Strike Action! A discussion on the movement and usage of the TIE Striker

I love the TIE Striker.

There, I said it.

I don’t care that it’s only got two green dice and four hull. I don’t even care that it’s got no target lock action.

I. Just. Love. It.

It’s just so manoeuvrable - being able to do that ‘pre-boost’ move gives so much arc-dodging and repositional potential to the high PS ships that it’s possible to go whole games without getting shot! Who needs three green dice if you never have to roll them!!!

There are other little tricks that make this ship great as well, things like being able to Aileron (yep, that’s a verb now) onto a debris, get a stress and then do a green move straight after to clear the stress… then do an action!!! As long as you don’t roll a crit, you have just gone over debris with no negative consequence! Same thing with an asteroid, it’s slightly more risky as you have a 50% chance of taking damage but still… pretty cool! The reason I don’t want to dwell on things like that too much is that, potentially, they will be FAQ’d to say that you lose your action if you go over an obstacle at any point during your activation. I can’t really see why they would do that, but it’s still possible.

Anyway, the purpose of this article is to show you what you can achieve and expect from, what is (in my opinion) one of the most exciting ships in the game.

Useful moves that are only possible with the Striker

I’ve often thought about how cool it would be to be able to move forward and to the side but not change direction. Essentially like doing a straight move and then barrel rolling but without having to spend an action! With Adaptive Ailerons, it’s possible to Aileron right, then bank left. Surprisingly, (to me anyway) if the bank is a three, this is the furthest a small ship can travel in the game! (without using a boost or barrel roll) It ends up being slightly further than a 5 straight.

Anyway, here's a picture.

Assuming you do a banking Aileron -

• The 1 bank move takes you just shy of a 4 forward and just under two base lengths to the side
• The 2 bank move takes you a 4.5 forward and just over two base lengths to the side
• The 3 bank move takes you about a 5.3 forward and about two and a half base lengths to the side

Getting back into the fight

These things can turn round quickly! Where every other ship (using non-red moves) can only turn 90 degrees (not taking into account the Defender) the Striker can make it 135 degrees by Aileroning (verbage) in one direction then hard turning the same direction.

Here’s the picture.

Both turn locations end 2.5 base lengths forward. The 1 turn lands you three base lengths to the side and the 2 turn lands you four base lengths to the side.

The pincer maneuver

This is so cool! If you Aileron one way, then turn the other way, you end up changing your angle by 45 degrees but essentially just moving forward - the furthest sideways you travel is about a base length.

Very good for barrel rolling and arc dodging!

Hunting down your target!

So, how can we use the Ailerons to help us with our offence?

Say you have managed to get behind a U-wing, there is a rock is front of it so you know it has to change direction, but which way will it go? And by how much?

In the following pictures, the Striker has a one forward dialled in, I’ve used the most likely moves that the U-wing would do, potentially it would try and escape with a longer bank, but that would just result in the Striker getting a, non-range-one shot.

Starting position

The U-wing does a 1 bank
 The Striker Ailerons forward, et voila, a range one a shot

The U-wing does a 1 bank
The Striker Ailerons right then rolls, a range one shot but with,
potentially, a better position for next turn

The U-wing does a 2 turn
The Striker Ailerons left for another a range one shot

The U-wing does a stop (or a 0 K-turn)
Most Strikers will bump BUT Duchess can choose
to not Aileron and still get a range one shot.

So, in conclusion, this U-wing, in this situation, is unlikely to escape unscathed!

Dodging arcs!

In this example, our dutiful TIE Striker is being jousted by an Arc. They start off facing each other at range three. If we dial in a 1 straight on our dial, let’s see what our Ailerons and Barrel rolls can do to get us out of the Arc’s arc! (Yea, I went there)

Starting position

The Arc does a 1 forward
The Striker Ailerons forward and then rolls forward. Arc dodged.

The Arc does a 1 bank
The Striker Ailerons forward. Arc dodged and a range one shot.

The Arc does a 2 bank
The Striker Ailerons right. Arc dodged.

The Arc does a 2 bank
***Duchess special***
The Striker choses not to Aileron. Arc dodged and a range one shot.

The Arc does a 2 turn
The Striker Ailerons left. Arc dodged and a range one shot

The Arc does a 2 forward
The Striker Ailerons left. Arc dodged.

The Arc does a 3 bank
The Striker Ailerons right and then rolls. Arc dodged.

The Arc does a 3 forward
The Striker Ailerons right. Arc dodged.

This Striker is not getting hit!

So, I know it’s not indestructible and actually, in test games, it’s damage output can be quite frustrating (my kingdom for a target lock) BUT I’m still very excited about this ship. I may have said this before but… I. Love. This. Ship!

I will just leave you with one final picture. This is all the final positions a Striker can end up (not including barrel rolls)... almost a rival to the K-wing and the mighty Echo, eh?

No! I Am Your Father… Christmas! / Woking / 04-12-16

Here follows an account of one of my favourite X-Wing experiences of all time.

Spoilers! I didn’t win the tournament, I didn’t go undefeated, I didn’t even get more wins than loses… I just had a fantastic time!

So, this tournament was held and organised by woking locals Zombie Squadron and, apart from one instance of repairing, which didn’t affect me, it went off without a hitch. Well done to Ian Courtney and his Zombies!

My list

Spurred on by my experience in Harlow two weeks back and some very successful practice games, I went with a variation on the Hot Shot RAC list.

RAC – VI / Engine / Rebel Captive / Hot Shot Copilot / Gunner (63)

Vader – Adaptability / Engine / title / ATC / Prockets (37)

It’s worth noting that I had a massive panic about whether to include the Prockets or not.

I had been playing the list (sans Prockets) at 97 points for a while because I really wanted initiative against VI Rey (striping the focus with Hot Shot before she shoots is excellent) but someone mentioned that I should probably put Prockets in because it would help against 90% of the meta and being PS10, I don’t need the bid against any other matchups… so I went with it. I faced no ships above PS9 so it turned out to be the correct choice! Winning already.

The matches

Match 1 

vs Joel North

Fenn – Mindlink / Autos / title

Teroch – Mindlink / Autos / title

Manaroo – Mindlink / K4 / Unhinged / Feedback Array

Kiting with RAC, flanking Vader!

***Sparkle Motion Showdown***

Welllll, it was going to happen, wasn’t it? To be honest, at least when I knew I was playing Joel, I knew we would have a fun game.

So we set up and engaged, Vader had a few good range 2 target locked shots on Teroch but had to barrel roll to arc dodge so no focus token for him. I’d stripped focus tokens with RAC and then just needed a semi decent roll with Vader to get a crit through (with ATC)… double blanks. Oh well, it’s alright, I haven’t taken much damage, I’ll come back round and try again next turn. Which I did and, with exactly the same conditions, the exact same result happened - double blanks… still no damage on Teroch. Thankfully (for me) my luck turned after this round and I started putting damage into Fenn, who died in fairly short order. I then managed a clutch attack on a full health Roo, a nice roll with RAC and Prockets with Vader took her down to below half health. I think I killed her before the end and got the win.

Win 66-32

Match 2 

vs Alex Birt

Ketsu – VI / Dengar / Black Market Slicer Tools / Engine / Title

2 x Gold Squadron Y-Wings – Unhinged Astromech / TLT / BTL-A4

Coming up to the initial engagement

Alex Birt, eh? Of 186^th Squadron Podcast fame, eh?

Avid readers of my blog (if there are such things) may remember my post regarding Warboar regionals (here) where I mentioned that I’d played both Mike Dennis and James Dowdall from the podcast and I was now hunting down Alex Birt to complete my collection! Here we go then.

It’s a pretty nasty list to look at really. If you give it the chance, Ketsu gets in to burn down your agility, then attacks, hits and brings your agility down even further with the title then each Y-wing gets 3 shots on you! Beast mode!

Anyway, target priority was always going to be Ketsu, I had to kill her before she got to put some serious hurt onto Vader! One mistake and he was pretty much dead!

So I managed to burn down Ketsu in fairly short order. I’m actually really pleased with how I flew Vader, with caution but still managing to put in a nice bit of damage. Successfully arc dodging one of the most satisfying things in X-wing.

By this point though, RAC was on 3 health and had a Y-wing hot on his tail. By the time he bought it, Vader was on 3 hull and each Y-wing had lost shields and had a few damage put into it.

Vader vs 2 Y-wings… it’s definitely possible but this time I didn’t manage it. It came down to a turn where I had both Ys looking at me and had to turn left to avoid an asteroid. I knew Alex would move one of the Ys into block me so I decided to gamble on flying over the asteroid and attempting to be out of range of the other Y. Unfortunately, it was not to be, I was in arc and untokened, I took three damage and the game was up.

Alex was a great opponent and I’m fairly happy with how I flew, we had a chat afterwards and he gave me some tips. Good stuff!

Loss 50-100

Match 3

vs Vid Cleall

Miranda – Conner Net / Ion Bomb / Homing Missile / Advanced SLAM / Extra Munitions / TLT / Sabine

Corran – PTL / Engine / R2-D2 / FCS

Run Miranda! Run!

OK, I just faced Alex Birt who I think of as quite a big part of the community and now I’m sitting across the table from Vid!

Vid (although he probably doesn’t know this) was at my first ever X-Wing tournament (in December of 2015 at the Games Shop in Aldershot) and has probably been at about half the tournaments I’ve attended since then.

I’m pleased to say that we had a great game and Vid was amiable and friendly all the way through!

I should caveat this by saying I’ve been having a nightmare of a time against Corran lately, ever since this list made the final at Worlds, various iterations of it have been all over Vassal. I have yet to beat a list with Corran in it!

To cut a long story short, I went hell for leather after Corran. If you are going to kill him, you have to commit. And commit, I did! I ended up boxing him in a bit. However, I made a mistake here against the fiend that is the bombing K-wing: I ended up getting Vader Conner Netted in such a position that he had one hull left and would be going onto a rock on the next turn! Balls!

At this point, myself and Vid discussed the fact that, if Miranda dropped an ion bomb on the next turn, due to Sabine, Vader was dead! It was also obvious that Vader was going onto a rock and, I assumed, the turn after that, if he survived, he would have to flying over the rock to get off it… it was very unlikely that Vader would survive, even if no ion bomb was dropped.

Vid opted to save Miranda’s ion bomb, leaving Vader to the fate of the rock. I rolled a blank that time… still alive! Next turn, I managed to get the template in without touching the rock. Vader was still on the board!!!

Shortly after that, I managed to kill Corran, losing Vader in the same turn to a TLT shot from Miranda.

I had taken a shields off Miranda with a few lucky shots earlier and in the next few turns, managed to pull out the win!

I didn’t write my score down for this game, I think I still had over half health on RAC, but I could be wrong.

Win 100-37 OR 100-69

Match 4

vs Tom Duncan

Ryad – TIE MKII / PTL / x/7

Howlrunner – crackshot

3 x Black Squadron TIEs – crackshot

OK, this looks bad, but I'm pretty sure I managed to arc dodge everything here!

What is going on? I feel like I’m in the presence of X-Wing royalty! My opponents, down to a man, have been fantastic today.

I’ve never played Tom before but I don’t think it’s possible to play X-Wing in London and not have heard of the guy. I have an enduring memory of being at the Warboar regionals in May and with about 2 minutes to go until registration shut, Tom ran breathless through the door. The place erupted in cheers and applause - that is how much this community loves Tom Duncan.

When Tom realised I wrote a blog called “Confessions of a mid-table X-Winger” he had his angle. He constantly ribbed me about being a mid table played and called me out for not having Navigator on my Deci. (wtf?) So I offered him a chocolate coin that I had acquired from Alex Birt earlier in the day and that seemed to do the trick in quelling the emotional assault he was obviously trying to win the match with.

In all seriousness, I get it. I understand why he’s the darling of the London X-Wing community. I get it, but I can’t explain it. If you haven’t played him before, you should try and get a game in with him, it’s... an experience.

Anyhoo, about 57 minutes into the most recent 186^th Squadron Podcast, (which you can find here) Alex mentions Tom and how he always seems to manage to point his TIE at the one thing you don’t want them pointing at, Oli Pocknell then states that he’s psychic. I think he’s probably right.

There’s not a huge amount to say about this game, I took out Howlrunner in the second turn of combat. My Deci had take a fair amount of damage though. A few turns later, I had an important decision to make. I had a Vader target lock on TIE A but had two TIEs (let’s call the A and B) in my arc. B had already had his focus stolen by RAC so I decided to Procket B, I killed him, no problem but then had TIE A, who still had a focus, put two damage through on Vader.

Later, Tom said I probably should have gone for the TIE I had the target lock on, I was likely to kill it anyway with a focus and Target lock and then I would have had a TIE with no focus shooing at me as opposed to a TIE with a focus token shooting at me. Fair point, we live and learn… well, Vader died soon after but, you know, the point was still good.

The match ended with RAC on PS0 against Ryad and a TIE. No arc dodging for me! RAC died and the final result was:

Loss 100-49

Match 5

vs Martyn Chivers

Fenn – Fearlessness / Autos / title

Serissu – title / Mangler / Stealth Device / Mindlink

Manaroo – Mindlink / Rec Spec / R5-P8 / Plasmas / Guidance Chips

Erm, I think Vader is doing some kind of evasive action there...

This game. This game! A rollercoaster of emotions. Seriously!

I got a pretty good first engagement, RAC and Vader had shots on Serissu and only Serissu had a shot back. I stripped tokens AND got a hit in with RAC! Stealth device down! I was at range one with Vader with a focus but no target lock… I know I shouldn’t but I couldn’t stop myself: Prockets!

This should have been very good, it wasn’t - 1 hit, 1 eyeball and 3 blanks. I spent the eyeball and Serissu got two evades… Prockets wasted. Sad face!

After that, some stuff happened, including Martyn doing some excellent blocking of my RAC whereby I had to sit on a rock for two turns with a console fire!

In the endgame, I had Vader vs Manaroo and Fenn. I was chasing Fenn down, I had one thing in my mind, Vader was 37 points, so was Manaroo. If I managed to kill Fenn, it would be final salvo. 2 dice each, it was my best shot!!!

Final turn of the match – 2 hull Fenn is focused and facing away from Vader, I have him target locked and I have a focus. I shoot, I get a hit, and an eye, I spend my focus and add the crit for ATC.

Fenn rolls an evade and an eye. A crit goes though… is it a Direct Hit??? No!!!!!! It’s Major Explosion, if Martyn rolls a hit, Fenn is dead and it’s down to final salvo. Martyn rolls a hit.

****** FINAL SALVO *******

I roll a hit, the crowd goes wild!

Martyn rolls a hit, the crowd goes wild!

I roll another hit, the crowd goes wild!

Martyn rolls an eye, the crowd goes wild!

I’ve done it, I’ve won, this is the best moment of my life! (It’s probably not, but, you know? I was in the moment, right?)

Phew, OK, let’s clam down and fill in our score sheets.

“OK” I say “you’ve killed 63 points of my list and I’ve killed 63 points of your list”

“Hang on!” exclaims Martyn “I had a one point initiative bid, you only killed 62 points!”

Bollocks!

Loss 62-63

Yep, the final salvo was all for nothing, Martyn had already won.

I should probably be salty about this, but you know what? After an experience like that, there’s no way I could be annoyed. It was one of the best games of X-Wing I’ve ever played! Bloody awesome!

So, in the end, I came 19 of 32 players, just about still mid table. I did, however, win a prize for the best sport, voted on by my opponents from the day. Thanks everyone!!!

I think it’s also worth mentioning that ALL of my opponents, came higher than me in the rankings, even Joel and Vid, who I beat so I’m still fairly pleased with my showing. My Strength of Schedule would be off the chain!

Before signing off, I'd like to say thanks to all my opponents and that I really hope I have the pleasure of sitting across the table from all of you again!

Right! No tournaments in the diary now until Exeter regionals so it’s time for the fun lists to rear their peculiar looking heads. Also, the TIE Striker article just dropped, time for some list building I feel!!!

Until next time, Redd XIII, standing by!

Battle Report - Regionals! Warboar, Bromley 21-05-16

Regionals!

I’ve been playing X-Wing seriously since around the beginning of this year. I bought the core set over a year ago but it sat on the shelf for months, then found a bit of (very) casual play over last summer. Between summer and New Years, I started buying up expansions but at that point I didn’t really have anyone to play with. Then, during a fairly quiet new year’s eve I gave Joel a game, he loved it and we were off! With a few months of Tuesday night X-Wing (at Dark Sphere in Waterloo) and six or seven tournaments under our belt, we booked our tickets to play at regionals. This was big! it would be our equivalent to Worlds. The biggest event in our X-Wing calendar and we were excited!

Warboar! With some Imperial intruders

I’ve been getting quite a bit of practice in on Vassal and I was pretty set on my list. It’s the same as the last tourney I wrote a report on. Here it is again:

Chewie – Lone Wolf / C-3PO / Luke Skywalker / title – 55 points

Chopper – Autoblaster turret / Fire Control System / Zeb / Han Solo

For a more detailed explanation of why I chose this list, read my last post, here.

So the day rolled round and I arrived at Warboar in Bromley just before 8am (bleary eyed because, of course, I had been up late on Vassal… practicing!) Joel had got there a while before and had been the first to register!

The turnout, I believe, was 96 players and after a bit of pre-battle banter with the lovely Mark Radford (from Marquee Models in Harlow), the first round pairings were put up and we all headed off to our tables:

Round 1 vs Sam Page

Carnor – PTL / title / Stealth Device / Autothrusters

Omega Leader – Juke / Comm Relay / Twin Ion Engine Mk. 2

Kagi – Palp / Sensor Jammer

Die Omega Leader! Die!

This was a great start to the day, Sam was a very friendly opponent and the pre-game chat was forthcoming. It turns out, Sam runs a gaming club called Mid Sussex War Gamers in Grinstead, unfortunately, due to being Hertford based, I can’t really get to Grinstead but if it’s near, why don’t you pop down and give it a look? If they are all as friendly as Sam, you’ll have a good laugh!

Anyway, the match; I set up with both my ships buddying up in the left bottom corner. It was either this, or Chopper in the left corner and Chewie towards the middle of the board (so as to proc Lone Wolf from the start). I really didn’t know whether this was a good choice (this would be a recurring theme) but I did it, so I had to live with it.

The start of the match wasn’t so good really. Chopper went down pretty early and the only damage to Sam’s list was 2 shields autoblasted off his Omega Leader… bad times. However, the tide was soon to turn. Chewie took down Omega Leader next turn, I was back in it. I’m really proud of this next bit... I proceeded to block Carnor every turn whilst taking pot shots at Kagi (who was currently in the long process of turning to face me)... Kagi died. Then followed the standard Chewie vs <insert ship name> endgame; many evade actions and 3PO guesses. This was a bit more difficult as I had to stay out of range 1 of Carnor to make use of my evade, I managed this most turns. In the end it was just a case of hoping Sam whiffed his green rolls before Carnor got too many shots into Chewie. Sam did whiff a green roll in the end and with Carnor on 2 health and 3 greens, it was only a matter of time.

Win 100-72

Game 2 vs James Dowdall

2 x Scout – Deadeye / Plasma torps / Extra Munitions / Overclocked R4 / Guidance Chips

N’dru Suhlak – Cluster Missiles / Crackshot / Glitterstim / Guidance Chips

Binary Pirate

A good place to put a Chewie? Not so much!

Round 2 and here I am playing James Dowdall from the 186^th Squadron podcast! Maybe this is it? Maybe I’ve reached the big X-Wing leagues? Maybe if I impress James, I would get invited into the coveted 186^th squadron? Maybe I could even get a 186^th Squadron t-shirt??? (not star struck, honest)

Well Red, keep dreaming because what followed was not a smooth sophisticated demonstration of my prowess on the mat but an absolute schooling on how not to position my ships.

I decided that my setup for the last match was one of the reasons it was so close so I decided to go with my other option, Chopper on one side of the mat (this time, on the right) and Chewie in the middle.

No combat in round 1. Round 2 rolls around and after movement, I had realised that my Chewie was not long for this world. He was within range 2 of N’Dru and range 3 of both scouts. This is what went down…

N’dru, Cluster Missles at Chewie. N’dru was far from his allies so that was 2 four dice attacks against Chewie. Oh, yea and also, James had Glitterstimmed N’dru. Long story short, 8 damage on Chewie… because crackshot and bad greens.

Chewie and Chopper vs Binarye; dead binarye (well, I thought I’d take out something… yes, I know it was bait!)

Scout one; plasmas on Chewie, another 3 hits (yay green!). Scout two; plasmas on Chewie… dead Chewie… * sad face *

Man! Chewie dead in one round. That is not impressive flying!

Well, not to be too downhearted, I ploughed on with Chopper. And what a trooper he was, before going down, he killed a jumpmaster and took all the shields off the other one. In the end, it wasn’t quite the trouncing I thought it was going to be. Still pretty shoddy though.

Loss 44-100

*** bonus ***

I now get to tick off James’ name from my People-I’ve-Played-From-The-186^th-Squadron-Podcast scorecard. So far, I’ve got Mike Dennis and James Dowdall… I’ll get you Alex Birt, one day!

Game 3 vs Nathan Phillips

Manaroo – Punishing One / Unhinged Astromech / Engine Upgrade / Push The Limit / K4 Security Droid

Latts Razzi – Feedback Array / Engine Upgrade / K4 Security Droid / 4-LOM / Dengar / Mangler Cannon

The Ghost is off it's base again... silly Chopper!

I’d met Nathan earlier in the day. Whilst waiting for my game with Sam Page to begin, Nathan and I had been talking about my list, he said he’d read about the Lone Wolf / 3PO synergy on a blog somewhere… turned out it was this blog (I have a reader!!!) We also chatted about his list that he was running today.

When we faced each other we knew what we were up against. My list relies on Chewie using his evade token and rolling his one dice (because you need to roll a green to use 3PO or Lone Wolf) so Nathan’s Latts build seems like the perfect counter to my Chewie, effectively negating 6 points of my list straight away!

We both knew what had to happen. From my perspective, Latts had to die. From Nathan’s perspective, Chewie had to die. We set up opposite each other and got to business!

I was so desperate to take out Latts that I was actually taking target locks with Chewie! (I never do that). Our ships met in the middle of the map in a place called Bump City! I managed to get Chewie behind Latts and take her out… Relief! No more decreasing agility or stopping me spending tokens and in addition to that, I’d negated Manaroo’s ability as well. She can’t hand tokens off to anyone if there’s no one else left alive!

Then it came down to, the old 3PO evade malarky again until Manaroo was dead. During this point, I got into a position where I had shot Manaroo and Nathan would have either taken one hit OR could have used his focus token to evade it (triggering Luke). I warned him about this (because of what happened at my last tournament) and he said he had remembered about Luke but was trying to avoid as much damage as possible. He also said he’d remembered reading about that on the blog as well.

Win 100-44

Game 4 vs Stephen Donn

IG88B – Crack Shot / Advanced Sensors / Tractor Beam / Mangler Cannon / Glitterstim / title / Autothrusters

IG88C - Crack Shot / Advanced Sensors / Tractor Beam / Mangler Cannon / Glitterstim / title / Autothrusters

This is Chewie about to get hurt!

Well, I’ve never played against Bro Bots in a competitive setting until today so I didn’t really know what to expect, I knew they were maneuverable and that in theory, I should go for IG88B first to shut down the gunner ability.

Well, as is the usual occurrence in these games, Chopper faired pretty badly early on. I had only taken out 2 of IGCs shields and was poised to do some more damage when… Blinded Pilot!!! So annoying. Then Chopper died. * more sad face *

Proud moment of the day number two: I managed to block IGB with Chewie every turn until I finally killed IGC. This meant I was only taking shots from one and most turns I was taking a damage but when your opponent has a gunner ability, that’s the best you can hope for.

So a pretty much full health IGB against a half health Chewie. Cue, autothrusters, 3PO, evade, Lone Wolf shinanigans. It could have gone either way but a few turns later, IGB got a Loose Stabilizer crit and when, on the last turn of combat IGB misjudged a sloop and Chewie (on one hull) was just out of arc, I rolled well and killed IGB.

Damn, that was one hell of a nail-biter!!!

Win 100-72

*** Interlude 1 ***

Tom: You know what? I’m 3-1. If I win my next two games, I’m in the cut. If I win one of my next two games I could be in the cut.

Joel: Wow!

Both: burst out laughing

*** End of interlude 1 ***

Game 5 vs Dan Rodwell

4 x Black Squadron Pilot – Crack Shot

Zeta Leader – Crack Shot

Howlrunner – Crack Shot

A pretty daunting sight.

A TIE swarm! I’ve never played against one of these either! (Although I did use one in a Vassal game against Joel a few days before this… the exact same list actually)

Fun fact: This is the same list Dallas Parker is flying at the moment according to Mynock Squadron Podcast.

I got initiative and gummed up the middle of the board with asteroids. Mission one completed!

I then set Chopper up in the bottom right hand corner. After a bit of deliberation, Sam set up his swarm opposite Chopper (jousting time!) Here follows my first mistake. I set Chewie up next to Chopper.

I really should have known better than that. Chewie doesn’t joust! Especially not with multiple ships!!!

Anyhoo, we went forward. Ramming speed, unfortunately, my ramming speed was not quite enough and everyone landed within range one of each other but no one bumped into Chopper. Dan Knew he had to kill Chewie and I knew I had to kill Howlrunner.

I killed Howl in that first round. Yessssssss!!!! Then Dan killed Chewie. Noooooooo!!!!

You know how sometimes, something happens in a game and it completely changes the atmosphere? This was that point in this game. Previous to this point, Dan had been very much, head down, concentrating, no small talk. (not at all unpleasant though) As soon as Chewie went down, he seemed to relax massively. To sum up the rest of this game, I took out a Black Squadron and then he took out Chopper.

Loss 34 -100

*** Interlude 2 ***

It was getting late, I was getting all hazy and, to quote myself on the day, getting all “leg-hurty”. For my next opponent, I would love something I knew how to beat. Another win would be fantastic.

The final swiss pairings are up. I trace down looking for my name, I find it “Tom Tattersall”. I trace right to see who my opponent is, would I recognise his name? Then I saw it:

All hail our national champion and UK X-Wing darling: Jesper Hills!

Bollocks

*** End of Interlude 2 ***

Game 6 vs Jesper Hills

IG-88B – PTL / Advanced Sensors / Mangler Cannon / Autothrusters / title

IG-88C – PTL / Advanced Sensors / Heavy Laser Cannon / Tractor Beam / Autothrusters / title

Pre carnage

The other thing I really hoped about my last round was that my opponent would be nice, friendly, chatty, etc. As I sat down, Jesper offered me a sweet… we were going to be OK.

So, Advanced Sensor, Push The Limit Brobots… man, they are good!

Honestly, there isn’t much narrative to this one, it was a slugfest really, Chopper barreled in, took a few shields off and then promptly died.

Then another 3PO evade blah blah session. It did take him a while but Jesper took my Chewie down before I did any more than half points on one of his IGs.

The problem was, both IGs had shots on Chewie almost every round. I was taking real evasive maneuvers to get out of arc of at least one of them but with the IGs moving after Cheiwe and the added effectiveness of boosting knowing where Chewie was ending up, plus Jesper’s experience and instincts, it proved impossible this time.

The score at the end of the game was 26-100

I nearly got half points on his other IG which would have meant the score would have been 50-100.

Jesper squeeked into the top 16 cut by 3 MoV (I think it was 3, a very small amount, anyway) and then went on to win the entire regional. I could have prevented Jesper from winning the regional if I had flow even just slightly better in that last game, potentially, the difference between me taking a focus instead of an evade in one of those last few rounds of shooting could have made all the difference.

You know what? I’m really glad the game played out the way it did! Well done on the win Jesper!

Loss 26-100

So, with a 3-3 result, I didn’t make the cut, (I didn’t come here thinking I would, but it would have been nice) I came 58^th of 96 players. Still not changing the blog name! I do think I’ve improved quite a bit over the time I’ve been flying this list. OK, I lost against three players but man, what players!

James Dowdall finished 8^th in swiss with a 5-1 record.

Dan Rodwell finished 6^th in swiss with another 5-1 record.

Jesper Hills, despite finishing 16^th in swiss with a 4-2 record, went on to win the day.

(It's also worth mentioning that Stephen Donn ended 13th in swiss too so I actually won against someone who made the cut!!!)

I would be super proud of myself if I managed to beat any of those guys and if we are going purely on Strength of Schedule, I had 115 and there were only 7 people in the whole tournament (including myself) who had 115 or above. So yes, today is a good day :)

On a different note, it's worth mentioning that this regionals event was also raising money for the Chartwell Cancer Trust - Tiger Children's Ward and managed to reach a staggering £2,000 in donations, raffle many, etc. What an amazing community to be a part of!

What did I learn? Engagement, engagement, engagements!

I talked to James after he trounced me about what I should have done differently in my game, he said setting Chewie up in the middle of the board without his buddy, Chopper, was a bad plan. It allowed James’ list the ranges it needed, not only to engage me with his jumps, but also to keep N’dru far enough away from his buddies to proc his ability and throw a total of 8 red dice at my Falcon. If I’d set up together, Chop might have been a more inviting target AND I would have been able to fight back with both of my ships instead of, effectively, just Chewie.

After being kicked to the curb by Dan, he said again that my setup was my biggest mistake. I set up my Chopper first and then Dan chose to joust me. What I should have done was to set up Chewie in the middle, joust with Chopper, take pot shots with Chewie, then fly away and drag his swarm through the rocks in the middle.

I’m learning all the time with this list so I’m not going to change it, the only thing I think I may do is try out dropping Chopper out for this.

Lothal Rebel – Autoblaster turret / FCS / Ezra / Hera (43 points)

This gives me either 2 points to play with OR a 2 point initiative bid… which I don’t really need. Maybe I’ll put Anti-pursuit lasers on to add to the blocking potential of a PS3 large base ship capable of doing hard one turns until the end of days OR Flechette torps so I can shoot out of that rear arc at all ranges (Autoblaster takes care of range 1) that everyone forgets about!

Unfortunately, that’s about it for my competitive X-Wing flying for a while (the cons of working Saturdays over the Summer unfortunately) I’ll still be on Vassal as much as I can be so message me on there if you want a game (Red XIII) and you can usually find me and Joel pew pewing at Dark Sphere on Tuesday evenings (we’re often down a player so always ask, if you want a game)

Thanks to everyone who has read any of my blog posts and thanks to all of my opponents, I think this feels like the end of chapter one of my X-Wing career… bring on chapter two!

Red XIII standing by.