Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!

Those who prefer to watch a summary of the battle report rather than to read it, see one here.

So this report is about my game in the Swiss DW Cup semifinals in Basel against a splendid French player (Seph) with an extremely well painted Russian Coalition fleet. Seph was the best gentleman one can possibly ask for and the game was fun and entertaining, yet my efforts seemed to evaporate just as if charging a fully equipped castle with a bare sword. ^^

Seph's Russian Coalition.

Once again my trusted Japanese list at 1'000pts.

This is how we set up.

After setting up, I felt very confident. I planned to put my three Tanuki Gunships on the very left or right to minimize the threat if his Field Order tells him to destroy my medium sized ships. However, when we went to get our Field Orders, Seph corrected me that you don't pick them, but you roll a D6 get them assigned. Ooops, I overread this with my opponents so far - we secretly picked them. o.O So we rolled our D6 and ended up with

Seph - destroy 70% of the enemy fleet.
Parcival - destroy all large and massive models of the enemy fleet

Here another mistake happened - I didn't read carefully and was under the impression I had to destroy *one* large or massive model. Hence I felt very confident that I could destroy his large ship in the upper center while he'd have hard time to get to 70% of my ships and therefore neglected his carrier in the upper right corner totally by thinking it's a smart move to just avoid it.

End of turn 1.

A the end of turn 1 I still felt very confident that I could win this game. He nicked some of my smaller ships (bye bye Fujin Corvettes), but due to pre-measuring I had positioned my ships in a way that his 16" (+Mv) threat range didn't or at least hardly bother me.

However, in turn 2 my biggest problem quickly became evident: Ablative Armor on all his medium, large, and massive ships.

My Uwatsus pumped three critical results into one of his medium ships...

...and didn't take off more than 1 hullpoint because of the Ablative Armor rule.

End of Turn 2.

The game went quickly downhill from this point. Due to Seph's high firing discipline and my inability to break through his Ablative Armor quickly enough my fleet started to disintegrate. My small ships were all but gone and the Dreadnought was heavily damaged where other gamers barely even scratched it. My remaining strong points where the Tanuki Gunships happily firing away their missiles in the lower left corner unchallenged while my Torpedo Bombers where flying rotations on the Sky Fortress.

End of Turn 3.

Turn 3 saw the end of the Dreadnought. The Sky Fortress dived and dropped her bombs, but got boarded right after and gave Seph double victory points.

The semi-finals and the pairing for the upcoming final game of the Swiss DW Cup.

So in the end I lost 885 : 295 against an opponent who definitely didn't steal his victory, but won graciously and even helped me with advice to improve my situation - without his help I would have lost even worse. o.O

However, despite me listing my mistakes above and despite the crushing result, I don't feel like it's doing justice to my performance. Instead I felt like I did reasonably well based on my skill level. A strong list in the hands of a strong player doesn't allow any mistakes and I think I was playing up to my best, so I give myself bonus points for having tried. :-D However, to be an effective threat against him, I'd have to play Seph and this list repeatedly until I am efficiently enough at taking advantages of his weak spots.

Well, I sign off for some "let's start a new fleet" therapy. ^^