I open this thread to give bit more visibility to the battle reports on my blog and to get some feedback.

First up: Bomber swarm VS Vador Shuttle & 2 Bounty Hunters

Please follow the link to the turn by turn report (with pictures ):

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/05/battle-report-bomber-swarm-vs-vador.html

I have to say I was really impressed by the resilience of the bombers, with 6 hull for 16pts you do get a pretty resilient platform, although hard to maneuver.

Please do not hesitate to comment here or on the blog, I'd love to get tactical advice to improve my handling of the bombers.

Cool report, and great blog! Love the pictures, very well done! If I had anything to comment about, it would be your choice to spread the asteroid field and to joust the firesprays.

Asteroid Placement:

I think given that you were facing 3 large ships, crowding the asteroid field would have been preferable over placing them in the corners. Asteroids are not kind to large ships . Yes, you normally would want to spread out asteroids playing a "swarm" list with standard TIEs + Howl but you don't have that here. And yes, a 5-kturn does dictate a spread out field, but I still think with 3 large ships facing you, more asteroids would limit their movement much more than yours.

Setup:

Both ships, firesprays and bombers want to joust. Firesprays get to use their rear arc with actions and Bombers can use their 5-kturn and avoid any unnecessary turning, something they're not fond of. That said, I think you took a lot of unnecessary damage by giving the Lambda an almost perfect approach for several turns. I think it'd be more appropriate to set up on the other side of the board, and force him those big ships through the asteroids. Yes, bombers are not great in an asteroid field, but a 3-turn combined with a barrel roll can really surprise you as to how tight that turn can be. You also could have gotten behind the lambda pretty easily looking at the board set up, or at least isolate it from the bounty hunters without much difficulty.

Compare and contrast your own and your opponent ships:

Lastly, given the MASSIVE blind spots of your opponent's ships, a tighter asteroid field combined with more difficulty in focus firing your 6 hp ships, would have very much benefited you. Next time, take some time to evaluate the pro's and cons of your opponent's ships compared to your own and then decide whether you want to joust or play the asteroid dog-fighting game. I think you could have won this handily if you chose to dogfight your opponent intend of jousting him due to your superior pilot skill and repositioning ability offered to you by barrel roll.

Overall, great report and I hope I did not come off as overly critical as that was not my intent. I also do love the bomber, and bombs are very underrated. Best of luck in the future, and look forward to your future posts!

Thanks JohnnyD144!

This is exactly the kind of well thought analysis I was looking for when posting here.

As you say it was a mistake to joust frontally with the Bounty Hunters, with the lambda free to shoot on the side. I probably should have went for the lambda first to reduce his firepower.

Yes, bombers are not great in an asteroid field, but a 3-turn combined with a barrel roll can really surprise you as to how tight that turn can be.

I'll try to add this maneuver to my repertoire for next game. However, for my first game with bombers, I wanted a spread out asteroid field to reduce piloting errors on my side. I found that this game is less about flying well than about about making less mistakes than my opponent so I wanted to reduce external factors. We'll see for next game!

The first two battles for my National Title:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_16.html

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_3800.html

Awesome Report! I like how you handled the bombers, and think if you had continued, you would have won.

Third battle for national:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_17.html

Fourth and Fifth battles:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_3644.html

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_21.html

@TieFanatic: thanks!

That Han match-up was brutal. Why did he 1-turn Han instead of going 4 straight? That made absolutely no sense to try to turn into a swarm...

I'm pretty sure he's still asking himself the same question.

Last battle before the final cut:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship_25.html

Final Cut top 16 game : How to train your Phantom:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/07/x-wing-french-national-championship-top.html

Just wanted to say I'm really enjoying these reports. Thanks for posting them and keep 'em coming!

Thanks for sharing the reports. I know they can take as long to write as they do to play!

Thanks guys!

@Ben Curry : or more in my case as I am publishing in both English and French!

The second shortest offensive of all times Battle report for the Final Cut Top 8:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/08/x-wing-french-national-championship-top.html

Do people forget to use asteroids to their advantage when flying against a swarm?!?!?!? That's two disappointing Falcon matches...

Battle report for the top 4 game : double falcons!

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/08/x-wing-french-national-championship-top_21.html

I'm currently waiting for the pictures to go with the finals battle report, should get them soon from WhelpSlayer.

@Deltmi : swarms without Howlrunner do not care as much about asteroids. They have the same firepower in or out of formation as long as they can point the guns in the right direction.

Fat Chewie VS Double HLC Defenders:

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.gr/2014/08/battle-report-fat-chewie-vs-double.html

Nice reports. Did you have one for the French Nationals Final game?

Not yet. I did not take pictures in that game as it was recorded, and I waiting for some stills to go with the report. I hope to get them soonish.

That's funny, i was gonna run that EXACT same Defender HLC Jonus list really soon.

Tournament débrief, I'm trying the buzzsaw shuttle plus 6 academies:



http://rule37-ica.blogspot.com/2014/10/x-wing-tournament-report-la-boite.html

http://rule37-ica.blogspot.com/2014/10/x-wing-tournament-report-la-boite_29.html

I got to face not one but two 8 ties swarm and a 3 assault missiles rebel squadron!

Starting my worlds debrief: http://rule37-ica-fr.blogspot.fr/2014/11/x-wing-world-championship-2014-debrief.html

Hey Ica,

I was following your blog since your nationals victory, well done! I look forward to your reports, I'm rather curios where it went wrong (if at all), I was hoping you'd make the cut.

Thanks!

You'll see in the game debriefs, but basicly it came down to :

day 1 :

- bad luck at the begining of my game against Dustin swarm (lost 2 ties on the opening salvo in 2 hits and 2 crits) then bad flying on my part

- really bad pairing against Kinetic Operator Echo list (compounded by tiredness)

day 2 :

- Keith (the British champion) outflew me with his swarm

- forgot to set a dial in my last game ( I blame the hotel for this, they called our room at 2:30 AM that morning to inform us that my roommate luggage had finally arrived : for me it was around 10:30 AM Paris time, I could not go back to sleep after that).