Unconventional Warfare

Unconventional Warfare is a progressive format for XWing for leagues and multi-round events. On top of the existing rules it layers some list-building restrictions, where your style of list grants you a perk for each round.

I asked AI to generate an image of Star Wars unconventional warfare. I don't know what the hell's going on here, but it's definitely not conventional...

Strategic Approach

So your style of list is referred to as your Strategic Approach. The rules say that you declare your approach during setup, between Place Obstacles and Place Forces, but anyone looking at your list should be able to figure out what it is... You can build a standard 20 point list and play that, but if it doesn't fit either of the available approaches you can't claim the perks. (And in my limited experience with the format, they're worth having). The two approaches are:

Fighter Aces - you can only use small ships that are limited, and you must have a minimum of three

Heavy Hitters - you must have at least two medium ships or one large ship, and you may have up to two small ships

These approaches can place limits on some of the factions (unless you're prepared to give away deficit points). Separatists who want to play Heavy Hitters have to take Firesprays because they can't take a Gauntlet or Infiltrator and make a 20 point list. The Resistance can't play Heavy Hitters at all as they can't make a 20 point list. And with the Upsilon not being in Standard, the First Order player wanting to play Heavy Hitters has to take two Xi shuttles. Which may not be sensible...

Perks

Unconventional Warfare is played across three rounds; how long a round lasts is up to your TO - at a convention it could be a day, for a league at your FLGS it could be a week, a month or more. For each round you receive a new perk based on your strategic approach:

Round	Fighter Aces		Heavy Hitters
1	After a friendly ship moves through but does not overlap an obstacle or enemy ship, it gains one evade token.		Once per round, while a friendly medium or large ship defends at range 1, the attacker ignores the range 1 bonus.
2	While a friendly ship attacks, if the defender is in its bullseye and the attacking ship is not in the defenders rear arc, add one attack die.		Once per round while a friendly medium or large shp attacks at range 3, the defender ignores the range bonus.
3	While a friendly ship performs a barrel roll or boost, it may use the speed 2 straight template. After a friendly ship uses this perk, it gains 1 stress token.		Once per round, while a friendly medium or large ship attacks, it may suffer 1 face-up damage card to add two attack dice.

Alignments

There's support in the rules for tracking wins and losses for the Light and Dark sides; it doesn't have any mechanical effect but I know some stores run campaign maps thattrack which side has the upper hand. The Republic, Rebel Alliance and Resistance score victories for the Light Side, and the Separatists, Empire and First Order score for the Dark Side. Scum and Villainy can play for either side, but the S&V players must declare at the start of the event which side they are playing for.

So there you have it, all the rules you need for the format. And if this sounds like your cup of Whyrens Reserve, I'm running an Unconventional Warfare event at Aardvarks and Dragons in Woodbridge on 9th June. And there'll be some cards from Adepticon in the prize pool.

Worlds 2024 - Miscellany

I went to the XWing World Championships at Adepticon at the Renaissaance Hotel, Schaumburg, in Chicago for 2024. And I thought it might be useful for someone else in the future if I documented some useful odd bits and pieces.

Where To Stay

I stayed at the Hampton Inn & Suites, and I thought it was pretty good. It's less than two miles from the Renaissance where Adepticon is - I'm pretty sure it's walkable or it's about five minutes in an Uber. There's a free hot breakfast every day that was surprisingly better than I expected; there were waffle irons so you could make your own fresh waffles, and the hot items changed every day which I definitely didn't expect. There's also a pool and a gym.

There's a Whole Foods Market about ten minutes walk away so you can pick up water, wine, snacks etc. Woodfield Mall is also about a ten-minute walk.

Where To Eat

Woodfield Mall has a selection of the US chains, Cheesecake Factory is the only one I ate at. Next to the hotel there was a microbrewery bar and grill which looked good and had I had more time I would have tried. Five minutes walk from the hotel is the Weber Grill Restaurant and Cook School, where I had the best meal of the trip. I also ate two nights in the Schaumburg Public House in  the Renaissance, which was pretty good. And the food during the day at the convention center was good, I really liked the meatball sub there. 

What To See in Chicago

If you want to visit Chicago itself, you can get there on the train. Take an Uber to the airport or to Rosemont station, and then get the train to Clark/Lake. From there the sights that I visited were a short walk along the river, then through to Millennium Park as I really wanted to see the Cloud Gate. It's an easy walk from the Cloud Gate down to the shore of Lake Michigan. After that it's a slightly longer, but well worth it, walk to Willis Tower. 

Worlds 2024 - Doubles and Prize Wall

Last time, I talked about the LCQ and Unconventional Warfare events at Adepticon, which covers Thursday and Friday. This week I'll cover the Doubles event and the Prize Wall and finish up with some final thoughts.

A Missed Opportunity
I have to start by confessing to a missed opportunity. As I got to the Renaissance on Saturday morning and picked up my coffee, I walked past the Battletech setup to get to the XWing area. They had a special guest on their stand - Michael Stackpole, author of the Rogue Squadron series, some of the best Star Wars books and source of a number of elements in the XWing game. But I did not take the opportunity to go and speak to him, I figured he'd be around the rest of the weekend and he'd be invested enough in XWing that he'd come over at some point to have a look at us. He did not (or if he did I missed it) and my opportunity was gone.

via GIPHY

Doubles
On Friday night we had an email from Chris Allen saying that more space was being opened up for the Doubles event, and if anyone wanted to play in a scratch pairing to rock up to the Judges tables Saturday lunchtime.

On one of the chats I was in, Dale Cromwell posted on Saturday morning that he was looking for a partner, so despite having never met him and feeling ever so slightly out of my depth I offered to pair with him as long as he was OK to carry my dead weight. I made my way up to the venue and set up to play a round of Unconventional, and Dale put his stuff down next to me, so I introduced myself and we had a chat, it turned out we were both playing FO so all seemed good. Unfortunately it wasn't to be as Dale had already paired up with someone else before he saw my message - he was very apologetic and offered to help me get paired up with someone else, and I ended up with the exceedingly lovely Cam Galloway, who was playing Republic. (Dale also gave me a consolatory prize ticket, which we'll talk about later)

So at this point we should talk about the Doubles format. Both players on a team bring a 9 point list, and all the ships between you were friendly to each other. Beyond that, you could mix factions, and limited pilots were only limited within your 9 points - so you could have, say, two Darth Vaders, or Darth Vader flying alongside Wedge. (We heard one team had two Bodica Venj's, fortunately we didn't have to play against them). You play to 18 points, not the standard 20; each player brings two obstacles for a total of eight, but you only place six of them on the board. We were only playing for prize tickets, of which we received plenty!

So our squad consisted of:

Team That's A Great Option
Major Vonreg
     Crack Shot
     Marksmanship
     Pattern Analyser
     Magpulse Warheads
Ember
     Proud Tradition
     Cluster Missiles
Broadside
Matchstick
Contrail

(Someone asked us our team name in the first game, and I said 'That's a great question!', and it stuck, then Kris Sheriff misread my writing on the form and Team That's A Great Option was born)

The first game was Chance Engagement, and we were paired with Clan Hall, Mark and Josh from Exile Squadron. They had a Scum list with Emon Azzameen loaded with Thermal Detonators as a main piece. I managed to keep my TIEs away from the bombs, and we got a kill - not the Firespray, we left it too late to bring that down. We won 13-8.

Which put us on the top table for round two, for Scramble The Transmissions against Team Many Bothans. We won this as well, 17-18.

Round three was Salvage Mission, and we moved down a table to face the Imperial lists of Team Whatever You Want. Cam and I really had our rhythm by now, we were communicating and working really well together. For Team WYW it was going slightly less well, there was at least one bump and some accidental bombing of friendly ships. Which meant we pulled away in the scoring, I think by the end we were carrying four crates, and they conceded.

Going into the last game, we were 3-0 - which is clearly a new experience for me… We were back on the top table for Assault At The Satellite Array, facing off against Sebastien and Jeff of Team Maple Syrup. And then Chris Allen revealed that there were after all prizes available for going 4-0, in the form of Adepticon medals. 

Unfortunately for us, the Canadians took an early lead when they managed to bring down Ember, the first time he'd been killed that day. And we were never able to get the lead back; I can't remember the score but I think it was something like 8-13, the reverse of our score from the first game. 

So we didn't get to claim the medals, but everyone who played Doubles had an amazingly fun time with a lot of laughs. There are some great (broken) combinations when you start mixing factions! Kris Sheriff told me Adepticon had asked for a Doubles event to be put on, as Adepticon is known for their Doubles games. It was also very 'feels different' having someone to confer with, and I feel like I learned a lot from playing with Cam and seeing his approach to the game, I'm looking forward to trying out some ideas in my next games.

Prize Wall
With (effectively) all my games played I could look at the prize wall and start spending some of my tickets. In the LCQ and the Worlds tournament we received five tickets each, plus one extra for the winner. In Unconventional Warfare you could claim six tickets per game, up to four games per day. And we received twenty-five for playing in the Doubles.
Everything at the prize wall was priced in multiples of five, meaning anyone who got an extra ticket for winning couldn't do anything with it unless they went on to win four more games. I came out of the LCQ with 21, combined with the 24 I picked up on Friday made 45. And the single that Dale gave me combined with my 24 on the Saturday for another multiple of 5. Plus the 25 I got for playing Doubles.

The prize wall itself, overall I found somewhat meh. There was nothing that screamed 'ohmygoditmustbemine' at me, and the pricing for some things was a bit weird. There were alt art cards for Soontir and Lando for the BoE set, and Anakin and Dooku (I think) for the SoC set, and a nice Marksmanship alt card that I wanted a few copies of (Marksmanship is a go-to card for me).The other available alt art cards were from this seasons Store Champs kit. They were priced at five tickets each.

Next up were dice, at ten tickets for one of each colour; there were sparkly dice, and also dice that looked almost excatly like the standard Core Set dice which is what I thought they were until someone told me they had a very subtle marbling in them. So subtle that it would be far too easy to get them mixed up with someone else' regular dice when you're packing your stuff up at the end of the night.

For twenty tickets you could have foil versions of some of the regular cards - Han Solo, the Scimitar title, Malice, um, Enhanced Jamming Suite, and I think one or two others. If there'd been perhaps foil versions of the faction talents (Hopeful/Heroic/Ruthless etc) I might have gone for one or two of these but as it was I didn't think there was much appeal there.

Jumping up to fifty tickets they had the Inferno Squadron damage deck, challenge coin and the acrylic Resistance Chewie and Captain Jonus cards. If memory serves these were all from the System Opens from 2020, and I strongly suspect everyone who came to Adepticon already had at least one of each of these. 

For seventy-five tickets there was Plo Koon's custom paint job Jedi starfighter with the accompanying punch. I really like getting custom punch for my pilots, and the ship was very pretty - but I don't play Republic.

Getting to the limits of what was possible to get, at 100 prize tickets there were movement templates, and bumper mats for each system (XWing, Armada, Legion, Shatterpoint) to lay your cards out on at the table. The bumper mats are nice, but if you had one would you take it with you to your FLGS? Or have it out at home? I think it's a nice idea, but not very practical. For 150 tickets there was the set of templates plus a template tray, or full size 3' x 3' mats.

I went for three pairs of the sparkly dice, the alt Soontir and Lando cards and some Marksmanships. I gave ten tickets to Louis Leong who was trading his own fabulous merch for prize tickets to collect prizes to distribute to groups around the world, and in return I got one of his Darksaber range rulers I've been hankering after plus a custom Soontir dial cover he'd done for the 186th players. 

And then I picked up another two each of the Lando and Soontir cards and another six Marksmanships that I'll use as prize support at local events.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, what would I have liked to see on the prize wall? I think some of the pricing could be reviewed so that folks who ended up with spare tickets could do something useful with them, and some items are either effectively out of reach for a single player, or you could end up using all your tickets for the whole event on one or maybe two things.
As to the actual items that were available, alt art cards are always nice to show off, it woud have been even better if there'd been more of a selection from the existing pool of official alts that are available (and especially some of the new full artwork ones). As I said above, the foil versions were not a compelling thing - if there'd been more generics, or a full spread across the factions maybe I'd have picked some up. I've covered the stuff that was old already. Punch, and ship repaints - yes, more of this please (and we know the designs already exist for quite a few of these) but again, it needs to cover all the factions.

As a slight aside, I was also somewhat disappointed that AMG didn't seem to have any product with them to sell. When I've been to UKGE AMG and FFG before them have had a stand to show off all their products both current and upcoming to other gamers to attract them into trying their games. At Adepticon they had nothing, and I could only find two stands that had any XWing product at all. One of the things I'd planned to do was pick up a copy of Battle Over Endor before it was out in the UK, if AMG had had copies with them I daresay they'd have sold one to every player from outside the US who attended, plus if they'd had everything else that's current there's always the chance to make a few sales for people who've forgotten the odd dial/card etc.

OP Kit Library
Something AMG had available that I thought was a neat idea was a set of OP kits that were available for players to use. The kits available were:

• Aces High
• Children of Mandalore
• The Droids You're Looking For
• Battle of Yavin
• Siege of Coruscant
• Battle Over Endor

I would have used this, particularly as I haven't had chance to play The Droids You're Looking For yet; however, you couldn't earn any prize tickets from it plus it would suffer the same limitations of space that we were having with Unconventional Warfare. As a result I doubt any of it saw any use.

Final Thoughts
Overall I had a really good time at Adepticon. I made some new friends, and reconnected with some of the UK players I already knew. I got to visit a new city, and eat some amazing food.

The Doubles event was some of the most fun I've ever had in ten years of playing XWing; the campaign to make Doubles an official format starts here, get on board! 

I remembered my triggers.

And I managed to avoid doing my back in from bending over the table to push plastic spaceships around.

Would I go again? With an invite, yes, but I wouldn't try the LCQ route again. So I'd best see if I can get to more store champs when the new season starts!

Worlds 2024 - LCQ & Unconventional

In September my friend Robin won the World Open Qualifier at the London Grand Tournament, which meant he was going to Worlds at Adepticon. And seven weeks ago I decided to throw caution to the wind, go with him and try to get through the Last Chance Qualifier. How hard can it be? 

My List 

I've had thoughts for a little while about leveraging Null's ability and Swarm Tactics to shoot at I7, and I'd been playing a list with Null, Vonreg, Quickdraw and Silencer Kylo Ren. But three weeks before Worlds I made a decision that Kylo had too many points bundled up, and I swapped him out for Ember and Commander Malarus. Which meant my list was: 

FO Sevens

"Null"

  Swarm Tactics 

Major Vonreg 

  Marksmanship 

  Crack Shot

  Pattern Analyzer 

  Mag-Pulse Warheads 

"Quickdraw"

  Swarm Tactics

  Pattern Analyzer

  Special Forces Gunner

  Fire-Control System 

Commander Malarus

  Cluster Missiles 

"Ember"

  Proud Tradition

  Swarm Tactics 

With four ships shooting at I7 and one at "only" I6 or 5, I hoped this would give me the possibility of initiative-kills on I6 ships like Vader, Anakin and Han while also giving me a five-ship list that had the ability to do objective work. But changing my list when I did meant I had practically no table time with it. 

LCQ 

I don't have a play-by-play of my games, in part because I took no notes and I'm bad at remembering to take photos. But in thinking back about them to write this, I have recognised a couple of mistakes that I made and I'm hoping that writing them down will help me avoid making them again. 

In the first round I was paired with Nathan and his RAC list: 

Rear Admiral Chiraneau

  Ruthless

  Darth Vader

  Death Troopers

  Agile Gunner

  Electronic Baffle

  Dauntless 

Tomax Bren (TBE) 

“Vizier”

  Emperor Palpatine 

Obsidian Squadron Pilot 

Obsidian Squadron Pilot 

Obsidian Squadron Pilot 

It was Salvage Mission, and I lost it by not doing the objectives; I'm still struggling with 2.5 and doing objectives vs killing ships. I took too long to kill Tomax while Nathan was earning points using his TIEs, and by the time I started to work on RAC I didn't have enough time left to recover. Loss 5-20. 

So I probably wasn't going to qualify, so the pressure was off and I could have fun... 

In round 2 I played against Joe and a Battle Over Endor list. 

Braylen Stramm 

Gina Moonsong 

Wedge Antilles 

Gemmer Sojan 

Keo Venzee

  Juke

  Vectored Cannons 

I made three mistakes here that cost me the game. The first was target selection - I saw Wedge at I6 and I was so keen to make my 'look, I shoot at I7' shenanigan work that I didn't think rationally about anything else. In turn 2 I made my other two mistakes. I bumped Quickdraw into the back of Malarus and lost a shield; Quickdraw took the extra attack on Wedge but did nothing significant. My third mistake was not shooting Wedge with a MagPulse to knock off his Target Lock on Ember. At the end of the I7 shooting, Wedge was not dead, and Wedge proceeded to one-shot Ember with an APT. The B-wings then killed Quickdraw, leaving me 9-0 down, and unsurprisingly I did not recover from this position. 

We both agreed I'd had bad green dice, but I think with hindsight given the mistakes I made, the outcome wouldn't have been different. Loss 3-23. 

The only good thing to come from that drubbing was that I had a bye in round three. 

In round 4, I was against Sean's Republic list. 

“Odd Ball” (SoC) 

“Jag” (SoC) 

“Sicko”

  Electronic Baffle

  Wolfpack

  Cluster Missiles

  Saturation Salvo 

Padmé Amidala

  Ion Torpedoes

  Passive Sensors

  Juke 

“Contrail” 

  Alpha-3B “Besh”

  Synchronized Console

  R7-A7 

  Crack Shot 

I have to be honest here, I can't remember anything about this game. Loss 13-21. 

So at the end of the day my result was 1-3, and the win came from having the bye. But everyone I played against was lovely, and even when things were going badly for me, I didn't get salty about it and I hope they found me a good opponent. I'm also fairly sure I remembered all my triggers, which some days can feel like an achievement on its' own.

Unconventional Warfare 

Having had a reasonable suspicion (based on my competitive history) that I probably wasn't going to make it through the LCQ, I'd already registered for the Unconventional Warfare league side event. I'll put up a separate post on the Unconventional Warfare format, but it was completely casual with no need for printed lists or pairings, and you could play anywhere at the venue, or at your hotel. You picked up six prize tickets per game, to a maximum of four games per day. 

So I'd packed a whole mess of Imperial ships to improvise lists with, including three Defenders with the intention of picking up the Battle Over Endor pack at Adepticon to play with. But with 311 Players playing in Day 1 of Worlds, and plenty of people around who didn't make it through the LCQ there was a lot of trouble finding space to play in until lunchtime when we got some spare mats and set them up in one of the other gaming halls. I played until mid-afternoon when I'd booked in for a demo of the new Star Trek: Into The Unknown game (summary: not for me, although the demo didn't really show it off very well).

Wrap Up

So that was my Thursday and Friday at Adepticon. Next time I'll talk about Doubles (spoiler: massive fun) and the Prize Wall. All glory to the Emperor!

Space Confiture

So I was hoping to have been writing this on the Eurostar on my way back from the Paris System Open (assuming I'd had a result I was prepared to share...). For obvious reasons, that hasn't happened with the Open currently being put back to the end of August. But there was another round of GSP's Space Jam series this weekend, which I played in.

After last time's escapades in which the TIE v1 demonstrated how squishy it can be, I've changed things up a little bit and swapped in a TIE x1, so my new list becomes:

Imperial 5s

Rexler Brath

 - Juke

 - FCS

Maarek Stele

 - Marksmanship

 - FCS

 - Afterburners

Grand Inquisitor

 - FCS

Having completely forgotten the existence of Foresight for the whole of the last tournament, I've dropped it from the Inquisitor. I've played Maarek a lot in the last 12 months, and Marksmanship let him double-dip his ability. Afterburners - well, 192 points is probably too deep a bid for my taste, and I've just watched this episode of Veteran Instincts so I'm hoping to use it as a get-out-of-jail card.

Game 1 - William Herbert

Lieutenant Bastian
 - Integrated S-foils
Temmin Wexley
 - Heroic

 - Integrated S-foils
Jessika Pava
 - BB Astromech

 - Integrated S-foils
Red Squadron Expert
 - Heroic

 - Integrated S-foils

William set up in a block of four, so I set up with Maarek and the Inquisitor going for a joust with Rexler moving up the middle of the table to turn in and flank. In the first turn of shooting, Maarek was perfectly lined up to get a crit in on Bastian with Marksmanship; however the Inquisitor and Rexler both missed their shots so when Maarek hit, all he was able to do was strip Bastian's shields. A big opportunity missed to get an early kill. Next turn I went for a risky K-turn with Rexler and subsequently got blocked, leaving him both without a shot and slightly closer to the board edge than I like to be, but the Inquisitor and Maarek both made shots on Bastian and he died, however Temmin took the Inquisitor's shields. With Bastian down I picked out Jess as the next target and started directing fire her way, however with pointing the wrong way I only got a couple of hits on Jess and one on the Red Squadron Vet. In the final turn, Temmin ran away, but I finally had all my ships lined up and Jess died.

Win 101-27.

Game 2 - Illy

Anakin Skywalker
 - R2 Astromech

 - Delta-7B

 - Hull Upgrade
Gold Squadron Trooper
Gold Squadron Trooper
Gold Squadron Trooper
Gold Squadron Trooper

As we started this game, I picked out Anakin as the one to kill, then allowing me to PS-kill the Torrents. We got partway through moving ships in turn 2, when disaster struck and Illy lost his internet! I hopped over to speak to the judges and find out what to do, and they advised me to give him ten minutes to get back on. I had a great chat with Dee from the judging team while we waited (and I want to give a big shout out to the judges here after I learned Dee was judging from LA in the middle of his night), and fortunately Illy was able to reconnect about 30 seconds before he would have forfeited the game. And he then proceeded to absolutely school me. My local meta doesn't have many (read: any) Torrents, and it showed, as they ripped me up. As consolation, I got two of them in the end so didn't get completely whitewashed, but I felt comprehensively outplayed and having the extra ten minutes of the game would have made no difference.

Loss 68-200.

Game 3 - Matthew Johnson

Fifth Brother
 - Hate

 - Fire-Control System

 - Homing Missiles
Grand Inquisitor
 - Hate

 - Fire-Control System

 - Homing Missiles
Darth Vader
 - Hate

 - Fire-Control System

 - Afterburners

I prioritised Fifth Brother so as not to face the hit-crit combination from his ability, but it took me longer than it should have to kill him and in the meantime I took a beating from Vader and his Inquisitor. Once I'd killed Fifth Brother, however, I was left with a good position on Vader, and something strange happened; Vader blanked out on his defence dice. Twice. No more Vader, but it proved to be too late and my remaining ships were killed by the Inquisitor.

Loss 127-200.

Game 4 - Chris Warren

Chewbacca
 - Heroic

 - Rose Tico

 - Finn

 - Deadman's Switch

 - Rey's Millennium Falcon
Colossus Station Mechanic
 - Deadman's Switch
Colossus Station Mechanic
 - Deadman's Switch
Colossus Station Mechanic
 - Deadman's Switch
Colossus Station Mechanic
 - Deadman's Switch

Chris' Fireballs came at me first with the Falcon trailing, and as we went into the first tun of shooting I was conscious that I wanted/needed to take out at least one of them before any of them could fire back. And once again my plans came to nothing, I left one Fireball with one health but not dead. And in return my Inquisitor was reduced to one hull. I ran my Inquisitor away and began putting hits into the Falcon from Rexler and Maarek. Two turns later, I was in a position where I could zoom forward with Rexler to get a great shot on the Falcon, but I had to take range 1 fire from all the Fireballs. I figured with three green dice I'd be OK, and I reduced the Falcon to one hull remaining; and Rexler was also reduced to one hull. The next turn Rexler K-turned, giving him a range 1 shot on Chewbacca, which I took, having completely forgotten about the Deadman's Switch. So Rexler died, and so did the one-health Fireball, which in a chain reaction then took out Maarek. So I was left with a one-health Inquisitor to close out the game. I played cagey for a couple of turns, as I did so I spotted I had a target lock on one of the remaining Fireballs that I'd forgotten about, and it only needed one hit for me to get half points on it. I wasn't sure what the points status was, but I knew that half points was potentially important. I slooped in behind the locked Fireball, and got three hits on it leaving it on one hull. So not only half  points but a good chance at full points. Going into the last turn, the Fireball slooped to point its' guns towards me, and I banked to follow it; I fired and killed it, and I was outside range 1 so avoided the Deadman's Switch damage; I then evaded incoming fire. Which left us on 171 points each and going into Final Salvo, a first for me. And with two Fireballs left on the board, this meant my two dice facing Chris' four dice; Chris rolled a hit and a focus, and I rolled ... two hits to get the win!

Win 171-171.

Game 5 - Jesper Winström

Anakin Skywalker
 - R2 Astromech

 - Delta-7B

 - Spare Parts Canisters
Obi-Wan Kenobi
 - Calibrated Laser Targeting
Ahsoka Tano
 - C1-10P

 - Calibrated Laser Targeting

After my game with Illy earlier, my heart sank a little bit on seeing Anakin again, especially accompanied by two more Jedi as I find them incredibly frustrating to play against. In the absence, frankly, of a better idea I decided to go for Anakin again with the hope of bringing him down and trying to PS-kill the other two. Setting about this, I signally failed to realise what Chopper brings to the list, being the ability to give out jam tokens, which meant Rexler was unable to get his free Evades. So partway through I turned my fire on Ahsoka, and fortunately for me she died fairly quickly. However all through this I was getting chipped away by the other two. In the end I had Anakin down to half points three times and then he regenned back up, and when time was called Ahsoka was the only points I scored. (I did however have some great chat with Jesper all the way through this game, thanks Jesper!)

Loss 171-53.

Learning Points - was I wrong to focus on Anakin in games 2 and 5? Right now, I don't think so, and I think I'd make the same decision again. What I should have done, however, was appreciate what the other ships brought to the table, both the Torrents and Chopper. It comes under the heading of 'know your enemy'... Similarly, forgetting about Deadman's Switch in game 3 was a basic mistake that I kicked myself for, although I doubt I'm the only one that's been suckered that way. Managing to take it to Final Salvo and then winning was luck, pure and simple, but if I'd kept more of an eye on points and victory conditions maybe I'd have made some different and more informed decisions. And with hindsight, dropping after game 5 was a mistake; I should have played on and gone for a 3-3 result. 

All glory to the Emperor!

I Believe I Can Fly!

Like everyone else in these strange times, I'm missing playing XWing at a FLGS with my mates. So when I saw Gold Squadron Podcast's Space Jam Tournament, I thought what the hell, and signed up. And I spent a certain amount of time after that thinking 'I'm going to get my arse kicked'. 

Still, rebellions are built on hope. I'd had two whole practice games to learn TTS (which as it turned out was two more than one of my opponents...). And I have a certain amount of faith in my list; as part of my best-ever showing at the UK Open I won my first two games with it on the Sunday, plus one of my TTS practice games with my friends from the Moldy Crows last week. So it is:

Take The Fifth
Rexler Brath
 - Juke
 - FCS
Grand Inquisitor
 - Foresight
 - FCS
Fifth Brother
 - Mag Pulse Warheads
 - FCS

The Defender is my favourite ship in the whole game and with most of the year to date being focused on Hyperspace lists it hasn't been seen very much (plus, you know, the whole 'massively expensive' thing...), and Rex's ability can be a game winner. The TIE v1 I like because its blue 1-speed turns and banks make it such a great knife fighter, even if it is a bit, um, fragile when it does get hit. The theory of this list, then, is that Rex and Inqy come in and strip the shields off a target, and then Fifth Bro follows up with a crit from the Mag Pulse and a second crit from his ability. So how did it work out...

Game 1 - HumanReason (Chicago)
Fenn Rau
Guri
 - Outmaneuver
 - Advanced Sensors
Black Sun Assassin
 - Crack Shot

I started out really hopefully in this game. I set up on the right-hand side of the board and moved forward, then left-turned to come into the middle to engage. Coming into the first turn of shooting HumanReason had made a mistake with Guri that left her without a shot and facing a rock, and I was able to catch Fenn in the open and halve him; unfortunately for me, Fifth had to use his Force just to secure the hit so I couldn't add an extra crit. In the next turn Fenn died, but those were the only points I was going to score. I spent the rest of the game chasing the two Vipers round the board, but I found them so slippery that I struggled to keep them in my gunsights and in the end I couldn't even make half points on either of them, and in return I lost the Inquisitor and half of Fifth.

Loss 83-68

Game 2 - DukeOfHobbies (Pittsburgh)
Wedge Antilles
 - Crack Shot
 - R4 Astromech
 - Servomotor S-foils
Cassian Andor
 - Crack Shot
 - K-2SO
 - Pivot Wing
Ten Numb
 - Crack Shot
 - Stabilized S-foils
Lieutenant Blount

 - Crack Shot

I set up for a joust in this game, planning to focus on Wedge as the biggest threat, and to give myself some credit I halved him fairly early on. And then I got tunnel-visioned into killing Wedge at the expense of everyone else, and I was duly killed by everyone else. In my defence, Wedge should have died three times, three times I had killing hits on him and he rolled all the evades he needed. C'est la guerre... Remember how I said the TIE v1 can be a bit fragile? I lost Fifth in the first turn of shooting. So in the end half of Wedge and half of Ten was all I scored, but on the plus side we were finished early which meant I was right on time for the dinner my wife had cooked. Small victories...

Loss 55-200

Game 3- Trevor Gait (British Columbia)
Ten Numb
 - Autoblasters
 - Stabilized S-foils
Braylen Stramm
 - Autoblasters
 - Stabilized S-foils
Garven Dreis
 - Selfless
 - R5 Astromech
 - Servomotor S-foils
Jake Farrell

I'm not sure what it says about me that I had my best result once I'd started drinking... I set up to come up the middle and then bank round the rocks, I was fortunate that as I came in to engage Trevor made a mistake and clipped a debris field with Garven leaving him with no tokens; I took both shields and a couple of hull off the X-Wing (Fifth got to use his ability!). Garven went down in the next turn and I set to on the B-Wings. I got some early hits on Braylen, but once again I lost Fifth. We chased down to my end of the board and under fire from both my ships Braylen went down. With limited time left I didn't think I'd be able to take out Ten, so I focused on Jake as we went back up the board. I got one hit through on him with a couple of minutes to go and Trevor told me that left him on one hull - I'd completely missed that someone (Inqy I think) had already stripped his shields. Into the last turn, and lack of a 1-forward left Inqy without a shot, but a K-turning Rex had Jake right in his sights and blew him away.

Win 95-147

Game 4 - Jaime Sinclair (Brazil)
Graz
 - Crack Shot
 - Contraband Cybernetics
 - Afterburners
Sabine Wren
 - 4-LOM 
 - Contraband Cybernetics
 - Shadow Caster
Guri
 - Outmaneuver
 - Virago

I'm not going to lie that my heart sank a bit on seeing another Guri, and this was also the first time in 2.0 I'd faced a Lancer. I'd totally forgotten how fast they are, which meant I got blocked a few times, denying Rex those sweet free evades. I was very conscious of Graz approaching down the flank, and having played him in one of my TTS practice games I kept thinking 'don't let him get behind you'. So there was a point where I made a hard-1 turn with Fifth that left me a hairs breadth from a rock that Graz was on the other side of - I swear if it had been on a real table I'd have caught the rock (Guri made a similar move a couple of turns later). Rex put hits onto Graz, followed by Fifth who used his ability to put a Direct Hit on the Khiraxz leaving him on one hull; I was slightly confused by this until I realised Khiraxzes gained a hull point in 2.0 compared to their 1.0 chassis. I finished off Graz in the next turn and turned my attention to the Shadow Caster. I had it halved at the cost of Fifth, having already lost Inqy, leaving it all for Rex to do, but as time was called it was left on two hull and I just couldn't get the hits I needed on it.

Loss 88-109

At 2315 and 1-3 down I, um, staged a tactical withdrawal. I'd really hoped to make Top 8 in faction to get a Grand Inquisitor alt card, but it wasn't to be.

Learning points - in game 2 I probably shouldn't have got so caught up with taking out Wedge, maybe the B-Wing and Z-95 would have been easier kills. For the TIE v1s, I probably should think more about using their linked actions to arc dodge instead of focusing on getting the target locks to use FCS. I'm a lot more confident with TTS now too, one of my big worries going into this would be that I would be hosting a game and TTS would crash on my laptop, so I was really pleased that didn't happen.

It was, however, great just to be on a table and pushing (virtual) plastic spaceships around again. My thanks go to Dion and everyone at Gold Squadron Podcast for organising the tournament, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

All glory to the Emperor!

Fear The Reaper (Again)

I took my Reaper list to 4tk last week and went 3-1 with it, and then  I took it to Ace today but tweaked it. I swapped out the Inquisitor for Pure Sabaac:

Maarek Steele
 - Fire Control System
 - Marksmanship
Pure Sabaac
 - Shield Upgrade
 - Marksmanship
Major Vermeil
 - Darth Vader
 - Agent Kallus
 - Angled Deflectors
Academy Pilot
197 points

Game 1 - Stephen Cooke
Howlrunner
Mauler Mithel
Iden Versio
Seyn Marana
Wampa
Academy Pilot

I made a number of bad decisions in this game, only the first of which was that in the first round of engagement Maarek didn't have a shot. I then went on to take bad positions with Sabaac and Vermeil that led to me losing them. In the last round Maarek did take out Howlrunner but it was too little, too late.
Loss 70 - 200

Game 2 - John Cooves
Emon Ezzameen
 - Proximity Mines
Guri
 - Advanced Sensors

I managed to distract Guri with the Academy Pilot while my other three ships went to work on Emon. I knocked the Firespray's shields off but left myself in a position where a bomb would have hurt at least one of my ships. But fortunately for me, Emon didn't drop a bomb. And then Maarek put three crits into him. Which with Maarek's ability to pick them meant Emon suffered a Fuel Leak, followed by another Fuel Leak, followed by a Direct Hit. One shot, three crits, six damage cards and one dead Firespray. And then I could just mop up Guri...
Win 200-51

Game 3 - Austen Green
Dutch Vander 
 - Ion Cannon Turret
Garven Dreis
Benthic Two-Tubes
Edrio Two-Tubes

I made a mistake with my approach here that meant that both Maarek and Academy Pilot ended up making their first engagements through a gas cloud and then having to move through it. I was able to take out Garven, but a combination of Maarek getting ionned by Dutch, the U-wing's stop and a limited set of available maneuvers meant we spent two turns in what I can only describe as a massive shamozzle. I should have punched out the U-wing with Sabaac, but the dice let me down... When we broke out of our traffic jam, I was able - eventually - to destroy the U-wing, and get half points on Dutch and Edrio, but I lost Vermeil and the TIE Fighter, and with time called I really wasn't sure I'd done enough. One of the closest results I've ever had.
Win 152 - 149

Game 4 - Paul Dane
Kylo Ren
Lieutenant Tavson
Starkiller Base Pilot

My problem in this game was not appreciating that getting in front of an Upsilon is a massive, massive problem... And maybe I should have picked the Upsilons as the biggest threat and not Kylo. In the first turn of shooting, Kylo not only broke Sabaac's ability but to add insult to injury put a Weapons Failure crit on him too. But I wiped out the Silencer and was able to start on the Upsilons. Paul transferred the Hunted condition from Kylo to the Starkiller Base Pilot, making him my second target. I was, as I mentioned, in front of the Upsilons, and although I killed the Starkiller pilot it was at the cost of all my ships except for the Academy Pilot. As my TIE Fighter ran away from Tavson's guns, he took two hits. So, a one-health TIE Fighter versus a full health Upsilon, with 30 minutes to go. I had to run... for a couple more turns, until I could engineer a way to get behind the shuttle. Once I was behind it, I was able to chip away at the shuttle, chasing it all round the board until it died, appropriately with me putting two crits into it.
Win 200 - 188

So where does this leave me and the Reaper? I've now played three tournaments with these two lists and gone 8-4, or 66%. Not earth-shattering, but in terms of my results since 2.0 came out, it feels like a significant step forward. I do think I'm going to revert to the Grand Inquisitor as I really like him as a knife-fighter (I just wish he had an extra point of hull or Force though...)

All glory to the Emperor!