Monday 4 July 2016

Battle Report - Lost Ark Games, Stevenage - 03-07-16

Wow, it feels like a long time since I’ve played X-Wing competitively! It’s actually only been just over a month since Warboar regionals and it’s not like I haven’t been practicing on Vassal and at Dark Sphere Tuesdays, but walking into Lost Ark this morning, I actually felt really nervous.

So, what did I run? Well, I’ve gone Defender mad! I’ve been practicing with the following list for the past few weeks:

Vessary – TIE/x7 / Stealth Device / Juke (38 points)
Delta Squadron Pilot – TIE/x7 / Stealth Device (31 points)
Delta Squadron Pilot – TIE/x7 / Stealth Device (31 points)

I’ve been doing pretty well with it, between Vassal and “in person”, I’ve got in 12 games and out of those 12 games, I’ve only lost 2! Both of those losses were against lists with Zuckass crew. Stating the obvious, that means I have a 100% success rate against Rebel and Imperial lists!

As this was one of the “I Am Your Father’s Day” events FFG have been running, Lost Ark decided to only let Rebel and Imperial lists play (because Luke was a Rebel and Darth was an Imperial)… I’ve got a 100% success rate against those lists so I should definitely take this list, right? I didn’t.

The day before, I came upon the amazing realisation that a fully kitted out Inquisitor comes in at exactly the same points as one of my Deltas. I should definitely swap them, right? Because the Inquisitor is incredible, right?

Well, I did swap them out and I ended up taking this list:

Inquisitor – TIE/v1 / Autothrusters / PTL (31)
Vessary – TIE/x7 / Stealth Device / Juke (38)
Delta – TIE/x7 / Stealth Device (31)


The Inquisitor certainly looked good


I like the idea of this list, the one thing that always frustrated me about Vess and 2 Deltas list was when to try and acquire the target locks with the Deltas to trigger Vessary’s ability. I get my free evade from the title but then do I focus or target lock. Difficult. Not so much with this list as the Inquisitor with the title always wants to acquire a target lock.

So in essence, I took this list to a tournament when I’d only flown The Inquisitor once before. Potentially, a mistake.

Let’s see how the games went.


Match 1 vs John Kane

Jake – title / Autothrusters / PTL / Adaptibility / Proton Rockets
Miranda – TLT
Sabine – TLT / Lone Wolf / Chewbacca

I recognised John from a previous game, I asked him whether we’d played before and he said he thought we had played at the Dark Sphere winter kit. That was a long time ago and before the blog so I have no idea how that matchup went down.

So, first game of the day. Unfortunately, my brain was not logged in. I was playing badly, I forgot a few actions, made some bad decisions. Sorry John!

I lost the initiative roll and John game me initiative so my Inquisitor was moving before Jake and Miranda. Bad start.
The one thing I seem to keep coming back to in these blogs is initial engagement. This was the first of many times, I screwed up with The Inquisitor. I went in too fast so on the first round of combat, most of John’s ships had shots on him and both my Defenders were out of range. Bad times. He died.
Special mention goes out to Vessary, Jake got his prockets off and Vess, now on one hull, pulled a console fire crit. He hung around for another two turns after that (without clearing the crit). He died to a TLT shot ( blank blank hit) where he totally blanked out. Boooo!

The Delta stayed on the board. I took none of John’s ships off :(

Loss 0 – 69

Don't put your Inquisitor in the middle of the board... it's a dumb idea!




Match 2 vs Ian Kafka

Maarek Stele (Defender) – Adaptibility / Twin Ion Engine MK II / Tractor Beam / TIE/D
Vader – Adaptibility / TIE/x1 / ATC / Engine
Omega Leader – Juke / Comm Relay / Stealth Device

I’d played Ian before when I went to an event in Harlow. Unfortunately, that was before I’d started blogging so I couldn’t tell you the result of that one, either.

We ended up meeting in the middle of the board with pretty good shots from both sides. I managed to take down Vader but lost The Inquisitor (going down first is his speciality). A few turns later and Ian reveled his dial for Maarek – a 1 left bank, he meant to do a 1 right bank. Assuming the dice didn’t sway particularly in anyone’s favour, it was possible that Maarek could have tractored my Delta onto a rock, bringing it into Omega Leader’s arc and preventing my shot. What happened is that after the 1 left bank, Maarek barrel rolled to get my Delta in arc, leaving himself with no tokens. The tractor missed, I think the primary did as well, I shot back and took a few health from Maarek.

A few turns later and Maarek is dead. Now it’s the showdown between a fairly beaten up Vessary and Delta against a full health Omega Leader. This took an age and by the time the match was called, Omega was on 2 health. On a side not, from a movement perspective, it was quite liberating going against Omega Leader, seeing as my evade token would do nothing, it freed me up to take the odd 1 or 2 speed maneuver when needed.

Win 71 – 31

Maarek is in the middle (with no tokens). I had nice shots this round!




Match 3 vs Hadrian Tulk

Dash – title / HLC / PTL / Kanan / Engine
Corran – VI / FCS / R2-D2


My initial thoughts on this matchup was that I really needed to take Dash down before my Inquisitor went down. Having that PS advantage over Dash would be invaluable.

Unfortunately, the Inquisitor went down really early here again. My problem is definitely range control, if I want to continue playing with him, I need to get that down.

I ended up managing to take down Corran with quite a nice killbox (Delta and Vess had range 1 shots), then Dash killed the Delta. A half health Dash, vs a two health Vess. Dash get’s the PS0 crit and time is called, this is the final round. If Vess died, I had lost but if I killed Dash OR no one died, I had won. Vess 4Ks and ends up looking at Dash. He’s close, it’s not range one but, maybe, just maybe if I’d barrel rolled as far forwards as possible, it might have been range 1. I didn’t I took a focus. I needed to get all 3 shots through and Dash to get 2 blanks. I ended up getting him down to 2 hull and then got blasted in the face with HLC… Dead Vessary… Deddary!

Soooooo close!

Loss 71-100

This was a tense game. So this is the only photo I got of it!



Match 4 vs Alex Vickers

Omicron Group Pilot – Palp / FCS
The Inquisitor – title / Prockets / Autothrusters / PTL
Soontir – title / Autothrusters / Stealth Device / PTL

Right, so for the fourth time in four games I put the Inquisitor in the thick of things too early. All shots on him, with the Defenders still out of range. To sum up – dead Inquisitor and a few shields off the shuttle.

I did manage to set up another nice killbox again. Alex’s Inquisitor in range 1 of both Vess and the Delta. Vess did take a procket to the face and suffered a minus one agility crit but was still just alive enough to strip tokens from the Inquisitor so the Delta could finish him off.

Soon after I made short work of the shuttle then it was a full health Delta and a badly damaged Vessary against Soontir. I managed to get a few nice blocks in and Soontir took a crit (Direct Hit!) which meant no more Stealth Device and then it was just a matter of time.

Win 100 – 31

This was the turn the shuttle died. If I remember correctly, my Delta also took a Soontir shaped hammering!




So I came 13th of 28 players, not awful. But honestly, I really wonder how it would have gone if I’d bought the triple Defenders list. The Inquisitor is a great ship but I really think he needs practice to fly well. I definitely hadn’t had enough practice.


I’m going to return to the triple Defenders and try and make the most of them for a while. One of the best things about this list is my PS1 Delta blocker. He did great, so I’ll have another one please :)

2 comments:

  1. Hey mate, great to see other people blogging about their experiences playing the game! Keep it up!

    Good idea with the pics! I'll try and do the same for my blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, yea, it started off as something that I was doing for myself but people seem to like it so there's a plus!

      What blog do you write? I'll give it a read :)

      Delete