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!