Battle report - ibuywargames, Woking - 08-05-16

Battle report – ibuywargames, Woking – 08-05-16

Here we go again! Me and wingman Joel, off on another road trip to push bits of plastic round tables for six hours… we love it!

The list this time was pretty similar to last time, still Chewie but this time Chopper piloting the Ghost. Here’s the full build:

Chewie – Lone Wolf / C3PO / Luke Skywalker / title (55)

Chopper – Autoblaster turret / Han Solo / Zeb / Fire Control System (44)

From my previous build I had decided gunner was great but often a little under powered, with the addition of Luke, I gave my offence a bit of a buff which played out quite nicely once or twice during the day.

The Ghost has changed quite a few times over the last few weeks. I have been wary of adding in autoblaster turret because, I figure that any ace with a higher PS than the Ghost (which is all of them) would just boost or barrel roll out of range 1 but I convinced myself that actually, even if that was the case, I was still making them use their action in a defensive way. Han crew works well on the Ghost, these things are always stressed so the fact that Han works even then (with FCS) is great. Zeb? I used Zeb’s ability once or twice throughout the day with mixed results.

The tournament was five rounds of swiss with a break for lunch, we started at 9.30 and finished at 6.00, I think the format is great, I payed my money and I think 5 games is definitely worth it.

Round 1 vs Christopher Douglass

Sunrise in Woking... sort of!

Warden squadron – TLT / Saboteur / Experimental Interface

Miranda – Saboteur / TLT

Roark – Chewie / TLT

As I sat down and we engaged in our pre game chat, Christopher told me that his list was built to chew through large, low agility ships. He then proceeded to show me how it was done. As usual, the Ghost went down first. By that time I had taken out the Warden so it was Roark and Miranda vs Chewie. I managed to kill Roark and in the end it came down the Chewie on one hull and Miranda on 3 hull. One more TLT shot and it was a dead Chewie.

This was a good game but all the Falcon’s tankiness goes out of the window when faced with things that can attack twice. A list containing 3 TLTs  tore through my evades,  3PO guesses and Lone Wolf rerolls pretty quick!

Not awful for MOV though.

Loss – 63 – 100

Round 2 vs Jamie Stone

Line up the Aces!

Soontir – Royal Guard TIE / Autothruster / Stealth Device / Push The Limit

Omega Leader – Juke / Comm Relay / Engine Upgrade

The Inquisitor – TIE/v1 / Autothrusters / Proton Rockets / Push The Limit

So this went pretty well for me, my standard setup is Chopper to one side of the board and Chewie in the middle (so as to proc Lone Wolf). Jamie set up his forces in such a way as to attack Chopper with The Inquisitor and Chewie with the other two. Well, Chopper started off blocking The Inquisitor and (because of Zeb) throwing 5 modified red dice at his 3 unmodified greens, suffice to say that within two turns, The Inquisitor was dead! Meanwhile in Chewie-land, my plan was to whether shots from Omega and Soontir until the Ghost was done with the Inquisitor. I managed pretty well by keeping Soontir at range 3 and Omega just out of range, all the while throwing rocks at Soontir in the vein hope of a green dice fluff. No luck there yet! A few turns later and Omega had given up and gone after The Ghost, it took a few turns of scrapping but finally, Chopper managed to land a few well placed Autoblaster shots and Omega went down. Around this time, on the other side of the board Soontir’s greens finally whiffed and down went the stealth device… then it was just a matter of time and a few rounds later, Soontir went dead.

Jamie got half points on Chopper but nothing on Chewie.

A win 22-100

Match 3 vs Graham Gibbon

Dancing with the Scum!

Contracted Scout – Deadeye / Proton torps / Extra Munitions / Guidance Chips / R4 Agromech / Feedback Array / 4-LOM

Contracted Scout – Deadeye / Proton torps / Extra Munitions / Guidance Chips / R4 Agromech / Feedback Array / Zuckuss

Palob – Blaster turret / Moldy Crow

Its a testament to X-Wing that a loss (spoiler!) can be you favorite match of the day!

I knew Palob was public enemy number 1 so went after him first. One mistake here possibly caused me to throw away a win. I had Palob at range 1 with Chopper and took a focus with Chopper (as soon as I had done it I realised my mistake... WHY DIDN'T I TARGET LOCK?) anyway so that played out as you would expect and I got a bit of damage through, a few turns later and I had exchanged Chopper for Palob (a rough trade for me really) BUT, the Scouts had only one torp left between them and were both nearly down to hull... it could go either way. I did my best to keep one at range 2 or 3 and one out of range whilst throwing pot shots at whomever I could and to cut a long story short, managed to kill one and on the last turn, I had one hull left and the last scout had two... then I made the fatal mistake of being in range 1... FEEDBACK ARRAY!!! Graham was pretty happy with that win and to be fair to him, he flew really well and, quite honestly, I was pretty happy with the loss!

Loss 84-100

Match 4 vs Tim Farmer

The only photo I got from this game... d'oh!

Rear Admiral Chiraneau – VI / Tactician / Mara Jade / Rebel Captive / Engine Upgrade

Echo – Recon Specialist / FCS / VI / Advanced Cloaking Device

I'd never before flown against a stressy RAC so I had a long think about engagements and what I could do to negate the stress mechanics. Ideally, I would leave the task of killing Chirpy up to Chopper (he doesn't need actions) and only use Chewie to attack him if I knew I wasn't going to get double stressed and I knew I could clear the Rebel Captive stress easily the next turn. The Falcon is such a sitting duck without it's evade! How it ended up playing out was that Echo was out of the fight for a lot of the first engagement and Chewie and Chopper were hammering RAC. Mara Jade and Tactician never triggered and I was able to clear Captive stress with little effort. RAC was on 1 hull, Chopper was on 7 but in arc of Echo and at range 3 of RAC... the possibility of a dead Chopper before he could get his target locked attack off was worrying. RAC fired, getting 2 hits. YES!!! That means, barring a direct hit, Chopper could whether Echo's attack and kill Chirpy. Echo fires, 2 hits, 2 crits... yep, one was a Direct Hit!

So RAC runs away to fight another way. Meanwhile, Echo is chasing Chewie and makes a mistake whilst de-cloaking and ends up flying over debris into range 1 of Chewie. After a bit of a tussle, Echo goes down, we then spend a few turns getting back into range of each other where I promptly get a hit through on RAC and finish the game.

Win 100 – 44

Match 5 vs Sam Ledwich

Pre-drama!

IG88B – HLC / Autothrusters / Advanced Sensors / Push The Limit

Dengar – Punishing One / Adaptability / K4 Security Droid / Unhinged Astromech

Well then, here we go! My first ever X-Wing controversy.

I won't bore you with the details up to this point in the game but we could probably say the game was still anyone's.

This is the cold facts of what happened, I'll go into what I was thinking after:

I rolled to attack Dengar (out of arc so now return fire) with Chewie and got 1 hit, Dengar was at range 3 so rolled 3 greens and got one eyeball. Sam said something along the lines of 'Damnit!' (sorry I can't be more accurate) I said 'You DO have a focus' he used that focus to evade and so I rolled my Luke shot, 2 hits and a crit. Sam said something like 'Oh, I forgot about Luke!' and then rolled his three greens and blanked out taking the full 2 hits and 1 crit (which I believe was the one where you can't do straight maneuvers)

So, here's what was going on in my head.

I rolled the 1 hit.

I thought, fine, he'll evade that and I'll use Luke.

He rolled one eye and I thought "Balls, only one hit"

I said (in what I thought was a flippant, joking way) "You DO have a focus"

He used the focus to cancel the damage.

I thought, "Wow! That's ballsy, he's going to try his luck against Luke!" To be fair, it was 3, pretty much, unmodified reds (other than Luke's small mod) against 3 unmodified greens.

After the event, I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt bad!

I know what happened was well within the rules of the game but was what I did honourable? Did I Fly Casual? The question is, should I have let Sam take back the focus after I realised he had forgotten about Luke and wasn't taking the focus to be "ballsy"?

I just don't know.

How will I prevent this from happening again in the future? Stop running Luke? (or Gunner) No, I like the card too much for that! I think faced with a situation where someone is cancelling hits to completely evade an attack that would be followed by a gunner-type effect, I will try to always warn them, just in case they have forgotten (although when I raised this idea with Joel, he stated that it might come across as patronising... arghhhh! This is a minefield!)

When did pushing plastic around a table turn into a quagmire of guilt, morals and honour?

Anyway, in the end, that was a win 100-77

So, after the tallying of scores I managed 7^th place out of 21 players. I’m slowly climbing up the ranks. I got an alt art Gunner and Poe for my troubles!

Anyway, what did I learn? Well there was the whole Luke, focus issue (but the less said about that, the better)

But list wise, I wonder whether to drop Chopper to a Lothal Rebel and use the points saved to put an Ion Projector on the Ghost… supper blocker much? The thing is, even though I managed to block with Chopper a few times, I forgot to use his stress giving ability every time!

I think I’m genuinely getting better at flying this list and what with Regionals coming up in two weeks I’m not changing much, if anything!

Red XIII, signing off once again!