I played this weekend at the same store as http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/109222-orlando-regionals-my-first-bat-rep/ and had a blast. The store put on a good tournament, and I had a ton of fun playing all new players, despite 4 others guys that I frequently have opportunities to compete against also being there. While I didn't do as well as the linked topic, I still managed a respectable finish. Most of my wins, however, I attribute to luck and strange choices by my opponents.

My Build: Chewbacca with Han Solo, C-3P0, Milennium Falcon, and Push the Limit; Tarn Mison; and a Blue Squadron Pilot with a Sensor Jammer. The idea behind my build was to make selecting a target as difficult as possible. If you shoot the Falcon, you are going to lose hits. If you shoot the X-wing and don't kill it, it will hit you back harder. If you shoot the B-wing, you either spend your focus or have less hits on target. In practice, it didn't work out all that well, but luck was still on my side most of the day.

Round 1: First round bye from a store championship. 1-0

Round 2: Bounty Hunter with Proximity Mine and Flight Instructor, Bounty Hunter with Proximity Mine, Omicron Group Pilot with Darth Vader.

He put his shuttle roughly 1/3 of the way from the edge of the table on his left, I put my B-wing in my bottom left corner, he slapped both Firesprays across from the B-wing, one facing forward and one facing the other Firespray. At this point I realize that my small ships are gonna have a hard time staying alive, so I stick Tarn behind the blue to hold formation and set up Chewie roughly across from the Shuttle.

As expected, he rushed forward with the Firesprays and Lamba, while I hard turned to the right with my small guys to reposition and sent Chewie up to meet the shuttle. Round 2 saw combat, as the Lambda continued straight ahead, the forward Firespray hard turned 2 into the center of the field, and the back one bank 2'd and got a good angle in as well. Both of my small ships hard 2'd left into the center of his killzone, while Chewie flew slightly up and right. Chewie dropped 3 or 4 damage onto the shuttle, the Firesprays pounded the B-wing, Tarn poked the forward Firespray (he was out of range on the shuttle,) the shuttle used Vader and finished off my B-wing, and the B-wing took shields off the shuttle.

The next round the shuttle swung right to face the X-wing, both Firesprays closed on the X-wing, Tarn banked 1 to the right and managed to get a focus action, and Chewie swung back to the left to keep shooting. Chewie put the shuttle at 3 hull left, Tarn managed another 2 damage to the shuttle, but it wasn't enough. Both firesprays whiff pretty hard, but the shuttle suicides itself to put my X-wing at 1 hull remaining. The next round of movement, one firespray flies over Tarn and trops the proxy mine, rolling the 1 damage required to kill off my X-wing, and now it's Chewie alone at full health against a fresh firespray and one with half shields remaining.

The game continues for close to 15 rounds of flying around, but in the end it's just not enough, and Chewie falls. One firespray had 2 shields remaining, and the other (the originally wounded one) survived with 1 hull left after two whiffed range 1 shots from Chewie. 1-1

Round 3: 2x Gold with Ion Cannon Turret, 2x Blue with Ion Cannon and Fire Control System

He sets up his formation in the center of his side, I set up slightly on my right to hit him from an angle and delay the inevitable: he was going to ion me off the board, and there was nothing my 1 agility ships could do about it.

First round of combat saw all the shields and most the hull come off the forward B, and my B was ioned and target locked by both of his Bs. Second round saw both of us lose a B-wing (bigger deal for me than him, though his cost more points,) and Chewie dumps some damage on a Y-wing, while Tarn is ioned into his formation. Third round, Tarn bumps the Bwing and Chewie is now behind his squadron on the other side of a rock. Tarn and one of the Y-wing die, and it's Chewie alone against the shieldless Y and a bull health Bwing. For some reason, he doesn't k-turn the Bwing, and starts playing chase-the-falcon-around-the-rock, never getting a single shot with the Bwing while his Ywing was still alive.

Right after I finish off the Ywing, he finally gets a shot on the Falcon, but it isn't enough, and my falcon ends the game with shields still up (though poked) and with no enemy ships remaining. Several times he had opportunities to ion the falcon that he didn't take (it ran around with a single ion token from the first round he was alone until the end of the game,) preferring to use primary fire instead to try to deal damage. If he had used his ion cannons, then Chewie would have likely flown off the board with most of his hull intact, but he didn't. Oh well... totally confused, I move on to my next match. 2-1

Round 4: Captain Jonus with Seismic Charge, Bounty Hunter with Heavy Laser Cannon and Anti-Pursuit Lasers, Omicron Group Pilot with Heavy Laser Cannon, Anti-Pursuit Lasers, and Advanced Sensors.

She sets up in a bow-tie slightly right of center on her side, I set up in my formation in the same place on mine. Her opening moves confuse the crap out of me, as she 2 banks the Shuttle forward of her formation, then runs the other two forward into it. I slow play dramatically to cause her to come into the asteroid field (all 6 were placed on my side) to deny maneuverability on her large ships.)

At the opening of Round 3, her shuttle is roughly halfway down the map in the asteroids, her firespray and bomber were approaching the fight, and Chewie, Tarn, and the B had all just rushed from out of range to range 1 on the shuttle. My blue eats some damage from the firespray and Chewie tanks the shuttle shot, and together my ships put the shuttle at 1 hull remaining. Next round my small ships turn to face the firespray and Jonus while Chewie moves slightly forward to finish the shuttle, which he does handily. The firespray and bomber drop my B-wing's shields, and I do a little damage to the firespray. Next round Chewie comes around, the firespray, worried about having a shot, continues straight forward, my ships turn in and range 1 the firespray, but my B-wing bumps it and can't shoot it, and Jonus angles himself to K-turn next turn.

The B-wing gets dropped to 1 hull left and I take no other damage that round, while I deal a total of 6 hits to her two ships (3 on Jonus and 3 on the Firespray.) Chewie swings back down to confront the Firespray as it K-turns hoping to catch my small ships, but they both K-turn as well and have beautiful shots on it, and Jonus completes the K-turn madness and drops the bomb on Tarn, taking his first shield off. More damage to the Firespray, and the firespray rolls a range 1 shot on my B-wing: Hit focus focus focus, sensor jammered into a whiff. Both my small ships move to clear stress, Chewie comes down into range of the Firespray, and the firespray moves up, clears stress, and bumps the falcon. Jonus rolls Hit blank blank with no focus on the B-wing, resulting in a miss due to sensor jammer, Chewie gets no shot, Tarn kills Jonus, the B-wing then has no shot, and the Firespray manages another hit focus focus focus range 1 shot on the b-wing for no damage.

We are both incredulous as to her luck at this point. Both my small ships K-turn to face the Firespray, which had K-turned again, and Chewie is alongside the Firespray. The firespray manages ANOTHER Hit focus focus shot against the B-wing, while my ships pour damage onto it. The final round, the firespray swings hard 2 to continue fighting my small ships, who both 1-straight to clear stress, and Chewie comes down. Chewie drops the firespray to 1 hull, the firespray, with an amazing display of nerves, rolls a final range 1 shot on my B-wing: hit focus focus focus. Sensor Jammer. Tarn then finishes off the Firespray for the game. I can NOT believe how many times my B-wing should have been dead, but due to K-turns and bumping the firespray never had a focus to spend to kill the thing. 3-1

Round 5: Gray Squadron Pilot with Ion Cannon Turret and R2-A3, Gray Squadron Pilot with Ion Cannon turret, Blue Squadon Pilot with Ion Cannon, Blue Squadron Pilot.

He sets up first, and places his ships in his left corner facing his right corner. I imediately realise that I'm doomed, he is just going to slow play and when I finally get to him, ion me off the map, which since I'll be on his side of the board, won't be hard to do. In response, I set up Tarn and my Blue in the middle of the field and Chewie on my far left side, opposite corner from his ships. I rush forward, hoping to catch him unready for me, and when we collide, he has barely banked off his side while Chewie has already hard turned on his side of the map, on his right side facing his left side.

This time, when I rushed to engage, I had my B-wing hold back at a 1 straight and Tarn raced forward 4, leaping ahead. He had his B-wings target locked onto mine, and his Y-wings target locked my X-wing. Tarn gets ioned and stressed into his team, and then takes a crit from a normal B-wing shot: Whenever you overlap a ship or obstacle, take 1 damage. All 3 of my ships pour fire onto the Y-wing with the droid, dropping it to 4 hull left. Next round, miracously, he doesn't move to block Tarn with the B-wings, letting Tarn get off one more range 1 shot before he goes down. My B-wing banks slightly to engage the weakened Y, and Chewie banks slightly up, again facing his edge of the table, but not bumping anything.

Tarn goes down, the B without an Ion cannon takes some damage, the other Y takes my blue and chewie shots and loses it's shields, and his droid Y bites it. My B is ioned. Chewie straightens out, again parrelell with the edge of the board while his ion-less B K-turns onto a rock and the others hard 2 alongside Chewie, granting my ioned B another shot, which he takes on the damaged Y. Chewie also dumps another hit onto the Y-wing. Only his Y-wing has a shot with his turret, and he takes it on the b-wing, which manages to avoid it. My B-wing K-turns at the board edge, landing barely inside, his pair of ion ships K-turn, chewie flies over and ends up range 1 in front of his ion-less b-wing. They exchange fire, dropping shields on the B in exchange for 1 damage on Chewie, while his ships finally kill off my B-wing.

Chewie swings back through the middle of the map, and over the course of 4 turns kills off the damaged B-wing and the damaged Y-wing. Alone and undergunned, with Chewie still having all his hull and no shields, the B-wing and Falcon face off. With my upgrade combo, I am easily more than a match for the B, and I end the game with 2 damage on my big bird. This was another game where if he had used his ion cannons on the falcon, I would have been hosed, especially the turn that I had to bank toward the edge of the map to avoid colliding. It didn't help that he refused to use the focus action unless he had a target lock already, which gave the B-wing 4 or 5 more hull than it should have had through sensor jammer. 4-1

Round of 8: Wedge with Push the Limit and R2 Astromech, Biggs, 2x Rookie Pilot

His squad sets up in a jousting formation in his bottom left corner, I set up slightly to my left of his squad on my side, intending to K-turn after the engagement at an angle while he plows into rocks. We plan our maneuvers for turn 2, and at the end of the activation phase, Chewie is sitting nice, fat, and pretty on the big asteroid, range 2 from his entire squad. Tarn hits Biggs for his shields, my B-wing lands a hit on his rookie, but Chewbacca takes 10 (TEN!!!) damage from his firing squad with no reprisal.

Biggs and Wedge turn to deal with my small ships, leaving the rookies to finish off Chewie. Chewie banks left and managed to get actions, while Tarn and the blue move up again, the blue ending up range 1 to both Wedge and Biggs. The blue takes a ton of damage but still has a couple hull left, Biggs dies, Chewie somehow survives with 1 hull remaining, and he takes the shields and 1 hull from the previously damaged rookie. Wedge K-turns, so does the B-wing and the forward rookie. the back, nearly dead rookie 1-banks right, and so does Chewie, ending up with only that rookie having a shot on the falcon. Wedge aces the B-wing before it can do any damage to him, and Chewie completely whiffs his attack, but Tarn manages to kill the damaged rookie before it can shoot Chewie.

His rookie moves up bank 3 to engage Chewie, Wedge swings around to fight Tarn, and Tarn K-turns to continue the engagement. Chewie puts damage on the rookie, and Tarn and Wedge trade shots, Wedge whiffing spectacularily and Tarn taking his shields for the effort. Chewie, however, takes the Rookie's shot and eats it, finally leaving the table for the first time since Round 2. It's cleanup after that, with Wedge and the Rookie easily putting Tarn out of his misery, and Wedge limping away with 1 hull remaining and a full rookie to escort him into the best of 4.

A note about the asteroid turn: we were playing on a differently heighted table than previous rounds, changing the angle that we were watching the board from. My opponent had even commented on that very fact the fateful turn that we placed the dials down. Addtionally, it was around 8:45 at night, after I had gotten up at 5 AM with little sleep and driven 3 and a half hours to the tournament, so I blame fatigue more than any other factor for my mistake. I debated long and hard over that dial, as I wanted to be close enough to shoot and didn't think a 3 straight would have let me fire, but not only did he move fast enough that it would have, but I wouldn't have hit the rock with the 3 straight either, instead having it to boost my defense.

Loss and elimination, final score of 4-2 and a top 8 finish

Final thoughts about my build: Chewie, 1v1 against any other ship in the game, wins. 2v1, he can normally handle himself, especially if the opponent gets strung apart or bumps him. When you get more ships than that pounding on him, however, he goes down fairly fast. The support ships I ran with were not the best I could have chosen, and in fact I had thrown the squad together in my head on the way down, with no playtesting. Tarn will be MUCH MUCH MUCH better when he has R7 astromech to keep him alive.The B-wing did nothing for me all day except soak hits from that one unlucky firespray, and will probably get swapped out (since I'm losing 2 points to add R7 to Tarn anyway) for a Green Squadron Pilot with Push the Limit (and when Aces drops, Chardaan Refit, A-Wing Test pilot, and Wingman to pull stress from Chewie every round.) Against swarms or mass rebels, the build suffers just like Han Shoots First, but it excels against 3 or 4 ship rebels if they follow conventional falcon wisdom of "Kill support ships first, leave the easily-hit falcon for later." Han Solo is easily my favorite upgrade in the game right now, allowing for your one action to be a target lock OR a focus, chosen at the time of rolling dice. That, coupled with the 2 dodges per round on the Falcon, makes it really really hard to kill before it kills you.