Hey guys,

Regionals is going down tomorrow in my neck of the woods and being pretty new to the game still (my 4 games at AOIA were probably only my 4th or 5th through 8th and 9th games total), I'm looking to get some advice. I watched Worlds from last year when I was getting into things and watching the finals, I liked Paul's XXBB as it seemed relatively simple and had some nice features, so that's what I started playing. I ended up going 3-0 sending me to the final table at AOIA so I was quite happy with it. Now I see Paul dropped the Daggers to Blues and the Rookie to a Gold with R3-A2 and an Ion Turret and I like the idea there as well and I'm curious what everyone's oppinions are on it.

I'd fly the two squadrons quite similar, so I don't see "Fly what you know" being too big of a deal here. With the new list I'd gain 2 Hull and 1 Shield worth of HP, I'd gain some control elements with the Ion and R3-A2, however I'd lose some pilot skill which could get me beat up before even getting a shot off, and while not necessarily taking attack dice off the table (except at Range 3 for the Gold), I do lose some damage with the Gold/Rookie trade. I like the idea of being able to go into a joust and just before the K-turns, hit a ship with an Ion shot and take it out of the fight for the next 2 or 3 turns and then down towards the end of the game, in a one on one or so (if the Y makes it that far), completely control the other ship and remove it from the fight entirely.

However, just finding out Large ships are a bit more difficult to Ion control, how would this fair against a list like the one I faced at AOIA of 2 Bounty Hunters and 2 Academy Pilots? The local meta here I'm not too sure about, as the AOIA I went to was only about 16 players, the Regionals are being capped at 32 and are probably going to bring people in from bigger cities, so who knows. These Regionals are also being restricted to pre-Wave 4 as the store owner didn't get stock in by a specific date and wanted to keep things fair.

What do you guys think? Any advice would be much appreciated.