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 :)
Hey mate, great to see other people blogging about their experiences playing the game! Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteGood idea with the pics! I'll try and do the same for my blog!
Hi, yea, it started off as something that I was doing for myself but people seem to like it so there's a plus!
DeleteWhat blog do you write? I'll give it a read :)