Author Archives: Jordan Bishop

Excelsior! – Ions and Fires and Scares! Oh My!

Right, time to start my new blog post. How should I write my introduction?
Shows like The Office used cold opens; that could be new and interesting?
What, like a ‘bit’?
Sure?
How would that work in written form though?
Google, define ‘cold open’.
That’s interesting. The earliest cold opens were in the 1960’s.
Google, did blogging exist in the 1960’s?
They didn’t; that was a silly question.
Google, what didn’t exist in the 1960’s?

*5 minutes later*

Google, what is the national minimum wage in Norway?
Wasn’t I doing something? Do I have ADHD?
Google, do I have ADHD?
“Do you struggle to stay focused at home, work or in social situations?”
…
…
Google, define ‘focus’.
Hey! The new Ford Focus looks pretty cool…
Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something?
Shit! My blog! Right, stay focused.

*5 minutes later*

Google, did Saddam Hussain have a Stargate?

Yes, the above did happen and no I didn’t find out whether Saddam Hussain had a Stargate.

What’s kickin’, little chicken? How are you? You look lovely! Did you do something new with your hair? Whatever it is, it’s working for you.

Finally, almost four months into the year I’m bringing you an event write up following my visit to Excelsior! Bristol which was not only my first event of the year, but my first official event of 2.5. How was it, I hear you ask. They’ve ruined the game haven’t they? How did it feel? Do you miss the old rules? How do you hang toilet paper: over or under? Woah, calm down there old sport. It was fun! No, nothing is ruined! It felt natural? I don’t miss the old rules. Over; I’m not a maniac.

We played four breezy rounds of swiss over the course of the day but before we jump into the main action, I just want to take a moment to ask you something. Ahem. You don’t want to miss out on future posts do you? Of course you don’t, you’re not crazy. Unless you hang toilet paper under, in which case what’s up with that bro? If you enjoy my blog did  you know you can subscribe? Subscribing is completely free and WordPress notifies you when I publish new articles so you won’t miss out on my exuberant content. To subscribe, head on over to my main page here, scroll down to the bottom, enter your e-mail and click the subscribe button. It’s as easy as that.

Right, I feel like I’ve been talking bollocks for too long. Let’s talk about X-Wing, shall we?

Preparation

Thankfully, preparation for this event wasn’t difficult and that familiar crippling feeling of  list-doubt never came. Unlike a drunk spouse sneaking into the bedroom at an unsociable hour, it didn’t enter my mind on the drive to Bristol either.Since AMG dropped the new points and scenarios on us, I’ve had plenty of time to sit and play with my squad builders. As some of you may know, my favourite faction is the Republic. I took a brief break from the faction last year (to practise with a Rebel hyperspace list) but I’m eager to make a return. We’re treading fresh ground in a new era of X-Wing so it only seems fitting I usher in this period with some of my favourite chassis’ and pilots in the game.

When the Republic first hit shop floors in the first quarter of 2019, Anakin piloting the 7B configuration Aethersprite with R2 Astromech alongside a Jedi compadre and two V-19 Torrents was all the rage. What a time to be alive. Sadly, as with all good things, this came to an end following an FFG points update and some other list took it’s place. Seeing as it’s been three years since I’ve put Delta-7B Anakin on the board, let’s start with him!

Three shields, three hull, three attack, two agility and a kickass dial to boot. As good a place as any to start. Naturally, Anakin will be my power piece. I want this guy in the fight as much as possible kicking out as much damage as he possibly can. I have fifteen upgrade points available so I’m spoilt for choice when it comes to my toys. Let’s start with the obvious; R2-D2. Happy beeps. I’ve yet to use Artoo in my practise games (as they’re usually over before I need to use the shield regeneration aspect) but he’s my safety blanket and I’m praying for the day I can remove an enemy device before it blows up. That leaves me seven points to play with. My instincts naturally gravitate towards Shield Upgrade but having not needed it in five out of five practise games*, I felt the points were better spent on upgrades that gave Anakin more potential time on target. I’ve never used Extreme Maneuvers but it fit the bill and I fancied a change so I #YOLO’d it, as the kids would say. Word to your mother. This left two points which felt wasteful spent on Ion Missles and due to a lack of useful Modifications, it made sense to spend the remaining points on another Force Upgrade – because Anakin has two now! Patience and Brilliant Evasion are probably the best for what I can afford, and seeing how I don’t really want to stack up additional deplete tokens, I went for the latter. My goal when outfitting Anakin’s Delta-7B was to make him the portion of my list that kicks the shit out of my opponents ships. I’ll try and identify what enemy ship grants me the best victory point margin and flank it while other portions of my list fill out a mixture of attack and objective capture.
_{^{*It’s this kind of thinking that leads you to situations later on where one extra shield would have saved you…}}

Anakin doesn’t come with plot armour so he’s going to need a friend to make sure enemy casualties are high. What’s that noise? Listen carefully! Can you hear that? That’s the sound of Barriss Offee and her massive balls making her way down the corridor. Barriss now checks every box for the cheap, effective Republic filler ship. Back when I was playing Rebel’s I had a soft spot for Ahsoka Tano in the A-Wing with Concussion Missiles because it enabled me to double modify a strong three dice shot with ease. Alongside the re-rolls from a Laat, I love Barriss Offee with Concussion Missiles and Instinctive Aim for the same reason. Barriss can essentially double modify a three dice attack from range one, two and three. Not to mention this essentially becomes a four dice attack in range one when you add the CLT bullseye bonus focus result. This is crazy good value for three points and she’s a perfect wing mate for Anakin.

Seeing as I’ve just mentioned the Laat, let’s find a main support ship for this list. I’ve held off buying the Laat since they released because under previous points they were very lacklustre. I could never seem to strike a decent balance between practical usage and points cost. However, that’s all changed and this ship is a beast under the new points system. “Hawk” costs five points and has an upgrade allowance of twenty-fucking-three. This thing drifts across the board less like a little boat and more like a bowling ball. My initial thought was to ignore it’s poor damage output and to focus on full support by utilizing Seventh Fleet Gunner. An extra damage die on one of my other ships every turn seems great, right? Wrong. Kind of. I put it on the board and being disarmed unable to shoot at things felt wrong. Robbing myself of range one shots felt even worse. This thing needs to be shooting. The best upgrades for this ship, in my opinion, is Ghost Company and Clone Commander Cody. The combination of shooting twice (if I’m focussed) and pumping out strain tokens if I miss is a beautiful thing. This turns the dismal two die primary turret into a more unforgiving cattle prod I can’t help but get giddy about every time I use it.

So I need to be focused if I’m going to make the most out of my double tapping Laat and I have fourteen points left for a support crew. Enter, Aayla Secura. For fourteen points I can focus and then link this action into a purple coordinate. This means my fully beefed out “Hawk” can focus, coordinate and shoot twice at two different targets with the possibility of straining them. This thing has the heart of an ox and I’m very happy with its capability to perform the support role. Additionally, under the new scenario rules medium and large base ships count as two ships when contesting objectives which could be just what I need to tip the scales in a pinch.

Last but certainly not least I feel like I want a ship that can support and deal damage. Because, ya’know, I’m greedy and a sucker for versatility. I’ve got four squad points remaining and I’m almost certain I want to fill that spot with another Delta-7 Jedi. I was just talking about how much I liked Ahsoka Tano for Rebels, but is she viable for Republic? Spoiler alert: yes she is. Ahsoka’s ability lends itself perfectly to scenario and objective play because I can use it to take an action which frees up her standard action to grab objectives. Additionally, this means another personal favourite droid of mine can make a return appearance and that makes me very happy. As if you hadn’t guessed yet, it’s C1-10P. Ahsoka is PS3 which means she’s likely to move before most things and that means Chopper has the creative space to be generous with his jam tokens in his erratic state. He has a heart of gold, doesn’t he? No, literally, his heart is made of gold because it’s a great conductor of electricity and heat. Stay in school kids. I’ve got a singular point left over and after getting some clutch usage from Compassion from my days with Rebel Leia, I opt to go with this as it’s a trigger I’m familiar with. Anyhow, I can’t see it coming up too often.

That gives is a final list of:
(8) Anakin Skywalker (Delta-7B) 
R2-D2, Extreme Maneuvers, Brilliant Evasion.  

(5) “Hawk” (Laat/i Gunship)
Aayla Secura, Ghost Company, Clone Commander Cody.    

(3) Barriss Offee (Delta-7) 
Instinctive Aim, Concussion Missiles, Calibrated Laser Targeting.    

(4) Ahsoka Tano (Delta-7)   
C1-10P, Compassion, Calibrated Laser Targeting.

Damn, that looks good doesn’t it? Santa has come early and he’s emptied his sack all over me. Oh, you are immature. Grow up. It really does seem like I’ve got everything I want from a Republic list all wrapped up in a neat little package. I’ve got equal parts support and firepower which means I should be able to hold my own on the tabletop. As an added bonus, this list doesn’t fall victim to the card bloat problem we’re seeing people complain about recently. I think this could really work!

So let’s sum up what we’ve got:

1. Anakin is pilot skill six, hits hard, moves fast and has shield regeneration capability.
2. Barriss hits hard and moves fast.
3. Ahsoka provides jam support, action economy and reasonable firepower.
4. “Hawk”provides action economy, re-rolls on friendly attacks and de-buffs enemy ships.

How’s that for a slice of fried gold? Yeah, boy-eee!

While I do really like this list, I’m unsure of how the meta will take shape which means it could be that four ships just isn’t enough to cut the mustard. However, I’m one step ahead of you like a carpenter making stairs. If it unfolds that I do need an extra ship on the table, Anakin is prime real estate at a hefty eight points of my list which could easily be downgraded to a different Delta-7 Jedi, like Mace Windu. This fundamentally splits Anakin into two different ships and enables me to take fourth Delta-7 Jedi, like Luminara Unduli.

That would look something like this:
(5) “Hawk” (Laat/i Gunship)
Aayla Secura, Ghost Company, Clone Commander Cody.    

(3) Barriss Offee (Delta-7) 
Instinctive Aim, Concussion Missiles, Calibrated Laser Targeting.

(4) Mace Windu (Delta-7)   
R4-P17, Brilliant Evasion, Calibrated Laser Targeting.

(4) Luminara Unduli (Delta-7)   
R4-P, Patience, Calibrated Laser Targeting.

(4) Ahsoka Tano (Delta-7)   
C1-10P, Compassion, Calibrated Laser Targeting.

In old money, (not that that’s at all relevant any more) this is 281 points of Republic ridiculousness. I’m always wary of low health, high agility ships because they have a tendency of dying in one shot when I put them on the table. However, that’s probably user error despite my unwillingness to admit it on occasion.

My bag is packed with both lists (in addition to a scum list I’ve flown once and made adjustments to) but for this event I’ll be flying the one with Anakin.

Tournament Day

I woke up. I drove. I arrived. It was nice to finally complete a journey without having car warning lights shining up my dashboard like Blackpool illuminations.

So as I mentioned at the start, the day was set up for four rounds. We played each of the four new scenarios once. We had a short, concise explanation of the round we were playing by Dad- Err. I mean, Richard Greenaway and Steve Boulton before moving away to our tables to set-up and play for ourselves.

I’m going to do this a little differently today. I’m still going to try and paint a picture of my games in my usual style but I feel like I want to talk more analytically about the scenarios and the lessons I’ve learned overall which should be helpful for me and you. I’ll do this after each round and hopefully it’s mildly insightful so strap in because I’m totally gonna blow your mind with like, knowledge… n’ stuff.

FYI: This event was a casual, fun day among friends that served the sole purpose of us having fun, testing new squad building and just generally wrapping our heads around the new scenarios. Fun was had by all and everybody left in high spirits for the future of the game. I still feel like the scenarios could be themed better but overall each has it’s own unique feel and I wholeheartedly believe you have to approach each one with a different thought process.

Round One – Simon Greenaway
_{Scenario – Assault on the Satellite Array}
^{Summary – Have more ships at Range 0-1 of objectives than your opponent to score 1 point in the end phase. Half points disabled. Full points scored for ships destroyed.}

Always a fun game to be had when Simon is your opponent. Simon was flying the mighty Resistance and had Poe Dameron, Rey and Nimi Chireen. We had an initiative crossover at six – Poe and Anakin.

I’m just going to say it; objective placement confuses me and I don’t have many (if any) thoughts on where to place them. This is a theme that carried over into every game… I ‘won’ the ROAD roll which meant I couldn’t follow Simon’s lead and had to be a big boy and go first. I felt having an objective closer to the middle was best so it was easier to be at range one with the Laat, which in theory means I wouldn’t have to commit to large leaping movements in order to continue scoring and stay in the fight. Additionally, my Aethersprites can leap from one to another with ease if needed. Not seeing any downside to my reasoning I used this rationality with the second objective I placed too creating a nice triangle of objectives that were easily reachable. Next was obstacles which I tried to place in a way that kept the three objectives I want to focus on freed up and easy to manoeuvre between. Unfortunately, this placement meant Rey on her large base would be very happy… I spread my ships across the bottom of my board edge with two goals in mind:

1. Score points for the objectives on my side of the table for the first two rounds, then branch out.
2. Use Anakin to go fast and deny Poe Dameron the objective he closest to.

I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe. This is pretty much how it went. Turn one shots were exchanged and I stripped two shields from Poe and only lost a single shield on Anakin. I scored two objective points and Simon scored one objective point as Anakin successfully denied Poe.

I’d positioned myself too far forward with “Hawk” during deployment and instead of banking and risking clipping the debris I opted for the safe two turn which kept me in range of the objective. Woefully, this meant an aggressive Rey would be taking a range one shot into him later in the turn. I had the initiative which meant Anakin 5K-turned over Poe, removed the stress with his pilot ability and took a target lock on the Trigger Happy Fly-Boy. Poe took three damage, stripping his remaining shield and leaving him on two hull. All objectives were contested bare one, which I scored a singular point for.

Over the next few turns, I focussed on objective points and started to creep towards victory with 3/2 points consecutively while Simon scored 1/2. I broke Anakin off from Poe and turned my attention to Rey while Barriss chased the limping Poe for six turns trying to finish off his remaining two health. She was unsuccessful. Sixteen dice were thrown at him over this period and every single one either missed or was evaded… Poe not dying meant the game went on way longer than it needed to. (Especially as the timer was forgotten for round one.)  

The victory condition was met by me when I gave up on killing Poe and decided to finish Rey instead. With the two points I scored that round for objectives and the full eight for Rey, I went from seventeen points to twenty-seven…

Result: Win, 27-14.
Republic MVP: Anakin – Consistent damage output, nimble and good time on target.
Resistance MVP: Rey – Consistent damage output with a tanky nature lending well to objective capturing and contesting.

I enjoyed this scenario despite Poe’s unwillingness to die and the lack of scoring outside the objectives . It felt decently paced and the objectives posed a welcome layer of tactical thinking that cannot be ignored when considering your movement options and ever changing win condition. I’m not sure how I’d play this differently in the future and out of the four scenarios over the course of the day this is the one that stumped me the most. I liked the aggressive approach with Anakin on turn one and think objective denial is equally as strong as objective capture. I think four ships is perfectly acceptable for this scenario, but you’ll probably have an easier time with five or more ships, especially if that includes one solid large base ship. Three ship lists understandably struggle to maintain momentum on objectives and will have to do some heavy lifting in the damage department to keep up.

There’s one thing from our game that stood out like a sore thumb. It’s glaringly obvious how the removal of half points thresholds specifically benefits large ships. Large ships are usually costed highly to offset their big health pool, strong weapons and upgrade accessibility. With games typically lasting between five to seven rounds it can be tricky to put enough damage through on one to see a points return and not seeing a return for your effort is simply frustrating.

Round Two – Tim Greenaway
_{Scenario – Chance Encounter}
^{Summary – Have ships at Range 0-2 of objective in the middle while your opponent has none to score 1 point in the end phase. Half points (rounded down) on ships is enabled in addition to full points (rounded up) for ships destroyed.}

Tim. Timbo. Timber. Tim Canterbury. Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop Muzorewa. (One of my more obscure references). Tim had brought Imperial pilots Colonel Vessery, Maarek Stele, Major Vermeil and “Night Beast”. We had an initiative crossover at four – “Hawk” & Barriss and Major Vermeil & Colonel Vessery.

We don’t get to choose where the objective goes in this scenario so we placed it in the centre and start placing obstacles. I placed my obstacles around the middle and tried to make it generally quite cluttered, which I prefer, but left enough space for “Hawk” to circle around if needed and deliver his double-tap goodness.

Right, so the old fashioned dogfight but with a slight twist; there’s an objective in the middle. Did I care about the objective though? Yes. Got you there, didn’t I? You thought I was going to say no. I cared about it briefly anyway in the sense that I didn’t want to give Tim an easy point by not contesting it in turn one. I launched Anakin forward full throttle with a 5-forward, contested the point and we moved into turn two.

Anakin flanked and shot “Night Beast” who received one damage despite having a focus and evade token.Then it got very dramatic when Colonel Vessery stripped a shield from Barriss Offee and Maarek Steele followed it up with a crit, crit, hit. This destroyed the Padawan with an all too familiar triple blank green dice roll.

Anakin and Ahsoka took this personally and sought vengeance stripping all of Mareek’s shields. The following turn they both 5K-turned and claimed his remaining hull. Meanwhile, “Hawk” was putting in the work tapping away at the other targets.

Unfortunately our game was cut short with a concession from Tim who wasn’t enjoying the match and preferred to call it early.

Result: Win, 20-3
Republic MVP: Anakin – Consistent damage output, nimble and good time on target.
Imperial MVP: Maarek Steele – Reliable damage output with devastating critical hit capability.

I really don’t have much to offer you regarding this scenario. It’s just the dogfighting we’ve grown to love. That said, does the central objective in this scenario have relevance? Does it need to be there? You could say it draws the action to the centre of the board but dogfighting doesn’t need that carrot on a stick because the very nature of dogfighting is you go where the enemy is. It automatically draws you to each other with the simple goal of  eliminating opposing ships. The central objective serves no real purpose and only clutters the rules. If you do somehow manage to score points from the central objective, would it change the overall outcome of the game? Probably not. All the same, dogfighting is fun and I appreciate the simplicity of this scenario.

Round Three – Richard Greenaway
_{Scenario – Salvage Mission}
^{Summary – Collect objectives with a scenario ‘grab’ action. Score 1 point in the end phase for each objective you hold. You drop the objectives if you suffer a critical damage from any source. Half points disabled. Full points scored for ships destroyed.}

The Greenaways come in threes unlike their Sith counterpart who, as we all know, come in pairs. Thankfully, playing them is always a pleasure and never a chore. Big Daddy Greenaway heard about the defeat of his young apprentices and was here to right that wrong with his Rebel pilots Kanan Jarrus, “Dutch” Vander, Ezra Bridger and Thane Kyrell. We had an initiative crossover at three and four.

I approached objective placement slightly differently here and wagered it would be best to set the objective further away from the middle. I predicted this would give me breathing room before I assaulted the central objective. Richard must have had similar gut feelings because he also placed his close to his own board edge. The other I placed at range four of Richard’s board edge.

On turn one Barriss Offee, “Hawk”, “Dutch” Vander and Kanan Jarrus all grabbed salvage crates. No shots were exchanged and we moved into round two.

I made a bad call here… I thought Ezra was going to take the central salvage crate while Thane came around for a flank. This didn’t happen and instead Ezra stormed 5-forward right into my back line while Thane came up the rear and took the central salvage crate. This meant Barriss Offee bumped into Ezra, but I wasn’t concerned and took the chance to try out the new rules and performed a stressful focus action. Anakin, “Hawk”, Barriss and Ahsoka then all shot at a tokenless Thane Kyrell who lost his three shields (he had a shield upgrade). Then it was Kanan’s turn to shoot. Oh boy… Kanan fired a warning shot across Barriss’ nose at Range 2: hit, hit, hit, crit. Careful, you idiot. I said across her nose, not up it! Barriss evaded nothing with another fistful of blanks. Tim did this exact thing to me not sixty minutes ago… Like father, like son. Overall, this turn set me back heavily as I lost a ship and two salvage crate scoring opportunities. Richard scored a whopping six points to my measly one.

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 8-3.

It can’t get worse, right? Right!? Turn three saw Anakin lose three shields, a hull and gain an ion token courtesy of Kanan in the Ghost. There was a brief reprisal when Anakin and “Hawk” finished off Thane while Ahsoka put minor damage into Kanan. (Importantly, the damage she inflicted included a critical hit which meant Kanan dropped his salvage crate enabling what happened next). The Ghost 4K-turned and prepared another attack on Anakin… Thankfully, Anakin made it through with shield regeneration aide from R2-D2. Thanks little buddy! Meanwhile, in the background of this destruction Ezra collected Barriss’ salvage crate giving Richard a 3-1 objective lead.

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 13-10.

I needed to make some points back and quickly because Richard was getting uncomfortably close to the victory condition. Ahsoka grabbed Kanan’s recently dropped salvage crate and came around for some shots on Ezra which was fruitless. Anakin escaped the clutches of Kanan making use of a 2-bank and 1-hard boost in an effort to get behind him. In a weird turn of events, Anakin then caught Ezra with his pants down and blew him away in a combined effort with “Hawk”. However, with every positive comes a negative. Kanan wanted blood and destroyed Ahsoka evening up the score again…

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 18-16.

There’s five minutes left on this round and I’ve got a win condition. There’s still hope. “Dutch” Vander has a single remaining hull and Anakin is in a prime location to capitalise on it. “Hawk” 2-turns but is unable to get shots unless I rotate the turret. If I do, I’ll get a two dice range three shot at Kanan… Pointless. Instead I opt to focus into a linked purple co-ordinate courtesy of Aayla Secura crew: I give Anakin a target lock on “Dutch” hoping to secure my victory before revealing Anakin’s 2-sloop.

I’ve got two force, a target lock and “Dutch” is at range 3 without a token as he’s double stressed from a panicked pilot. I roll my dice. Hit, blank, blank. Okay, shit… But I’ve got a target lock! This can still happen! I only need one damage to win… I re-roll my two blanks and I’m punished for having hope. Two more blanks. This wasn’t looking good but if Richard doesn’t roll any– Ah, two evade results. Nevermind.

Result: Loss, 18-16.
Republic MVP: Anakin – Consistent damage output, nimble and good time on target.
Rebel MVP: Kanan Jarrus – Very high health pool and damage output with additional board control with Primary Weapon, Ion Cannon and Veteran Turret Gunner.

This was a really fun scenario and we were graced with plenty of natural critical hits when shooting which enabled the scenario to really show off how the salvage crates can sway the score.  

My overall tips for this scenario would be to grab the salvage crates with your ships that don’t rely on advanced manoeuvres to do their job (in this scenario you perform a 2-forward stress manoeuvre if you attempt an advanced manoeuvre while holding a salvage crate). As with ‘Assault on the Satellite Array’ I’d say be patient. Grab the salvage crates that are comfortably within reach and then start laying the groundwork for your win condition, whether that be more objectives or killing a big target/multiple smaller targets. Objective points are harder to deny in this game mode as you are reliant on critical hits to prevent your opponent scoring, unlike ‘Assault on the Satellite Array’ where your presence alone is all it takes to deny objectives. Unless you have reliable ways of performing critical hits, I’d recommenced finding more reliable way of scoring. Be calculated in your approach and respect the knowledge that the game can snowball rather quickly if you fall behind.

There it was again though, much like in the Assault on the Satellite Array scenario. Not scoring half points on a large ship is devastating. They’re incredibly difficult to burn down in the time available because they are by nature hard to kill and kick like a mule. If you’re list building for a tournament don’t overlook large ships. I really think they’re solid choices for all four scenarios.

Round Four – Toby Harris
_{Scenario – Scramble the Transmission}
^{Summary – Claim control of objectives with a scenario ‘claim’ action. Score 1 point in the end phase for each objective you hold. Random chance to not claim an objective if your opponent controls it when you ‘claim it’. Half points disabled. Full points scored for ships destroyed.}

The final game of the day and it’s against list building extraordinaire, Toby Harris. At this point Toby was on a 3-0 win record, as were two other people in the room. However, none of those people were playing each other. Yeah, weird right? TTO seemed to have soiled itself and was just randomly pairing people despite the days match-up history. (Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the inner workings of TTO but I’m well aware a great deal of work is needed to ensure a system like this functions like a well oiled machine. The points changes can’t have been easy on the developer(s) and I’m not throwing any shade at them. Put down your pitchforks and take a breath. Thank you TTO for offering a great website used and loved by many). Either way, it’s a friendly casual event and nobody is really all that fussed so lets just crack on with it.

Toby was sporting Scum pilots Maul, Ndru Suhlak and two Mandalorian Royal Guard Fang Fighters. We both chose to put an objective in one of our corners and the other as far forward as possible. I figured more distance between objectives would give me some breathing room against the Fangs who like to be up close and personal. I tried to create some clutter with the obstacle placement but left a large open channel Toby would then use to his advantage.

Turn one we both moved forward and scrambled the two objectives on our respective sides.

Ongoing Score Counter: Draw, 2-2.

Barriss hung back (scared of being shot off the board in one shot again) hoping to find a safe future opportunity while Ahsoka did the opposite and found herself taking shots from Maul and both Fangs. Toby’s dice were dog egg and Ahsoka only took a shield in damage. Phew, that was close. However, the central objectives was scambled by one of Toby’s Fangs. Anakin was in a fight of his own on the board edge and had 3-banked left and 1-hard boosted right dodging the firing arc of Ndru while shooting into his side claiming both shields. So far, so good?

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 5-4.

Ahsoka shot forward a little too optimistically and opted to take a focus token instead of scrambling the objective under her because it seemed like safer option if Maul full-stopped. He did full-stop and rotated towards Ahsoka shooting her at range one which left her on two hull. I wish I’d considered that when setting my dial. “Hawk” 1-banked to glory, taking a focus action ready to double-tap some Mando Royal Guards. At the least here I was expecting to throw a couple of strain tokens their way but instead “Hawk” went full-psycho and pinged two damage from both Fangs including a critical hit. Holy shit “Hawk”, calm down! Barriss turned in ready to unload some Concussion Missiles and left a Fang on one hull. Ndru came 4-forward and scrambled what would now be Toby’s fourth objective held. Anakin finished him off but the measly two point reward felt hollow at the end of the round…

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 9-7.

This is where I realised the game had reached a turning point and was about to snowball. The board was covered in red objective tokens and it was about to get out of hand fast. I powered on though refusing to give up regardless of how bleak it looked. “Hawk” moved to take the middle objective but I lost the objective in my bottom corner. Also, Ahsoka perished to a Gar Saxon powered Maul shot from her self inflicted C1-10P jam… Ouch. That gave Toby four kill points and four objective points while I only scored one.

Ongoing Score Counter: Losing, 17-8.

Okay, so let’s do a a win condition check.

1. I cannot kill Maul before Toby wins on points.
2. I could take a real good shot at the Fangs and if I kill both I’ll score 10 points. But that puts me on 18 and I can’t reach 20 before Toby does at the end of the round.
3. If Barriss isn’t blocked by a Fang, I could possibly get one more objective before the end of the round but that still only puts me on 19 in the best case scenario.

‘The fight is done. We lost.’ I’m so excited for Kenobi. Roll on May! In any case, in a bid to score more points, and have some fun, I went in hard on the remaining Fang Fighters successfully killing one. Sadly, Barriss was blocked by the remaining Fang because of the ROAD result and therefore could not scramble an objective. Furthermore, I wasn’t able to destroy that Fang with my remaining shots. What did surprise me was an out of character move for Barriss who didn’t succumb to Mauls final shots of the game and survived! Hooray! Kind of…?

Result: Loss, 21-14.
Republic MVP: “Hawk” – Solid damage output while scrambling objectives and soaking lots of damage. .
Scum MVP: Maul – Threatening, looming power-piece that demands respect with three force, two agility and lots of health.

Okay, a lot to digest here but with a very simple message: Don’t sleep on these objectives. Scramble. Scramble! Scramble!! I would wager that this scenario has the biggest potential to snowball out of control the fastest and with some data from the course of the day I can probably prove it. But before I do, lets talk more about this round. For the third time today, a large ship was the thorn in my side and the MVP of game for the enemy. First it was Rey, then Kanan and now Maul… I’ve said it twice already but I’ll say it again: large ships not giving up half threshold as they perish is huge and I think that makes them a serious contender as some of the best ships in the game. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not saying you can just slap one of these on the board and do well with it. If you put it in a silly position and your opponent capitalises on it you will feel the sting. But if you know what you’re doing and you play cautiously I think you can really put the pressure on.

The next time I play this scenario I’m going to focus less on fighting in the middle and spend more time clocking over my points with the objectives. Make use of your ships to scramble the points you can without putting yourself in compromising positions. If you can’t, make sure you’re not letting the scales tip in the favour of your opponent. If you do, be prepared to do some heavy lifting to tip them back…

The Data

Okay, so I’m conscious this post has been a little long so I’ll start to wrap it up. I hope you’re still with me and if you are, you’re amazing.

Using the information on TTO we can determine what the average rounds were for each scenario over the course of the day. Before I do the maths I thought it would be interesting to make presumptions based on my experience and see if that leans true based on the data.

I predict that (with the exception of games that took way below the average or have mitigating circumstances) Scramble the Transmission will be the shortest game mode on average due to it’s snowball potential. Chance Encounter will be the second quickest scenario because of it’s familiarity with the player base and the increase in power of lists on the table. I’d then presume Salvage mission is third due to the aforementioned unreliability of critical hits to deny objective points. Lastly, Assault on the Satellite Array will be the longest scenario on average due to it’s accessible objective deniability and lack of half points thresholds which will increase the length of the games.

Average Rounds Per Scenario:
Assault on the Satellite Array – 6.4
Chance Encounter – 4.8
Salvage Mission – 5.8
Scramble the Transmission – 5.4

Not too bad and they’re all quite similar in length. But is this enough X-Wing for you? Personally, I didn’t feel like I played any less or any more X-Wing than normal.

Most of the data in TTO looks reasonable and there were only two cases of rounds being much shorter than the rest and both of those were in the Chance Encounter round. The outliers were a game that seemingly only lasted three rounds and my round with Tim Greenaway which was ended prematurely on turn four due to a concession. If we were to assume those two rounds lasted a little longer, say two/three each, the data looks more like this…

Average Rounds Per Scenario:
Assault on the Satellite Array – 6.4
Chance Encounter – 5.6
Salvage Mission – 5.8
Scramble the Transmission – 5.4

So what does this all mean? Apart from the fact I was right on the money with my predictions but you’ll have to take my word for it because there’s no way I can prove I guessed what I guessed before I did the maths.

Well, it means…

Conclusion

I really enjoyed flying the list I chose and it has some real strength. Throughout the day there were times when I felt like I didn’t have enough ships on the table and was fighting a losing battle but in hindsight that’s because I’d lost a ship early and was paying the cost. (Read: Barriss keeps dying and it’s because her massive balls are weighing her down).

Anakin and “Hawk” were my personal favourites throughout the day and it was glorious to see the damage they can do. If you are contemplating a Republic list I can’t recommended these two pilots enough. Moreover, when it comes specifically to the Laat, please don’t go down the route of Seventh Fleet Gunner. It’s a trap. The singular extra die on another friendly ship is not worth the trade off for the disarm token to re-arm it. I was consistently double-tapping with “Hawk” and found he rolled more dice and contributed more to my overall success than Barriss and Ahsoka combined. I can’t wait to put him back on the table.

I’m used to ships that go pop easily but my CLT Jedi flying is rusty and leaving a lot to be desired. If large ships do become more prevalent in the meta I think I may end up downgrading Anakin to Mace to fit in Luminara. Four CLT Jedi with “Hawk” as support could do some pretty gnarly things to a large ship base… But that’s a thought for another day.

Big thank you to everybody who attended. It was a fantastic day of X-Wing and I’m just grateful we all get to walk hand in hand into this new era of X-Wing together. Big thank you to Richard Greenaway and Excelsior! Bristol for hosting, it was very smooth and the prize support was fantastic as always.

I’m going to get some rest and keep practising for the Board in Brum event on Saturday 9^th April. If you’re interested in this event and would like to attend you can find all of the information on the Facebook event page which is here. It would be great to see you there. Come and say hi!

Until next time…

Bye, Bongo. Bye, Spanners. Bye, Padre. Bye, Melly.

Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.

X-Wing 2.5 – A New Hopium.

Woah! You can’t just walk in here without any trousers on! Cover yourself up and come back…

That’s better. Weirdo…

How’s it going Junkies? It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? There are no battle reports today and this will be shorter than usual but I felt it was important to climb out from under my rock and scream my opinion into your eye holes for about fifteen minutes. Sound good? Good.

Before we talk about X-Wing I want to take a brief moment to talk about something important: mental health.

Since my last event in Cardiff I’ve not been playing much X-Wing. I knew I wanted a break over the Christmas period but come the end of December I just couldn’t find my enthusiasm for the game or for anything else for that matter. I should have started practising for the Sith Taker Open which I had full plans on attending as it is one of the hottest events of the year. What then followed for me in January was my employer launching a new corporate re-structure plan and unfortunately my job role was cut and I was facing redundancy. In addition to this, I caught Covid-19 for the second time which in turn meant I was isolating and couldn’t see my friends or family for nearly three weeks. On top of all that, my renewal on my tenancy was due and that was scary as a possibly unemployed almost thirty year old man… When life hits, it hits hard, right? I’m not ashamed to say my mental health took a dive and I was depressed, anxious, irritated, and angry. This resulted in me missing out on things like the Sith Taker Open which was a real shame as it looked like a fantastic event. Thankfully, this story has a happy ending and after undergoing a vigorous interview process with my company I was offered a higher position and I will be staying on.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, I’ve been pretty open and honest about my mental health as I don’t think bottling things up helps. In fact, I know it doesn’t help. I’ve been there. If anybody reading this is struggling with anything, no matter how small you may think it is, speak to somebody. A friend, a family member, a professional or a complete stranger – my door is always open so please don’t feel like you don’t have anybody because you do and you are loved.

The statistics for men’s mental health are staggering:

• Three times as many men as women die by suicide.
• Men aged 40-49 have the highest suicide rates in the UK.
• Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women according to the Government’s national wellbeing survey.
• Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men.

We all share a love for this hobby and as a rule, we’re a sausage party aren’t we fellas? A real meat feast. The Grundle Gang. A proper penis posse! No shame in it. There just aren’t that many females in this fandom.

Either way, we all need to look out for one another and what I’m trying to say, but poorly, is you’re not alone. I’m going to leave on a positive note and leave some helpful links and my details below in case anybody ever wants to reach out.

1. Support Line
2. NHS Mental Health Helpline
3. A-Z List of Organisations for Mental Health.

Discord: Eldrad#0322
Messenger: Jordan Bishop

Did I just write ‘penis posse’? I’m as surprised as you are… Shall we move on?

Let’s talk about X-Wing.

X-Wing 2.5 – Controversy Strikes Back

I’m not going to dilly-dally here and set the scene or build tension; it’s not a Mission Impossible script. AMG released the new rules reference & errata, ship & upgrade points, the new scenario rules and the new ban list (all of which can be found here). They also accompanied this with a statement (found here) about why they’ve taken the approach they have. Which, ya’know, as far as hopes and dreams crushing statements go is thoughtful and nicely put? It eloquates something that I personally feel about the game myself and what makes it interesting. I can safely say, in concept at least, I totally agree with AMG’s reasoning here. After community… Discussion? Lets call it discussion… this was the sentiment that was echoed online where players on both sides of the debate whether they were happy or sad with the outcome could accept that AMG had made their decision and justified that decision with some really well reasoned and argued-NO! It was a shit show, obviously…

So, there are a couple of things I want to say about this before we move on and get on with our lives and the first might upset you… I’m glad that these changes are being made. Please, bare with me on this one, okay?Because I’m not saying that you are wrong if you disagree. In fact, I’m not even saying you’re wrong at all. So don’t say that.

In part I’ve been playing this game now since the first months of version 2.0. I did not play 1.0. I consider myself a competitive player and I regularly travel around England & Wales for events. Therefore, I think I’m in a position to say that when it comes to AMG’s proposed rules I am fully in agreement with every advocate for changes. However, I also fully agree with you on the problems and fully expect changes will be made in the future to make these new rules better rounded and more enjoyable. I also share the belief that this game needed to move away from a standard dogfight play style and move to a position that gives the player more direction when they are thinking about the game.

I’ve thrown a lot at you there, and I can see some people smiling and nodding, some are a bit red faced and some of you just look vacant and clueless. You know who you are… Let’s take a brief time out before we venture a little further down this rabbit hole. That was rough, wasn’t it? Close your eyes and think of your happy place, I’ll be here when you get back. Ready? Good. You’re gonna want to mentally prepare for this next bit.

Okay, so what’s my experience with AMG’s new direction for X-Wing?

Disclaimer: I’m not demonstrating for or against views in the below section*, just my thoughts on my experiences so far.
*I tried not to, but there are a few biased points and a bit of finger pointing…

Scenarios – What is it good for?

As a rule, I love objective based gaming. Having a clear cut objective or scenario thrown upon me and figuring my way out of it is exciting and engaging. Sadly, the only tabletop games I’ve played that do this well are board games like Marvel Villainous, Super Dungeon Explore, Dune, Fallout, etc. I never liked Warhammer 40k’s objectives and that was a game for me that usually ended up with the goal of totally annihilating the other player’s forces and it wasn’t fun or engaging.

I have one tiny little niggle with the new scenarios and that’s that they don’t really feel like Star Wars. Aside from the pilots and the ships on the table you would be forgiven for thinking this is a generic space game where we’re all obsessed with satellites. The scenarios themselves play just fine and they’re engaging enough to keep me interested as a whole and bring another level of decision making to my game play; I just– satellites?! Hey guys, remember how cool it was in that one movie where they went and collected that satellite? Yeah, me neither.

If they were going to be so linear in the design I’d have settled for simplistic objectives with generic predetermined objective setup. Over my games so far the objectives have always formed a pattern comparable to that of the face of the five on a six sided die. Has anybody else found this? There isn’t much creative liberty the player can take and really only presents the illusion of choice. I guess my point is the theming of the objectives don’t capture and express what Star Wars is to me.  Neither does a space chase with one side running out of fuel, but that’s a story for another day.

Game Length – Is it enough?

I’ve found through playing 2.5 that the duration has drastically shorted. The 12 round turn limit hasn’t been reached yet, nowhere close for that matter, and games have ended due to the score limit of 20 being achieved by one of the two players, usually in turn five or six-ish. I believe the score limit needs to increase to at least 30. At the moment, losing your 7-10 point ship feels like a game defining moment and you don’t have the capacity to pull back from a losing position. Let’s take a moment to consider football. Just because Spurs are 0-1 down doesn’t mean we give up, leave the stadium and never come back claiming they’re the worst team in the world… Okay, poor example that’s exactly what we Spurs fans do… My point being the excitement of a game is the twists and turns along the way and just because the start wasn’t favourable, or potentially was, doesn’t mean that’s going to be the same throughout the middle and end of the game too. X-Wing’s new scenarios seem to be lacking that at the moment and can feel over before they’ve really had chance to get going. That’s not to say they’re not fun, I just want more from my time at the table. That’s all I feel I need to say on this one.

List Building – Oh boy, that’s bait.

Oh boy, this is a big controversial hot potato I don’t want to catch right now. It’s certainly a lot simpler in terms of points now, isn’t it? But does that simplicity translate from paper to the board? I’m going to leave that as rhetorical and not actually answer it because I don’t want to get crucified.

The separation of a pilot’s value and their respective upgrade allowance isn’t something I saw coming but I actually quite like. I’ve found that the problems I had before are still present in that the decision of which pilots to take for my allotted points is a head scratcher, but now I get a shit load more upgrades when I finally make that decision (in most cases). It’s been years since I’ve flown Delta-7B Anakin Skywalker because his cost was justifiably outlandish. Not only did I need to pay his upfront cost but additionally the necessary upgrades that make him threatening which cost an arm and a leg.

This often led to situations where you’re trimming down on upgrades to fit in other pilots and it doesn’t feel good being priced out of the pilots we know and love. All of this is heavily improved upon under this new system.

Old Rules – 101 Points                                   New Rules – 8 & 15/15 Points.
Anakin Skywalker – 59                                  Anakin Skywalker – 8
Delta-7B – 24                                                  Delta-7B – 0
R2-D2 (Republic) – 10                                    R2-D2 (Republic) – 8
Shield Upgrade – 8                                        Shield Upgrade – 6
Compassion – 1                                               Compassion – 1

With old rules Anakin was 51% of my list and a heavy point sink. However, under new rules the exact same load out is only 40% of my list and I don’t need to sacrifice any upgrades. Overall, this means more toys on the table and I’m very happy with that.

“But with this introduction comes the inability to choose how I outfit my ships: lean or thick!” – Reddit Chad, 2022.

Well, yes but also no. Sure, Anakin is 8/15 and built for destruction but my other ships may not be. My choice between lean or thick now comes before the upgrades and is now in my choice of pilot. Like N’dru Suhlak in the Z-95 who is turning heads right now. He’s a strong, lean objective securing option coming in at 2/0. Or to stick with the Republic example, Barriss Offee who’s 3/7 and an absolute steal for the cost. She’ll never be thick with an upgrade allowance of 7 but that’s just fine.

I’ve seen claims that separating the pilot costs and the upgrade costs take away player choice but I believe that’s grasping at straws. All it takes is a trip to Meta Wing to see how the vast majority of you were all running the same pilots, with the same upgrades, with the same wing mates during 2.0. Is it really player choice if you were just following the meta herd? If you’re a competitive player are you now suddenly worse off because you have the option to fill a ship with upgrades? No. You’re in exactly the same boat you were before except you’ve got more toys to play with. You’ll still continue to run the same pilots, with the best upgrades, with the best wingmen. And if you’re a casual player, you still get to run any pilots, with more upgrades than before, with any wingmen…

While all of this is mostly positive and exciting for me I can partly understand why the people who enjoy flying generic pilots are upset. You’re not having your toys taken away but you are being told how to play with them ‘correctly’. A lot of the generic pilots just aren’t worth taking over the named counterparts. But, is that a bad thing? I would argue that popular lists that included generics are still viable and in some cases, like the Imperial Tie swarm, they got even better. What about Resistance T-70’s? If you flew four before you can now fly four named T-70’s including Poe Dameron. I’m not saying you were doing it wrong before but when given the choice between the greatest pilot in the Resistance or lowly cannon fodder. It’s kind of a no brainer, right?

While I’m talking about player choice and positive steps in the right direction AMG made a design decision that filled me with joy. AMG reintroduced previously removed upgrade slots from certain pilots. If you read one of my older blog posts you’ll recall a section where I claimed removing upgrade slots from ships is not a good answer to any power related questions and that in doing so locks out the design space and isn’t very fun. Well, it seems AMG agrees! Not only did we see the return of the illicit slot on the Rebel YT-1300, we also saw the crew slot returned to Scum Boba Fett! In addition to this there are certain pilots across all factions that have extra slots that others in the same chassis do not. For example, Republic Y-Wing “Goji” has three payload upgrade slots! Do I need them? Dunno, but I’m grateful I’ve got the option. 

Conclusion – So what does it all mean?

TL;DR – Rome wasn’t built in a day. The game hasn’t collapsed in on itself like a warm Easter egg. There are some teething problems which I would expect with an overhaul of this magnitude but I’m positive that as time goes on AMG will update and improve the new systems they’ve implemented. How quickly and the approach taken remains to be seen.

It took the departure of FFG from X-Wing for the player base to realise they did a good job. If I took the quotes from earlier and told you they weren’t about AMG and were in fact from 2 years ago when FFG released one of their points updates would you even be able to tell the difference? I’d wager probably not. Every update that got launched under FFG had its protestors and groups of disgruntled, vocal, unhappy individuals. In hindsight, we’re all still here and we’re all still playing the game. I sincerely believe this will be the case two years from now.

So go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over…

I’ll bring you some proper content next time. I promise.

Until next time you bunch of reprobates.

Peace. o/

Cardiff Store Championships – Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

Hey Junkies! How are you?

1. I’m great! I’m on top of the world!
2. I’m alright, I guess?
3. Terrible, I need a hug.

Excellent! Glad to hear it. Alright, chatterbox, hush up and lets talk about me.

If you’re a regular reader then you’ll know that since my last event at Board in Brum I’ve put aside the Extended format in favour of the Hyperspace format in anticipation of the Cardiff Store Championships which took place on 27/11/2021. There’s a lot to cover so get yourself comfortable, grab a brew and let’s just jump right into it…

Before Worcester Store Championships, I didn’t like Hyperspace. There, I said it. It’s harsh, but it’s true. I thought it was complete and utter dog egg. I really didn’t like the limited style and a lot of my favourite ships to fly are unavailable or not as fun due to the limited upgrades available. However, after Worcester Store Championships, I came to a realisation:  I don’t really mind Hyperspace? It’s a baby step in the right direction, right? I appreciate there’s a need for restrictive formatting in games but it just isn’t my cup of tea. The light in the darkness for me is Leia, Luke and Ahsoka (list here). These three ships combined make the format exciting for me and I really enjoy playing with them.

Putting in some research, I found out that there could be a couple of people flying this list at Cardiff, and that spelt trouble. I’d have to make alterations to my list as the possibility of the mirror match without the bid is enough to make you shudder. Trust me, I played the mirror match with Dylan Jones prior to the event and after winning the start of game initiative roll I decided to give Dylan first player and put myself at a handicap to see how bad it could potentially be. Turns out it’s bad… Who knew? Moving everything you have without information, when you want information, feels horrible especially when you have things like Proton Rockets. Overall, It just makes things more difficult than they need to be. With that in mind, I decided to make some changes and I finally settled on this final version for Cardiff:

Leia Organa – Modified YT-1300 Light Freighter
Compassion, Millennium Falcon
Ship Total: 81

Luke Skywalker – T-65 X-Wing
Servomotor S-Foils
Ship Total: 60

Ahsoka Tano – RZ-1 A-Wing
Concussion Missiles
Ship Total: 55

During practise I’d unknowingly and subconsciously started playing more aggressively with the list and it wasn’t boding well. I was hard flanking with Luke and putting him in silly positions where he was getting picked off early. The temptation to play for the Shattering Shot on Leia was hindering my opportunities and as if that wasn’t bad enough, I was also playing for the Proton Rocket shot too hard and that was leaving Ahsoka in bad positions, usually stressed.

Stripping the list back to basics, I decided:

1. Leave Luke as he was and run him with the main pack. This isn’t a set-up problem, it’s a play-style problem.
2. Go with the consistency of Concussion Missiles on Ahsoka, instead of Proton Rockets. This gives the list better range three poke and in turn would make managing Ahsoka’s force pool easier. Sure, it loses the heavy hit but anecdotal evidence from practise and Worcester Store Championships shows I only got it off 50% of the time.
3.  Remove Shattering Shot from Leia for a deeper bid. It’s a great upgrade, and certainly helps with Leia’s output but it’s arguably the weakest upgrade in the list and I need a better bid.

A five point bid was a little higher than I needed, and I was willing to wager if others weren’t using Shattering Shot they’d opt for another 2-3 point upgrade. Therefore, as I would now be trying to run my ships in a group ‘Compassion’ seemed like a great 1 point upgrade on Leia to protect my ships from unwanted critical hits. I’m not sure how often it will trigger, but it’s better than nothing.

I have no problems with telling you my practise games for this event went horribly. I was losing more than I was winning and I was burning myself out. I was putting way too much pressure on myself to do well and between my perceived failures and the stress of work I was exhausted. It got so bad, I felt like changing my list at the last minute and then considered not going to Cardiff at all. I felt like this would enable me to take a week or two break to refresh my love for the game. However, Toby Harris, my knight in shining armour picked me up, brushed me off, knocked me down, picked me up again and told me to sack up and take practise with a grain of salt and just do what I do best on the day of the event with a list I was familiar with. At the end of the day, he was right. So that’s what I did! Also, I had another reason to win, and that’s so Liam Baker didn’t stab me…

Event Day

Cardiff is just under a two-hour drive from Stourport and I had to be there before 09:30am as per the e-mail instructions from Paul Westwood. After a sleepless night due to the unrelenting wind and rain I got in the icy car at 07:15am clutching a travel mug full of hot tea. About half way to Cardiff with around an hour until my arrival at Firestorm Games my check air pressure light came on. Not now. Not now! NOT NOW! I silenced Miley Cyrus (on the stereo, she wasn’t coming with me to Cardiff) and drove with caution for the next few minutes. I couldn’t figure out if my car was swaying because of the relentless wind or because of the tyre pressure issue. I had a serious problem. Without anywhere reasonably safe to pull over, I had to use the hard shoulder. I whipped out my trusty electric pump and braved the bitter cold making my way from tyre to tyre. Thankfully, after re-entering my vehicle the light had gone and I proceeded on my journey and arrived at Firestorm Games safely, if not a little stressed.

As it happens, some attendees were running late or something and I had plenty of time to get set-up and get comfortable before the first round was called. This gave me some time to say hello officially to Dylan and Cai. Interestingly, Dylan had also opted to take a deeper bid and had removed Shattering Shot from his version of the list. This meant, if we did play each other for the mirror match he’d have the jump on me! Not good! But hey-ho, we roll with it and do the best we can, don’t we?

Round 1 – Dan Barringer

At first glance, I felt reasonably good going into my first game. Dan was flying Poe Dameron, Nimi Chireen, Aftab Ackbar and Rose Tico (list here). Poe can be tricky to fly against, especially as he’s initiative 6 but concentrated fire should humble him. Dans forces started at the top right of the board and came directly at mine who were in the opposite corner.

I made a play for the rocks and took a target lock on Aftab with Leia hoping for some early damage. I moved Ahsoka behind Leia but forgot to spend two force to allow Leia to take an evade action. Leia’s shot completely whiffed even with the target lock and Aftabs return shot took a shield and ionized Leia. Bollocks. The worst part of this was the mandatory ionized 1-forward would put Leia on a rock, which is something I really couldn’t afford to take. Thankfully, with some clever flying (it was just a 3-forward) I was able to put Luke in front of Leia to avoid this.

Ahsoka was out of position but I felt I could afford to take a shot or two to take the heat off Leia. I couldn’t. My shots did a couple of shields to Aftab, nothing special. Nimi Chireen fired at Ahsoka and she suffered two shields. Rose Tico then fired at Ahsoka at range three and scored two hits. Ahsoka blanked on four dice and she left the field. Then, Poe and Aftab took all five shields from Leia. It snowballed quickly after that and Leia took a further eight damage the following turn from the Resistance and she too left the field leaving Luke alone against a very healthy Resistance fleet. Luke took a lock on Poe and blanked on three dice, twice. It was at this point it was obvious I couldn’t win and Dan took the game with forty-seven minutes remaining!

Like with my dismal start at Board in Brum, it can’t get much worse than that! I hope this doesn’t become a trend.

Result: Loss – 200-0.

Me and Dan chatted about the game while we tidied away (we had plenty of time for it!) and while Dans dice were hot and mine very much cold, I admitted I played terribly and the dice only snowballed the outcome as a result. Leaving Leia at range three without an evade in the initial engage and risking the ionization was just stupid and then I did exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do and that’s play aggressive, which cost me Ahsoka. I needed to pick myself up and get my head in the game because I would need to play a lot better than this to do well!

Round 2:

I had to wait forty-seven minutes for the end of the round and then around fifteen minutes for all the usual post round admin to conclude. For round two I’d been awarded the BYE. With how the morning had gone, I was a little peeved because lunch was after round two, meaning come almost two o’clock I would have played around twenty-five minutes of X-Wing in four hours of being at the store with a two hour drive to boot. I came all this way to play! Not to sit around waiting.

I took myself to my car and decided to take the time to rest and get an early lunch. These tournament days are long and sooner or later mental and physical fatigue kicks in which, looking on the bright side, means I was essentially two games behind everybody else which gave me a slight advantage. I got myself some food, listened to an episode of Bill Burrs Monday Morning Podcast and rested up for round three.

Result: BYE Win – 200-100.

Round 3 – Matt Lees

Matt was flying rebel beef with two B-Wings, two X-Wings and Jake Farrell in the A-Wing (list here). Trying to keep in line with my planned defensive play style I keep my distance trying to pull the opposition through the rocks. I then break my defensive rule and Luke pulled away to bait the beef. Don’t shout at me, I know this was what I said I wasn’t going to do but it was calculated! This was successful and enabled Leia and Ahsoka to come in unchallenged. Luke took some initial damage on the engage but traded his half point threshold for a full Jake Farrell with the help of Leia. After the initial engage Luke managed to avoid a lot of damage with a 4K-turn and namely because of the lack of mods on the stressed B-Wings. I played cautiously focus firing one ship at a time and after a few turns had managed to whittle the beef down to it’s bones for the cost of half on Leia, which was good news for me.

However, for Matt this meant an uphill battle with only one X and B-Wing left. The named Rebels finished off the generics and that was game.  

Matt played well and was betrayed by his dice on a few turns and the overall points don’t seem fair for his efforts. But, we’ve all be in that position and I’m glad he was able to finish the day with a round four win. Well done mate, keep it up.  

Result: Win – 200-71.

Round 4 – Martin Golay.

What an absolute gent Martin turned out to be! Martin was currently 3-0 with his First Order list comprised of Kylo Ren, Major Vonreg and two TIE /se Bombers (list here – This is the best I could remember, some upgrades may be wrong. Sorry Martin). This meant with my 2-1 result I had been paired up. Martin started his ships in the top left board edge and I started mine adjacent. I knew these Bombers were going to come in quick with their boosts and decided to use the obstacles for defence – I cannot let those Proton Rockets find a target. I kept Ahsoka back, Luke went fast around the edge and Leia took the middle of the board. A bomber came very close to a rock and took a shot from Leia which claimed it’s shields.

Next turn Vonreg followed suit narrowly clipping the rock and losing a shield. As I’d already stuck three target locks on Kylo I wasn’t in a position to capitalise on this mistake but felt confident I could benefit next turn as he would need to go over it again due to positioning. Seven out of nine dice were hits into Kylo but I failed to claim one shield… Martins dice were so hot they burnt his hands! Unbelievably, Martin rolled triple evade twice, and evade, evade, focus once. Insane for a tokenless ship! Leia lost two shields in response.

Kylo’s dice came full circle in the next round and he perished to a triple blank defensive roll but not before putting some damage into Luke. Shockingly, Vonreg didn’t take damage from the asteroid but took three hits from a 4k-turned Luke and died. This left two heavily damaged Bombers against the mighty Rebels. In a last attempt to spite the Rebels, Conner Nets were dropped but they didn’t find a target however Luke was finished off with a chance shot. It was great to see the Bombers go down swinging!

Result: Win – 200-60.

End of Swiss

What a turn around! After a disastrous start to the day I finished fourth in Swiss which meant I was in the top eight cut. We had a bit of downtime while rewards were handed out and I must say I liked the extra rewards for player voted ‘best sport’ and ‘biggest loss and win’ margins. Who doesn’t like extra swag!? There were potentially another three games to play if I did well, so I needed to stay focused…

Top 8 – Quarter Final: Piers Horry

Piers last game of Swiss was against Dylan Jones who, as we know, was flying a very similar list to mine. I won’t spoil the result of that game but I did find it amusing Piers would have to face down the same list again! Piers and me have played before, that much we’re sure of. But between us we couldn’t figure out where, or when! Hopeless. Today, Piers had an N1 themed list comprised of Dinee Elberger, Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala and Ric Ole (list here). This was weirdly intimidating! We both started really cagey and neither of us wanted an engage that wasn’t favourable.

Both fleets orbited the obstacles baiting the other, picking up target locks here and there. Luke found himself in a potentially damaging situation but an Ahsoka pre-movement barrel roll action guided him to safety. After some plinky shots from range three, Dinee was on half points and Padme had lost a singular shield while Leia had suffered two shields. The turn after, Ahsoka was caught at range three by two N1’s and dice crapped out, meaning I lost both shields and took a Hull Breach crit. Ouch. Luke 4k-turned trying to catch the N1’s off guard and Ric… 3-banked to the board edge? Blimey, okay. But the daredevil boost fits, right? It doesn’t?! This is huge. This turn saw the demise of Dinee and I scored half on Padme, but the full points on Ric (who since he was going off the table, decided to do it in Ric style with a 5-forward!) was just the icing on the cake.

Going into the last round I was unable to finish off Padme or damage Anakin as the dice had used all their juice, but it was a win none the less.

Result: Win – 128–28.

Top 4 – Semi Final: Alex Jensterle

Okay, now we’re getting serious… Game face! Another absolute gent was up next; Alex Jensterle flying the Republic with R2D2 in the Y-Wing and three Delta 7B Knights (list here). Last time we played was in 2019 at the Worcester Wargames Hyperspace Trial. Alex trounced me in round 2 with a Republic list. Was history going to repeat itself? Secretly, this match-up worried me slightly. The Delta 7B Knights can be a force to be reckoned with and I would need to get a perfect engage otherwise I could lose a ship easily.

We started out ships in adjacent corners, both made a slow-ish start and then we both made a play for the centre of the board. I had two options from where I was:

1. Go slow and potentially get caught out.
2. Go fast which could end up in a bump or if I time it right, I can move in and fly right past a Knight with Leia and take no shots…

The Knight into the middle with a 3-bank and target locked Leia as he already had a focus token from Aayla Secura’s (crew) co-ordinate. Leia’s 4-forward brought her just in front of the Jedi Knight with perfect room to boost left and avoid a range-1 shot. Oh baby! Lets go!! Ahsoka followed up the rear with a 3-bank and took a target lock on the Jedi Knight while Luke came around the left side and also took a target lock on the Jedi Knight. Less than average red dice and above average green dice meant out of ten dice, I only took three shields from the Knight. Not great, but certainly could be worse. It’s points on the board, so it’s a start. Leia started moving around the top obstacle and continued to take pot shots into the center at R2D2 and anything that she could. Meanwhile, Luke and Ahsoka started on another Jedi Knight, unable to finish off the damaged one. More half and full points followed on the turns after only in exchange for half on Luke. Alex conceded the game with a singular Knight left.

Result: Win – 200-30.

What a game this was. I felt like this was make or break in the engage and getting lucky enough to boost out at the start and avoid a load of shots with Leia really boded well for me in the middle/end game. Thank you Alex – as is the case with a lot games the scoreline doesn’t quite do it justice.

Top 2 – Final: Gavin Kirby

Okay, blimey. Phew. What a day. The final table. This is it; make or break. I was in such a concentrated state that I completely forgot to even check who was up against! It was only as I was setting up I thought to check! Sorry, Gavin! I’ve seen Gavin’s name around on the usual Facebook groups and the fact he was already sporting two metal focus tokens meant I was in for a tough game. So, what was Gavin flying? “Longshot” and five Omega Squadron Expert TIE/sf Fighters with Fanatical (list here). Gavin started his TIE’s in two groups of three in the top left corner. I did my usual set-up in the adjacent corner and was going to opt to take things real slow and steady. We were about to get things started but I couldn’t find my dials? Where are my dials!? It took a few moments and then I put two and two together… I’d moved my stuff to the table Dylan was on before me. Had he tidied my dials away with his ships!? I rang him as quickly as I could hoping he wasn’t too far away and he made a speedy return to the store to give them back! Cheeky monkey had appropriated my list and now he’d appropriated my dials!? All joking aside, it was hilarious and Dylan was an absolute champion for coming back to the store to return them! Thanks mate.

Right, onto the game… Leia moved 1-straight while Luke and Ahsoka all moved 2-straight along my board edge all keeping good distance. The TIE’s turned in and barrel rolled towards their edge. Then, fast forward a couple of turns the two packs of TIE’s broke up, I 4K and 5K-turned my ships to go back in the other direction along my board edge in an attempt to come back around the side hoping to use the asteroids to break up the swarm. As the TIE’s came in I managed to avoid taking many shots and plinked half points on the red TIE.

The following turn Leia proceeded slowly around the top and continued to take shots at the red TIE in an effort to kill it while Luke and Leia took evasive action away from the swarm to set-up for another pass. I kept telling myself it was better to stay safe than risk taking shots I didn’t need to take. A few more turns passed and Leia continued to take shots into the centre with Ahsoka coming up the rear safely. Luke 2-turned into the board and came face to face with Longshot at range one who got obliterated by the combination of Luke and Leia. Gavin was leading me into a false sense of security and I had to make sure I stayed focussed. Due to the pricing of the TIE’s versus my ships, giving up a ship (or two halves) could drastically sway the game. Which is what happened… There came a turn in the last fifteen/ten minutes where the intensity sky-rocketed when Ahsoka lost her shields and a hull. Limping around on one health is not ideal… To follow it up, Leia also lost her final shields and took two damage giving Gavin the lead with 69-64. It would come down to the last shots… The red TIE that took a beating at the start of the game was still limping around and Luke was best placed to do something about it. However, while the 2-bank was his best chance, he’d also be facing down two TIE’s who weren’t going to let him have those points easily. Leia was safe, so was Ahsoka. Leia was my only other ship with a shot and I needed two damage on the green TIE for more half points. Sadly, Leia only scored two hits with a target lock and Gavin rolled a focus result, meaning half points was denied… Lukes shot was the last chance of scoring enough to win the game. Three paint with the target lock and force was enough and the red TIE died. It’s so close I can taste it!!!

However, Gavin still had two shots… The first got two hits, and Luke blanked. No! Not now! All Gavin needed was one more damage on Luke and he’d won. One hit… EVADE! That’s game.

Result: Win – 81-69.

What a legend Gavin was, and what an epic game we had. He’s such a cool laid back guy. I am thoroughly looking forward to our next match. This was easily my most favourite game of the day. Nothing against my other opponents, they were all fantastic and the games were ace! But this was just something else. Maybe because it was the final and if I may say so, we both flew it really well? Thanks again Gavin! Hope to see you across the table again soon! Oh, and thank you for the ‘Ka-Palp!’ tokens, they’re super dope!

Conclusion:

And that’s that? I suppose there’s really not much else to say! I’m over the moon with the result and was super grateful to have had the opportunity. The list works beautifully and I really do enjoy flying it. It will be interesting to see how well it works under AMG’s new rule changes. Not needing to bid frees up more points and that means Jyn Erso would be an auto-include for me, maybe over the Millennium Falcon title? Shattering Shot would make it’s return with the addition of Novice Technician with the left over points? Something to think about at least.

Without the support of Toby Harris, Andy Cameron and Liam Baker in the weeks leading to the event I don’t think this would have been possible. So cheers chaps, your support is greatly appreciated!

Big thank you to Paul Westwood and Firestorm Games for hosting and running a great event all around! I had a blast, despite my ropey start!

I feel like a weight has been lifted for me in the competitive scene. Achieving a solid decent win at a cut-event means a lot to me, especially a Store Championship. Now I can return to the Extended format and say my final goodbye to Hyperspace as it’s being assassinated by AMG. Goodnight sweet Prince.

I don’t have any events planned for the rest of the year so if I don’t see you, have a fantastic Christmas and I’ll see you all at a table in new year.

Big love.

Peace. o/

Board in Brum – ‘What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?’

Who among you has seen ‘No Country For Old Men’? This neo-western crime thriller from 2007 is an absolute masterpiece. In one chilling scene, Javier Bardem’s character, Anton Chigurh, asks a terrified gas stop proprietor an important question which became very relevant for me this weekend… ‘What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?’

Hello Junkies. Before we jump head first into this weekends thrilling four game event at Board in Brum, I’d like to take a moment to talk to you about today’s sponsor, SquareSpace. I’m joking, I wish I had a sponsor. SquareSpace if you’re reading (spoiler: they’re not), hit me up. We’re only 108 words in and I’m already distracted. Right, so, in my last post I mentioned my next event would be an Extended event hosted by Board in Brum which was this 13th November 2021. In anticipation of the event I spent a lot of time at the table, real and virtual, trying out different lists to see what would tickle my pickle. Turns out, there’s quite a lot that tickles my pickle and choosing a list was proving to be troublesome. So, I enlisted some expert help to assist in the decision. Well, I say “expert”… Enter Mr Liam Baker, whom I recently befriended following the Worcester Wargames Store Champs event. We arranged to play at Board in Brum to try out some potential lists for event to come. I’d not been to their new venue so it was a two birds one stone situation.

First up in the list of lists to test, was an evolution of my triple Jedi list I’d had recent success with:

Anakin Skywalker — Eta-2 Actis
Predator
Ship Total: 53

Obi-Wan Kenobi — Eta-2 Actis
Sense, Predator
Ship Total: 56

Plo Koon — Delta-7 Aethersprite
Calibrated Laser Targeting
Ship Total: 49

“Odd Ball” — V-19 Torrent
Marksmanship, Proton Rockets
Ship Total: 35

I’ve introduced “Odd Ball” into the list and paired him with Plo Koon who will enable him to deliver his payload to maximum efficiency. Liam was flying Jango, General Grievous and Chertek. His list can be found here.

Our first game I lost, but felt I’d messed up my engage and also took a heavy loss when Obi-Wan died in one shot from Grievous who rolled some very nasty reds and Obi-Wan rolled some rather dismal greens. Onward and upwards, the next game I won and managed to deliver “Odd Ball’s” Procket payload; but not in a favourable position. The end game state was a halved Jango vs a full Anakin. I flew around for ten minutes and claimed a cowardly win. Our third game was more like our first, but with me on the winning end. “Odd Ball” managed to deliver his payload perfectly into an unaware Grievous and come the end of our three game stint I felt like I’d learned a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy this list a lot but my main bugbear with it is how low scoring it can be. Also, I’ve found that usually at some stage in every game it devolves into running away or doing everything you can to not get shot and give up points… I think I’m ready for something different that focuses more on rolling dice and blowing shit up! Which is an excellent transition into my next list…

As I was seemingly taking a break from the Republic I focused my attention back to my Leia, Luke & Ahsoka list which is heaps of fun to fly, but I don’t think it’s equip to deal with the challenges and curve balls that the Extended meta could throw at it. (Also, there’s an upcoming event where I’ll be flying this list – More on that later.) Therefore, after some chopping and changing I tried to create something that potentially could:

Han Solo – Modified YT-1300 Light Freighter
Trick Shot, Kanan Jarrus, R2-D2
Ship Total: 103

Wedge Antilles – T-65 X-Wing
Servomotor S-Foils, Afterburners
Ship Total: 61

Jake Farrell – RZ-1 A-Wing
Predator
Ship Total: 36

Putting Han back on the table was like a breath a fresh air. Not having to worry about three hull ships dying in one shot is an enormous weight off my shoulders. Wedge is a nippy little X-Wing able to craftily get himself in flanking positions and Jake is a low cost support piece. I played the list numerous times on Tabletop Simulator and had a blast with it, winning five out of five games. My sixth game was against returning hero Liam Baker who took great delight in ruining my win streak securing victory on the final shot of the game finally killing Han with Kylo Ren. How thematic… R2-D2 was the MVP of this game hands down. The spirited droid put in the absolute work and recovered Han a total of nine shields! Unfortunately, I’d lost Wedge early due to a combination of miss-positioning and Liam’s forces chasing him down like a pack of hungry wolves.

Throughout the coming weeks there were two other lists that came to fruition that I’d flown once or twice and quite enjoyed. But, I had questions of one sort or another and ultimately opted not to fly them. However, if you’re interested those lists were:

1. Boba Fett, Skull Squadron Pilot, Skull Squadron Pilot – List here.
2. Poe Dameron, Rey, L’ulo – List here.

So, big time skip forward to two nights before the event. I had a good catch up with another good friend, Andy Cameron, who came to mine for some friendly practise games and some food. Those were my Mince Pies Andy… Our games confirmed to me that my heart just wasn’t fully committed to the Republic play style right now and it would probably do me some good to fly something different for a change. But yet, despite this knowledge, I was still completely torn right down the middle between the Rebel and Republic lists. This is probably because I’m familiar with the Jedi and they’ve been ol’ reliable for a fair few months.  Maybe if I slept on it for a couple of nights, a decision would surface…

Event Day.

A list had not surfaced. Why is it so hard?! It shouldn’t be this hard to choose which tiny plastic space ships I want to fly for 4-6 hours. I nervously sent a text to Liam who was in a similar predicament and had done the same as me and packed both lists in a bag and hoped a decision would find it’s way to us before registration. I joked we should choose each others list, a bit like Strangers on a Train, only without the murder. My, my, we are full on movie references today, aren’t we? Talking of movie references, let’s come back to something I said earlier. ‘What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?’ When I arrived Liam suggested, in similar fashion to Javier Bardem, we toss a coin. Heads: I play Han. Tails: I play Jedi. I’d like to say I gave up a fight to this suggestion, but I really was so torn and exhausted with the decision I was willing to go with this tomfoolery. The result was tails. I unpacked the Jedi and round one was called.

Round 1 – Liam Baker

You are joking? Actually, going into this match-up I felt pretty good. Liam had made a decision to fly his earlier mentioned list of Jango, General Grievous and Chertek which I had previously beaten twice in practise. If anything, it could be poetic that the opening round be decided by a match-up we’d both played three times before on the back of a coin toss.

I set up Plo and “Odd Ball” slightly to the left and Anakin and Obi-Wan middle-ish with the intention of going brake-neck speed forward in an attempt to catch Grievous and Chertek off guard. If I can kill Chertek before Jango gets into the fight, I’ll have the upper hand. This didn’t happen. They were way too fast for me and despite getting some cheeky shots on Grievous from Plo and Obi-Wan at range 3, no damage was suffered and he escaped my grasp. I made a wrong call regarding where Jango would be on the following turn and was now facing him down, after bumping into him with Anakin. “Odd Ball” took a shot from the Simple Man and suffered two damage. The following turn was an embarrassment. Anakin system phase barrel rolled and that now meant I’d bumped Plo and Obi-Wan into Anakin. As a result, Plo nor Obi-Wan could barrel roll to stop Jango Fett performing a 4K-turn which promptly followed as predicted. It fit perfectly and Obi-Wan ate a two crit Autoblaster shot: Damaged Engine and Direct Hit… Poof. He was gone. The following turn, Anakin 2-talon rolled, Plo Koon 5K-turned perfectly lining up his bullseye on Grievous with “Odd Ball” also coming into range 1 to help throw some damage onto the asthmatic droid. All three attacks betrayed me with horrible results and Grievous shrugged it all off. C’mon! In retaliation, Grievous put three damage into “Odd Ball” and he was gone too. Really not good.

I’d like to say things got better, but Jango Fett took no damage the following turn despite landing on a rock and taking a range 1 shot from Anakin. Also, I lost Plo Koon to Chertek wizardry and more well placed shots. I’d like to say this had a happy ending for me, but Anakin was thrown around by Chetek like a dog playing with a chew toy.

So, to answer your question Javier – The most I’ve ever lost on a coin toss is 200-0.

Result: Loss – 200-0.

Round 2 – Alex Boulton.

Okay, so that last round was probably the worst defeat of my X-Wing career. The worst bit was there was twenty-seven minutes before round two was called which meant I had plenty of time to stew and fester! On the bright side, it really can’t get much worse than that! So time to pick myself up and move into round two strong.

Alex had brought with him a very beefy, four force, Decimator and Maarek Steele. List here. It looked as daunting as it sounds. This list had plenty of toys that could ruin my fragile ships at the snap of its fingers. Alex deployed the Decimator in one corner and Maarek Steele in the other. This felt like a golden opportunity to remove him from the board before Daddy Decimator came around to tell me off for bullying his son. And I don’t mean Steve Boulton. So I deployed opposite Maarek and went Lightning McQueen fast. Kerchow. Like my last game, this didn’t quite work quite how I’d hoped but it did strip Maarek’s shields and he left the fight like a wounded dog which was good because the Decimator was on it’s way in which I really didn’t want to deal with. However, despite my concerns “Odd Ball” let off a Procket in it’s face removing all of its shields, but took 3 damage in return for his efforts. I then pulled my ships out of the fight to regenerate force and re-think my second approach. The turns that followed, it felt best to split my forces. Anakin and Obi-Wan hunted down and destroyed Maarek who wasn’t quick enough for the iconic duo and Plo and “Odd Ball” chipped away at the turning Decimator. In what would turn out to be the last round of our game, I risked a 2-sloop with Plo, eating a two damage Proximity Mine, which was fortunate as I’d forgotten about Darth Vader (crew) which put an extra damage on Plo for his lack of a green token which brought him down to 1! However, while it was a good attempt, the Decimator was too crippled from the fight and the Jedi finished it off.

Result: Win – 200-43

Round 3 – Steve Jewell.

While setting up our forces, Steve informed me he was new to the game and his brother-in-law (Richard Greenaway no less) had tempted him into the hobby. He’d played a few games against the Greenaways but aside from that was jumping into the deep end with this event! Fair play Steve, welcome to the hobby. You don’t have to be crazy to play here, but it helps.

Steve was flying a beefy rebel list consisting of Luke Skywalker, Hera Syndulla (B-Wing), Ten Numb and AP-5. List here. They were all deployed together in the top left corner. I started my fleet in the middle opting to boost with the Eta-2’s and 5-forward attempting to get behind the Rebels, quickly. Plo Koon and “Odd Ball” took it slow and waited for the rebel fleet, like bait. Luke Skywalker didn’t fancy the obvious bait, and broke off from the pack hoping to remove himself from history by killing his fathers younger self. (Read: Luke went for Anakin…) This didn’t quite go how he expected and Luke failed to put any damage into the Hero of Coruscant. Luke lost all of his shields and was dealt a damage card by Obi-Wan and Anakin in return. Meanwhile, a little further down the board, Ten Numb lost all four shields and received a damage card from a potent procket, then two further damage from Plo Koon. Big oof! Steve’s dice betrayed him and he wasn’t able to put any damage into any of the Republic. The following turn Luke found himself narrowly on a rock, and Plo was in a position to end his misery. Ten Numb opted to end his own life by rolling a hit on his Console Fire critical and also left the battlefield. The following turns the Jedi dismantled the remaining Rebels and they were dealt a harsh defeat. Steve was remarkably chilled about the whole thing and was a great opponent. Keep it up Steve!

Result: Win: 200-0.

Round 4 – Steve Boulton.

Hooray, I’ve collected a pair. Two Boultons in one day. This will go very well next to my rare triple Greenaway set. Steve was flying a beefy Resistance list consisting of Poe Dameron (HoH), Jessika Pava, Blue Squadron Rookie and Zizi Tlo. List here. Steve set his forces in the top right corner and I set mine split apart, knowing I wanted to keep Anakin and Obi-Wan in a reserved position anticipating a cagey engagement. I sent Plo and “Odd Ball” forward while Anakin and Obi-Wan turned to come along my board edge while the Resistance turned into their own respective board edge.

The first meaningful engagement came a couple turns after when Plo and “Odd-Ball” set-up a kill box covering the middle lane to catch Poe, while Obi-Wan came just shy of catching him too; but he had shots on the other two X-Wings. While this happened, Anakin was dog fighting Zizi and 4K-turned over the top of her for some nice bullseye shots. Poe suffered his three shields, while Plo suffered his only shield. Obi-Wan failed to do much due to dice, despite lining up his bullseye and then had to spend all his remaining force and his evade token to stay alive from a single returning shot. The other T-70 shot was range 2 and while Steve only had a focus token, I had no tokens and I knew in my gut what was about to happen: 3 hits. I rolled all blanks and once again I would be losing Obi-Wan in a single shot. It was disheartening, I won’t lie. At least Anakin had managed to strip Zizi’s shields. “Odd Ball” was in a bad position going into the next round and his 1-forward saw him destroyed, not before doing some shields to a T-70 though and now it was Anakin and Plo against the whole Resistance fleet. Anakin was unlucky on his dice, again, but my 1 out of 3 paint roll, actually succeeded at killing Poe and Plo failed to put anything into Zizi.

The next 3-4 turns were a constant knife fight and very tense. Despite putting Anakin in positions where he was getting shots every turn, I failed to do any damage due to lack of dice results which again was starting to become a little frustrating. Eventually, with around ten minutes left I managed to destroy Jessika Pava and half the Rookie, which meant I was marginally up on points going into the the last round… Anakin failed a systems phase boost by the smallest of margins and his 5-forward now took him out of the fight, instead of directly behind Zizi at range 1. Plo should have done a 3-bank and a combination of barrel rolls and boosts to avoid getting shot, but hindsight is a beautiful thing. I instead opted for the “unpredictable” and “cute” 1-hard left into the corner of the board which didn’t actually fit and Plo fled the battlefield. Big sigh. Even if this had fit, Steve would have battered me with his well placed remaining forces so the move was irrelevant but it was embarrassing none the less. I should have taken a page out of Steve Jewell’s book and shrugged it off with a smile, but I was feeling frustrated and exhausted. Steve was fantastic as always and he made his way round the table for the post game hug which I desperately needed.

Result: Loss – 140-131.

Overall Results:

Okay, so overall I was 2-2. Not terrible, but not great. Just average. I’m sure most people would be happy with this result but I’m incredibly hard on myself and strive for greatness. I always aim to win more than I lose, so unfortunately I was disappointed. Despite that though, I’d have four great games and the event was fantastically well run. Don’t get me wrong, I did have fun. Lots of fun. But my aforementioned frustrations with the Jedi meant I didn’t enjoy the list I was flying and for that reason I won’t be using them for a tournament for a little while. I knew this before going into the event and I think the main takeaway for me is: trust your gut. So, how did the finals scores look?

Overall,I was 6^th which surprised me. I think, even with the final round win I’d have only placed 5^th due to MOV. So really, what was I beating myself up over? It’s easy to be hard on ourselves in many walks of life, especially in the areas we’re passionate about.

Big congratulations to Andy Cameron for taking the win on 4-0 and MOV. Well deserved big cat, keep it up.

I’ll be traveling down to Cardiff for Firestorm Games Store Champs on 27^th November. The format for the event is Hyperspace and I’ll be making an excited return to my Leia, Luke & Ahsoka list from Worcester. I’m really looking forward to attending a venue I’ve not been to before and regardless of outcome, it’s going to be a great day.

I hope he wont mind me saying so, but amongst all the negativity we’ve been encountering surrounding the changes AMG are implementing I wanted to take a moment to appreciate a random act of kindness that brought a smile to my face. I was unable to purchase a ticket for the Cardiff event until the 24th, and the shop weren’t willing to reserve one for me. So, to prevent me from potentially missing out Dylan Jones sent me a message saying he’d purchased my ticket for me! Big shout out to Dylan Jones for his enormous generosity; you’re a legend. I’m sure you’re familiar with his blog, but if you’re not go and give it a read here:

Until next time, Junkies.

Peace. o/

WWG X Wing Store Championship – There is another…

Hello fellow junkies. How are you? It’s feels like it’s been a while, doesn’t it? You good? Good. Right enough about you, lets talk about me!

Firstly, this has taken longer to publish than I would have liked. (Saying that, I’d rather I took my time and I put out something I felt was decent, than rush something out that was garbage). Reason being, my part-time job has finally been upgraded to full-time hours and I have a lot less free time during the day. This is really great news for me as I lost my job in the January before original lockdown and things were tight for a while. But, I decided that instead of ‘just getting another job’ I would make a career move into something I actually wanted to be doing. Sadly, at the time, all that was available was part-time. Well, the time has come and after blood, sweat and only a few tears I’m full-time and I can get some semblance of normality back after the horrendous 2020/21we’ve had.

Right, so what have I been doing? Well, this time I have something slightly different for you. Worcester Wargames was to host their Store Championship and as this is my local store I was very excited. What Extended list would I be flying? Republic Jedi? Ooo! Maybe something new? Double ooo! The possibilities were endless. Turns out I wouldn’t be flying anything Extended as this was a Hyperspace event… Bugger. I hold no punches when talking about the Hyperspace format: I don’t like it. I don’t personally feel like the restrictions laid upon the format make for interesting and complex list building. However, saying that I can see how your opinion could be different based on what type of faction preference you have. As somebody who uses a lot of Aethersprite Jedi I’m obviously not a fan of not being able to fly them. So, we’re back to that traditional question of what am I going to fly?

It was suggested to me by friendly neighbourhood Toby Harris that I use the event as a pallet cleanser going into the new points and that I should fly something different to what I normally fly. So knowing good advice when I see it, that’s what I did. I started brainstorming what types of list I felt like playing and spent some time with LaunchBay creating and changing various lists. My first thought was…

List #1:
Resistance (197) – YASB Link for this list.
Ello Asty T-70 X-Wing (54)
Intergrated S-Foils
Nien Nunb T-70 X-Wing (53)
Intergrated S-Foils
Zizi Tlo RZ-2 A-Wing (46)
Proton Rockets
Lulo L’ampar RZ-2 A-Wing (44)
XX-23 Thread Tracers

What I like about this list is they’re all Initiative 5 which means in the Hyperspace format there isn’t much that will be moving before them. Also, seeing as the event is using the currently written (read: real) rules I feel like the 3 point bid will be enough to sneak me the choice of initiative. Move up, focus, fire thread tracers, get locks, do big damage. It’s nice, simple and well-rounded with the addition of the T-70’s having a decent health pool.

However, ‘There is another…’ 

List #2:
Rebel Alliance (198) – YASB Link for this list.
Leia Organa Modified YT-1300 Light Freighter (83)
Shattering Shot + Millennium Falcon
Luke Skywalker T-65 X-Wing (60)
Servomotor S-Foils
Ahsoka Tano RZ-1 A-Wing (55)
Instinctive Aim + Proton Rockets

Same as the list before this one, I like that they’re all Initiative 5. Also, I have a soft spot for the Falcon. There’s just something about it on the table I love. The new Shattering Shot upgrade is intriguing and while everybody is putting it on ETA-2’s I think Leia and Rey make better carriers for it. Being able to double mod my shots using Ahsoka’s pilot ability means I can use Leia’s force to add the focus result and really push the damage. Seeing as Trick Shot isn’t in the hyperspace format, this is probably as good as it gets for the YT-1300 chassis. I thought Luke would make for a great end piece ship but my games didn’t quite turn out that way… It’s not all doom and gloom though as Ahsoka packs a helluva punch herself being able to target lock and utilise Instinctive Aim to deliver her payload, essentially double modded. Originally, I had Agile Gunner in the space of the Millennium Falcon title so I could end phase rotate to set-up better shots with the Falcons dial. However, in the end I felt the swarm/concentrated fire protection the title added would yield better results over the course of a day essentially still being able to take an Ahsoka action on Leia to mod my shots with a Target Lock/Force if needed.

I started practising with this list at casual night and finding games on TTS where I could spare the time. The week before the event I would be away in Dorset and would have no time to practise so this week was crucial to get as much time as I could with the list so I felt comfortable flying it competitively. (Again I can’t express how useful the Discord is for finding TTS games if that’s your kind of thing. Invite Link Here). Long story short, during the course of the week I went 7/1 with my list only losing to Supernatural Kylo and Snoke Tavson which isn’t Hyperspace Legal, so I felt rather comfortable with my list. I was all but certain this was what I wanted to use.

Until…

Two days before I was due to leave for Dorset I had this pesky thought come around in my head that I should fly a TIE Swarm. It’s online success at GSP – Hoth caught my attention and it looked super fun. I purchased a couple of missing cards and base plates and got everything ready… However, having no time to practise with it I couldn’t bring myself to make the decision to swap this late in the game. But, if there is another Hyperspace event in the future it is something I want to try! Watch this space.

WWG X Wing Store Championship
My week in Dorset was over way too quickly but this is the way with time off/holidays. The day came around fast and before I knew it I was en route to Worcester wondering what the day would bring, what lists would be present but overall just looking forward to playing some good wholesome X-Wing with new people and people I’d not seen for a while. I got to the hall and had a chat with a few people, one of which being good friend Ben Saunders. I knew you’d come. The grovelling worked! Huzzah. After chatting for a little while, Lians magnificent voice boomed out cutting through the excited buzz in the room like a hot knife through butter and we fell silent for introductions and the round one draw… Let the games begin.  

Game #1 – Ashley Turner

Rebel Alliance (200)
Red Squadron Veteran T-65 X-Wing (41)
Marg Sabl Closure + Servomotor S-Foils
Red Squadron Veteran T-65 X-Wing (41)
Marg Sabl Closure + Servomotor S-Foils
Red Squadron Veteran T-65 X-Wing (41)
Marg Sabl Closure + Servomotor S-Foils
Red Squadron Veteran T-65 X-Wing (41)
Marg Sabl Closure + Servomotor S-Foils
Jake Farrell RZ-1 A-Wing (36)
Vectored Cannons + Deadeye Shot + Starbird Slash

I’ve not played Ashley before and his list was beefy. This was going to be a tough game as one wrong move could see my ships heavily damaged or destroyed completely. Ashley started his forces in a block formation in the top right corner and I opted to start mine in the corner opposite to entice his forces through the obstacles – keeping my distance, being careful not to enable his Marg Sabl Closure.

As Ashleys T-65’s came forward, I went left and outward. Then a few turns in when it looked like an engage was upon us I decided to try and get some cheeky shots with Luke Skywalker. Luke did no damage despite having a target lock and force and lost one of his own shields. Crap. 

Leia moved up, playing it safe hoping to use the rock next turn for some Shattering Shots. Ahsoka came in nabbing Luke in her range 2 bubble and gave him a barrel roll to help him avoid the oncoming T-65 onslaught. There was a T-65 in front of Luke which took 4 damage from his range 1 attack but in response Luke took 3 damage over all Ashleys incoming shots, leaving him with 1 hull. Not an awful trade off considering the shots taken. Leia also managed to put some damage through on another T-65 as I couldn’t reach the one Luke shot at. Sad face. I then tried to 4-K turn with Luke for it to be blocked and he promptly died. It was worth a shot. However, before he died he put another 4 damage into a T-65 so at least I had three of Ashleys T-65’s on half, or limping on 1 health. The next couple of turns Leia and Ahsoka tag teamed up to remove those T-65’s before they could shoot. One managed to squirrel away into a position where it wasn’t taking shots nor firing back so the force wielding duo bullied Jake Farrell who didn’t last long…

Result – Win: 159-60. 

Game #2 – Andrew Robertson

Rebel Alliance (200)
Luke Skywalker T-65 X-wing (67)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes + R4 Astromech + Servomotor S-foils
Jake Farrell RZ-1 A-wing (39)
Proton Rockets
Sabine Wren RZ-1 A-wing (40)
Proton Rockets
Ahsoka Tano RZ-1 A-wing (54)
Mag-Pulse Warheads

Another Rebel list? Interesting. Not only another rebel list but one that contains two out of three of the pilots I’m flying too! I knew that 2 point bid would come in handy… I made Andrew first player. Sorry, not sorry! Andrew started top right and I bottom left with the same plan as before – to entice his forces through the obstacles.

The engage came on turn three where multiple shots were traded at range 3; my Luke took 1 shield, Jake took 2 shields – half points. There was an integral turn to the game where I 5-K turned Ahsoka and granted Luke a Barrel Roll so his own 4-K turn fit snug behind Andrews Luke and Ahsoka who tried to block. Sadly, this wasn’t enough to kill his Luke but brought him down to 3 Hull. We take the little victories. Leia was floating round the edges and I took her too far out of the fight and would now need to spend a few turns getting her safely back in; she was my contingency plan if Luke and Ahsoka bit the dust. After forgetting about the R4 unit on Andrews Luke, it was a Luke-off and they both killed each other in a blaze of glory. Adv. Proton Torpedoes are no joke! Thankfully, his was more expensive and with Jake on half I was still up on points and now Leia was in a position to come in and help mop things up.

Ahsoka ended Jakes suffering at range 1, and Leia started on enemy Ahsoka by wiping out her shields. My Ahsoka took 2 damage from his Ahsoka in revenge for what she’d just done to Jake. Fair. As we approached the last couple of turns enemy Ahsoka blanked out to Leia again and she unceremoniously blew up leaving Sabine on her own on half points. Leia couldn’t finish her off in the final shots and that was game. The points don’t do this game justice. It was a fantastic game and one of my favourites throughout the day. Thanks Andrew!

Result – Win: 180-88

Game #3 – Simon Greenaway

Rebel Alliance (200)
Evaan Verlaine BTL-A4 Y-wing (48)
Ion Cannon Turret + XX-23 S-Thread Tracers + R4 Astromech + Conner Nets
Blue Squadron Escort T-65 X-wing (38)
Servomotor S-foils
Blue Squadron Escort T-65 X-wing (38)
Servomotor S-foils
Blue Squadron Escort T-65 X-wing (38)
Servomotor S-foils
Blue Squadron Escort T-65 X-wing (38)
Servomotor S-foils

MORE REBELS? Seriously? Okay then… Having faced ‘beef’ in the first round and managing to do well against it I was confident I knew how to handle this match-up. However, while there was an air of mystery about Ashley as I’d never played him before, Simon I have. He’s a deadly killer, don’t let those puppy dog eyes fool you. It runs in the family… Simon started his forces in the top right and I did as I did in the first game and started opposite. Guess why? Yes, you guessed it. Lets say it together. “To entice his forces through the obstacles”. I wanted to play down the left hand side of the board where there were plenty of obstacles but Simon was too clever for this and slow-rolled until he knew he could get my Falcon in a good position to focus-fire it down. I came up the top of his board edge and Simon 2-turned his forces into the board. Thankfully, there was a gas cloud blocking the formations way and he’d need to break up to get shots. While this was happening I made sure Ahsoka and Luke were coming in from behind on a flank so they could get safe shots if Simon did go for the Falcon.

Simon changed his mind and saw the flanking ships as better opportunities turning his ships in, all but one which got an expertly done block on forward moving Leia. I thought Ahsoka and Luke might look tempting… So I’d made sure they weren’t in a position to take any shots opting to play it safe myself. Thankfully, this meant that Leia had shots on the T-65s and she started going to work putting damage through on one. The turns that followed meant I was splitting fire trying to score what points I could, successfully managing to half two T-65’s only taking a few shields in return. The Y-Wing made for an obvious target but I couldn’t quite finish it off before time was called. Simon set-up a kill-box for the Falcon on the last turn of the game trying to put through enough damage to get half, only being 2 damage away! But a 4-forward and a boost meant Leia dodged every arc and that was game. Another game where the points don’t do the game justice. This was tense, tight and exciting. Simon was an excellent opponent as always. That was revenge for Plo in Bristol, Simon!

Result – Win: 62-0

Game #4 – Kester Smith

First Order (199)
Kylo Ren Tie WI Whisper Modified Interceptor (65)
Predator + Enhanced Jamming Suite
”Grudge” Tie SE Bomber (48)
Thermal Detonators + Cluster Mines
Sienar-Jaemus Test Pilot Tie SE Bomber (43)
Thermal Detonators + Cluster Mines
Sienar-Jaemus Test Pilot Tie SE Bomber (43)
Thermal Detonators + Cluster Mines

Right, c’mon then what Rebel list have you got for me Kester? Oh, finally something different! First Order. Not only First Order but the new shiny, stuff! Ooo! Kester started his ships spread out in a line across the middle of his board edge, and Kylo on the far right side. This meant there was a nice opportunity for me to go quick down the left edge and see if I can get some cheeky shots off and remove a Sienar-Jamus bomber before it does anything. Seeing as we’d broken the three game rebel train, I thought I’d break my three game defensive play style for an aggressive one. I didn’t know how effective that would be until later… Kester went forward slowly, and I went full throttle narrowly missing a turn 1 shot. However, the following turn I was in a great position to take advantage of the early positioning and the danger close SE bomber took a pounding, losing its shields and 2 hull. Kester then tried to fly in and block my ships to stop the SE bomber meeting its early demise, but I moved Ahsoka first into range 1, then self bumped leia into Ahsoka’s rear granting her range 1 shots too, denying any advantageous bumps. Sorry Kester. Luke also bumped into Leia’s rear granting him range 2 shot too… Needless to say, that bomber died and it was an early lead to me. I slooped and turned my ships giving me better positioning for the turn after and started working on Kylo. What followed was disgusting and I acknowledge the dice were completely in my favour. Kylo died in two rounds of hot, hot, hot Leia shooting and Grudge and the last SE Bomber were below half threshold thanks to Luke and Ahsoka. They dropped their payloads but some more tactical bumping meant I only took 1 damage on Leia. I finished both Grudge and the remaining Bomber in the turns that followed opting to just eat all the bombs dropped in Leia’s path as she was already at half threshold and saw the game out destroying “Grudge” with 35 minutes to spare. Ouch!

Result – Win: 200-42

Game #5 – Tim Greenaway

First Order (200)
Gideon Hask Xi-class Light Shuttle (45)
Fanatical + Sensor Buoy Suite
”Breach” Tie SE Bomber (52)
Feedback Ping + Proton Torpedoes + Conner Nets
”Scorch” Tie SE Bomber (51)
Feedback Ping + Proton Torpedoes + Conner Nets
”Nightfall” Tie WI Whisper Modified Interceptor (52)
Deadeye Shot + Fanatical + Sensor Scramblers + Enhanced Jamming Suite

I’d honestly been having so much fun the fact we were now on the last round of Swiss blew my mind. It had gone so fast! Now, it would be a battle on the top table for myself and Tim who were the only people on 4-0. Andy (WWG Shop Owner) had last minute found the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Swiss trophies which were 3D printed lightsabers appropriately coloured for their position and I was in awe. I was confident with my MOV that I would be able to get one regardless of this games outcome, but I wanted the gold one!

Tim’s list was a touch of genius. I really liked it’s concept and it was frightening for my ships to face. The Sensor Buoys were on the clouds nearest to my board edge and I placed forces with the intention to kill one to buy myself room before the main engage. However, the dice had other intentions and it shrugged off a collective attack of 9 hits! Insane… I got a little too close with Luke on the following turn and he suffered for it and was now carrying a collection of three target lock tokens. Bugger! As a reprise though, the Buoy met it’s demise. Good! My forces came around the outside right edge while Tims came down the left. Neither one of us particularly wanted an engage that wasn’t favourable. Tims forces turned up and into the board where it looked like a juicy Luke Skywalker sandwich would be, but I baited him out and got to safety instead putting the Falcon in a position where Tim would need to commit to it. Shots were traded and there were minor shield casualties on either side. Next turn, Tims SE Bombers banked left slowly, turning their focus to Leia and both took locks in an attempt to launch their Proton Torpedoes. Leia went 4-forward and boosted around, dodging one arc and narrowly failing to escape the other. So close… Either way, a single modded torp wasn’t the end of the world. It did 4 damage, and she took 4 on the shields after failing to roll a singular evade. The next turn, Luke and Ahsoka obliterated Scorch while Leia came around behind Gideon Hask hoping to start whittling away at his health pool. Then, Luke traded with “Breach” while Ahsoka and Leia gave chase to Gideon, just doing enough damage to score half threshold in the final turn of the game. Luckily for me, this meant I had won; even if Tim scored the two hits required on Leia for half. So it happens, he didn’t quite get enough and the game was seen out with a final score of…

Result – Win: 126-60.

If I hadn’t have scored half on Gideon and Tim did get half on Leia the score would have been  103-103.. Could you ask for a potentially tighter game!? Well done Tim, thank you for an amazing final swiss game of the day. You did exceptionally well and should be very proud of yourself. But you know this already!

Overall Results:

As the rewards were handed out (congrats to Adam Searle for the Razorcrest Wooden Spoon!) and we ran up the leader board I was over the moon with my performance and how I’d flown my list. It had been a mentally taxing day with five tough games. Lian called me up and I collected my golden first place lightsaber trophy! Brrzzzzhhhh! That’s me making happy lightsaber noises. What a day this has been… I’d like to thank Lian for hosting, Andy for… *Scratch record*

Wait! Now it was time for the cut. It’s not over! Let’s go, I’m sure this will be fine!

Boss Battle – Craig Reed.

Ah crap. Craig is a pillar of our community and an all round brilliant guy who pilots with master-class precision and expertise. I can all but hear the boss battle music starting… We’d faced each other once before at the last system open and he beat me on the final shot of the game! I was worried going into this game but did my best to kept my resolve. Craig was flying:

Scum (200)
Torkil Mux HWK-290 Light Freighter (58)
L3-37 + Moldy Crow
Bossk YV-66 Light Freighter (66)
Greedo + Contraband Cybernetics + Cutthroat
Genesis Red M3-A Interceptor (45)
Cutthroat + Proton Torpedoes
Sunny Bounder M3-A Interceptor (31)
Ion Torpedoes

Craig started his forces top left and I started mine adjacent bottom left, hoping to go right and drag Craig through the debris and get some effective shots. I moved slowly and Craig fast, which meant he was upon me really quick. The majority of his forces took a lock on Leia on the second turn of the game and despite moving fast to avoid shots, this was bad news. The combination of Craigs experience, Tokil Mux making one of my ships initiative 0 and the heavy damage Bossk and Torpedoes can do ruined me. 

Leia lost all of her shields in the first proper engage and claimed 2 shields from Bossk in response. The following turn the onslaught continued and Leia received the following crits:

1. Hull Breach
2. Panicked Pilot
3. Fuel Leak
4. Structural Damage

Good giddy aunt! Among the other damage received Leia was now on 3 Hull. There was a mild reprisal and Bossk picked up a Disabled Power Regulator which I thought would be useful to pick up some damage in a couple turns if I could survive. However, Leia bumped the following turn, was made initiative 0 by Mux and promptly finished off by Bossk. Ouch! Luke was not in a good position to follow up with any shots and was being chased down by a hungry for blood pack of M3-A Interceptor’s.

Ahsoka was made initiative 0 by Mux which meant I couldn’t initiative kill Genesis Red and Luke succumb to the onslaught joining his sister on the sidelines. Don’t worry, you’ll become a force ghost. As the clock ticked down I was extremely behind on points. Bossk finally got ion’d and Ahsoka launched her Proton Rocket payload achieving half on Bossk. That means poor little Fulcum was on her own against the world. I tried my best to keep her from destruction and still get shots but it was desperate. I managed to score half on Mux and time was called…

Result – Loss: 171-62.

Good game Craig, very well deserved. I had an absolute blast and congratulations for going on to win the day as a whole. I can’t wait for our next game.

Conclusion:

What a day. What a result! Needless to say I’m very happy to have topped swiss with a result of 5/0 and despite crashing out of the cut, I couldn’t be happier. The list performed really well and there’s really not much I would change about it. If it was Extended, I’d use Jyn Erso instead of the Millennium Falcon title as it adds more value to my other ships, especially Luke. But for Hyperspace, I don’t think it gets much better than this. Shattering Shot was less useful during the event than it was in practise but I think that was due to what I was facing. Heavy beefy lists where I need to be careful but quick means I can’t just sit where I want and get perfect shots. Despite that, it’s totally worth the 3 points.

Thank you to everybody that made the day great. To all my opponents, everybody who turned up, Andy of WWG and a big special thank you to Lian Smith and Law for running a smooth, fun day. Always a pleasure.

My next event is Board in Brum (Extended) on the 13^th November. I’m hoping to make a return with a new and improved Jedi list which has been going decently in practise. However, following the event at Worcester I did buy myself a Ghost which I’ve wanted for some time and have enjoyed flying that a couple of times… Who knows. But until then my fellow Junkies…

Peace. o/

‘Ministravaganza’, Points & Excelsior! Bristol – Scene 1, Take 2.

Hello my fellow junkies. First and foremost I just want to take a moment and say a massive thank you to each and every one of you for reading my blog. The positive feedback and encouragement I’ve received so far has been truly mind-blowing and I’m incredibly grateful. You could say…

Before we jump into this weeks tournament I wanted to take some time to discuss the recent announcements from AMG. AMG had their ‘Ministravaganza’ event on 11/09/2021 and the X-Wing content for this event wasn’t hard to miss as there was only one panel at 23:00pm GMT on the first day. There was a lot on my mind in the build up to this event and I wanted to put those thoughts on paper before the announcements. Therefore, the following will be split in three parts.

1. Before the stream.
2. After the stream.
3. Excelsior! Bat Reps.

Before the Stream – 07/09/2021
‘This is the Way.’

I’m going to make one big fan girl noise, get it out of my system, and then we’ll talk constructively. Sound like a good plan? Feel free to join me and I’ll count us in. Okay. 3, 2, 1… EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! The Razor Crest!

With the amount of large ships Scum currently have I really hope this is on a medium base but if it ends up on a large base like the Jumpmaster 5000, then so be it. I’ll be buying one regardless. I don’t have a large Scum & Villainy collection and don’t really have plans to start playing the faction competitively but this will be great for a ‘mix it up’ type thing on casual nights. As with most of us, the Mandalorian has single handedly brought back excitement for modern day Star Wars. Whether you liked the sequel films or not, I haven’t met anybody yet that hasn’t enjoyed this series more. And if you do enjoy the sequels more than The Mandalorian I have a question and a request:

a. What’s wrong with you?

And…

b. Get out.

I think the Razor Crest will have: 3 primary, 1 agility, 8 hull and 2 shields. I think seeing as the ship is always damaged in the show and being pushed to it’s limit a good thematic ship/title ability would be some sort of benefit like a) red moves become white when you’re damaged or b) you can perform actions while critically damaged and stressed. I don’t know, but I’m excited! I recently saw a super cool fan made version of the ship where Din Djarin had condition cards like Zam Wesell that modify attack and defence dice called Bring You In Warm and Bring You In Cold. It was seriously cool, you should check it out here!

Points Changes.

Points can be a funny thing. There’s a few changes FFG made when they were in charge that I didn’t like and felt were handled poorly. However, credit where credit is due they did some things I liked too. First and foremost, I don’t believe removing upgrade slots from ships is a good answer to any power related question. Removing the illicit slot from the Rebel Falcon was a bad idea. Removing the crew slot from Boba Fett was a bad idea. I personally believe this response locks out the design space surrounding a chassis/pilot and when new cards are introduced to the game to keep things fresh it automatically excludes certain ships/pilots from the pool and that’s bad for game health and fun as a whole. The dynamic pricing system of cards like Delta 7B, Supernatural Reflexes, R2 Astromech, etc is a really good idea which I’d like to see more of – it doesn’t always need to be a scaling system. With this in mind wouldn’t you rather have seen ‘Maul’ (Scum Crew) rise in cost specifically for Boba Fett than remove Boba Fett’s ability to equip any crew card altogether? It’s just overkill, removes fun and wastes design space. They got so close to getting this right with a scaling points increase on Inertial Dampners following Jack Mooney’s System Open success with Han & Jake, only to then remove the illicit slot from the Rebel Falcon as well anyway… Why? So, because Inertial Dampners had a strong combo, I can now no longer use Rigged Cargo Chute or new cards like False Transponder Codes on the Rebel Falcon? That’s just stupid. To avoid moaning too much (because there’s more to come…) I’ll just say my one wish for AMG’s upcoming price changes would simply be that power is reflected in points, not the removal of slots from ships. Aside from all I’ve mentioned it also messes with faction identity.

So what should change?

I think we all agree that False Transponder Codes and Zam Wesell should increase in cost? False Transponder Codes is currently at a pricing level where it’s an auto-include and you don’t have to give its inclusion much thought. It’s power is obvious and there’s no downside to taking it if you have the points available. Increasing it to 4 points means it’s more of a consideration and when taken on multiple ships it will get pricey.

Zam Wesell (Crew) is insane for the cost. Yes, she’s currently predictable in the sense the user will cycle between charge & lock, charge & lock, bonus attack, but all of that for 4 points makes me sick. Rose Tico for the Resistance gives the user a Target Lock at the cost of a red die. Zam does this without a downside and then some for less. I’d like to see her at 8-10 points and why not throw in some Resistance love and lower Rose Tico a bit? Maybe 6-7? Is it too obvious I’m trying to cram more upgrades into my Fat Rey list?

Zam Wesell (Pilot) is 10 points cheaper than Boba Fett (Scum), is at the same Initiative 5, has a better pilot ability and access to force crew… I’m somehow supposed to be okay with this? We get it, new products need to sell well and I think they’re rubbing it right in our faces with “Zam We Sell”. Because sell she did. Realistically, with how restrictive it feels building around Boba, I think they will get the balance they seek with Zam at 86. Personally, I also think Boba should come down to 78/80. I don’t like seeing meta staples nerfed into the ground, I think AMG should be perfectly capable of finding a perfect balance that Thanos himself would be proud to behold. I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting to see good varied lists in a room at tournaments I attend. This is completely dependent on AMG’s ability to manage the game and frankly I don’t trust them not to turn X-Wing into a Star Wars version of Marvel: Crisis Protocol. But, I hope they prove me wrong and I’ll happily eat my words should that happen.

After the Stream – 10/09/2021
‘Is This the Way?’

Deep breathes, okay. In, 1, 2, 3. Out, 1, 2, 3. It’s been less than 24 hours since AMG’s  ‘Ministravaganza’ X-Wing ‘This is the Way’ panel. I honestly don’t know how to address the information we were given. I really don’t. Mainly, because they didn’t give us enough information about the controversial topics they discussed to warrant me having an opinion this early. I’ll try anyway…

Let’s start with something we can all agree on and things that make us happy. The Razor Crest looks awesome and while I didn’t get my wish of condition cards on Din, the ship as a whole looks well rounded and a decent addition to the Scum arsenal. Not quite sure how I feel about ‘Mandalorian Super Commandos’ jumping out of ships to shoot and punch others but hey if you like that sort of thing, hooray! I’m more excited to see the 3D printed goodness people will conjure up to represent this upgrade on the table as we’ll inevitably only get a cardboard ‘Remote’ token.

I wish I could stay on the topics that make us happy but for me there really wasn’t any outside of the Mandalorian content. That said, I’m conflicted because I really don’t want to be negative. I started writing about X-Wing to spread joy discussing my adventures and sharing my thoughts surrounding the game we all love. Unlike some people on the internet, the last thing I’m about to do is throw my toys out the pram. I think AMG were really, really silly to throw the community numerous half-baked, controversial ideas the way they did without also taking the time to expand and develop their gameplay alternatives. Therefore, until we have more information, here are some hot takes from me:

Bidding – If there wasn’t enough time during the panel to discuss the removal of ‘bidding’ and the inception of it’s gameplay replacement then it shouldn’t have been mentioned at all. At this moment in time I’ll remain cautiously optimistic that any changes they make will be for the betterment of the game and even if I don’t agree I get used to it. I’ve always liked using information upgrades like ‘Sense’ so I can’t see moving first against other aces being a big issue, nor a new experience for me. Especially when my favourite ships and pilots can reposition before they move… Let’s see how it goes…

Ban List – Isn’t Hyperspace basically a ban list already? Again, more information about the inception of this idea would have been great but alas it wasn’t to be. Personally, I’d like to see the Hyperspace and Extended formats abolished and one singular format replace them with everything available and maybe then a ban list wouldn’t be so hard to imagine. A bit like how it’s done for Yu-Gi-Oh and other popular card games. However, if we keep both formats this just seems like unnecessary bloat and extra time/work for AMG to balance and get right.

Scenario Play – Yeah, Possibly? Star Wars has a great, rich story but I’m not sure how that will translate onto the board? Is this really a fresh idea? People have been doing this kind of thing on their kitchen tables for years and they’re still playing the game without traveling so there has to be something in it. I think the game will need something like this in order to stay fresh and exciting. The standard dogfight will only remain interesting for so long.

Again, we don’t have all the information so lets nervously wait and see what unfolds in the coming weeks. Whether you’re happy about the changes or disappointed and angry treat each other kindly and let’s try not to argue… Not too much at least.

Right, onto the fun stuff…

Excelsior! Bristol – Scene 1, Act 2. – 11/09/2021

This weekend I once again ventured south to Bristol where Richard Greenaway was holding another 14 person Extended event at Excelsior! Unlike the five round Store Champs from August, this was going to be a four round event. In an unusual turn of events there was not a doubt in my mind over what list I was taking to this event. The cloud of doubt has been lifted and I am once again unburned by the unrelenting self-questioning and second guessing! With my recent success at Escape Games I wanted to take the exact same list with me to Bristol. I’m sorry if that doesn’t spark excitement I just love this list so much. This was going to be my last event until the points changes officially drop so I was looking forward to a nice chilled day of X-Wing among friends.

Round 1 – Guy

Lets get this show on the road. First game of the day and I’m playing somebody whom I know but don’t think I’ve ever had the good fortune of playing. My game with Guy helped kick off the day with a chilled out, fun, lots of laughs, no-holds-barred type of game with some insane dice rolling from both of us. Guy was flying Advanced Sensors Guri, Old Teroch and a Skull Squadron Fang Fighter. Unfortunately for Guy, I had a deeper bid and he would be moving all of his ships first giving me comfortable space to reposition. ThIs iS a PrOblEm. ReMoVE bIdDiNG. During set-up I noticed Old Teroch was in a position I felt I could capitalise on early as he was separated from his squad mates. I tried to keep my ships slow and unpredictable with numerous lanes they could benefit from as Guy brought his forces in quickly. Old Teroch came in on a 5-forward while Guri took the flank. This was my opportunity to strike. Anakin side-stepped in the systems phase and found himself at range-1, bullseye of Old Teroch while Obi-Wan was sitting comfortably at range-2 of Guri and Old Teroch with 2 force and 2 evade tokens thanks to Plo Koon and C1-10P. Perfect! Most importantly the range-2 part was important because it meant Guri didn’t get a focus token and Old Teroch couldn’t strip my green tokens! Double perfect! Anakin shot first, throwing ‘Damaged Engine’ and ‘Structural Damage’ criticals into the now fearful Old Teroch. Obi-Wan followed up with a whiff of a shot but still managing to put through 1-damage. Now only Plo remained and as he was at range-3 with a deplete token (thanks to Patience) I didn’t fancy my chances of removing Old Teroch from the board, but it was worth a try! I rolled 1 hit, not bad there’s hope… Guy whiffed – 3 blanks. Ouch! Goodbye Old Teroch, we hardly knew you. 

There were return shots on Obi but average rolls and stacked tokens saw him through to safety. Guri was my next target but I wanted to play it safe so brought Anakin out of the fight to bring back around while Plo and Obi tried their best to remain cautious and at a safe distance of the enemy ships. Guri took some more fire from Plo for a couple of turns and Guys dice betrayed him a second and a third time giving me half on Guri. As the game started to come to a close, it started to take some weird turns which I don’t think Guy will mind me saying came out in my favour. Guri made good use of Advanced Sensors to stop Anakin from getting shots from behind and Obi-Wan found himself at range-1 of the Fearless Fang Fighter. I could have barrel rolled or boosted out of arc, but I was getting greedy so opted to stay in the arc and token up with an evade. When Guy rolled 3 hits and 1 crit I knew this was a mistake… Oh, 4 nattie evades. Nevermind… Sorry Guy! The last couple turns saw bad reds and reasonable greens which meant I was unable to finish off a 1 Hull Guri. Last round was called and that was that. A fantastic game with lots of laughs and Guy was a great sport despite some whiffy dice.

Result: Win 76-0

Round 2 – Toby

Toby and I haven’t played for some time despite both attending the same casual night at Worcester Wargames every week. Things just haven’t seemed to line-up and we haven’t played for months (maybe years thanks to Covid?) Toby is one of the strongest, most consistent players I know and this was going to be a difficult game. Toby was flying two ARC’s, Anakin and Ric in their Naboo N1 Star Fighters. (List here.) My opening plan was to come up the side of the board fast and aggressive and start pummelling the side of an ARC-170’s early but changed my mind and decided to be cautious along my board edge. Plan B was opting to try and roll and boost out of firing arcs when the time came. This was my first mistake. The ARC-170’s came in gingerly casting a wide net and the N1’s came in fast and then slow. Toby played brilliantly and got the engage he played for. Obi was shot and had to spend all of his force to not take damage from a single shot. Not good! Only managing to do one lucky damage to Ric in return, I now needed to disengage from the fight as I was in the corner of the board. The temptation to play risky and systems phase boost to set up some early 4k-turns was high but I decided against it as I didn’t want to risk bumping into the already unpredictable N1’s. Turns out, this would have been the perfect play, but it was too late as I’d committed to the disengage. Hindsight is brilliant, isn’t it? However, Plo wasn’t in a position to disengage with his Jedi friends and had to play it as safe as he could. The plan was to use him to start putting out some damage… That was the plan anyway… Plo managed to dodge the firing arcs of N1 Anakin and an ARC-170 while lining up a nice range-1, CLT bullseye on Ric. My red dice said no, followed by my green dice and just like that Plo was on 1 Hull. Oof, ouch, owie my bones. The following turns saw Anakin lose his stealth device while trading shots with the Wolfpack ARC-170 as I scrambled in desperation to score some points. Then things went from bad to worse as Ric put a solitary hit through onto Plo and despite having force and 2 green dice (due to Outmanoeuvre), Plo blanked out and died.

Toby apologetically threw more natties into Anakin who like Plo also refused to roll any paint, and died. So now it was Obi against the world and the Wolfpack ARC-170 had a measly 1 Hull left which I was determined to claim. Woefully, for 2-3 turns my red dice refused to play ball throwing up a combination of blanks and eye results I didn’t have the capability of modding. This meant the Wolfpack ARC-170 clung to the board for dear life while the rest of Toby’s forces dealt with Obi whose stealth device failed to prevent the damage required and it was disengaged before a finishing blow was struck by the other ARC-170 who rolled crit, hit, hit out of hand! It seems all my ships were playing copycat as they had all died in similar fashion. To add insult to injury, the Wolfpack ARC-170 was still alive… Mission failed, we’ll get ‘em next time. Great game Toby, a well deserved victory. Hopefully we can get a rematch in soon!

Result: Loss 200-23.

Round 3 – Richard

Richard Greenaway has more titles than Daenerys Targaryen so to keep things simple we’ll just stick with ‘Rich’. Me and Rich haven’t played against each other since a pre-covid event at Firestorm Games in Swindon where we were both flying Resistance. Rich was still on the Resistance hype-train today and was flying Nimi Chireen, Finn, Cova and Nodin! (List Here.) This game was something I was looking forward to as all games with the Daddy of Vagabond Squadron are brilliant. Rich started his forces in the top right corner and split Nimi and Finn away to come down the board in an attempt to pincer my ships from both sides.

For some reason Obi found himself in the flanking position Anakin should have been in but it was too late for any changes and I rolled with it. I knew Nimi in the T-70 would give me the most cause for concern so I went for her first. Some keen knife-fighting from Plo and some Autoblaster flanking from Anakin saw Nimi off the board after 3 rounds of shooting. While this was happening Obi-Wan was facing off against the space sofa’s. A bump into Nodin meant Obi had shots into Cova without taking any shots in return. Lets just pretend for a moment my brain knew what it was doing at the start of the game because Obi-Wan taking on the space sofa’s now meant I had ‘Sense’ to confirm my predictions of when they were stopping or reversing which was a god-send when planning my system phase pre-positions. Another bump with Obi meant he was taking shots from the Big Deal himself, Finn. Finn rolled hit, hit and then strained himself to add a focus result which he then turned into another hit with the respective focus token! Nasty! As with my last game, Obi’s stealth device failed to prevent the damage required and he was halved in a single blow. To add to my misery I checked my phone at this point to see Spurs had lost their Premiership game to Crystal Palace 3-0. As Big Deal had already been damaged at this point and was sitting on 1 Hull, Plo sought compensation for Obi-Wan (and Spurs) and fired some hot reds of his own removing Finn from the table. A couple more turns of skirting around the Resistance Transports saw them take heavy damage and Rich called the game to a stop thus ending a great game. The space sofa’s were scary as Rich made excellent use of all of his triggers and toys that made them a force to be reckoned with. Although after seeing them in The Last Jedi I’m sure Rich was just glad his ships didn’t run out of fuel…

Result: Win 200-31 

Round 4 – Alan.

And last but certainly not least I was going into round four against Alan. I was currently on 2-1 and keen to bag myself another win. Alan had two Y-Wings, Talonbane Cobra and Asajj Ventress. Alan started his forces spread out along his board edge so I set-up my Jedi facing his Y-Wings. I figured if I could get the Y-Wings off the board early, I wouldn’t have to worry about their Thermal Det payloads and then I could focus on Asajj. On turn 1, I systems phase boosted Anakin and Obi-Wan forwards and did a 5-forward with all three Jedi right into the face of a lone Y-Wing who was now presumably shocked and crapping his pants. I threw 7 red dice into the Y-Wing during the turn and only managed to take his two shields… Hmm. Not great, not terribly awful either. Looking on the bright side though I was in a great position to follow up next turn.

The Y-Wings came forward again while Asajj and Talonbane 2-turned to rush to the aide of their friends. I now had all three Jedi pointing at the Y-Wing at range-1. That’s 11 red dice into one target with mods. Oh boy, here I go killing again. Just take one moment dear reader and ask yourself whether you think the Republics finest could destroy a singular six health Y-Wing… Yes? No? Are you ready? If you said yes, you’d be wrong. If you said no, you’re spot on. Have a cookie! Despite my best efforts I was only able to put through 5 damage and the 6 hulled Y-Wing survived. Luckily for me Alan’s dice weren’t kind to him either and I didn’t take any damage in return. This did however mean I was going to have to contend with bombs next turn which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. As predicted, Alan dropped bombs and I skirted around them taking no damage. Obi-Wan was the only Jedi I left with shots on the crippled Y-Wing thinking he’d be enough to finish it off… Risky, with how the previous turns had gone, I know! Thankfully, it worked and Obi-Wan blew the Y-Wing to bits with 3 hits while Anakin and Plo turned their attentions to Asajj who had just put herself on an asteroid and couldn’t shoot. The following three turns saw the loss of the second Y-Wing and the Jedi turned to deal with Asajj but due to slow dice results there was only ten minutes of the game left. The dice didn’t bounce back and despite my best efforts I was unable to score any more points and couldn’t even half Asajj! How!? Dice can be so cruel…

Result: Win 76-0

Conclusion.

Another well run event by Richard Greenaway and Excelsior! Big thanks to you all again for another brilliant day of X-Wing. Excelsior is quickly becoming one of my favourite venues to play X-Wing. If you get a chance, definitely make room in your diary to attend an upcoming event.

Big congratulations to Toby who managed to fly 4-0 to take the #1 spot. Very well flown! I’m happy with my 3-1 result and took #3 just behind Fix Bornes at #2, who had a very successful and destructive day with Darth Vader and friends scoring a full 200 points in three  out of four games! You don’t always have to score 200 Fix! Give us a chance at least.

This will be the last time I fly my Jedi list competitively as the upcoming points changes and new releases will likely change it. How drastically it will change remains to be seen at this moment in time but I’m excited to add Malice to Anakin and fill out the remaining ships with upgrades to what could be a full 200 point list with the removal of bidding.

But until then, stay safe and I’ll see you soon.

Peace. o/

Escape Games, Revenge of the Squid – 04/09/2021

Has it seriously been two weeks since my last X-Wing event? Already? How? Is it just me, or are the days and weeks flying by at the moment? Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. It’ll be Christmas before we know it! Dammit.

So another work week down and the weekend has arrived and with it another exciting day of X-Wing. This Saturday 04^th September I attended an Extended 4-round, swiss only event at ‘Escape Games’ in Coventry with fellow Vagabond Andy Cameron. I’ve not been to this venue before and seeing as it’s only an hour away from me it would be rude not to indulge!

This event popped up a little over a week ago on my Facebook News Feed courtesy of Gary Bailey who shared it to one of the X-Wing groups. Thanks Gary! Normally prize support isn’t a contending factor for me when attending events but Escape Games had me fan-girling hard. They have a Space Squid- Ahem. I mean, they have a Trident Class Assault Ship on offer for first place! I don’t play Epic. I’ve never played Epic. But this thing is majestic. Seriously, just look at it! Who wouldn’t want it?! So, sweating slightly and with space squid swag on my mind I excitedly opened LaunchBay and asked myself the impossible question we all ask ourselves before every event… ‘What am I going to fly?’

Recently, in a blog post by Dylan Jones he used a diary-style type build up to an event and I loved it. Therefore, I’m stealing it. Sorry Dylan. Thanks for not suing me. Unless you have sued me in which case I’ll see you in court. Legal proceedings aside, let’s get stuck in.

Days Remaining: 12
Panic Level: 2%

Despite my less than ideal finish at Excelsior two weeks ago my Jedi have still been my go-to ships during casual play. The list being:

Galactic Republic (194) – YASB Link for this list.
Anakin Skywalker Eta-2 Actis (63)
Marksmanship + Autoblasters + R7-A7
Obi-Wan Kenobi Delta-7 Aethersprite (58)
Sense + Calibrated Laser Targeting
Plo Koon Delta-7 Aethersprite (73)
R2 Astromech + Delta-7B

The games I lost at Excelsior were super close and I know I can do more on the table to pinch a win. Yet, I was starting to think Plo Koon felt… Out of place? Just, something wasn’t fitting correctly. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first but it felt like a square peg in a circular hole. On paper and in theory Plo looks great; three dice primary, three hull, three shields, great dial and two force. What’s not to like? However, I’m noticing one big recurring problem and that’s the fact he’s 73 points and my opponents seem to be going for him first as he’s essentially a big points piñata. This is bad for me as he’s my ‘big gun’ and not having him consistently on target is detrimental to the lists success. So, with this thought provoking exercise completed and everything taken into consideration… I took the exact same list and put it on the table against my friend, Andy Cameron. Yep, that’s right; I changed nothing. I just had to be sure before I started tinkering!

The game was a win for me against Leia, Luke Skywalker and Jan Orys. I felt I played the game well but my main take away after putting Plo under a microscope was that I was right. He needed changing. So this then presented another question… How do I turn Plo into a circular peg that fits my circular hole? That sounded weird…

Days Remaining: 9
Panic Level: 23%

After a couple of days pondering my pesky Plo problem I came to some conclusions. Obi-Wan needed changing. What? Wait, I can explain. Ultimately, this is something I’ve been considering for a while and I’ve decided to make the jump now. With the teasers for the upcoming cards and ships a particular upgrade caught my eye – ‘Malice’. (TL;DR – When performing an attack, use 1 force to convert 1 Eye or 1 Hit into 1 Crit. If you deal a Crit to the defender and it’s a pilot crit, regen 2 Force). I am beyond excited to put this on the table and is something I just have to put on Anakin. The easiest way to make the points available for this upgrade (when it is released) is to change Delta-7 Obi to Eta-2 Obi; with CLT no longer an option I’ve saved 4 points. Also, I just prefer Eta-2 Obi’s ability in this list and I wasn’t getting much, if any, use from the Delta-7 Obi ability. Back to Plo; Andy had suggested a few days previous that I remove the Delta 7B from Plo and equip Stealth Devices to my Eta-2’s. Andy also thought that Obi-Wan should have Autoblasters too… Mhm. Okay, let’s give Plo the CLT and drop that horrendously priced Delta-7B upgrade and R2 Astromech. That frees up big points to put Stealth Device onto my other two ships. Plo has now become more of a support battery and when he’s not on target it’s not costing me heavily in points and firepower. But, how can I further embolden this role within him? I eventually came to the conclusion that Patience and C1-10P would be best. I could use C1-10P to take Evades which paves the way to erratic free Jams. Mmm, Jams. Patience would also be great as it allows me to recover force for defence, not leaving Plo bare if I have to send a token to a friendly ship. So this is what we have:

Galactic Republic (192) – YASB Link for this list.
Anakin Skywalker Eta-2 Actis (71)
Marksmanship + Autoblasters + R7-A7 + Stealth Device
Obi-Wan Kenobi Eta-2 Actis (62)
Sense + Stealth Device
Plo Koon Delta-7 Aethersprite (59)
Patience + Calibrated Laser Targeting + C1-10P

Days Remaining: 4
Panic Level: 63%

Lots of questions were now floating around my brain. Were these changes right? Maybe? Is this an improvement? Possibly? Was I crazy? Definitely. There was only one way to find out and that’s reps, reps and more reps. Today I have three games planned and in the interest of keeping this blog post shorter than it’s currently turning out to be, I’ll spare you the casual bat reps and just say my questions were answered with three comfortable wins and I had confirmed to myself this was the list I would be taking to Coventry. And with 4 days to go! That has to be a record?

Days Remaining: 1
Panic Level: 100%

What’s that? Who’s there? Oh, it’s the meta-devil on my shoulder again… ‘It’s not going to work, just take Jango & Zam’. No! Shoo! Begone! I found myself at something of a loose end this morning so decided to see if I could arrange a game using the TTS X-Wing Discord (Click here to join). User ‘Arex’ messaged me and within minutes we were starting a game! Very nice, great success. Unfortunately for Arex his dice would have yielded better results if they hadn’t loaded in. His Kylo, Rush and Recoil list was reduced to tatters and I mercilessly finished off Kylo with 10 minutes remaining resulting in a 200-0 win. Ouch. This result cemented this list for me. I’m ready. Here I come Escape Games!

Tournament Day.

With a 10:00am-11:00am registration I comfortably awoke at 08:30am and yes, this time I’d made sure the sat nav wasn’t going to drastically over estimate the journey. The drive was comfortable, there were no problems and I certainly didn’t take the wrong turn twice adding 30 minutes to my journey. I totally did. Shut up. There was convenient parking right behind the venue and when I wandered into the shop I saw some familiar friendly faces, but as a whole I didn’t know most of the people here. I set up everything I would need for the day and nervously awaited first pairings.

Round 1 – Jaime

If there’s one thing that scares me, it’s lots of ships with a high primary fire. Especially when those ships are as efficient as the Resistance T-70 X-Wing. Unlucky for me, Jaime had four of them with BB Astromechs supported by Rose Tico & C3-PO in a pod.  He deployed all of his ships in the top right corner and I rather weirdly set up mine opposite aiming for a nice big field of gas clouds.

Being quite reserved I carefully brought my ships towards the safety of the clouds but kept Anakin back to see where the T-70’s would go. They were coming right at me as it happens and I quickly decided that Anakin wanted nothing to with anything that was coming his way and booked it out of there pronto! As Anakin was making his grand escape, Obi and Plo made their way around the gas trying to flank the T-70’s which had now 2-turned in to face the middle of the board. Thankfully there were a handful of gas clouds between me and them and while a few shots were aimed at my Jedi, no damage was sustained. Next turn Obi and Plo found the flank they were searching for and in two rounds of shooting removed Rose Tico from the board while Anakin turned around to get a piece of the action. The T-70’s seemed to take this personally for some reason and did a mixture of 4K’s and 3-Talons in an attempt to avenge their fallen companion. What then developed was numerous rounds of the Jedi denying the T-70’s shooting opportunities while attempting to do some damage in return. Two of the T-70’s were brought within 1 damage of half threshold but as time on the round was sneaking up to us, I didn’t want to risk losing more points than what they were worth in return and decided to run away- I mean ‘tactically retreat’. One heroic T-70 had the last shot of the game on Anakin in a desperate last attempt of scoring some points but the young Jedi had other plans. While not a high scoring game, this was a head scratcher and the points don’t do it justice.  

Result: Win 31-0

Round 2 – Andy

Ah, yes. Would it even be an event if you didn’t play somebody you knew? I’m not afraid to say that this match-up scared me. Not only because Andy is an exceptional player and helped develop my list but also because he was flying triple large base Scum and this meta bogeyman list made me regret not wearing brown pants.

To the best of my memory, Andy was flying:

Scum and Villainy (200) – YASB Link for this list.
Lando Calrissian Customized YT-1300 Light Freighter (53)
Jabba the Hutt + False Transponder Codes + Lando’s Millennium Falcon
Asajj Ventress Lancer-class Pursuit Craft (78)
Foresight + False Transponder Codes + Contraband Cybernetics + Shadow Caster
Bossk YV-666 Light Freighter (69)
Unkar Plutt + Zam Wesell + False Transponder Codes + Greedo

Andy started his ships in the top left corner of the board and I started mine opposite in the bottom corner in something of a conga line. Andy jokingly suggested that we should go and have a drink for an hour and then come back and play out the last fifteen minutes because that’s how cagey I was going to play and I couldn’t help but laugh. For the Space Squid! But that wouldn’t make for interesting reading, would it? Would it? Asajj came into the board on a 2-turn, Bossk bumped into her rear barely moving and Lando did a fancy 4k along Andy’s board edge. Also playing cagey, I 2-banked all of my ships and barrel-rolled towards my own board edge. Asajj then came forward scarily fast and so did Bossk with Lando closely behind. Refusing to commit just yet, I did the same as the turn prior and 2-banked and barrel-rolled towards my own board edge. This third turn would be integral to the games outcome. By how my ships were sitting, it looked as though I would 5-forward to the safety of the gas cloud, but I didn’t… Andy, predicting a 5-forward 3-turned Asajj in to cover that space. Bossk bumped into her rear to cover a wide area and utilised Unkarr Plutt to take a lock on Anakin, jamming him in the process with False Transponder Codes. The Jedi all 1-turned in to the left, Anakin cleared the jam token and the others repositioned themselves out of Asajj’s front arc. Phew.

I then had a difficult decision with Plo, I could leave him where he was and have a range 2, bullseye shot on Bossk, or barrel roll towards Anakin and give him the C1-10P Evade token at the start of the engagement phase. The idea of Anakin being tokenless at range 2 scared me, despite the Stealth Device, so I opted to do this to play it safe. I took the shields from Bossk with Obi but this came at the cost of half on Plo Koon in response. In my eagerness to cover Anakin, I didn’t expect him to be ignored completely this turn (but why shoot a 4 green dice, token’d up Anakin when you can shoot a naked Plo!?) The following turn, Bossk bumped into Asajj not moving, again. Lando tactically bumped into the back of Bossk and Asajj did a contraband cybernetics 5k-turn. Obi positioned himself at range 2 of Bossk eager to follow up with more shots and Anakin came around to flank hoping to get some Auto Blaster shots, only to be narrowly out of range 2. With some nice dice, I manage to whittle Bossk down further without giving up any more points. Phew again. The following turn, Lando bumped into Bossk, staying where he was and the limping Bossk barely moved again after attempting a 3-turn out of the fray, only to have been blocked by a systems phase boost from Obi-Wan. Asajj came 4-forward to clear her stress. Due to the bump with Bossk, I now had him at range 1, bullseye with Anakins Auto Blasters… With the auto-crits from Ani (and a little help from Greedo) this meant I had finished off Bossk and he was removed  from the table! My force on all three ships had taken heavy punishment over the last few turns and was dangerously low so I needed to disengage here and brought Anakin and Obi-Wan out of the fight flying 5-forwards away from the carnage that had just ensued. Due to where Plo was, he’d need to play it careful as Asajj was chasing him down in the boards corner and there was no escape route for him. During the last 15 minutes of the game I decided a re-engage wasn’t worth the risk and tried to keep my distance. I was winning on points and I didn’t want to throw that away. So naturally, I put Anakin on a debris cloud in a moment of panic. Thankfully, I didn’t roll a crit but I was now stressed and Andy had put Lando in an excellent position to capitalise on my mistake. Lando threw 3 hits and 2 converted into damage at range 2 as I rolled 3 blanks and 1 evade. That was now half on Anakin. Also, this removed my Stealth Device. Embarrassingly, Anakin now had to take the debris cloud again due to how I’d mucked this up. I could feel the game slipping through my fingers and a quick internal points check showed the game to now only be narrowly in my favour 69-66. I decided it was best to go for as many points as I could in the final turn of the game and move Obi safely in front of Lando (who’s arc was side-to-side). Keeping the stress, Anakin 3-turned to create as much distance as he could from Lando. Obi halved Lando and now the final nail-biting shot of the game would be from Lando into Anakin. This shot would determine the game… Andy rolls 3 hits with his modifications. I now need to roll 3 out of 4 paint with only my force to help me to win the game… 3 natural evades and 1 blank sees the game out and I breathe a final sigh of relief. What an intensely fun game. Big thanks to my dice for coming through for me in those final moments.  

Result: Win 96-66.

Lunch:

What a morning! I’d worked up a hunger and this hunger could only be satisfied by a Subway. Meatless Meatballs on Italian bread if you’re wondering. Me and Andy walked over to Subway and deliberated over our game, our lists and how different things could be right now if so many little details had been different. With only 30 minutes for lunch and our game running over slightly we didn’t have long before we needed to hastily head back for what would be an intense round 3…

Round 3: Ewart

There’s a few things I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing on the board yet and HMP Droids are in that category. Unsure of how they worked I put them on the virtual-board in Fly Casual a couple of weeks ago in a bid to understand how they move and function. This was to be a quick lesson as three of my HMP Droids sideslipped off the board. Ah, so that’s how that works… Anyway, this was to be the only preparation I had going against Ewart who was the only other player in the room currently on 2-0 and flying:

Separatist Alliance (199) – YASB Link for this list.
Zam Wesell Firespray-Class Patrol Craft (82)
General Grievous + Thermal Detonators
DGS-047 HMP Droid Gunship (43)
Repulsorlift Stabalizers
Baktoid Drone HMP Droid Gunship (43)
Repulsorlift Stabalizers
Baktoid Drone HMP Droid Gunship (43)
Repulsorlift Stabalizers

Ewart opted to start his forces together in the top left and I put mine in the middle pointing at different angles. Hilariously, I was so shell-shocked from my first two games, and as I needed all the extra brain power I could muster against the HMP’s and Zam, I completely forgot to take photos after deployment for what appears to be the following 50-60 minutes that followed. Sorry! Ewart brought his droid forces straight down to my board edge. I barrel rolled Anakin into an early position to take a shot on Zam, only to change my mind by not shooting as I didn’t want to give Zam a free target lock from You Should Thank Me. Much to my surprise, I’d mind-gamed myself as Ewart had put down You’d Better Mean Business and Zam recovered two energy giving her four. Following this, my Jedi used the gas clouds in the middle to jostle for a good engagement angle as the HMP-Droids split away from Zam. Plo and Obi got some decent shots on target but Plo took a beating in return. I completely forgot about the HMP Droids ‘Networked Calculations’ and Plo was lucky to come out of this with his life. I was grateful for the 1 remaining Hull he had. Sadly, I wasn’t grateful for long as two HMP Droids finished off Plo the following turn after Anakin and Obi-Wan had dispatched the third. With a self-bump into Obi, Anakin managed to finish off a second HMP Droid the following turn with more Auto Blaster crits and Zam returned to the fight, narrowly missing out on a shot at range 3.

With just ten minutes left it was time for one of those famous tactical retreats again. However, as I ran down the clock hiding behind clouds the last turn of the game was upon us and I’d run out of clouds to hide behind. Anakin shot the final HMP Droid and whittled it down to half. Zam shot Obi at range 1 and he lost 1 hull and his stealth device. Then, completely forgetting Zam can bonus attack, Obi shot her back at range 1. 1 shield on Zam was not an effective trade for what could follow… My heart sank. You’d Better Mean Business. Nooooooo!! Ewart rolled another range 1 attack into Obi and I was once again at the mercy of a last turn shot that could determine the game. However, I was bailed out by a lack of modifications for Ewarts reds and an influx of greens my end. Thankfully, due to points this end-game position wasn’t as close as I had first thought in the moment. But, a blank out could have been disastrous. I need to be more careful!

Result: Win 99-59.  

Round 4 – Dan

So this was it. The final round and I was the only player currently on 3-0. If I lost this final game, first place would be open to the person with the highest MOV in the 3-1 category. On the other hand, if I win the top spot is mine and I’ll be taking home the Space Squid. For a brief moment, I thought the excitement had got to me as I couldn’t read Dan’s cards… Get your head together! But it wasn’t my mental state slipping, Dans cards were in Spanish! So for my final game I would be facing two torpedo de protones (Proton Torpedo) Y-Wings with Códigos de transpondedor falsos (False Transponder Codes), Captain Seevor and Gamut Key in the HWK-290 with Engine Upgrade and another False Transponder Codes. This could be painful if I’m not careful… Dan started his forces in the top right side of the board and slowly made his way down to my board edge in a seeming unwillingness to engage my ships. Meanwhile my Jedi started bottom left and went full-throttle straight down to his board edge. Now, this is where I know the pressure was getting to me… Because I’m a professional, I misjudged a systems phase boost with Anakin and he landed on a rock when he revealed a 4-forward. I promise I’m normally better than this. I rolled a hit, Anakin was reduced to 2 Hull and I lost my Stealth Device all by my own doing.

Readjustments in my approach then saw me continue to utilise the systems phase repositions and caught Dan and his forces off guard with a rather aggressive approach. I went in hard on the HWK with two range 1 attacks and a range 2 from Anakin. My aggressive approach was let down by my red dice and the HWK survived comfortably losing only it’s shields. Thankfully, I was in a comfortable position to pull off a cheeky double 4K-turn with Anakin and Obi-Wan. Plo 1-banked and C1-10P jammed the target lock off a Y-Wing. No torpedo de protones shot for you! Unfortunately for Seevor, this now meant he was sitting in front of Anakin oblivious of the range 1, bullseye, Auto Blaster shot he was about to take. With a naturally rolled crit and Marksmanship and R7-A7 doing the rest of the work, Seevor was obliterated in one shot by triple crits. Much to my dismay, there wasn’t much time to celebrate as Plo was now taking two range 2 shots upon which the first shot yielded Dan 1 hit and 1 crit all of which Plo took to the face, taking a Structure Damage critical. The second range 2 shot from a zealous Spanish Y-Wing also saw Plo take 1 crit. A Direct Hit to be exact and he was promptly moved off the board to sit with Seevor. Due to the Y-Wings not so speedy dial, it was difficult for them to keep pace with the Eta-2’s sharp turns and reposition potential for the following turns and with some practical usage of Ani’s pilot ability, I was able to keep target locks off both my ships further denying the Y-Wings of applying any real threat. Despite my best efforts to remove the HWK from the board, he just refused to die and a unmodified, forceless, range 1, bullseye Auto Blaster shot with Anakin yielded 3 Eyes and 1 Blank. Gah, I just needed 1 hit. Forget it! You get to live Mr. HWK! I turned my attention to the remaining Y-Wings managing to destroy one and deny the other a shot in the last turn of the game. Which meant only one thing…

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Result: Win 117-59.

Conclusion.

So there we have it! Thus ends another epic day of X-Wing at a brilliant venue. I have to say kudos to Gary Bailey who did a fantastic job of making sure the timings for each round were smooth and spot on. A very big thank you to Escape Games and Gary for running such a bang-up event. I had an absolute blast.

As the scores on the doors were read out and people were handed their prizes, I waited exhausted and absolutely chuffed to bits with my results. I was then called up with a warm round of applause and I collected the oh-so beautiful Space Squid. Eeeeeeeeek! The temptation to hold it above my head and make Sand People noises was overwhelming, but I didn’t.

There were arguably some lucky key moments in some of my games over the course of the day but as a whole I was happy with how I had flown my list. I think the modifications I made to the list prior to the event made it synergize better and produced better results than the previous version. Obi-Wan assisting with focus tokens was invaluable and Anakins ability to remove red tokens from him and Obi-Wan was very clutch. Plo now feels more useful and isn’t a big points sink that ends up costing me heavily in the eventuality I lose him. All in all, to me, this list is fetch.

Thank you again to Escape Games, Gary Bailey and all of my opponents over the course of the day. Big shout out and thanks to Andy Cameron for the suggestions surrounding my list too. You all made this event epic and I hope to see you at a table again soon.

But until then…

Peace. o/

Excelsior! Store Champs Extended – 21/08/2021.

The day started with a rude awakening from my 06:00am alarm… Today was the day of Excelsior! Store Champs (Extended) and it is my first event post-covid. As is tradition, the build up to this event started as many did pre-covid; with heavy doubts over what list to take. Eventually, despite the efforts of the devil on my shoulder telling me to fly Jango/Zam… I settled on my go-to Jedi Aces list which I’ve been enjoying for some many months now:

Galactic Republic (194)
Anakin Skywalker Eta-2 Actis (63)
Marksmanship + Autoblasters + R7-A7
Obi-Wan Kenobi Delta-7 Aethersprite (58)
Sense + Calibrated Laser Targeting
Plo Koon Delta-7 Aethersprite (73)
R2 Astromech + Delta-7B

I’ve got reps with the list and I’m comfortable with it on the board, and above all else its fun to fly!

I set out nice and early at 06:45am. Fueled up the car and set on my way… 2 hours and 16 minutes to Bristol! Wait, 2 hours and 16 minutes…? That seems a bit outlandish for a trip from Stourport-on-Seven to Bristol… Oh well…

I get to 20 minutes down the road to Worcester and the Nav’ is telling me to avoid the M5… Right? Apparently the Sat Nav is avoiding the motorways. I make quick adjustments to include motorways and huzzah! We now have a 1 hour 6 minute journey. Much better. However this now meant I was going to be disgustingly early for an event starting at 10:00am… ‘Better early than never?’ Also, in traditional pre-covid tournament-style it wouldn’t be an X-Wing event without car trouble… Thankfully it was just a check air-pressure light and I wasn’t stranded on the hard shoulder in the early hours of the morning waiting for an unusually aggressive roadside repair man who couldn’t get a tyre size right! *breathes* Yes, that has happened, but that’s a story for another day…

Right, let’s get on topic… Star Wars X-Wing! I arrive at Excelsior! and meet up with my fellow Vagabond squad mates, Ben Saunders who’s with Rich, Tim & Simon Greenaway (I totally wasn’t waiting outside the Comic shop rather than the actual shop… Shut up). We setup and waited for the first round to be called…

Round 1:

Round one was against fellow mini-Vagabond Simon Greenaway! I’ve seen Simon play, and he’s become an exceptional player. My jedi would be facing down his Rebel fleet consisting of Alexsandr Kallus in the VCX-100, Dutch Vander with Proton Torp’s and two Red Squadron Vet X-Wings. Lots of firepower, certainly something my Jedi don’t like to see. It’s a slow opener but after a wrong read from me, Simon gets the favourable engage with Plo Koon sitting at danger close Range 2 of his X-Wings. Sure, it’s not terrible, but not great. I just have to roll some paint and Plo will survive. Simon rolls everything except a blank, twice. I roll everything except paint, twice… Plo is gone, but not without taking a shield from a X-Wing in response… It’s the little victories that count, right? It’s an early lead for Simon but Obi and Ani are in positions to follow-up effectively next turn. What then followed was 60 minutes of Obi and Ani dodging as many arcs as they could attempting to gun down the opposition. The penultimate turn of the game saw a crippled Obi on 2 Hull and Ani on 1 Hull against a shield-less Kallus, and an X-Wing… Kallus had a Range 2 shot through a cloud on Obi but it wasn’t enough and Obi exploded. We set dials when the final round is called and my win condition is to kill the X-Wing. This, sadly, seems impossible with where Ani is. I try and navigate towards the X-Wing anyway in desperation but I’m blocked by the VCX! Ani shoots but does not damage and is quickly humbled for his attempt by blanking against the X-Wing’s return fire… Ani goes down in similar fashion to Obi-Wan and Plo Koon. Rest in Peace.

Result: Loss 200 – 111.  

Round 2:

Opening with Round 2 I have another fellow Vagabond, Ryan Coyle! Ryan was flying Scum Bossk with BT-1 and Lando Calrissian, Asajj Ventress with Shadow Caster and two Jakku Gunrunners, one with Protectorate Gleb. Unlike the last game, I felt this required a more aggressive approach (Can it get more aggressive than leaving Plo in arcs of X-Wings?) I didn’t quite get the engage I wanted but was sat pretty behind a cloud for return fire against the Tug’s. Bad dice meant I did take 1 shield but not the end of the world… Yet. Anakin had a lovely range 3 bullseye primary shot on a Tug which remarkably took Crit, Hit, Hit. The turns that followed saw the destruction of the Tugs who stripped Plo of his shields. I turn myself around slowly returning to the fight against Bossk and Asajj making sure to use my R2 droid twice to recover my shields. Plo then gets caught short in Range 1 of Bossk and takes Crit, Hit, Hit, Hit. Plo blanks and the crit is converted into a hit. 5 Damage sees him to his grave. Obi then spends four turns pursuing Asajj while she chases Ani and Bossk turns around to return to the fight. Now, I hate to blame dice as the result of a loss… but the four turns Obi spent chasing Asajj I lined up bullseye for CLT and had range 1 every turn. However, even with mods the results for all four turns yielded 1 eye, 2 blank + 1 eye for CLT. I couldn’t get more than 2 damage and Asajj shrugged it off with a combination of good greens, an evade token and force. Everytime. Gah! Last round was called and Bossk and Asajj were still alive but so were Obi and Ani. Sadly, that wasn’t good enough.

Result: Loss 105 – 95. So close!

Lunch:

So there was a quick 30 minute break for lunch where I had time to reflect on the first two games over a cheese sandwich. It’s hard to be upset with two games as close as these. The game against Simon could have gone either way and I was foolish to play so risky with Plo, big lesson learned – that needs more practice. My game against Ryan felt winnable, and over the course of an event your dice just aren’t going to play ball on occasion. It is what it is; it was a fun game but now it’s time to pick myself up and start working on that 3-2 finish!

Round 3:

Enter Ben Lee of the 186^th Squadron. Ben is also flying Republic and has gone for:

Galactic Republic (193)

Obi-Wan Kenobi Eta-2 Actis (56)
R7-A7 + Autoblasters + Marksmanship
Plo Koon Delta-7 Aethersprite (54)
Calibrated Laser Targeting + Sense
Ric Olié Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter (47)
Daredevil
“Odd Ball” V-19 Torrent Starfighter (36)
Proton Rockets + Marksmanship

Eagle eyed readers will note that Bens bid was 1 point better than mine and he graciously gave me first player. Thanks Ben. So my CLT Obi and my 7B Plo move before his entire list, then Anakin moves last. It’s not terrible; I have Sense for this exact reason. We have a very cagey engage! My CLT Obi senses his ETA Obi; he’s doing a 4k which I predicted. His CLT Plo senses my Ani; he’s doing a 4k too. Ben also predicted this. Great minds think alike. Both ETA Obi and Ani do a system phase force boost and 4k. Ani finds himself behind CLT Plo with bullseye and range 1 but ETA Obi gets blocked by CLT Obi! Phew. Ani wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic for his Jedi friend whom he was behind and rolls Crit, Crit, Hit and Eye. I use the force and convert both hits to two more crits with R7-A7 and Marksmanship. FOUR UNCANCELLABLE CRITS. The dream. Plo goes *poof* in a big puff of smoke and Ben remarks how as a fellow Autoblaster ETA-2 player, he respects and loves the roll and result! I start to feel confident about the early lead until the Plo hate continues and Odd Ball unceremoniously smashes Delta Plo with a Proton Rocket – 2 crits, 3 hits. Ouch. I get exceptionally lucky and manage to come away with 1 Hull after Ric also shoots 7B Plo at Range 1. However, I’m critically damaged with a Damaged Engine and Loose Stabiliser. My CLT Obi has no shot and 7B Plo removes a shield from Ric. The following turn Ani moves up behind Odd Ball seeking revenge for that Proton Rocket and between him and 7B Plo (who did a 2 straight to avoid the damage from Loose Stabiliser) they manage to get Odd Ball off the table. I’m now all out of R7-A7 charges but they were put to very good use! The turns that followed Plo recovered two shields but was still at half threshold so no recovered points for me and my CLT Obi was left on 1 HP with Ben in range to shoot his auto blasters on the final turn of the game. I’m currently up on points but if he destroys Obi, I lose unless I can strip 2 hull from his ETA Obi with Ani. This didn’t happen and with an autoblaster shot coming up on CLT Obi he wasn’t long for this world… He went pop and that was that. What a game, truly fantastic and certainly my favourite game of the day. Thank you Ben!

Result: Loss 90 – 95. Another close game!

Round 4:

So going into round 4 I was 0/3 which isn’t quite what I was expecting, but after the tight fun games I’d had I was in a good head space! My next opponent was Mark B flying the First Order. He had Quickdraw, Von Reg and Major Stridan in the Upsilon Shuttle. I had a favourable engage and stripped Von Reg of his shields and 1 Hull, leaving him limping. Mark really did have terrible dice for this entire game and it was hard to watch… Mark, burn those dice! End the curse. Quickdraw had a range 1 shot on Obi and blanked… This meant I was comfortable taking the range 1 shot into Quickdraw in return and I stripped her of all shields and the bonus attack from Quickdraw did just 1 shield to Obi… Oof. The following turn I mis-flew Ani and was punished for it as Ani and Von Reg traded range 1 shots. Ani died immediately to the 4 hit range one shot… Maybe Marks dice aren’t that bad after all? Ani’s return shots failed to take Von Reg off the board so he limped on! Plo finished off Von Reg from behind and Obi finished off Quickdraw but not without damage, leaving him on half points. That leaves the two Jedi against a healthy Upsilon. Plo was still healthy and in a great position to take advance of the slow turning shuttle and proceeded to fly behind him for numerous turns until final round was called… Stridan had 3 hull left and Mark took a target lock instead of his usual Reinforce… There’s a chance here! Plo gets 3 hits with target lock and force and Mark blanks on his green die. Stridan dies. No those Dice really are trash Mark, sorry buddy!

Result: Win 200 – 92.

Round 5:

Last but certainly not least I was matched against Cai Jones flying another Republic fleet – two Arc’s, a Jedi Knight 7B and Warthog in the LAAT. My head was in a complete haze after my first four rounds and my back was starting to give up on me. I forgot how much of a toll a full day of X-Wing has on you! However, I was determined to press on and aim for a 2/3 finish. Cai was an excellent last opponent and we had a great game. I decide that against the slow moving ARC’s and LAAT that my best bet was to press the attack quickly and as Cai started his Jedi Knight away from the pack, this made it good prey against Ani and Plo. I was right and I was wrong. I managed to sneak a range 3 shot on the Knight with Plo with a target lock after Fine-Tuned boosting forwards. Cai shrugged off all 3 with his focus token and returned fire without any mods. I took a shield on Plo for my eagerness… The following turn the ARCs and LAAT started to pursue Obi who was separated from Ani and Plo. This gave me a greater opportunity to remove that Jedi Knight from the board. However, Cai had other ideas and once again shrugged off an Ani Bullseye Range 3 attack, and another Target Locked attack from Plo. Next turn, Obi turned tightly avoiding the ARC’s firing arcs and started bullying them with some CLT shots while Plo and Ani failed to bully the Jedi Knight once again doing no damage. The next few turns are a bit of a haze but how I came out of it without any damage I’ll never know. An ARC and Warthog fired at Plo at range 1-2. No damage. Plo and Ani finished off the Jedi Knight and it was clean up from here. The remainder of this round was a haze, the day truly had taken its toll on me! Who has the paracetamol? The LAAT went down to crit-madman Ani and concentrated fire from the other Jedi and then it was over to the ARC’s who went down in glory in the following turns. The game was over, Cai had cycled through his entire damage deck except for 1 card! What a game.

Result: Win 200-0.

So that was that. A 2/3 finish and my first event post-covid was finished. Richard and Excelsior! had excellent prize support supplementing the OP Kit with X-Wing Ships and Plastic Dials. When all was said and done, I managed to sneak myself into 10^th place out of 18. Not awful but not fantastic. I had a final MOV of 2/1204/0.40 which I felt was respectful given the rest of the rooms results. Fingers crossed for a higher rank next time!

Not too bad for a first event back…

I had an incredible day and it was great to see everybody enjoying the game in person again. I’m eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to put the Jedi on the board again. Thank you to all my opponents throughout the day and I hope to see you all again soon.

Peace! o/