First off, I would like to thank Roy and Mr. Nice Guy Games for running an excellent Regional Tournament, and providing extra prize support in the terms of play mats for the top 8. Second off, I’m going to attempt to remember what happened over 24 hours ago, in the middle of the longest and hardest day of X wing I’ve dealt with, so I apologize if it’s not accurate or comes across biased. There were 38 people in attendance, so we ran 5 75min rounds, with a cut to the top 8. My list was Hobbie w/ R3-A2 + Flechette Torps, Biggs, Green w/ PTL, Gold w/ ICT. Note, all left/right and top/bottom of the board are from my orientation, but right/left maneuvers are from the ship orientation.
I had a first round bye from winning Mr. Nice Guys Games store championship, so I grabbed some grub with Rhinehart and then watched some other games as well as talked with some of the Nova Squadron folks that also had a bye.
I forget who I played the second round, but he ran a dual Firespray list: Kath w/ HLC + PTL, Boba w/ HLC + PTL + Weapons Engineer. I pushed a dense asteroid field since I figured I could pull him into it since he had nothing besides big ships to chase me. I setup my A wing on the left side, Y wing about 2/5 from the left, and X wings about 2/3 from the left. He setup Kath lined up going through the left half of the asteroid, and Boba going through the right side of the asteroid field.
My Green wing was charging forward attempting to get the flank, but ended up getting shot at with the HLC, but thanks to token stacking, I believe I came away untouched. The next round, my the A wing closed to R1 of Kath, but failed at getting out of her arc. My opponent made a mistake and chose to PTL with both Boba and Kath, so they were both stressed. Biggs hid behind an asteroid, and Hobbie took a TL on Kath. Boba had to shoot at Biggs through a rock, who took 1-2 damage. And Kath didn’t have any shots at anything besides the A wing, who took 1 damage I believe. While I had a lock on Kath, I ended up having a R1 shot on Boba, or a R3 obstructed on Kath, so I decided to take the unmodified shot on Boba, stressing myself to stress him. Biggs shot at Boba too, while the A and Y (ion but missed) took shots on Kath. I probably totaled 4-5 damage this round, most of which came from the R1 shot from the A wing on Kath.
The next turn, I knew he was likely to be doing greens to clear the stress, especially with Kath since she could then act again, so I did a sharp 1 with my Green to block the 1 right bank, 1 and 2 straight, leaving her only with 1 left, which I blocked with the Gold… Kath was not going to get an action that turn. I slow rolled my X wings so I made sure that I wouldn’t get out flanked, which ended up being a good move. He did 1 right bank with both of them, running Kath into my green, and exposing Boba’s side to my X wings. I forget if Boba shot at the Green or the Gold, but without modifications, didn’t do much damage. Kath didn’t have any shots. I stressed Boba again, even though I thought that he would be dead this turn, while Hobbie and Biggs ripped him apart. Boba ended up surviving the A and Xs barrage, with 2 hull, so the gold took an Ion shot at Kath successfully.
The next turn, I did 1 bank lefts with both of my X wings, bumping into Boba, but there wasn’t much else I could do. My green took a 2 turn to clear his stress, and my gold attempted to 2 turn left and block Kath’s slow speed maneuver. Turns out, she expected that and did a 3 bank, putting my Y in a R1 rear arc shot, and my A wing I believe just missed arc on Kath. Boba also flew out of there, doing a 4 straight, but maintained his double stress. He shot at R2 against Biggs, and did another damage, but then Biggs shot back and killed him, leaving Hobbie free to take a R3 obstructed shot on Kath, but he put a second stress on her since she PTL during activation. My Y missed his ion shot.
At this point, he gave up on trying to clear stress, and kept flying away as fast as possible. Since I was trailing him, I had issues getting anything besides R3 shots with the Y, but my Xs and A cut her off from the side. It took a few turns, but I ended up killing Kath without losing a ship. My Y wing managed to get a crit in at R3 from his primaries… which was only the second hit he got in. The A wing probably did at least 8 damage total (he pretty much single handedly killed Kath), and the X wings accounted for the rest. 100-0 win.
My next round was against SteveO. He was running Wedge w/ ST, Biggs, and 2 Blues. Again, we setup a dense asteroid field. Since I had 99 points, I got to decide initiative, and this time I decided to give it to him to keep his B wings from barrel rolling to react to my Y wing, but more importantly, Hobbie moves after his Biggs, and I can get a lock to launch my torps on him. He setup on the right corner of the board, and I knew in all likeliness Biggs and Wedge would fill out the square so he could effectively use swarm. My A was on the left, Y 2/3 on the right, and X’s about center.
My A wing was fast enough to get on top of the asteroid field, and zoom across it before the rest of my squad engaged. Wedge was the only one that ended up with arc on the A, and managed to do 3 damage to it in 1 shot, but no one else could shoot at it (I forget if it was arc, or that he was covered by Biggs and Wedge couldn’t shoot Biggs). I was forced to shoot at Biggs, as was he. But I double stressed him without doing any damage. I believe my Biggs did a damage to his. My Y managed to Ion Biggs.
My A wing then managed to block Wedge, and lined up a R1 shot on Biggs, just in case my X wings couldn’t kill him. He K turned one of his B wings, lining up a R1 shot on my Green wing. The rest of my squad slow balled it, as did his. With just 1 B wing with a focus, I had the advantage. Wedge did a damage to my Biggs, and his Biggs failed at doing anything to mine. In the return fire, my Biggs killed his, allowing me to stress the B wing that had a focus token with Hobbie. My A wing didn’t have any shots since Biggs died and he was touching Wedge, but my Gold ionized the B that was stressed. SteveO made a mistake and took a R2/3 shot at Biggs with the B wing that K turned instead of the R1 shot on my 1 hull A wing, forgetting that Biggs’ effect was only R1.
From there, I pushed past the B wing that was double stressed, so he didn’t have any shots, and got my A wing out of arc of the ionized B wing. With the B’s both controlled, I turned my sights to Wedge and by the end of the round he was dead. I switched the B wings that I ionized/stressed since Hobbie flew past the previous one and didn’t have a shot. But the effect was the same – neither had actions, and one didn’t have any shots. While mopping up the B wings, he ended up getting a R3 shot on my A wing killing it off. 100-22 win.
The fourth round was against Dranthax running Rookie x3 and Ibby w/ EU + PTL. We both setup a tight asteroid field, but this time I took initiative – I figured I could make more use of blocking with the Y every now and then instead of reacting to where he’ll move his rookies. He setup on the left, and I setup the X/Y mostly centered, and A on the right.
We basically setup a joust between his 3 Rookies and my X/Y wings, while the A ran around the flank, and Ibby turned off to take care of the A. After the first round, I stressed one of the Rookies and Ionized another, Hobbie K turned behind them, but I made the first mental mistake of the night when I attempted to K turn Biggs, who landed right on top of the ionized ship. This was the start of a series of mental mistakes I made throughout the rest of the night. No matter, I couldn’t focus fire, but nor could he. We both walked away without killing anyone, but he had 2 rookies at 1 and 2 hull, the 3 rd untouched. Since I K turned, I didn’t have a TL to remove my stress, and I chose not to stack a second stress on myself to stress one of the rookies. And then my ion missed, so the next turn I didn’t have control over the board.
So I decided to use my Y wing to block 2 of the Rookies. Ibby PTL’d, and the 3 rd rookie was killed via Hobbie/Biggs. And Ibby killed my Green Squadron Pilot. But I ionized her, which was the last shot she ever took. By blocking with my Gold, I ended up putting him in the cross hairs of both Rookies the next turn, so while he continued to Ionize Ibby, he was brought down to 1 hull. My dice went cold that turn, and I only managed to do 1 damage with my 2 X wings, bringing his second rookie down to 1 hull.
In an attempt to keep my Gold alive, I made my second mental error of the night, charging Biggs forward with a 4 forward to cover the Gold. This was a mistake because both Biggs and Hobbie were in chase position behind the Rookies, who were behind the Gold, who was behind Ibby. Biggs and the Gold were capable of taking Ibby out, but his two rookies took out Biggs.
The next turn, I ended up running into the injured Rookie, and couldn’t do any damage with Hobbie or the Gold, who was subsequently killed. Now I had a full health Hobbie against a 1 hull Rookie and full health Rookie, but he had maneuvered the injured one out of the fight, and back in behind Hobbie, so I had to choose between K turning and facing both of them at R3, or slow balling it, eating a R1 from the 1 hull and chase down the full health one. Mental mistake #3 came in here when I decided that I was going to outsmart him and somehow I thought I could get out of arc of the injured one and run into the full health one, so I could have a turn to get a better position to take out the injured one… But that was just stupid, and he ended up having a R1 shot on me with the full health, and a R2 with the other, while I had no shot. Hobbie then died. 58-99 loss.
Going into the final round, I knew it was win or go home as, per usual, I’d done the math on the theoretical placements and pretty much decided short of draws happening, there was no way for the loser at 3-2 to make the top 8 (Turns out there was a draw between Paul Heaver and the other undefeated opponent, but that didn’t matter). I played against Osoroshii and his 3 X wing list, Wes w/ VI, Wedge w/ Opp + R2, Luke w/ Opp + R2D2.
A dense asteroid field was setup, and I placed the A on the right, Xs in the middle, and Y in between. He set all 3 up directly across from my A wing… Sooooo I turned everyone to the left, and rotated the playing field 90 degrees. I entered the asteroids from the left and he entered from the right. I decided to take a short cut with the A wing, so he had R2 shots on the A wing before anyone else came in range (mental mistake #4). There goes the A wing. I took a R3 shot at Luke, since he was the only one in range for both Biggs and Hobbie, I chose to stress me to stress him, even though I didn’t have a TL (mistake #5). Luke hadn’t bothered to use Opp to finish off the A wing, so he only had 1 stress. But I stressed him on the gamble that I could ionize him through an asteroid, but that failed. Had it succeeded, he would have been parked on an asteroid… However, it was a mistake to stress him since if the ion had gone through anyways, Luke wouldn’t get an action anyways since he would be on the asteroid.
I decided to do a 3 bank right with my Y wing, hoping to block Luke on the asteroid, which was mistake #6 for 2 reasons. First, I ended up on the asteroid myself. Second, I knew better since he would have to either keep the stress and go over the asteroid, or bear off and not have a shot that turn, which is what he did, 1 bank right, R2D2 heals the 1 damage I managed to do. Meanwhile, from entering the asteroid field from the left, Hobbie and Biggs were staring straight at an asteroid (which was mistake #7 made earlier in the game). A 2 straight (clearing Hobbie’s stress) wouldn’t clear the asteroid… So I ended up going 4 forward to clear the asteroid, and a 2 bank with Biggs so he wouldn’t hit the asteroid which meant that Biggs didn’t have a shot, but that didn’t actually matter since he died before he would have shot anyways. Hobbie shot at (without any tokens) Wes (mistake #8 because I could have double stressed Wedge, taking Opp out of the picture) and didn’t do any damage.
Next turn, Hobbie couldn’t K turn, and was about to fly past everyone, so he was useless and ended up dying. I did get an Ion shot through on Wedge and did one damage to him. But with only my Y wing left, vs. his entire team (less 1 hull) I knew it was over and I had no chance. The Y did manage to live for another 2-3 turns as he ran away, but it was only because the game had thus far only taken 20min or so, and we had an hour still left to play. Loss 0-99.
Osoroshii ended up in the top 4, and Danthrax ended up in top 8, so I don’t feel too bad to losing to them. I feel like I could have won against Danthrax had I not started to make mistakes left and right. Take away from my first large X wing event – I need to work on my mental endurance. I did end up in 13 th and managed to win some fancy acrylic evade tokens… My A wing no longer has to feel like a bum with the only cardboard token!