So I’ve been raving about my Pyscho Tycho list for a while now. It consists of:
Corran Horn w/ Veteran Instincts, Fire Control System, R2-D2, Engine Upgrade
Tycho Celchu w/ Proton Rockets, Push the Limit, Daredevil, Experimental Interface, A Wing Test Pilot
Prototype Pilot w/ Chaardan Refit
In casual play and vassal play I’ve gone 18-4 with it. Two of my losses were due to Corran failing at life – the first he got one shot via HLC w/ Predator (hit hit hit rerolled crit vs. 4 blanks/focuses… direct hit drawn), and the second due to a R3 double tap where the other dude’s Corran rolled 6 total hits, and my Corran rolled 1 out of 8 evades. Another loss was cold red dice across the board against a double Falcon, where a R1 double tap, and Prockets did a total of 3 damage. The 4th loss was a close match at my FLGS against a newer player with a Decimator + Defender, where I just couldn’t put damage on the Defender. When Tycho and Corran died, the Defender had lost 1 shield, and the Prototype took the Defender all the way down to 1 hull before it died (and we rolled the dice just for SnG – the Prototype would have killed the Defender if it had survived to get a shot).
So, needless to say, I took it to my first store championship with high hopes. Last year I won two different Store Championships and barely missed the top 8 in two different regionals due to tie breakers. I knew there was going to be some tough competition, as both Eric B. (runner up at the Ohio Regional, brother of the Runner up at Gencon) and Phil H. (top 4 at Ohio Regional – lost to the winner, top 16 at Gencon) were going to be there, as well as several other good local players. But it turns out that 45 people showed up! That was more than any of the three regionals I attended last year, so we were in for a long night. Dice started rolling at 3pm, and we did 5 60min rounds with no break, plus a cut to top 8. Phil and I play each other all the time, so we put down each other’s name so we wouldn’t have to play together in R1.
But instead, I get paired up against another friend who has been primarily playing the LCG recently, so he decided to run a Kath w/ Ion Cannon, PTL, Gunner, Proton Bomb, Flechette Torps, EU and Whisper w/ VI, FCS, ACD. Per my usual game plan, I went after Whisper first – I have a very hard time tracking her down if I lose Corran, so I feel like I have to kill the Phantom first. But it became quickly apparent his game plan was to just lure me into chasing Whisper while he took pot shots with Kath, so I disengaged Whisper and turned my attention to Kath, which is easy enough to do with three fast agile ships. After pinging a shield or two off of her, but without taking any damage myself, she dropped the Proton Bomb. I had setup a block with the prototype, which ended up preventing Kath from escaping her own Bomb, but sadly Corran BARELY ran into Kath’s side, and lost his action, and then BARELY caught the PB ( a barrel roll would have easily cleared him from the bomb). Kath drew Damaged Engine, while my untouched Corran drew a Direct Hit. Boom. Done. The End. This was about 10 minutes into the 60min round, and my initial thought was to kill Kath, and then run away, but I know I couldn’t reasonably do that, nor could I live with myself for running away for 30+ minutes, so I had to quickly kill Kath and then very defensively hunt down Whisper. I unloaded my Prockets, and it wasn’t long before Kath was dead, I escaped that with a shieldless Tycho and a 1 shield Prototype. Whisper had lost a shield earlier in the game when I was originally chasing her.
The one saving grace I had was that I had Tycho, who is arguably more maneuverable than a Phantom, and I had two ships, so I tried to force him into bad decloaks, putting the prototype in R1 of where he’d be decloaking one way, and Tycho at R1 the other way. One two occasions, this resulted in him decloaking the third way, and landing on a rock taking a damage. All of a sudden, this was looking possible – I still had 2 ships and he had just 1 hull remaining. Things quickly changed as the next shot killed off Tycho. The prototype gave the Phantom a run for her money, and when time was called, the Prototype (who had 1 hull remaining) was staring down a cloaked w/ Evade token R1 shot. I had no modifiers though. The prototype rolls a natural crit crit hit, and I my heart races – I could actually pull off this win. Whisper rolls slowly, blank, evade, focus……. Evade, and spends the token to keep living. I lost 84-60. Both my opponent and myself (as well as the audience that was growing around us) all agreed there was no reason for him to win that fight, but a single well placed Proton Bomb and an unlucky direct hit changed everything. 0-1. 76 MoV.
The next match was against Whisper w/ VI, FCS, ACD and 5 Academy Pilots. He won the initiative roll, and chose to give it to me, not what I would have done in his position, but whatever, I’ll take it! I can tell that this player wasn’t that good of a player, on the second round (first round of combat), he allowed Tycho to slip past all of his TIE fighters, and get a R1 TL+F on Whisper… I’m not really sure why he chose to decloak her right into Tycho – I guess because he was trying to maintain formation with the TIE fighters. Corran was flanking on the other side, and no one could shoot at him either. Corran pinged a hull on a TIE fighter, and Whisper rolled 3 hits spending her focus to attack my Prototype, who rolled 2 evades, 1 blank and 1 focus – and spent his focus token to keep from taking damage and to prevent Whisper from taking a focus (at which point the player had to read her text to realize he couldn’t do that, and then I had to tell him that she could still cloak even though he didn’t hit, and had to read that too to figure that out). Tycho took advantage of the R1 opportunity, and blew his Prockets… 5 natural hits, which is only a 3% chance, but if you take into account that I had a TL and F to spend, the chance of getting 5 hits is 51%. And Whisper rolls one evade, 2 focuses, 1 blank. Boom. Just like the last game, that single round completely changed the outcome and strategy of the game. The prototype was attacked by all 5 TIEs, and took 2 damage, and he was the only one in the cross hairs from then on, so he turned tail and ran away, the remaining TIEs gave chase. The prototype managed to live with 1 hull, while I managed to kill all except 1 TIE when time was called (5 minutes early I might add, that pissed me off because I could have killed the last one in those 5 minutes). 1-1. +187 points of MoV.
Next up was against the newer player that I had lost to two days before. We were both running the same lists, but I knew that the loss to him last time was more on dice than it was skill. He was running Kenkirk w/ VI, RC, Isard, Gunner and Vessery w/ VI, HLC. I immediately targeted the Decimator, and closed to R1 with both Tycho and Corran for the first round of engagement, while the Prototype had a R2 shot. The decimator escaped that with 3 hull and a Damaged Sensor Array, but Corran escaped with 1 hull. So he bugged out, and arc dodged Vessary (and recovered a shield and took an evade). My opponent then chose to shoot both of his shots on Tycho instead of taking the R3 obstructed at Corran with Kenkirk. While it’s hard to say that Corran is the better shot, I felt like he had no choice but to try and kill Corran at that point, so I think he made a mistake. Tycho did a damage (after he spent his evade), and the Prototype had a R1 shot rolling two hits after spending his focus, Kenkirk rolled a focus, and spent it to live with 1 hull… But as we were going through dials, he remembered that he had the damaged sensor array and shouldn’t have had that focus token, so he offered to remove his ship, at which point I told him it was up to him, officially it should be dead, but neither of us caught it when we should have. He pulled the Decimator off the table, so I was left with a half health Tycho, a regenerating Corran, and an untouched Prototype to chase down the Defender.
Once again though, I just couldn’t get damage through on the Defender. Corran regen’d all of his shields while the A wings kept Vessery busy but they couldn’t do any damage to him. Corran joined the fight, and I still was left without doing damage. After several rounds of just enough evades to cancel all of my <booms>, Corran finally pushed through a hit, and then two more on the double tap. The next turn the prototype managed to push through a hit and crit, which was a direct hit. 2-1, +200 MoV.
My 4th game was against a very interesting list, that I can see how it could be deadly, but I never allowed it to do what it wanted to do. He was running Scimitar w/ 2x Conc Missiles, Jendon w/ SJ, ST-321, and Vessery w/ Adrenaline Rush, HLC. Yes, I got to play against Defenders in back to back games. I really liked the addition of AR to the Defender, I had toyed around with it a while ago myself, and if I had no other EPT I wanted, I would take AR in a heartbeat. Due to the setup, I really wanted to slow roll, and figured it didn’t matter either way since he could get the TL on whomever he wanted and pass it off in the first turn anyways. I did manage to juke his Defender, who was left without a shot in the opening round, while Tycho zoomed into R1 of the Bomber, and Corran had a R2 obstructed on the Bomber. The Bomber and Jendon both had TL on Corran, so I knew this was going to be a painful turn if I didn’t manage to kill the bomber first. Corran pushed through a hit and crit on it, which reduced its agility by 1. I decided to fire the Prockets even though I didn’t have a TL, and managed 4 <booms>. His single evade turned up blank, killing a fully loaded Bomber. Jendon then went and ticked a single shield, which I didn’t care about.
I knew that any of my three ships could single handedly take out the shuttle even if I only had 1 hull left, but the board position meant that I could rush around a rock and keep Vessery from shooting while taking shots on the Shuttle, so I went after it next. After a R1 double tap and R1 TL+F from Tycho, it was left with 1 hull, but Tycho wouldn’t be able to get a shot in on it next turn, so it was up to the Prototype to navigate into a position where it could kill it. Sadly, there wasn’t a good place besides a 5K, but that would leave it up to chance as I didn’t have an action. But I figured worst case I could just chase it down the next turn with the Prototype. Corran slow rolled to regen a shield, and he didn’t have a shot due to the double tap, but Tycho zoomed in on the Defender, and started the dance. The Prototype rolled one <boom>, which thankfully went through, and then turned my entire attention to the Defender, which didn’t last anywhere near as long as the previous one did, but he did make good use of the AR to surprise me with a 1 turn + BR. 3-1, +200 MoV
The last round of swiss I ended up getting pair against Phil H. Go figure. The one guy I really don’t want to play at a tourney, and we get to play in the elimination round. Phil was running Oicunn w/ Predator, Tactician, Isard, Gunner, Engine Upgrade, and Whisper w/ FCS, VI, ACD (I think that was what he was running, I might be a bit off on some of the upgrades though). I ended up getting out played at the beginning, with Corran being just out of range – he was playing safe for a forward or right Whisper decloak and Corran did a 1 bank right, but Whisper actually decloaked left, and stayed back and took a R3 on Tycho. Meanwhile, Tycho took a damage from Oicunn because I didn’t want to spend my evade token and trigger gunner. I was at R2 and couldn’t fire the Prockets, but I made a mistake – I should have boosted into R1 and fired them that turn. Instead, by staying at R2, I allowed him to do a 3 turn into Tycho and he took a second damage. Tycho then did his magical K turn, and I thought he was in R1, but it turns out he was a millimeter out, and couldn’t fire the Prockets. Tycho proceeded to die that turn with the rockets in his tubes. Corran and the Prototype continued the fight, and I’d done enough damage that a regenerating Corran still had a chance, nevertheless a Corran supported with a blocker.
But at this point, Phil took a tactic I never expected – he used Whisper as a blocker on Corran. Often this left me without a shot, and I rarely had an action. The prototype and Corran’s double tap managed to get Oicunn down to 1 hull, but the next turn the Prototype died, and Corran was brought down to 1 hull. The final round I chose to do a 2 left bank, regenerate a shield, and barrel roll to arc dodge Whisper, or so I thought. Oicunn did an unexpected move to block the 2 left bank. Had I gone with the simple 1 straight though, I would have had the kill shot on Oicunn, and then would have had a chance against Whisper – if I could survive that turn and run away to regen. But since Oicunn blocked me, I couldn’t shoot him, and I didn’t have an evade token. Whisper did two damage, stripping my just regened shield, and doing the final hull damage. 3-2, +0 MoV.
At the end, it turns out that a single 3-2 person made it into the top 8. My MoV of 663 put me in 9th place, 23 points behind 8th. So had I done the simple 1 straight, I would have killed Oicunn and I would have come in 8th by 35 points. Or if Whisper in the first round had rolled 1 less evade, I would have won and been 4-1 (with a much higher MoV)… or had Corran not drawn the direct hit on the Proton Bomb. Phil H. ended up winning the tourney. Going in, I had my money on Phil, Eric, or myself winning it, so I don’t feel too bad that I lost to the champion when I played sub-optimally against him.
But I was very happy with how the list did, and I will be bringing it to more store championships, and hopefully win one of those, so I can post here about Tycho’s victory!
P.S. – Playing against 5 imperial lists, 3 Decimators, 3 Phantoms, and 2 Defenders gets boring.
Edited by Khyros