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 - 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!