Written by Tyler Carnes
Hello all! Welcome to the Garrison’s first in series: Tournament Recaps. In this series, we look at some of the major tournaments and talk about things such as faction/unit breakdowns and/or battle reports (if one of us was lucky enough to attend). This article will cover the one and only:
Rocky Top Gaming Convention 2022
Rocky Top was hosted by the guys that run the STABcast (go check out their content, wonderful people). A special thanks to Ryan Sliwoski for TO-ing/judging and Ben Fowler for judging. If you don’t know about the history of Rocky Top, their previous event had a grand total of 12 players. Not bad! Maybe they doubled in size and had 24 this year, right? That would be a good turnout! Nope, They were able to muster FIFTY ONE for this year, and that’s not counting many people getting sick and not coming in the week leading up to the event. What a pleasant surprise representing the growth and prominence of the legion community.
Now to get into the nitty gritty. To keep from reiterating five times, I’ll preface my recaps by saying that I had pleasant games all weekend and most of that was due to my splendid opponents. Thank you everyone who had to put up with me for 2.5 hours. What list did I bring to Rocky Top, you may be asking? Well, here it is:
Yes, I am in fact “that guy that brings Kalani/spiders.” Hear me out first…. I brought Maul, too. That has to allow for some sort of exception, right?
The list is easy to dissect: you have a gunline and a force user. The force user can be conservative or go out on a flank and completely murder-ize everything if needed. Maul fills this role perfectly, and this list lives and dies by what he can accomplish. The comms relays on Kalani and the DRK Probes make sure that no matter what card you play, Maul and the three ion spiders will have orders. The PK worker droids ensure that there isn’t too much burst damage onto a spider or onto Kalani, and the E5S B1s are there to further lean into the range four shooting, and are often ignored because of the threats that the spiders and maul present.
My list, compared to a lot of others using this archetype, is odd since it doesn’t have a squad of MagnaGuard. I’ve played a number of games with a similar list where you have two MagnaGuards filling in the spots of Maul and the DRK Probe Droids. While that list is very potent, I find that Force Push is more addictive than sugar. I also believe the list with the MagnaGuards also drives itself where the player can go on autopilot using it and Maul presents a much more complex puzzle not only to your opponent, but to the one playing the list.
– Round 1 –
Objective: Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators
Condition: I don’t remember, so probably Clear Conditions
Deployment: Major Offensive
My first game was against Kevin Salhoff. We were put on a fairly open table, which doesn’t mesh well with all of the white saves. The spiders melted the T-47 before it could make any sort of impact (pun intended), and Operative Luke had too far to travel before he could do any damage. Maul was able to go and take over one of Kevin’s Moisture Vaporators, leading to a 6-2 victory for the CiS.
– Round 2 –
Objective: Key Positions
Condition: Clear Conditions (maybe?)
Deployment: Long March
My second game was against local friend of mine and fellow Garrison member, John McNeil. He infiltrated Iden aggressively in the middle of the table in order to block off a Maul infiltration, but this led to Iden taking too many shots Turn 1, resulting in Iden’s death.
We talked afterwards and he said he shouldn’t have done this. Although, had Maul infiltrated, I would’ve been able to terrorize those red save corps and pick off a unit one at a time. Him already being down two activations to start had him climbing all game, especially with Key Positions, and though Operative Vader is much faster than before his errata, Long March kept him out of the action for a Turn or two too long. I was able to win that game 2-1.
– Round 3 –
Objective: Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators
Condition: Clear Conditions (who knows what I played at this point)
Deployment: Long March
My final game of day one was against J. Muth. This was by far the most concerning game after Turn 0. I later came to the realization that his list was constructed very well to play Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators. The bikes are for pressure to kill a couple units then get out of the action, then force your opponent to be the aggressor once they’re down on killpoints, and walk into a wall of mines.
I inferred that he was going to to kill a spider with his bikes, then play defense the rest of the game. His bikes were only 70 points while my spiders were 73, so even if I was able to trade a bike for a spider droid, he would still have the kill point advantage. Unfortunately for Muth, the table had two long lines of buildings parallel to the long board edges that were all height two, and with Long March it created three lanes that he was forced to choose between with his bikes.
With all of the tall buildings, he didn’t have the chance to redirect to another lane because of the tall buildings, and I was able to hold long enough for his bikes to work their way too far up the board, allowing Maul to get his hands on them. I would love to play this game again with a different table as the one we played on seemed to screw him up pretty badly.
– Round 4 –
Objective: Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators
Condition: Minefield (I finally remembered!)
Deployment: Roll Out
The first game of Day Two commenced against Michael Henry from the Atlanta area. If anyone listens to the STABcast, you’ll recognize that name as someone that travels up to the Knoxville area and is a very good player (he is currently ranked 5th in the Fifth Trooper’s ELO ranking).
The scenario turned out to be very unfortunate for Michael. He placed his 2 Vaporators in the crook of the “L” shape that Roll Out creates, and there was a building Maul could infiltrate behind that would safely have him within range 2 of both Vaporators. This created a huge dilemma for Michael, as he had to decide to either use his characters to defend his Vaporators, or use his characters aggressively to pressure mine in response and hope for R2 to score. He chose the latter option, but Maul and the probe droids were able to successfully manhandle Michael’s Vaporators, leading to him only repairing his one time by the end of the game. I was able to reasonably hold off his pressure from his operatives and prevent R2 from scoring, leading me to a 3-1 victory. Like previously mentioned, the game setup ended up being heavily in my favor, which definitely made the game feel much more lopsided than it probably should have been.
– Round 5 –
Objective: Recover the Supplies
Condition: Supply Drop
Deployment: Major Offensive
The fifth and final round of Rocky Top had myself and Garrison member Joe Hicks (Kass#6126 on discord) squaring off as the last two remaining 4-0 players in the tournament. Joe came into this game with a vendetta, as the tournament the Garrison hosted a few weeks prior (Revenge of the Smackdown) had me winning by the absolute slightest margin of Strength of Schedule. Joe’s list is an absolute mind bender. With ten activations and a 14 point bid, I was a bit flabbergasted trying to wrap my head around this army.
The battle cards flipped and I was left with the choice between Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators and Recover the Supplies. I thought that my army had enough firepower to kill Cassian if he chose to infiltrate him on the middle, and Vaps would’ve left me chasing his 6 health squads around all game.
The biggest mistake for me came right out of the gate, where I had to decide to divulge “The Phantom Menace” or not, and I got really aggressive and tried having Maul pressure Joe’s back boxes while focusing the rest of my army on killing Cassian in the center of the table. After deployment, I realized that Maul was not safe and would receive some shots from the commandos and Veterans, so I decided to play Maul’s “Duel of the Fates” card in an effort to get him a dodge. His commandos were able to find a shot on him and forced me to make 4 saves after the dodge….
....3 blanks.
That immediately crushed my spirit. I needed Maul to be able to be somewhat healthy to make the impact I wanted him to. Joe didn’t have any sort of melee threat to stop maul if he was able to get into the mix of things. From there, Joe did a masterful job at zoning Maul out with his Vets, Mark II Blaster and a Commando team and was safely able to extract his box that he had over there. Maul was able to grab ahold of his Mark 2 and stay engaged with him, meaning that he’d live the rest of the game but have no meaningful effect.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the table, my spiders and B1s attempted to gun down the remaining units he had and overwhelm him with dice. Cassian ended up only taking one damage from all of my fire Turn 1, but racked up lots of suppression. One mistake Joe made was playing Cassian’s “Volunteer Mission” Turn 1. His logic was to dump Cassian’s cards before he died and for the extra Danger Sense, though that ended up backfiring for him.
At the start of the second turn, Joe failed to rally with Cassian, leading to Cassian panicking and leaving his box behind. Joe was fine with this and still in a good spot until the unit he left to pick up Cassian's box, a full health six man Fleet squad, was one shot by a Spider Droid (as if spiders weren't good enough). Though Joe was able to grab this box the next round and get on top of a building with an injured commando squad, a heroic B1 E5S squad was able to roll enough crits to kill them on the very last turn of the game. The game was absolutely wild, and Joe is a VERY good player so it was very difficult and lucky all the way around for me. We ended up going to kill points, where I had the slight advantage.
At the end of the day, I was the last 5-0 player remaining, meaning I took home first place! This is the first major I have won, granted there haven't been so many since I bought into legion at the beginning of 2020. If you would like to see some more in-depth stats from the event, check out the link to "Legion Stats" by the Fifth Trooper here. Thank you everyone for reading, and PLEASE try going to a big event if you have the opportunity! They are an amazing experience.
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