Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Two by two by two by two.... And Dropfleet

As has been the standard for a while, on the Saturdays that I don't have my kids, after hours we throw down a game of Firefly. Well, this past week was no different. However, what was strikingly out of the ordinary was how often I drew the reshuffle Misbehave card. During the game, we saw it come up 6 or 7 times, of those, I drew it 5 times. Suffice it to say that this game was mildly frustrating. Not in a bad way, I just couldn't get through. However I did manage to get some Dropfleet games in, both on Saturday and during the week.And after the break I will tell you how those went.
Game one on Saturday was versus Nabors's PHR. I was running the Adamant, a Jet, a Basalt, 2 groups of 2 Amethysts, 2 Emeralds, and 6 Voidgates. The idea was to use the Adamant as a heavy hitter, bringing in the Jet to bombard or add some close action anger, hold back with the Basalt, raining bomber death, mop up with the Amethysts while the Voidgates and Emeralds do their thing. Well, Adamant did fairly well, but its not really super powerful. The Amethysts are amazing. Bombers didn't really do much. Not really enough of them to take it to the PHR, and felt pretty meh. The Jet went screaming forward to bring pain, was able to shoot its Disintegrator Battery once and then die. Well, hmmmm.... For the PHR's part, Nabors brought in his strike carriers on turn two and ended up behind. Overall, he mauled me pretty heavily, and after the Jet evaporated and the Adamant took its licks, I felt like I had a handful of wet noodles. And Amethysts. In the end, though we played a bunch of stuff wrong, he was just able to whittle down my ground forces. We finished with a draw, but only because I had some dice luck at the end of six. I left knowing I would have to rethink my list pretty hard, because it just didn't stand up.

So, on Wednesday, we met up to try it again. Nabors hadn't changed his list, but mine saw an overhaul. I kept the Adamant, because its my battle cruiser, kept the Amethysts, of course, Emeralds and Voidgates, like there is an option, but dropped the Jet and Basalt for a load of Disintegrators in an Onyx and an Amber. Yeah, they are as good as I thought they would be. My first list was to try the things I had thought about, but was not sure on. This second list was to bring what I felt was really good and throw it against the wall and see what busted through. What busted through? All of it. And took the next room along with it. I Silent Ran the Onyx on with its three Gate turn one, followed by the Adamant to take advantage of some aggressive movement by the PHR. Within the first two turns, I was able to take out his Bulk Lander and the other ship in its battle group. On turn three, I brought on my Amethysts, which removed his battle cruiser. After that I continued to hunt his ships, leaving wrecks in my wake. On the ground, the sector his strike carriers went to saw heavy fighting, that would have likely went against me, eventually. However, the other two sectors were easily mine, as I had destroyed the only competition and did not even bother putting down markers for my drops. Needless to say, this one ended heavily in my favor. It is hard to argue with results, and the ability to sit back and send shots across the board really helps to lessen the weak armor and expensive shields of the Shaltari.

I hope to get in another game of Dropfleet this weekend, but we will see. I will likely play either Dropzone or X-Wing versus my kids, so that too will be fun.

Well, I am keeping my resolution so far. Just need to keep on keeping on. Catchya next week.

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