Hey all. You haven't heard much from me on here before, so consider this an introduction as well as a recap of my insane run at the championship (previous version lost so this one is a bit shorter, i tried to redo as much as i could remember).
First off, a HUGE thank you to the FFG crew for making the weekend so incredibly enjoyable and running a great and smooth event. Can't wait to see you all again!
This was a bit of an anniversary for me as far as playing xwing. During the summer of last year I purchased a core set at target when they were on clearance thinking that the game must have tanked to be on clearance already but the models looked cool anyway. So, into the closet the box went. At some point I popped into the xwing section on BoardGameGeek and discovered that the game is actually thriving and there is an organized competitive element to it, something i had been looking for. I came across Paul's name in the article on Worlds which had just wrapped up and saw he was local so I reached out to him and he pointed me to Nova Squadron.
Oddly enough, Paul was either the first or second match of xwing I ever played and one of the first kills I scored.
Over the last year I have seen my skill level steadily go up. I made it to 9th at the Regionals (a key loss where I rolled 11 blanks in a row kept me just out) and won the NOVA Open. I highly highly recommend people consider making the trip out here for the NOVA Open. It is an amazing relaxed weekend, the guys have tons of great things planned, the prizes are insane, and you know there will be some top notch competition at the championship!
Fast forward and I've made it to worlds. What an amazing experience. I met many great people from all over the world, some with names or online personas familiar to me, others that I didn't know of at all but am glad to have had the pleasure of hanging out with. I will definitely be back next year.
I made it all the way to Top 4 and I figured this would be a pretty good opportunity for a first tournament report since there were definitely some amazing and interesting games (some that were downright quirky).
I played on Thursday in Flight 1 coming in first with a 6-0 record and a 1087 MOV. Yeah, 1087. I only lost 6 z95s and one of them I actually blew up myself because I forgot about the crit I had on it when I set my maneuver. I may not be the World Champion this year, but I think I have a pretty good shot at holding the MOV record for a 6 round tournament.
My squad was a Fat Han variation:
Han - Predator, Gunner, C3po, Engine, MF Title
Tala x2
Bandit
After lots of testing I had worked out that this was probably the best balanced way to run the squad against most lists. I felt fine without VI since I felt phantoms were becoming a bit more scarce and I never actually got to play against a whisper in the end unfortunately. The single bandit gave me the edge on most other Fat Han lists since I could win by 1 point if I could not kill Han in time after getting rid of all their Talas and against a 3 bandit list predator and pilot skill would have a big edge.
Game 1:
First match was against a local player running a mixed imperial list with Vessery w/ HLC and wingman, Soontir w/ PTL, stealth device, and targeting computer, and a shuttle I think. Nothing much of note with this match, I used careful maneuvering to dodge the shuttle and keep the HLC from eating me up and dropped dice on soontir. Lost 1 z95, killed all ships.
Game 2:
This was an 8z swarm. Tough match, but I managed it effectively. He set up in 3 blocks of ships and I was able to send the z's up to block and fake han around the back leaving 3 hits on a lone z that i passed up to curve back around on 2 other z's that had come down the other side of the big rock from the main group. In the end it was 5 z's down and some damaged and I had all my ships. It was a close call because in the rush of the last round before time i had forgot to flip over my falcon dial and my opponent called over the TO to confirm he could move my ship. He tried to send it over the edge but the 3 bank was not close enough. he said he would expect anyone else to do it to him. perhaps not to that degree i imagine but anyway, he was an ok guy. one of my z95 lasers snapped off and he replaced it with one of his 8. cool guy, thanks for that 
Game 3:
This was one of my favorite games of the event. I played vs. Rick Sidebotham running Vader w/ Outmaneuver and prockets, soontir w/ PTL and hull + shield, and a shuttle with FCS and intel agent. Going into the match I saw the name and mentioned that it sounded familiar but I wasn't sure where I had heard it. Rick is a really great guy, all he said was that he "had a good game at nationals" and I told him I had probably watched a video of it at some point. It wasn't until later that day I found out he had won nationals. This game was a lot of fun in no small part due to how much fun rick has playing win or lose. you can crack jokes and just have fun with it. its a game after all I will always be happy to sit across the table from him.
I don't remember the exact setup other than that I isolated the shuttle at the far end from han and set the z's up to cross paths with it and pester it while han could deal with soontir and vader. rick kept his ships together after i placed han so i pushed the z's around the far end of the rock and sent han in to guard as he brought soontir and vader down. one z choked up their asteroid path as 2 went up and around and i think vader lost a shield, the z probably took 2. the interesting part was in the mid game where han got target locked by vader who was messing with the z's and then suffered a crit reducing his primary weapon. I spent a lot of this game running down to the bottom of the map away from vader so he could never reach range 1 and it took 3-4 rounds to roll a hit and fix my guns. predator and gunner eventually ate away at soontir and then han took care of the shuttle. vader went down a bit after. great game vs a great opponent.
Game 4:
Doug Kinney's tie swarm. I was pretty nervous going into this one, but I had a solid plan and it got executed well. I sent my z's up the left side of the big rock and faked a han coming up the side. this caused him to waste a turn with the ties in the upper corner doing small turns and barrel rolling away from han, who ended up going across the bottom of the board and boosting up toward a path on the other side of the big rock. he sent some ties down the han side and some to meet the z95's so in effect he was split 3 ways. he wasn't able to take out the z's so in the end I just kept picking him off. the only ship i lost was my own z95 when i blew it up because i made a red move with a crit when i forgot.
doug had probably the worst dice ive ever seen that game. just blanks on blanks with howlrunner blanks and more blanks and eyeballs when he had no eyeball because of blocking and bumping. it was rough. dice or not though i think i had done what i needed to do to win that match. i was -almost- able to say i have beaten both world champions in a tournament without losing a ship. maybe next time
Game 5:
Fat Han mirror match time! the top 5 squads in this round were fat han of some variation. nothing too special about this game, i was able to annihilate the z's and chase han down with an extra z and take him out.
Game 6:
Another Fat Han! This time against James Skeffington, and since we both knew we were in the finals we were just relaxed and having fun. Lots of jokes and good feels and I was able to kill han again.
Game 7 Top 32:
This was my match against Dom Cairo, who was running Soontir w/ targeting comp and PTL, shuttle with FCS, sigma w/ stygian and fcs, backstabber. i felt pretty confident against this list going into it. he positioned in the top left corner with his stuff and the shuttle in the top right. my z's were bottom right and han on bottom left. i sent the z's in along the bottom of the big rock in the middle to curve up into his rock space. he got timid about facing han and stalled in the corner letting me move in slow while han cut around back. unfortunately when he came into the rock area han was ever so just out of range of the sigma which stunk. long story short i lose a z and he gets jammed up by his own doing in the entrance to the rock area with no clear way out. my 2 z's block up the bottom and han knocks the shuttle around a bit going up the side. now han jumps over the shuttle with a boost so the shuttle and han are blocking up top right where soontir wanted to go so he has no choice but to turtle and soontir gets one shot but does a few damage back.
there was a bit of a kerfuffle here at the end, as for the vast majority of the game up until soontir i was down by 2 z95 and he had a gutted shuttle and a sigma with no shields (it turtled in front of my z and took no damage from 3 hits). so the entire game he is ahead and while i won't say he was slow playing for time, he took exceedingly long planning his moves every round. soontir dies with 10-15 minutes left and i think we only got 1-2 more rounds in. han moved a little and the shuttle was turning around, my z was coming up around the rock, the sigma was decloaking and turning around and took a potshot at the z95.
at this point we start turning dials and after a minute he throws some target locks down on the z95 from the sigma FCS. i tell him we are planning moves and its too late for that and he insists that it was the last ship that shot and he should get the target lock. now, i could have called the TO over and wasted some more time (probably a sound move since I am ahead and time will get called) but i shouldn't even have to call the TO over for something like that at this level. missed opportunity is missed opportunity. whatever. one more round, i dont remember much happening, shuttle turning around, backstabber doing who knows what. han moving forward. time gets called as we finish and he picks up a dial. he insists that this should count as starting planning a new round. it is an extremely literal interpretation of the tournament rules. he insists on calling the TO over to start a new round and the TO agrees, although if you want to insist that the instant you touch a dial you are planning then insisting on having that target lock on the z95 to try and win on points is kind of lame.
so, my z95 hard turns around the corner away from the shuttle that is desperately trying to catch han, han runs to the corner and turtles, sigma tries to get the last 3 hull and fails, shuttle out of range, end of game in overtime.
unfortunately this game left me a little irritated. the last round thing on top of the target locks was frustrating especially when so much time out of our actual round time was spent on his planning when my dials had been set for a while. i was warned that this sort of thing might be expected and thats exactly what happened. i can't say this was a super enjoyable game, but dom is a great player and i respect his skill at the game.
Game 8 Top 16:
this was my game against Nathan, pauls opponent from Gen Con. this kid is amazing. he is so young and so tactically gifted and adept at this game. it was also really wonderful to see his dad there cheering him on, probably more excited than nathan was. i loved that. this game was really enjoyable but also crazy intense. Nathan had biggs w/ hull, 2 tala, corran w/ FCS, ptl, r2d2, and shield upgrade. tough nut to crack!
we started with him in the upper left corner and han in the bottom left and my talas in the bottom right. there was a nice big space in the bottom half of the map with tight rocks up top, so the z's advanced while han cut across the bottom to go up the other side. a few turns later his force is aimed at the z's but not quite there in the middle and han is poised to do 1 of 2 things. i had the idea to fake going inside and turn outward and come back down once he got into the rocks as the z's blocked behind. in the end i decided he would never bite on that and figured he would go for the z's and han would be out of reach. so i turn inside....and so does he! now han has to cut across the top as the z's bite at the back. in the end, a key bump into corran allowed range 1 on biggs (he still lived with 1 hull) and then next turn finished him off. i cleared out his forces down to han and 2 tala vs corran and he kept running. i just couldn't kill him even down to 1 hull. he tried circling around the map to come get han while i circled at the bottom and in the end we ran out of time.
there was one point where he ran corran right in the face of han having forgotten that he double tapped my z the round before....and i still couldn't kill him! that guy just wont die.
amazing game from an awesome opponent. watch out for this kid, he will be a potent fixture in the tournament scene for years to come!
Game 9 Top 8:
This was my game against Jonathan Gomes, and it should have been filmed over the lame han circling match with paul. it was insane. it took 3 judges marking and holding things and measuring and keeping track to help us manage the cluster. he ran 3 blue w/ tactician and gold with ion and stress bot. i wasn't so worried about stress, predator and gunner can manage ok. just wanted to make sure i had good placement. well, i messed that one up!
we both set up left side and he had a good stalling tactic with bumping and barrel rolling so i was approaching slow with han on the left and z's coming up angled from the right. as he came into the rocks i had planned to shoot han forward over the rock in the corner with a 4 and block with the zs. unfortunately things looked a bit different on his end of the table and he blocked me with a barrel roll by the tiniest bit back onto a rock. that was upsetting, but i wasn't down and out yet. the z's were there doing work, one b couldn't shoot han. so i was doing ok. i just needed to get off the rock. a left turn was too close and i didn't want to forward move as that might be too far plus i now had an ion token on me and a stress.
now, Jonathan told me after i explained this to him that he wanted to keep shooting on me instead of bumping, but i had already seen a way he could keep me on the rock indefinitely with those slow moving rebels and then nail my zs with his harder hitters. i guess he didn't fully see what he could have done so he turned his bumping bwing in and moved the ywing 2 turn down preparing for me to make a 2 turn. i 2 banked and was out. now i could range 1 with han and predator.my angle meant ion was meaningless. i didn't care about the stress. game on!
unfortunately my dice even with range 1 and predator were not giving me more than 1-2 damage per turn on these guys and its just too slow so han kept eating dice. in the end i took out a bwing and the y wing. now with time almost out theres 1 bwing next to han with 2 hull and 1 full up below him aimed away. last turn. han needs to bump that bwing so he can kill the other one. he only has 1 hull. intense! han is aimed straight away 45 degrees past the big rock, b is aimed straight down on the other side. it could k turn, but instead 1 turns below han to cover that arc, making my 2 turn bump him and give me a free shot on the other guy. i also managed to get 1 of my 2 z95s aimed at the damaged bwing. i think if he had done a 2-k i might still have bumped him and been ok but who knows.
this was such an intense and outstanding game. i really enjoyed playing Jonathan, he's a great guy, all smiles and happiness and i can't wait to play him again!
Game 10:
Paul Heaver.....Paul Heaver.....well, its an unfortunate matchup, not much else to say. i knew there was no way to win this game other than on time, and i had ten minutes left when he killed me. winning on time would be kind of sad (but paul has already won once so that would be ok ). if i had had either of the other two matchups i think i had a good shot of going all the way.
i think some of my disappointment was probably coming out in this game, and for that i apologize. i had been sick all week since wednesday and hopped up on medicine, running on adrenaline, and the intense high of my previous games and the fact that i was daring to hope at that point that it was going to happen for me was a big place to fall from seeing paul across the table.
mathematically there was no way to win, and this was the game they decided to film, watching us sadly circle around. it was just a bummer and i think paul agrees. it was a boring game to play, boring to watch (they cut away from us for the most part). i couldn't quit but to be honest my heart was not in that game. if my only hope is that paul rolls badly as we circle around the board, we are playing monopoly, not xwing.
So, in summary, i had an absolutely amazing time, met great people, and will definitely be back next year. I want to thank FFG for a great game and hosting a great event and all the cool stuff I got to take home I also want to thank all the great people for making the xwing community such a pleasant place to play games.
Ira Mayers
Edited by Meekrob
