“Rocky Top Open” and “Legion By The Bay” Top-of-Cut Lists

Legion By The Bay

Held at “Kubla Con” in San Francisco, this was held as a 32 player affair. Unfortunately, a multitude of late drops led to the actual number being 18, but don’t mistake this for being “just a local.” There was a top-notch list of players there as our more die-hard readers will soon see as they look at the player list for Day 1, but we’re going highlight the top 8 with one-liners with a little extra focus on the top table match.

#8 Kody Doherty: General Grievous, B2, Magna at 8 acts

Maybe the purest aggro CIS list I’ve ever seen, 6 monsters with two repair bots, basically have to kill units before they get to you…scary!

#7 Peter von Bleichart: Veers AT-ST Gunline

A fairly classic Veers Walker list where the AT-ST is rolling with Weiss and all of the fixins. With the surge from AT the range 2 shot from that walker is very deadly indeed (6.657 forced saves on average with no aims).

#6 Tom Patten: Anakin Gunline

The lone GAR list in the top cut is not surprisingly one of the two commanders that are really viable right now. I will say it’s pleasant to see a “classic” Jedi gunline doing well, this is similar to how I built Obi lists back when ARC snipers were good without Echo. All the corps are either courge 2 or have captains which makes it very mobile, and regular access to surges and fire support from the BARCs makes the Zs work better than on its own.

#5 Charles Anakin: Secret Mission Tauns

Anakin, you’re playing the wrong faction man! A neat concept, R2 and his landspeeder are really the stars of the show and Shriv can help make sure he remains unshootable. The tauns and FD seem to be there to distract; the brave Mk2 blasters that can make it into FS range combo very well with any of those Supports.

#4 Miles Darcy: Palp Gunline

A classical version with two med droids and barrier on Palp. Generally good against the DLT spam because of High Velocity.

#3 Don Gillin: Super Tac Maul 11 Act

I love the radiation cannon in here, feels like a last act cherry on top until it’s close enough to do damage. A very solid list; reliable order control on Maul in an 11 act list is going to be good pretty much regardless of what else surrounds it.

#2 Bobby Joe “Blood Ocean” Thomas: Iden Dews

#1 Matt “Zeusjus” Bronson: DLT Vigilance and Luke

An unsurprising showdown between two excellent players (both from the Pacific Northwest might I add, Bobby is a local of mine so don’t bother defending him when I give him some crap below) with two lists that are popular in the meta. I touched base with both players at the end of the weekend. Bobby likes to switch his lists up in general but always values blue player; naturally in an Iden 333 list of any variety, objective choice and deployment are very key. Matt is playing the same list he’s been playing for the last few months. Why change when it’s working (top 4 finish at adepticon, made IL elims first round in NA West).

Below is a pic taken during the mid-game:

Bobby’s tac strike took a sniper team out and did 1 wound to Luke and 2 trooper wounds; obviously not the hottest of alphas. Meanwhile, as you can see there weren’t a lot of great places for the Dews to hide. Bobby dove one into Vap A which got taken out by troopers, then later the one near C got TWO-SHOTTED (ouch) and Luke basically spent the whole time safe in melee. He was nearly killed turn 6 which would have swung the game but Bobby reported the MULTITUDE of free surges Luke got from “Into the Fray” kept him safe and likely ensured the win for Matt.

I somewhat cheekily asked the players how they would make their lists worse if they were AMG:

Bobby: “Nothing, it’s perfectly fine” (Of course he said this, har har)

Matt: “I’d add 1-2 points total to SA/captains. That’s 5 or 10 points across the board which the list doesn’t really have. I played Luke and 4 DLTs about a year ago and it didn’t feel nearly as strong without that extra squad.”

Congratulations Matt! Get good Bobby!

Lastly, a haiku for the “Fallen” Fifth Trooper Jon “Bushfacts” Bushman who went 1-2 for the event:

Vig spam? Easy wins
As long as "muh dice" don't fail
Then, later..."MUH DICE!!!"

Rocky Top Open

I spent about half my life in Tennessee so I wish I COULD have attended this one but I was on a trip for my 6th anniversary and I’d like to have a 7th so plastic pew pew toys weren’t in the cards for me! By all accounts this was a blast of a tournament with an array of excellent prizes and occasional FREE fanny packs. Funny enough, while Legion By the Bay went to a cut this one was a regular old 5 round hootenanny so let’s take a look at the nine 4-1 lists and focus a little more on the winner.

#9 Shawn Sibert: Palp Gunline

Fairly standard guns and guards with Palp…but hark! Is that an HH12 squad? That’s cool, don’t see those very often.

#8 J Muth: Krennic, DT’s, 2 Sab Strikes, one FULL sab, and….3 HH12 Storms

WHAT IS HAPPENING I

#7 Sean Dekle: Anakin, Padme, 3 P1 Heavies and 2 Shooty Wooks

Hey you want to be in the top quartile of a tournament with GAR you better bring Anakin or Yoda. However, this is a fun spin on it. It risks cutting down to 8 acts by using five real shooters to go along with the doomed couple including two scope shooter bowcaster overwtatch scopes squads, quite a punch if you step into their parlour at range 3!

#6 Wesley Wagner: Super Iden Triple Dews

I say “Super” Iden because she has a gun, two loadouts, and her droid, otherwise it’s the fairly typical build with Dews instead of bikes, this really does seem to be the list that Dews thrive the most in.

#5 TFT Podcast’s Own Nikolaus “Grammer” Lichtenberg: Super Tact’s 11 Acts, a haiku!

01001101 01100001 01100111 01101110 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01010011 01110000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 00001010 01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101100 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 01110011 00001010 01000101 01110110 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100011 01101011

#4 Michael Henry: Lando, Cassian, R2, Double Bus

I actually just read Raekwon’s book and I can confirm that Inspectah Deck, GZA, and Cappadonna had a fairly wild time on a bus early in their careers, they actually performed a few rhymes for Canadian mounties under a thinly veiled threat of arrest for drug possession. If you have no idea why I’m talking about this…take a look at the article I posted a couple weeks ago!

Anyway Lando and TWO BUSES is a pretty dang reliable way to help R2 score, and I could totally see putting Cassian in the other one for a tricky tacticioned and K2’d up Crack Shot with the threat of a follow up standby shot via overwatch!

#3 David Jones: Kalani, AAT, 2 Spiders

It’s still kinda crazy to me how droid lists fit together. This combines several heavy corps with three monstrous range 4 threats and some of the best commands in the game, very scary stuff.

#2 Joseph Hicks: Leia Cassian Fleets, double full Commando

A very cool list, I could see “No Time” hitting hard with those fleets, LOTS of ranged pierce to put red saves away! Been a while since we’ve seen our hero Leia in a top cut list, very nice work.

#1 Tyler Carnes: Kalani Maul

This looks like a very reliable template for any Maul list these days. The super tac commands and shared tokens give Maul a bit of an extra edge when trying to survive after diving. I do wonder how often the worker droids were helpful as aside from the spiders which tend to hang out in the back he’s otherwise just saving B1’s and maybe Kalani. Far be it for me to question him though he did win, I just wonder whether shifting one to be a medic may help ensure Maul stays around long enough to bear his teeth. Anyway, a list that’s very much to my liking, it’s efficient, it’s got great commands, it has force push. That may as well be all you need in this meta.

Congratulations Tyler!

Lastly, I’d like to point out two things for the site:

• Our computer wizards (especially “DrPowerSlam”) have been hard at work on our stats page, which now includes “win rates” for various units. CHECK IT OUT HERE!
• I myself put together an index of the majority of our blog articles so you can peruse in a more organized way than searching or clicking on keywords. CHECK THAT OUT HERE!

Congratulations again to the folks above, good to see that Legion really does now feel like it’s back, hope to see you at the next one!