A little while ago we had the Shepparton Miniatures Gamers Dystopian Wars Tournament which was awesome. I went with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. I came 5th overall with 2 Wins 1 Draw and 2 Losses.
It has been a while and the counselling is finally starting to kick in so here goes… This is a quick story of my 3rd match.
I fielded 1 Zamiec with a Grom buddy, 1x Triglav, 3x Marowit, 3x Podaga, 4 Frigates.
My opponent played as New Zealand with 2x Cerberus Battleships, 4x Victorias, 4x Protectors and 5x Goshawks (these were all named after Maori gods of death… fittingly)
Deployment:
New Zealand deployed arrayed along their side of the board pointing inwards. PLC deployed tight in behind an island for cover, very tight.
Turn 1 went fairly quickly and not much happened. The PLC didn’t really take much damage at all. But New Zealand had 2 critically injured Victorias, one downed Goshawk and one injured Goshawk.

Early in turn one. That block of cruisers will move forward and maintain basically the same spacing… great idea…
Turn 2 opens. NZ win initiative. Goshawks activate targeting the Grom. Ok, thats fine I think to myself. Opponent plays devastating ordinance… Ok fine, it’s early in the game, shouldn’t be pivotal at this point and I get 60 points…and naturally he rolls a triple critical. Yikes. 1st some effect. 2nd Magazine explosion. This results in a dead Grom. But not just a dead Grom but an explosion-y one. Boom.6 hits rolled… Trig minus 1 HP, Zamiec -1 HP Marowits -1 hp each… the Podagas on the other hand. Yikes. All crited. First one rolled some effect, second one another effect… third one: Magazine explosion. Scoring enough HP loss to kill it, causing another massive blast. Oh FFS. Crits to all other ships. Another magazine explosion, this time from a Marowit. Crits all round once again, good bye Triglav.

The Grom vaporised the rest of the fleet damaged but the back line is about to cause more problems…

3rd on the trot 1 Grom, 1 Podaga, and now a Marowit
Triglav – Dead
3 Marowits – Dead
3 Podagas – Dead
1 Grom – Dead
Zamiec 5 HP lost
The Heavy Frigates were all good which was nice.
More than 70% of the fleet annihilated by a damaged unit of smalls in one hit the first activation of the second turn. Yowzer! My opponent later calculated the odds which he put at 1 in 76.7 million
We played out the turn. I sunk the Vics and the Zamiec went down. Obviously massive MASSIVELY crushing defeat for the Poles. It was epic. Nuts. But man as those Mags started cascading I just had to strap in and take it.

A consolation prize from my opponent, Hehehe, hopefully it helps ease the pain next time.