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!
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