Last weekend my friend Ross, Tom and I travelled up Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to attend a tournament being held by the 2nd Legion gaming group. I had been looking forward to it for some time, as it was only my second event, and was eager to do well.
Before I start the write up, I must give a shout out to Dion Morgan, the TO, for both organising the event and running it flawlessly, and to everyone who played. Some of the games were highly memorable, and having fantastic guys as opponents was a big reason behind that.
My list was:
“The Quick and the Fat”
Han Solo [Veteran Instincts, Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, Millenium Falcon] (58)
Jake Farrell [A-Wing Test Pilot, Chardaan Refit, Push the Limit, Lone Wolf] (27)
Prototype Pilot [Chardaan Refit] (15)
100 points
Yes, I played a Fat Han. There was a Decimator on the line, **** it! And I still have trouble fighting Phantoms, so Veteran Han’s ability to neuter them entirely was quite appealing to me. A-wings as the supporting ships are not really the optimal choice, I know, but I’ve got a soft spot for them. Plus Jake with Lone Wolf sounded like it would make an excellent flanker (with Wave 5 hitting shops down here only a couple of days before the tournament there wasn’t really a chance to test it or any other new things, so going in I had to hope I would pick up using it quickly).
Ross and I met up the day of the tournament and (after tricking him into standing outside in the cold for twenty minutes) picked up Tom and made the hour’s drive up to the event.
The Tournament
Round 1: Nathan Kohler
Wedge Antilles [Predator] (32)
Keyan Farlander [Opportunist] (33)
Tycho Celchu [Push the Limit, Expert Handling, A-wing Test Pilot, Proton Rockets] (34)
Nathan and I set up our forces in opposing corners of the map. I opened by moving Han quickly up my edge of the map while the A-wings attempted to flank Nathan’s ships as they moved to pursue Han. Or that was the plan, anyway: in reality I ended up walking my Prototype right into Tycho and Wedge, who promptly killed it while Farlander focused on Han.
Fortunately I had gotten a lot of practice against Opportunistic Keyan thanks to my friend Ross, who has had a bit of a man-crush on him since Aces first landed, which had taught me how to handle him: get a token up and do. Not. Spend. It. By denying the use of the EPT, and with it Keyan’s ability, you basically turn him into a massively overpriced generic, and I was able to destroy him while taking only a few hits on Han.
By then Han had reached the top edge and was moving across it while Wedge and Tycho closed in from the centre and Jake nipped at their heels. We spent several turns exchanging fire until Jake ate Tycho’s Proton Rocket, which I didn’t actually mind. With the Rocket gone Wedge was the only threat to the Falcon, and I had more than enough HP left to win a slugging match with him. Wedge went down after missing two crucial evade rolls, and Tycho followed him a few turns later.
Win 100-42 (1-0)
Round 2: Matt Hollis
Soontir Fel [Daredevil] (30)
Whisper [Advanced Cloaking Device] (36)
Mauler Mithell [Predator] (20)
Black Squadron Pilot (14)
Matt set his ships up with Soontir on one side, the TIEs in the middle, and Whisper on the other side; I put my A-wings in position to distract the TIEs and Soontir while Han was placed right in front of Whisper, with the aim of charging her down and eliminating her early. After all, I had brought VI Han specifically for ghost-busting duty, so why not use it?
However, Matt rightly recognised that he was going to lose a straight-up fight with the Falcon, and so remained cloaked and blew right past him. Unfortunately, he then picked the wrong direction on his turn, and instead of having his Phantom turning in towards my A-wings it wound up facing the wrong direction in the corner of the map.
While Whisper hurried to turn around and get back in the fight, Han finished moving up the edge and turned inwards, while in the centre of the map the A-wings and TIEs made contact. The first few rounds met evade dice, and then a mistake on my part left my poor Prototype Pilot stranded in the middle of the enemy force for the second game in a row.
With Soontir at range 2, and both Mauler and the Black Squadron at range 1 I just gave up on him and started thinking about how I would continue with him. The little guy must have sensed my lack of faith, because he went out of his way to show his worth: Soontir’s two hits were met with Evades, Mauler’s three hits met more Evades and the Prototype’s Focus token, and the Black Squadron’s two hits were met with yet more Evades. Then, when he got to return fire, the Prototype rolled 2 crits and a hit and reduced Mauler to flaming wreckage.
The Prototype went on to score two more range 1 full rolls, one each on Soontir and the Black Squadron, contributing to killing both. Only then did Whisper finally manage to rejoin the fight, but there was too much for her to do; the only damage I’d taken was a lost shield on Jake and two on Han. I sent the Prototype away to safety as a reward for his hard work while Han and Jake hunted the Phantom down.
Win 100-0 (2-0)
I will also give special mention to one of the highlight games of the tournament that happened beside Matt and I. My friends Ross and Tom had been paired up, Ross with his Han/Farlander/Bandit list and Tom with a classic 8-man Academy Swarm. The TIEs ravaged Han on the first round, stripping his shields and dealing several points of hull damage. But seeing his buddy being wailed on sent Farlander into a righteous fury, and he went on to rack up six kills before finally failing the evade that would have kept him alive and let Ross take a time win. As it was Tom took a 100-84 victory, which I didn’t mind because the low MoV kept him and his TIE Swarm away from me in the top two.
Round 3: Ashley Staib
Soontir Fel [Veteran Instincts, Royal Guard TIE, Hull Upgrade, Shield Upgrade] (35)
Rexler Brath [Veteran Instincts, Hull Upgrade] (41)
Academy Pilot (12)
Academy Pilot (12)
Ashley set up his squadron with Soontir and Rexler in a corner each, accompanied by one of the Academy TIEs. I decided that my best bet was to single out Soontir, who I thought was the weaker of the two big guns, and kill him quickly before Rexler could join the fight. I thus set my Han up directly across from him and charged right at him, while Jake and the Prototype hard-turned and rushed to help. The plan worked well; Soontir went down on the third round of combat for the loss of the Prototype. Han then continued his run up the side of the board and across the top while Rex and the Academies attempted to pursue and Jake slid onto their tails.
After several turns of exchanging fire with the Falcon, Ashely decided to swing around and deal with Jake, and probably would have if not for an impossibly lucky set of dice rolls that saw a full roll from Han get through for the kill. The surviving Academy TIEs blasted away at Jake, but with 3 agility and Lone Wolf online they couldn’t force damage through and, even if they could, had no way to threaten the Falcon.
Win 100-15 (3-0)
Round three also served up another highlight match, with my round 1 opponent Nathan Kohler fighting James O’Grady to a rare draw. The match came down to a crippled Carnor Jax staring down an equally crippled Tycho Celchu, and with both being PS8 the Simultaneous Fire rule came into effect and let the two kill each other on the final round.
Meanwhile, on the table next to Ashley and I, Tom was fighting the Sunshine Coast’s Tom Dogswater, who had brought a non-traditional TIE swarm: Howlrunner, an Academy TIE, and four TIE Bombers, three of which had Seismic Charges. The list had no less than thirty hull points for the opponent to chew through and was being flown by a very skilled operator. The early exchanges saw Howlrunner go down for the loss of three Academies, but then the local Tom got off a brutal bombing run that killed one of visiting Tom’s TIEs outright and badly damaged two more. The local Tom eventually secured a 100-36 victory, and he and I squared off for first place in the final round.
Round 4: Tom Dogswater
Howlrunner (18)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot [seismic Charge] (18)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot [seismic Charge] (18)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot [seismic Charge] (18)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot (16)
Academy Pilot (12)
After seeing what it had done in the last round, I was rather terrified of Tom’s list. With my admittedly limited offensive potential I was really going to struggle to chew through all thirty hit points in time, if I made a wrong move the Charges would wreak havoc on my fragile A-wings, and with 6 Howlrunner-backed attackers Tom had more than enough firepower to eat through my Falcon. In the end I decided that my only real hope was to stay alive and ahead on points and win when time ran out.
Tom set up his loaded Scimitars together in his left-hand corner of the board, put Howlie behind them, and positioned the unloaded Scimitar and the lone Academy together slightly to the left of the main force. I set up the A-wings in my own left-hand corner and Han more towards the centre; the plan was to have the A-wings blast their way to the other side and swing around onto the flanks, while Han would move diagonally across the middle to follow them while strafing the unloaded Scimitar and Academy TIE.
The plan went well at first; Han made it through the centre and towards the left edge while downing the Academy and then conspired with the A-wings to eliminate Howlrunner before her rerolls could cause too much damage. But Han was still taking consistent damage and all four Bombers were able to converge on him as he attempted to fly across the top edge of the map. The A-wings were unable to offer much help since the threat of the Seismic Charges was forcing them to waste time breaking off and coming back around each time they lined up a shot. Before I knew it Han’s shields were down and the hull began evaporating.
Han made it to the board’s right-hand side and began moving down that edge while still trading fire with the pursuing bombers. At this point Tom made a critical mistake and put one of his bombers onto an asteroid on the same turn that I made an equally bad mistake of turning Han in towards the centre. That simultaneously shut off Jake’s Lone Wolf and put Han in position to take fire from all of the remaining Bombers. The only reason I survived more-or-less unscathed was luck of the dice and Jake’s Interceptor-level ability to reposition, which let him dodge the final Seismic Charge and escape all of Tom’s firing arcs. One more Bomber went down as they chased Han towards the bottom edge before time was called with him still on 3 HP, leaving me with a 48-0 victory.
Final Thoughts
I honestly don't think I deserved to win that last one. Tom played very well, especially considering he had just come off a mind-screwing swarm v swarm match the previous round, and if any number of things had gone slightly differently the result would have been very different. My luck with Han's non-Threepio Evades were what sealed it, in retrospect; if I'd rolled only slightly worse, or if one of the hits that had gotten through had been a particularly bad critical, Han would have gone down and there was no way the A-wings would have been able to catch up.
Speaking of the A-wings: the Prototype is definitely worth the upgrade over the Z-95, if you have the points for it. Jake was also very good, and probably could have been better; I kept brining him too close to the other two ships, keeping Lone Wolf offline far too many times.
Results
Name - Score - MoV - SoS - Record - Byes
Ben Doyle - 18 - 691 - 46 - 4/0/0 - 0
Han Solo [Luke Skywalker, C-3P0, Veteran Instincts, Millennium Falcon], Jake Farrel [Chardaan Refit, A-wing Test Pilot, Push the Limit, Lone Wolf], Prototype Pilot [Chardaan Refit]
Tom Dogswater - 15 - 580 - 43 - 3/1/0 - 0
Howlrunner; Scimitar Squadron Pilot [seismic Charge] x3; Scimitar Squadron Pilot; Academy Pilot
Ashley Staib - 15 - 539 - 43 - 3/1/0 - 0
Soontir Fel [Royal Guard TIE, Veteran Instincts, Hull Upgrade, Shield Upgrade]; Rexler Brath [Veteran Instincts; Hull Upgrade]; Academy Pilot x2
Thomas Dobson - 15 - 480 - 45 - 3/1/0 - 0
Academy Pilot x8
Nathan Kohler - 11 - 476 - 39 - 2/1/1 - 0
Wedge Antilles [Predator]; Keyan Farlander [Opportunist]; Tycho Celchu [Push the Limit, Expert Handling, A-wing Test Pilot, Proton Rockets]
James O'Grady - 11 - 366 - 36 - 2/1/1 - 0
Whisper [Fire Control System, Veteran Instincts, Advanced Cloaking Device]; Carnor Jax [Opportunist, Royal Guard TIE, Shield Upgrade, Targeting Computer]; Kir Kanos
Ross K Evans - 10 - 560 - 46 - 2/2/0 - 0
Han Solo [Navigator, Veteran Instincts]; Keyan Farlander [Opportunist]; Bandit Squadron Pilot [Assault Missile]
Gunther Ende - 10 - 434 - 30 - 2/2/0 - 0
Colonel Vessery [ion Cannon, Veteran Instincts]; Echo [Fire Control System, Advanced Cloaking Device, Veteran Instincts]; Academy Pilot x2
Greig Burges - 10 - 398 - 36 - 2/2/0 - 1
Unknown
Kaje Germon - 10 - 318 - 35 - 2/2/0 - 0
Biggs Darklighter [R2-F2]; Bandit Squadron Pilot [Assault Missile, Munitions Failure] x4
Paul Skuse - 5 - 300 - 50 - 1/3/0 - 1
Nera Dantels [Proton Torpedoes, Marksmanship, B-Wing/E2, Nien Nunb]; Gemmer Sojan [A-wing Test Pilot, Proton Rockets, Munitions Failsafe, Marksmanship]; Tala Squadron Pilot [Assault Missiles, Munitions Failsafe]; Lieutenant Blount
Aaron Rudolf - 5 - 242 - 36 - 1/3/0 - 0
Carnor Jax [Marksmanship, Royal Guard TIE, Hull Upgrade, Shield Upgrade]; Saber Squadron Pilot [shield Upgrade, Marksmanship]; Academy Pilot x3
Troy Crossingham - 5 - 230 - 41 - 1/3/0 - 0
Jek Porkins [Opportunist, Proton Torpedoes, R5-D8, Hull Upgrade]; Kyle Katarn [baster Turret, Recon Specialist, Moldy Crow]; Garven Dreis [R5-P9]
Matt Hollis - 5 - 190 - 43 - 1/3/0 - 0
Soontir Fel [Daredevil]; Whisper [Advanced Cloaking Device]; Mauler Mithell [Predator]; Black Squadron Pilot
Edited by DR4CO