Houston Regional: After Action Report
This is really long, so if you want something more succinct, follow the links at the bottom of the post.
The List
Howlrunner with Hull Upgrade and Swarm Tactics
Lt. Lorrir with Hull Upgrade
Obsidian Pilot (2)
Academy Pilot (2)
99 Points
My list building philosophy has become “build around a closer.” The idea here is for the fighters to tear up any of the opponent’s high-skill ships so that Lorrir can dance circles around whoever is left with his special barrel roll.
I usually prefer to play Rebel lists. Until a couple of weeks ago I had never used anything resembling a swarm, but when I got my hands on Lorrir, he looked really fun. I put together an earlier version of this list with 4 Academy Pilots instead of the Obsidians and a few more points of upgrades. There was a bit of a learning curve on blocking tactics and handling the large formation, but it was pretty shallow. I was doing well enough in recent casual games that I decided to use it instead of the Falcon list that I had been practicing with, though up until right before the tournament I was considering swapping Lorrir for a Royal Guard with Push the Limit.
Thanks to Piqsid on Board Game Geek for the suggestion to upgrade to Obsidians and to Dan for his Swarm tactics (not Swarm Tactics) insights and the swarm-on-swarm practice game a few days before the tournament.
My personal goals going into this tournament were, in this order (1) Don’t suck , (2) get a set of cool dice by legal means, and (3) failing #2, otherwise acquire a set of cool dice.
The Venue
Montag’s Games in Pearland, TX is clear on the other side of the Houston area from my home, so I have only played there twice. Both tournaments that I have attended were handled very professionally. We actually played in rented space adjacent to the game store so that there would be plenty of room regardless of turnout.
I arrived at the registration table to find Star Wars playing in the background, and through the course of the tournament, we would also be treated to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and subjected to Phantom Menace , Attack of the Clones , and whatever the last one is called; I wasn’t paying attention. Our hosts had snacks and drinks on hand, X-wing products ready for last-minute purchases, and a few guests of honor.
I’m the one dressed like a fighter pilot
The Competitors
Houston is a large city geographically (well, by population too, but that’s not the point), so we all tend to play at stores close to home, and the several distinct groups do not usually overlap. Still, I was surprised to meet players from Houston that I had never encountered before. Additionally, several people traveled from surrounding cities including a large contingent from Austin and one competitor from across the border.
Popular lists included variants on BBXX, BBYY, and Doom Shuttle lists. There were a few ace lists that did pretty well, too.
In total, 25 players started the tournament. One dropped after suffering a couple of losses. Every one of the Houston area store champions either couldn’t make the tournament or forgot to take their bye certificates.
Our TO, Alan, told us that we would play five rounds and then cut to the top 8, then he announced first round matchups.
Round 1: Andres
Wes Janson w/ Squad Leader
Ibtisam w/ Heavy Laser Cannon, Fire Control System, Opportunist
Biggs Darklighter w/ R5-P9
100 points
Andres flew into Houston from Mexico City, which I think won yesterday’s award for miles crossed to play X-wing. His models looked awesome.
Obviously, this list puts out a lot of firepower, but I expected it to be a good matchup for me since I can afford to lose a TIE early, he can’t really afford to make mistakes with so few ships, and B-wings take lots of hits even from 2-dice TIE attacks. I set up in one corner, and Andres took the middle of the board.
With R5 observing, I think Andres had the home-field advantage
We opened by moving straight forward, then we banked toward each other for opening exchanges on round 2. Wes targeted an Academy Pilot and stripped his focus. I put some hits on Biggs, and then all hell broke loose with Ibtisam’s heavy laser. She eviscerated the ship that Wes had fired at, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was for Biggs to double-crit (without modifying dice and including a Direct Hit) one of my Obsidian pilots. At the end of the first round of shooting, I was down two fighters. I had put one damage card on Biggs, but he spent his focus to regenerate a shield. My Interceptor took a couple of Ibtisam’s shields, but I was pretty nervous at this point.
End of the first round of shooting. No jokes this time. This isn’t funny.
Fortunately for me, Ibtisam was stressed and Wes would collide with an obstacle on his next maneuver. In what is now obvious to you but seemed like a stroke of genius at the time, I went for the block. My Academy Pilot moved to interfere with Ibtisam’s bank, and the Obsidian pulled right in front of the asteroid. Biggs K-turned, and Ibtisam surprised me by going full speed ahead, leaving her stressed and unable to shoot at anything. That left Biggs as the only thread for this round, and he was swiftly dispatched.
For the next couple of rounds, Wes and Ibtisam ran towards my starting corner, which gave me several unanswered shots. Ibtisam eventually got back into the fight, but she was too badly damaged to have much of an impact by that point. In the end, it was a healthy Wes against a healthy Lorrir and Obsidian.
Wes killed the fighter, and it was one-on-one between an Aces Interceptor and a Transport X-wing. We would close, engage, separate, K-turn, and repeat. Even though Wes moved last and shot first, Lorrir was incredible in his ability to slip into position for unanswered shots. Before long, the slippery squint cleared the board. 5 points.
Round 2: Joel
Howlrunner w/ Swarm Tactics
Black Squadron Pilot w/ Swarm Tactics (2)
Academy Pilot (2)
Alpha Squadron Pilot (2)
100 points
Joel’s swarm tore up my Wedge/Luke/Biggs list at a store championship a few weeks ago. I placed my fighters in my left corner (like I did at the store championship) with my interceptor in the middle of the board to flank Joel’s formation, and he set up in the far corner with all of his ships facing laterally toward the center of the board (like he did at the store championship). We both opened by racing straight forward. On the second round, I banked my formation towards his and expected him to do the same. Instead, he turned toward my flanker, and I bumped the Alpha on the end of the row. This was my third-worst maneuver of the day, and without his roll to elude arcs, Lorrir got torn to pieces before he could attack. When Joel activated his Swarm Tactics, he opted to fire at 8-8-8-8 instead of 8-8-4-4-4-4. I don’t know whether this hurt or helped him.
After losing Lorrir, I would have bet on Joel, but I was able to prioritize the most dangerous targets, and I think I iced his squints in consecutive turns. The rest of the match was what you’d expect from a couple of swarms: back and forth in the middle of the board. If I recall, the attack dice did me some favors, and when we went to time I think he had two ships left and I had only lost Lorrir and one Academy pilot; none of my other ships had been damaged. 10 points.
Round 3: David
Gold Squadron Pilot w/ R2 Astromech and Ion Cannon Turret (2)
Blue Squadron Pilot w/ Advanced Sensors (2)
98 points
David is a seasoned miniatures gamer, but he is new to X-wing. You certainly wouldn’t know he’s new to the game; he knew all the rules and played well. If he sticks with this game, he’s going to be very good.
With all the B-wing lists floating around, I was happy to finally meet one. I could finally use my PS3 Obsidians to abuse some low agility, low skill ships. I took my usual corner and David places ships more or less across from me. When we opened, he swung the Ys to my right to try to work the ion turrets from the periphery of the battle. He gave me a little bit too much space, though, so he wasn’t able to ionize anyone before I took out one of his Bs. After finishing off the first B-wing, I chased down one of the Y-wings, and then we converged in the middle of the board with (I think) two Academies, an Obsidian, and Lorrir against a Blue and a Gold. He managed to ionize one or two of my ships, but it wasn’t enough of a disruption. I finished the Y and then the B with Lorrir and 2 generic eyeballs still on the board. 15 points.
At this point I realized goal #1 was satisfied, and if I could get one more win, I would probably meet #2 and not have to resort to #3. There were four of us who had not lost. One was SableGryphon’s bomber swarm, one was Darren’s 8-TIE swarm, and the last one was Daniel’s Smuggler/Blue/Blue/Gold list. I definitely wanted the Rebel matchup and was pretty afraid of the 8 TIEs.
Round 4: Darren (DoubleNot7)
Dark Curse
Academy Pilot (7)
100 points
Well, so much for luck of the draw. During the previous round, I heard Darren saying that he couldn’t specifically recall losing with this list. I was seriously hoping for a good round 5 matchup because this list scared me.
I took the same left corner that had been so good to me all day. The enemy ships set up opposite of me for a joust, which didn’t surprise anyone. We rushed forward at full speed, and I believe I took the worst of the opening shots. In round 2 I made my second biggest maneuvering error of the day. I advanced my formation forward at speed 2, and Darren did the same. His first two Academy pilots bumped mine, but his second rank had plenty of room to complete their maneuvers and focus. I made the mistake of using focused Academy Pilots near Howlrunner to shoot at Dark Curse. I reasoned that since he didn’t have an action, it was my best chance to hit him. Instead, I wasted those focus tokens and my rerolls. Howlrunner would be killed on the same turn, so I sacrificed some potentially major attack modifications to that decision.
The middle game is pretty fuzzy in my memory because I was too stressed to take notes and photos would have just looked like a pile of TIEs. Lorrir ended up hitting Dark Curse really hard; since Lorrir’s advantage is in maneuvering and he typically doesn’t have an offensive action anyway, he wasn’t really at a disadvantage against Dark Curse’s ability. At some point, we mixed up each others’ Academy Pilot #4 ships because we forgot to alternate ID tag colors. In any event, during the middle of the game I made up some of the ground that I had lost early, and as time approached I had 1 Academy Pilot with 2 damage cards and Lorrir with (I think) 2 damage cards against Darren’s 3 Academy pilots. I did some quick addition and was pretty sure the points favored me, so the beat up little eyeball ran for it with 3 enemies in tow. Lorrir used his normal shenanigans to harass the enemy ships.
As time was called, we were setting maneuvers for the last round. Lorrir was near the far edge of the board. Darren’s ships were in a rough line pointed toward my damaged Academy TIE; one was out of range, one was at range 3 with stress, and the other was at either 2 or 3. My eyeball ran for it at speed 5 and evaded. All of the enemy ships chased at full speed. Lorrir took an unmodified shot at a healthy fighter in hopes of a one-shot kill that would have given me the round, but he only dealt one damage card. My AP didn’t have a shot. Darren’s closer (focused) fighter fired, and the attack missed. The last shot of the game: Range 3 with no modifiers; Darren rolled one hit, and my evade token meant I didn’t have to roll for defense.
We totaled points destroyed: 64-61 in my favor. Modified win for 18 Tournament Points.
Round 5: Daniel
Blue Squadron Pilot w/ Advanced Sensors (2)
Gold Squadron Pilot w/ Ion Cannon Turret
Outer Rim Smuggler
100 points
While I had been sweating over the most intense match I have ever played, Daniel squaring off against SableGrypon on the next table. I literally don’t even remember seeing these two next to me since I was so focused on my own game, but apparently Daniel’s dice were pretty incredible, and he dealt the first real blow to the bomber swarm. You can read about it on Sable’s thread (linked below).
Daniel and I had played this match twice this week already. I won’t repeat the language that he used to describe those practice games or the words that he used when our matchup was announced, but I will share his line from before the tournament: “I win against the swarm about one in three games, and you’ve already beaten me twice.”
I set up to the left, and Daniel took the far corner. My TIEs flew out of the gate with 5 straights, as TIEs are wont to do. Daniel turned his smuggler hard left toward the edge of the board and bumped his Y and Bs into it. “You’re going to have to come and get me, [redacted].” This time I honestly don’t remember what colorful phrase he used to address me, but no doubt it was totally inappropriate. On round 2 I banked toward his ships in the corner and he broke up his stalled cluster to head for the middle of the board. He approached well so that on the first round of engagement the smuggler was my only target and then in the second round it was past most of my ships, causing me to split my fire. An inconvenient asteroid caused me to split off a couple of ships, and I think I focused on the Smuggler and Y-wing first.
One of my Academy Pilots took two hits before landing on a rock and surviving, flying off the rock and surviving again, then flying back across it in the other direction. That particular ship was not destroyed in the match. Once I had killed the smuggler, the Y, and one of the Bs, Daniel called the match. I had lost only one Academy Pilot, but, in fairness to Daniel, my dice were very kind to me. He would also like you to know that he nominated himself for best dressed. Either way, we were both into the top 8. I was the top seed with 28 points.
The Cut
Alan passed out the promotional cards to those ranked 17 through 24 and evade tokens to places 9 through 16. Finally, he announced the top 8 bracket including Daniel, Darren, Sable, Ryan with a Doom Shuttle and five TIEs, Sean with XXBB, Austin with Blue Thunder, and Tim with another Doom Shuttle/5 TIE list.
The Top Eight
My top-eight game was a rematch with Darren’s Dark Curse swarm. This time, just to change things up, I set up in the right corner. Darren set up opposite me, and we opened with the exact same maneuvers. I don’t think much damage was exchanged in the first round, but I now had a chance to correct a big mistake from the first round. My Academy Pilots in the center of my formation moved 3 forward while the rest of my ships moved 2. This fouled up Darren’s center and cost him a lot of actions, and he paid dearly for it. I hit him very hard in the second exchange. Taking a lesson from our last game, I left Dark Curse to Lorrir in order to make the best use of my actions. It helped me that Dark Curse was on the inside of the formation, so when Lorrir approached from the middle of the board he was able to set up good range 1 shots.
I have learned in the last week that swarm vs. swarm matches have a much greater tendency to favor dice results over maneuvering subtlety, and this match was no different. We K-turned around each other and jousted back and forth, and Darren simply could not put hits down on me. My new dice were rolling like they had evades on five sides instead of 3, and there’s just nothing you can do about a game like that. In the end I lost only one of my Obsidian TIEs.
Elsewhere in the top eight, Austin beat SableGryphon, Ryan beat Daniel, and Sean beat Tim.
The Semifinal
In the semifinal round, I faced Ryan with a Doom Swarm. I had never faced a Vader shuttle with an Imperial list, so I was pretty terrified of the free critical damage. I opened as usual, by racing forward. Ryan slow-played his first round, so there were no shots. On the second round, I raced forward at full speed and managed to block several ships, then I rolled Howlrunner out of Yorr’s arc. Yorr iced one of my Obsidians without needing to trigger Vader, and it was all downhill from there. I took a thrashing, and much like Darren couldn’t hit me during the quarterfinal round, Ryan was matching my rolls with fistfuls of evades, and my own green dice abandoned me. I had two consecutive rounds where I had range 1 shots on Howlrunner and dealt no damage. Once he had eliminated most of my ships (I think Lorrir was the only one left), I called the match. It would have been fun to see what kind of havoc Lorrir could have caused, but it was very late and the other table was already finished. I did not destroy any points.
In a very short match, Sean beat Blue Thunder to go to the final table.
The Final Match
Ryan:
Howlrunner
Captain Yorr w/ Darth Vader
Black Squadron Pilot (3 – 1 w/ Draw Their Fire)
Academy Pilot
100 Points, initiative
Sean:
Tarn Mison w/ R2-D6, Veteran Instincts
Red Squadron Pilot
Dagger Squadron Pilot + Fire Control System (2)
100 Points
Nobody was really surprised to see these two at the final table. They usually play at different stores, so I don’t think they face each other often. Sean wins lots of tournaments, and while I don’t think I had ever faced Ryan before Regionals, he has always performed well in the tournaments that we have both attended.
Ryan wanted to joust, but he had to place everything except for Howlrunner first. He chose his left corner and Sean took the far corner on his own left. On the first round, both moved slowly forward, then Ryan turned to move across his own side of the board.
In the first shots, Howlrunner attacked Tarn, taking two shields. Tarn fired back with his free target lock and focused his dice for two hits and one critical. Howlrunner rolled 3 evades. Tarn took two more hits by the end of the round, the Red pilot lost a shield, and the combined Rebel fire destroyed a Black.
The TIEs closed and the shuttle stopped. One of the Daggers landed on an asteroid, which Sean predicted as a tournament-losing maneuver, but Tarn one-shot Howlrunner before being pulverized by Yorr. The Blacks picked on one of the Daggers. The Dagger that wasn’t parked on a space rock killed the Academy Pilot, and the Red X-wing didn’t have a shot.
The remaining Black Squadron Pilots K-Turned, the shuttle did something slow and green, the Red K-turned, and the Bs converged on the shuttle. Yorr removed the Red’s shields and dealt a damage card, and then Vader followed up with a Damaged Cockpit. The Blacks did not deal any damage. When it was Sean’s turn to fire, he teed-off on the doomed shuttle. The X-wing scored a hit, one of the Daggers took removed the shields and dealt two Minor Explosions, one of which added an additional card. The last dagger finished Vader and Yorr off. The X-wing died in the next exchange, and the TIEs and Bs chased each other around for a little while, and on round 10 Sean finished off the last TIE with both of his Daggers on the board, winning a really awesome acrylic trophy. Seriously, if you go to a regional, make sure you get a look at the trophy before you leave.
We were mercifully spared from the final lava fight scene in that one movie, proving that it is possible to run a Star Wars regional tournament in less time than it takes to watch all of the movies. The Montag’s crew ran an excellent tournament, and I think everyone enjoyed a day of X-wing.
SableGryphon’s report is here:
http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/105447-houston-regionals-recap/
You can find all of the top 16 lists here:
