Rocky Mountain Open Top 8

Last weekend (March 11-12) Front Line Gaming hosted the Rocky Mountain Open in Denver Colorado. With the 5280 crew out in full force let’s look at who made the top 8 cut and with what.

In the top 8 we saw 1 Shadow Collective, 1 CIS, 1 Rebel, and 5 Imperial. The Republic got snubbed at this tourney with the highest placing Republic player being Jason Baird of the 5280 Legion at 12th place.

8th – Jim Shafer – Oh how original, Imperial Dark Troopers

Impact Impact Impact. This list run by Jim Shafer brings along Impact 13, plus Impact Grenades and some Critical. This list will look at armour and melt it. One thing for sure is that this list will be good into other dark troopers.

This list also has some decent objective play with the ability to teleport a dark trooper as well as dark troopers being inherently tricky on objectives with their double activation.

This list also brings an officer upgrade which might seem a bit odd. The officer provides a courage 2 corp as well as a point of Inspire.

7th – Zander Woolley – 5280 Legion – Pizza Party Planes

The first battle force on this list, and it’s not Blizzard. Zander brought an Echo Base Defenders list to the tournament and did quite well with it. As the name of the list implies this list is centered around the T-47s and the Laser Cannons. These two things together are great against armour, as well as anything more generally.

The large bid is probably necessary with three laser cannons to ensure favourable deployments or picking the more advantageous side.

This as discussed has a good dark trooper counter in plenty of impact. This list also packs a Blizzard counter in the form of the Echo Base card Delaying Tactics. With the way Blizzard gives out orders, you often have the opportunity to bounce Op-Vader’s order back to the bag and leave him very vulnerable.

5th – MICHAEL RAMIREZ – Maul ready for this

The one CIS list we saw in the top 8 was run by Michael Ramirez. This list takes what is good in CIS and brings it.

In this list we see Maul, who’s always been good, especially when played by good players. We also see some range 4 poke with B1 E-5S while also providing some anti armour and cover tech. On top of that we see three B2 units with HAs, T-Series and Emergency Transponders. These B2 units are the heart of the list and will provide most of the beef and offensive potential.

We also see a T-Series Commander, and then round out the list with BX droids and DRK droids.

4th – Maxwell Silver – 5280 Legion – Tony Hoth’s Pro-Speeder IV

How original… Now we see the ‘standard’ Blizzard force. 4 speeders? Yup, Op-Vader? Yup, HRUs? Yup.

Maxwell Silver brought a good list and did good with it. Blizzard is certainly a list that takes some practice to do well over two days of games.

One thing that has become quite popular is the Emergency Transponders on the bikes, the Transponders are quite the upgrade on the bikes and give even more efficiency.

Though this listicle is in the same order as the final rankings on Game Uplink (the tournament was straight swiss) Max was one of the two 5-0 players going into the final match.

3rd – Dustin Grorud – 5280 Legion – Winners Find Ways to Win

It’s the same list!! Wait, not quite.

Dustin has everything the same except adding Impact grenades to the naked Snows. For the cost of a lower bid you end up having more of an armour hedge (think Dark Troopers) as well as snows with grenades that can actually hurt a bit. I got hit with some Snow grenades at LVO and wasn’t expecting it and it hurt more than expected.

2nd – Michael Smith – Maul’s Seafood BBQ

As the name tells us, this list is Maul and a bunch of Pykes.

With the latest points update these types of lists got a lot more expensive. In the past you’d have Pyke Capo upgrades on all the corp instead of foot soldiers.

This list still has a great force user, and six corp squads of six models, all with heavy weapons. The force user plus gunline archetype is a tried and true one and Michael managed to build an effective version of that archtype.

1st – Gus Woomer – 5280 Legion – Back in Black

Congrats to the Winner of the weekend Gus Woomer.

This list is quite the grab bag of things. Within this grab bag is a Force User plus Gunline archetype at heart. The list wants to shoot its opponent and then have Vader mop up the rest. With three seperate units that can pass aims, you will see some really effective shots out of this list.

The seemingly really out of left field unit in this list is the Scout Troopers with Electrobinocs. Gus probably included this unit for a bit of scout, plus some late game effective shooting. However likely the biggest reason for incorporating this unit is that this list has moderately poor order control. Presuming you give Vader an order every turn, every possible token you pull out of the bag can pass an aim. This ensures that your shots are as effective as possible.

Conclusions

What’s good is good. We saw Empire dominate the top 8 on top of winning the tournament. We did see some interesting takes on empire lists in this top 8 with only two lists being ‘the boogeyman’ Blizzard force. If you want to go far in tournaments you will need to have an answer for both Blizzard force, Dark Troopers, and just Empire in general.