Tournament on 13th April in Jyvaskyla, Finland
The local gaming event (mainly computer and console gaming) had a small X-Wing tournament. The attendance turned out to be rather limited as only five players were present, but as a loosely translated Finnish proverb says, the party gets better when people get fewer. Good thing was that we were able to play full round robin, so four games total and no speculations on the pairing.
This time I wanted to give the TIE bomber a chance as I have three of them. I didn´t really have a lot of experience using bombers, but after trying a couple of lists I decided to go with following:
Krassis Trelix with HLC and Rebel Captive
He´s providing the long range killing power and general all-around goodness.
3 x Scimitar with Seismic Charges
Cheap and resilient bombers, seismics to give some easy-to-use, non-action-requiring firepower and deterrrent
I played couple of test games against my friend´s Interceptor lists and after doing fairly well, I was confident enough to go to the tournament. Naturally I forgot the seismic charge counters, but luckily TO had spare ones for me.
1. Game
The first game was against a 4X list (Wedge with R2D2, two reds and a rookie). Nice to see someone playing a quite stylish squadron. Wedge and the rookie were deployed on the one corner and reds took the other one. I deployed my whole squadron facing Wedge´s team. The game started well for me as I downed (in space?) the rookie quickly while damaging Wedge with seismics and blasters. Wedge was constantly missing his firing (barrel roll on bombers is nice) and was finally taken out. Reds were missing the fight and then it was my four ships against his two. I lost one bomber and finished the rebels. Full win, good start for a day.
2. Game
This time I went against my friend with four Interceptors (Turr and three Sabers, all with PtL – naturally). This time Krassis performed well, his HLC shots were real killers and the stress-dealing rebel captive was a good counter for the slippery PtL Interceptors. And seismics were naturally an effective threat and deterrent to paper-thin, high value ships. I took out Turr and two Sabers while losing a bomber so I got a full win again – but it was really close as the other Saber went down on the last round, giving me full points.
3. Game
Rebels again, a neat list with tooled up Jan (Ion turret, Chewie, Determination) escorted by two rookie Xs (other with an astromech of some sort, maybe R5) and a Blue B. I had never played against any HWKs so Jan´s ability was a bit of a surprise. Luckily her turret gunner had only one eye or something hitting only once during a whole game. The opponent flew defensively, concentrating his fire on Krassis (wise move) while avoiding seismics – I didn´t manage to get any decent opportunity to drop a bomb. My firepower was still good enough to down first the X with droid and then the B. But Krassis was bleeding shields and hull as he took few of those killer five dice TL´d shots, so during the last round he was shot down as I took speed 3 K-turn instead of speed 4 which would have been long enough to out of the X´s arc. So 44 points scored against my opponent´s 46 (who idiot took the prisoner with us?), loss! With these expensive big ships it´s easy to grasp a defeat from the jaws of victory.
4. Game
The last game was against the winner of previous tournament, so I was expecting a difficult game. This time he was flying BBXY, Y was PS 2, the rest PS 4. I started well as I was able to avoid the brunt of the rebel firepower while damaging his ships. He went boldly for a close action so seismics were really effective – the X, for example, took damage from all three of them. But then I got cocky and my flying went really sloppy and I was unable to finish off a single enemy ship. Krassis was on the rocks or otherwise lost and bombers were missing their arcs so damage output was not enough against the well-protected rebel ships. Luckily both of the B´s were constantly stressed and unable or unwilling to take green. When the time was up, we had ALL the ships still flying, but my enemy was able to down a bomber during the final round. I got my chance as one of the bombers got a long range shot on a 2 hull remaining B, scored two hits but that sneaky rebel was able to dodge the other hit. How close can you get? Loss, but luckily only a modified win for my opponent.
Two full wins were enough for the second place, my friend getting the first place with his Interceptors. Almost all the games were really tight with some modified wins - the tournament was still "old skool" with 33 point limit.
I was quite happy with the bombers, they are cheap and bomb type ordnance is actually handy as you don´t need any actions to use them – and they can be hard to evade for the ships without boost and/or barrel roll. Krassis with HLC was powerful, but needs to perform more or less every time he fires as he´s a big investment. And I need more practice using HLC ships as this time I had really big problems to get the main gun firing. In some of the games I got maybe one or two shots and the rest of the time it was tailgunner´s day.
All in all, a good tournament.
. IMO Firespray needs some kind of defensive boost as it is naturally top priority target for the enemies. Flight Instructor could be even better but this time there were no points to spare.