To read about my first Store Championship, feel free to read the write up here: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/133744-pyscho-tycho%E2%80%99s-first-store-championship/

Psycho Tycho:

Corran Horn w/ VI, FCS, R2D2, EU

Tycho Celchu w/ ATP, PTL, DD, EI, Prockets

Prototype Pilot w/ Chardaan Refit

So after just missing the cut last week, I decided to bring my Psycho Tycho list to another Store Championship yesterday. I still had faith that it could do well, and let’s be honest, we all say fly what you know best, and at this point, I’ve played Tycho like that for so long that I have issues playing a Green w/ PTL. The turn out this week was smaller, but the usual heavy weights were all present, with the addition of the Gencon runner up, Jeff B. So while we only did 4 rounds with a cut to top 4, there were no “easy” matches and you tend to get in larger tourneys if you lose a game or two.

My first match was against a pretty good local play, Alex. I played him once before when he and Eric B. came down for an escalation tourney. He was running a very interesting list of an ORS, Tycho w/ VI+PTL and Corran with VI+R3A2. I felt rather confident against his list – if he targets Corran, I’ll want to do greens to regen shields. If he targets Tycho, he can’t stress him anyways, and if he targets the prototype, I don’t really care about the stress bot. So in my opinion, my fully kitted out Corran had every edge on his, and his Tycho w/o DD or Prockets wouldn’t be able to keep up with mine, even if he moved after I did. He came in at 100 points, so my 1 point init bid resulted in him having init so my Corran could react to his.

I started with the prototype lined up to shoot up a gap between the rocks, and put my Tycho on the left side. He setup his Tycho basically across my Prototype, he had his ORS setup on an angle on my right, angling towards a gap in the rocks, and his Corran the ORS’s left. I put my Corran pretty much all the way to the right to ensure he wouldn’t be outflanked. My plan was to 3 bank Corran in and BR back out, but after seeing him charge his ORS forward and slow rolling with the A and E, I decided to zoom in on the ORS. Everyone was just out of range that turn, and the next turn I managed to put everyone in R1 on the ORS – and by jumping on the ORS, his Corran was out of position to shoot. After shooting with Corran, Prockets, and the Prototype, he was left with 4 hull, so I double tapped and did 2 hits and a crit, which was a direct hit. The ORS (with MF Title, R2D2, and C3PO) got 1 rounded, nice!

As the round continued, our Corran’s ended up trading R1 shots, and we each brought down the other’s shields, since he had init, he took the first double tap, which got a single crit through – blinded pilot. I took my double tap so I could turn it down, and then I went running away to regen the rest of my shields. In the meantime, the A wings kept both Tycho and Corran busy preventing him from chasing my limping Corran away. My Tycho ended up getting the kill shot on his Corran, but by then my Corran was back at full shields, and re-engaged his Tycho, who didn’t last through the concentrated fire. 1-0, 200 MoV.

The next round I got matched up against my favorite opponent (at least according to frequency of play), Phil H. He had switched up his list a bit, but he was still running Whisper + Deci, but this time it was Chiraneau w/ RC, Vader, Jerjerrod, Expose, EI and Whisper w/ VI, FCS, ACD. This build really scared me, since it basically meant that to get my Prockets off 5v0, I’d have to suffer through a 5v3 + Vader counter strike. I’m willing to say that this build is pretty much a hard counter to mine as I really don’t want to face Vader, not to mention a low quantity of high quality shots – they can easily chew through my high agility ships. I once again gave him init as I wanted to move my Tycho after he moved Chiraneau.

By the way, a Decimator with Experimental Interface is VERY predictable. But that really didn’t matter since he was really deadly. This time, I decided that I needed to focus on the Deci first, and hope that Corran lives long enough that he can chase down Whisper afterwards. I know Phil typically prefers to leave a regenerating ship until the end because he doesn’t want it to easily break away and regen at the beginning, and then I get free damage in on him. This match wasn’t too eventful and it was over quickly with Phil totally tabling me. I learned my mistake from last time with slow rolling Corran too much, which paid off with a R3 uncloaked shot at Whisper in the first round that pinged a shield, but between Phil’s hot dice, and his just totally scary list, I got completely tabled. I did manage to eject Vader though! When I lost, I had only done 2 damage to his Phantom, and the Deci had 6 hull left. 1-1, 200 MoV

On to round 3, where I faced another Chiraneau + Whisper, but this time with a different load out, the most notable change was the lack of Expose, the addition of EU, and the lack of Vader. It’s funny how this list really didn’t scare me even though most would consider this to be the better list. This time, he setup in such a way that I had Tycho get behind Whisper, and Corran had a frontal attack, so I decided to try and take him out first. It wasn’t as clean as I was hoping for, but I did eventually kill off Whisper, but due to focus fire on the Prototype, I had to have him limp away and be useless for fear of losing him… For some reason he targeted the poor little A wing first – I guess because I was being more defense with my actions with the other two (what can I say, it was really scary facing 5 dice in my face turn after turn… it probably influenced my decisions in this match too). Once Whisper fell, it was only a matter of time before Chinareau was going to die. I sneaked in a R1 attack to get off the Prockets, but other than that I tried to stay at range 2, but there were a few times where he was trying to get me in R1 and would block me with one or the other ship. It ended up meaning that he was splitting damage between my two ships as they took turns piling the damage onto him. 2-1 400 MoV.

The 4^th round was the do or die round, as a 2-2 record wouldn’t make the cut, but a 3-1 would more than likely make it. By my calculations, there should be 1 4-0, and 4 3-1 players, assuming that when a higher player is paired with a lower one, the higher player wins. I was up against a 60 point Fat Han (MF, C3PO, Gunner, EU, VI), supported by two Greens w/ PTL. The Greens didn’t scare me at all, and once the match started, I knew that he didn’t know how to properly fly them. But I had just watched the end of his 3^rd round where he took down Eric B, so I knew that he knew what he was doing, so I had to stay focused. He set his Greens up on either side of where he would put his YT, pretty much smack dab in the center of the field, which was a refreshing change… a YT that WANTS to go through the rocks! Fine with me. He overshot with his Greens, and ended up having them both stressed via PTL and having no arc. I had a pretty good idea of where Han was going to go since the Proto, Greens, and rocks were blocking most paths for escape, so I ended up changing my plan with Tycho (which was to get behind him) to block the final boost path via a DD, and then TL+F Han as his other two actions. Corran also Boosted in to make sure he’d have arc, and when Han revealed his dial, he was about half a maneuver away from the Proto, blocking the straight boost, Tycho was blocking the right boost, and his own green was blocking the left boost. I ended up with 3 (er, 4 if you count DT) R1 shots on Han, and his only shot was from Han, and he chose to shoot at my Prototype. He clicked off two shields from it, but then I unloaded the Prockets and double tap and Proto return fire, stripping him of all his shields and doing 2 hull, one of which was Damaged Sensor Array crit. I broke off chase for a turn, since Corran couldn’t shoot, and I really wasn’t in a position through the rock field to turn around and give chase, but neither were his A wings, so Han had the only shot the following turn, and he killed off the Prototype.

As the fight continued, I kept the heat on Han. Without an action, I knew that he was a sitting duck (no boost) and I could get more damage in (no Evade). But the damage mitigation was still there. It seemed like every time I attacked, only 1 hit would get through, which kept being a crit. By the end of the fight, Han had two weapons malfunctions, one damaged sensor array, one thrust control fire, and one stunned pilot. I felt a little bit bad as I continued to outfly his A wings (as I said, he wasn’t flying them well, and he was still F+E every turn while I had yet to even take a shot at either of them and was clearly chasing down a 2 hull YT) and he was throwing 1 attack die, 4 times (go go Han reroll + gunner), but couldn’t ever get through my 3 agility. I did once have to spend my evade token to trigger a gunner attack, which I did avoid at that point. Han finally went down, and it was two Greens vs. untouched Tycho + Corran.

By this time I could tell my opponent wasn’t having any fun, and honestly, I don’t blame him. However, playing him made me realize how much of the fun of X wing relies on the mantra “Fly Casual.” S*&% happens, and he had some unlucky crits drawn, but he proceeded to accuse me of using non-regulation dice and called a TO over and asked to inspect them… The TO didn’t, but we did ask one of my earlier opponents and he said my dice were normal at best. And as the game continued, I nudged one of his A wings with my hand as I did a DD move to get out of arc, which was VERY easy to tell it was going to get out of arc (I was barely in to begin with) but he placed the A wing back such that I was well in arc. And on the final turn, I moved Corran right into R1 of his A, said focus, and grabbed my 4 dice to roll, rolled 2 booms 2 eyes, and he refused to let me change them since I never put the token on the board. Fine. Turns out it didn’t matter anyways as he rolled blanks and died anyways (he only had 1 hull left), I really wanted to reply “Karma’s a B8(*&,” but I didn’t really want to stoop to his level. At this point, he conceded, and left the tourney, even though there was only about 10min left in the round, and he would have won a dice bag. But he only wanted the tokens, so he said give the bag to 9^th and left.

At this point, the prizes were handed out, and the top 4 were announced, 1^st was Phil H, 2^nd was myself, 3^rd was Eric B, and 4^th was Jeff B… Those are the four I would expect, perhaps not in that order, but the swiss tourney seemed to do its job in creating the top 4. We were all 3-1, Phil lost to Eric, I lost to Phil, and Jeff lost to someone else. My MoV was 2 higher than Eric’s, but seeing as it would have given him 2^nd seed to play me as 3^rd, it really didn’t matter. We all took a break for dinner, and about half of the guys joined us for dinner and came back to watch the final 3 games.

This was going to be my first time playing against Eric B after two years of going to tourneys together, I was excited. Eric was running Chewy w/ R2D2, C3PO, MF, EU, Predator and Luke w/ VI and R3-A2, and a Bandit. Once again, my 1 point init bid meant that my Corran would move last. It was refreshing going against a lower PS YT, as I felt like I could reposition to get my Prockets off easier. The opening round had both Luke and Chewy coming down my right side, and it was clear to me that Chewy was going to try to get behind me, so I let him and went for Luke first. Knowing that Luke didn’t have a reposition ability, I navigated Tycho around a rock and took a TL+F on Luke, who ended right in R1 of Tycho. Corran took a Focus and had a R2 on Luke. Corran rolled boom eye blank, so I chose to just let the 1 boom go against Luke, which was smart since he rolled evade eye and would have evaded the two anyways. I figured with both Luke and Chewy shooting at Corran, I could use the F on defense. Luke pinged a shield on Corran, and Tycho managed to knock out Luke’s shields with the Prockets, thus far Luke evaded 4 damage (well, 3 total, plus a 4^th that he could have had I spent the F). Turns out Chewy went for the Prototype – he wanted the double reroll + F, which ended up doing 2 damage to him, so I guess it wasn’t a bad shot. The Bandit put a Weapons Malfunction crit on the Prototype, and I gambled with Corran’s double tap for the kill on Luke, which was successful.

At this point, I had the choice of chasing Chewy, or chasing the Bandit, I chose to go for the Bandit, as I figured by doing that, Chewy would get himself out of range and all I’d have to face was the Bandit. I also made sure that my Prototype wouldn’t be shot at by anyone – that one hull is a very scary place for a Prototype to be at. I danced around a bit with the Z, and pinged its shields, but the opportunity presented itself to disengaged the Z and zoom towards Chewy, which may sound stupid on paper, but we were dancing in a corner, and it was very nerve wrecking and limited options. Plus if he was to get both of them back, then the Z becomes a bigger threat. So I disengaged and zoomed across the board to Chewy, which I suppose caught him by surprise as his Z was in no position to chase at all. We were both feeling rather confident at this point, from his point of view, I had already spent my prockets, and would have a hard time getting through his 3 regen/turn. From my point of view, I was fighting a single target with no attack modifications, and I could evade + regen… plus Corran is a Fat ship buster.

A few turns in, he was sitting at 2 hull and a shield, and made a 1 turn left – millimeters from the edge of the board. His goal was that I would fly right past him, which was mostly correct. I flew right into him with Tycho, and right into Tycho with Corran. Sadly, Corran had just double tapped, so he didn’t have an attack =/. That turn put me in a position where I had to decide to regen the shields he had just knocked off, or continue putting the pressure on Chewy. We had about 20min left, so I decided to disengage Chewy and go finish off the Z. The Z quickly fell to the combined firepower of Corran and Tycho (the Proto was still playing very safe and rarely had a shot, and always an E). After that, it was just one turn to re-engage Chewy and finish off those 3 health. Now, one point I want to bring up – while I did my best to minimize shots, the shots Chewy did take typically were complete junk. Twice he took a R1 w/ Predator for 1 hit. The dice gods made this an impossible game for Eric to win. I’m not going to say that dice were the reason I won, but it’d be next to impossible to lose with the dice he had was throwing at me.

Phil managed to beat Jeff, so I found myself at the championship table playing an oh-so-familiar player, who had beaten my list twice already. We decided that we had plenty of time, and as such we were going to play an untimed match. This changes my tactics as I know I can play more defensively. It ended up taking us around 75min to decide a winner, but if you listen to Phil, it should have ended quite a bit sooner, but I was dragging it out with my Corran – we’ll get to that later. Of all of the rounds, this one is the most of a blur to me. It required quite a lot of concentration on both our parts, and knowing that we had an audience, we made it more tense by rolling dice one at a time for the important rolls.

He set up his Phantom facing my right on the left side, next to his Deci. I knew Phil would expect me to fly forward with Tycho and Corran, but I typically start slow with the Proto. So this time I switched it up and flew fast with all 3, forcing a R3 engagement with the proto on Turn 1 with the Deci. Nothing happened, but it setup a block the following turn, which ended up parking his Deci just BARELY on a rock… Tycho managed to just barely get a R1 shot on the Deci… and when I say just barely, my ruler looked like R1, his looked like R2, so the TO came over and measured with his and called it R1, and Whisper barely ran into the back of his Deci. Corran had a choice between a R1 on the Deci, or a R2 obstructed on Whisper. I chose to attack Whisper, and knocked off two shields. Whisper did 2 to the Proto, and Tycho unleashed his Prockets, finishing off the shields and pushing a crit through, to which Jerjerod ejected the captive to flip down (I believe it was Blinded Pilot). Corran had a hard time deciding whether to take the double tap on Whisper or Chinareau, and I ended up taking it on Whisper (who was tokenless due to spending the F to defend against the Prototype)… 3TL vs. 5 seemed like I had a good chance of getting a hit through.

Sadly, I did not, his 5^th die rolled the needed 3 evades. The next few turns are a bit of a blur, but he managed to kill off both Tycho and the Prototype, and eject Jerjerod. In the process I managed to do 1 more damage to Whisper, and bring the Deci down to 5 hull. Corran was all that was left on my team, and while I still felt like I had a chance, it was going to take a few good rolls to finish everything off. He managed to move his Deci into a position that would block my Corran, and then proceeded to barrel roll his Whisper left to what he thought was going to be out of arc. Sadly for him, she ended up not only staying in arc, but the barrel roll put her in range 3. 3TLv3, I roll 3 hits, and he rolls 3 focuses. BOOM. All of a sudden I’m feeling much better about this game. 5 hull shouldn’t be too difficult for me to chew through without dying first.

Well, it turns out that the luck I had from getting that last hit on Whisper decided to come back and bite me in the butt. My first attack was 2 Focuses and a blank (I took the Evade token), and I didn’t have a TL on Chinareau, so 0 damage. At which point he proceeds to roll his 4 TL+ability+Expose dice, and gets all 4 hits. I roll my 3 evades and get 1 result, spend the token to take 2 shields. I double tap and get 2 damage through, leaving 3 hull remaining. But this starts the dancing game – I need to regen shields, but I can’t get shot at. And this is where Phil says that I drug the game out for much longer than it was supposed to go. I ended up disengaging and recharging my shields, I come around for another attack, and stay at R3 and manage to just get 1 hit through. I made the mistake of not double tapping as the following turn I ended up turning away again to regen the 2 shields he popped off (several times he rolled 4 hits, I rolled 1 evade and spent the token). It was crucial that I didn’t lose that 3^rd shield as I knew he was going to Vader me, even though it would kill him. We’d discussed it, he really wanted the game to end that way, and if I drew a direct hit, he would win the draw because I gave him init.

Finally, the last turn came, and I took a R3 shot and rolled boom kaboom blank, rerolled for an eye. Two hits vs. his 1 agility die. And he rolls a focus, spends his token, takes the crit. Direct hit. Boom. I managed to pull off the win. Just for SnG’s, the TO flipped over my top damage card to see what it would have been if he managed to Vader me. It was a Direct Hit. I’m glad I managed to pull off the win, especially against a tough and well respected players of the community as I want to prove that you don’t have to net-deck and play whisper or a turret to win. I plan on taking this list to at least one more SC as I’m sure winning one mid-sized tourney isn’t going to convince people that you don’t NEED to play a turret/phantom to be competitive, nevertheless win.

I really enjoyed this narrative. Thanks!

Curious what your method is for documenting all these details. Do you video all your matches?

I do not. When I get to run against different lists, I have an easier time remembering what happened and why. The specific details on occasion (did I do 2 damage with Corran and 2 with Tycho, or was it 3 and 1?) I may not always remember, but the end results are simple enough to remember for me.

But that's why there isn't as much detail in my first match against Phil, I can't really remember did it happen yesterday morning, last week, or last night at the final table. The final match is a bit more memorable because it was very dramatic and it felt like each and every dial mattered.

Kyhros, was this at AFK in Lansing? I'm thinking it was though we didn't get to play against each other. I didn't stick around after placing 5th (too bad we didn't have a few more to get a top 8), but am glad to see that there was a non-traditional finish. I brought 3 interceptors (black and purple paint scheme) and knew it would be a steep battle with how many large turrets were on the mats:

Soontir, PTL, Stealth, Hull, RGT

Turr, VI, Stealth

Carnor, PTL, Stealth, Hull, RGT

I did play one of your opponents (Eric) and had extremely cold dice. Ended up being my one loss of the day and it was a total blowout. I try not to blame the dice and he was very good with a nice list, but I sure wish I could have finished off that last hull his x-wing had for a few more points.

Think we'll both benefit even more once autothrusters comes out. I was really hoping to put those cards down on Saturday, but no dice there either... but maybe the next one.

Great summary and memory!

Good report. Much deserved, Khyros! Always great to play with Eric and his friends.

Ten Numb is all gued back together and ready for more abuse.

Great write-up, and awesome job! Glad to see that all your work with the Psycho Tycho build is paying off.

In your experience, how crucial do you think Corran is to making Tycho work? I like that Tycho build, but I'm personally sort of allergic to 3-small-ship lists.

Yes, this was at AFK games. As for how vital Corran is, I found that Tycho can't handle Whisper due to his higher PS. As such, someone needs to take care of them. I really do think Fat Han would be a good wing mate for Tycho, but I won't play him. I have tried running it with Luke w/ VI and EU, but I really like the ability of the double tap - it completely changes how the entire list plays. They rely on more hit and run tactics, and luke couldn't keep up, and the double tap greatly increases the damage output in that play style.

Congrats on the win. It's a really unique build, and I'm glad you were able to use it effectively. Will you be using this build for future tournaments?

I plan to use it at least once more to hopefully do well and get people to realize there are options out there that you can play if you look hard enough.. But I will probably eetire it soon, I've played a total of 40 games with it over the past 6 weeks or so, so I want to play around with some other stuff at some point.

Jeff... Grats on the W and we'll done!

It's truly gratifying to see the Rebels win and doubly sweet to see Tycho and Corran capture the victory!

as an imp player this is the only rebel list I feel like flying. I'am all in for hit & run tactics but it was always hard with rebels as the X-Wing is clumsy and B-Wings are dogfighters.

thanks for sharing, I'll give it a try!