on them you'll know where I stand on this topic. I still think Wrecker is better, maybe even significantly better. However, I think the one place that I like Crosshair more is here, in a Luminara list. His wounding capability makes her Identity a lot more potent than with other Republic stuff. Both of them serve a purpose here and both are good.
Commandos love Lumi as well. I think Commandos are probably still my favorite Clone Support in the game. CF: Damage can be very helpful. The Bounty Hunters are also good, though again, I don't have much practice with them.
Overall this list is great and Nik knows how to pilot it extremely well.
The Game
We flipped through maybe 5 different maps before we found one that we both liked, but we finally did! It's a Tatooine-ish map and it was pretty fun.
Nik won the roll-off and chose Never Tell Me The Odds. I was not too upset about that, since that is also what I brought with me. So this was going to be a pretty spread-out game, or so I thought.
This is what we looked like after Deployment and flipping of the first Struggle. We pulled one of the two I like the most for struggle one. This one has Secondaries Challenging The Odds.
Nik flipped Maul first and immediately reserved him. He followed by going with his commandos. They were able to score the top middle point and start moving toward the middle left point. I flipped Han, moved Kanan towards the middle-left, and Han under the bottom rough building. We both spent the next few turns positioning to win three points at a time.
We went back and forth for around a deck and a half before this struggle was over. It took us around an hour to complete the first struggle which I think is the longest I've ever taken personally. We both had some pretty nice plays in this struggle but what Nik was able to do with Maul at the end was what sealed the deal in his favor. Maul was able to pull Chewie off of the top-middle point, put a lot of damage into him, and triple advance from the top-right-ish of the board to the bottom left. Winning the bottom left point that I was forced to leave empty to have a chance. Nik played this struggle phenomenally.
This was the table at the top of Struggle Two. You can see Maul down in the bottom left there after his hit-and-run on Chewie in the top-right. We flipped a map that I was not happy with at all. Both of the options were pretty bad for me, but I felt like the one I chose was the best of the two. By this time Ezra had been wounded twice and was going to die after his next go. My first pull was the Commandos who were able to actually have a pretty good activation, taking two objectives at once and scoring me three points. Sadly for me, I forgot who I was dealing with. Nik pulled Lumi who was able to get to my bottom-middle point, wound my commandos, move Wrecker with Lumi's identity, and score four plus a momentum. Ouch.
After that, I pulled Zeb, who was not able to do anything particularly helpful. I think I scored 1 or 0, I can't remember. After that Nik got Wrecker who shot Chewie twice and harrassed Han and my commandos, again, Nik scored four. My last draw was Kanan but I had no hope of winning.
This was the table at the end of the game. Struggle Two was over in five total activations. Nik won the game 2-0 and 5-4. I did not respect what Luminara was capable of and I will not make that mistake again. I would say she was his MVP in this game. Mine was probably Han, maybe Chewie.
These were the lists at the end of the game.
Ezra and the Clone Commandos were both on deck to become defeated. I think I put maybe 4 or 5 attacks into Crosshair, who just kept healing from Lumi. Over and over, I could not get any meaningful damage to stick to him or her really.
Overall, this was a very fun game and a great learning experience. Nik played this game amazingly and I hope he takes it all the way again. Good luck to him in the rest of his games and hopefully in the cut.
Thank you for reading!