Played in my first store championships today - had an absolute blast despite the early start and the screaming hangover.

As I'm new to this I decided to play a defensive build in a defensive style - hugging the edges of the board, and trying to sweep across the front ranks of my opponents, denying a few arcs while sniping at the ships on the flanks.

So final round there's everything to play for, but I'm tired, frazzled, and still hungover - and I'm up against a very fat Han with a AAZ escort - I'm surely toast now.

The game was an absolute blast - my opponent Steve was just the nicest guy ever, and the game was incredibly tense and very close - with the balance shifting back and forth between us - closing out with a modified win for Steve with just a 7 point winning margin.

If you're reading this Steve, kudos for giving me my best game of x-wing ever mate - games like that are what it's all about.

But that's not I wanted to talk about - I wanted to talk about hindsight

In the second to last round of the final game, with just a few minutes left on the clock I was leading, but only very marginally - I'd taken Steves AAZ escorts and put Han down to just 2 or 3 hull . Chewie's still in fairly good shape but Leebo's starting to smoke with just 1 hull left. If Steve can take out Leebo and keep Han alive, he'll edge it.

I have arc and range with both Chewie and Leebo - but Han shoots first.

1 hit and a Crit against my roll of a focus and evade - but leebo has an evade token.

Do I spend the token to cancel the crit - thus triggering Han's gunner ? - or do I take a gamble on cancelling the crit with determination?

I decide to take the offer of the evade while it's there to be taken - big mistake - gunner kicks in, Leebo takes 2 damage and buys the farm.

Out of curiosity I check the damage cards ...... one of them was a pilot crit

Had Leebo stayed on long enough to shoot back I would have fancied my chances to finish Han off and make it a clean sweep - or at least a 50 point-ish margin to me

Good enough maybe for second or third place overall

Not that I'm complaining in any way shape or form - I rode my luck in a few games so I could have quite easily done a lot worse than the 5th place I finished with.

Last off a big thanks to Pete from our FLGS - Entoyment in Parkstone Dorset- and Matt from the Poole Gaming Society for putting on the event.

Sounds like a job for the mathwingers.

If you had taken your chances with the crit you had almost a 25% chance of living (8 out of 33 cards). I'm guessing that's better odds then han doing another round of 1-2 attack rolls on you but I could be wrong.

Sounds like a job for the mathwingers.

If you had taken your chances with the crit you had almost a 25% chance of living (8 out of 33 cards). I'm guessing that's better odds then han doing another round of 1-2 attack rolls on you but I could be wrong.

By that point in the game both me and my opponent were sweating so much we could barely turn our dials - I wasn't about to making it worse by thinking

How many Pilot crits had you already seen? And, how many Ship crits had you seen? For each of those the likelihood of seeing another diminishes. Did Han have any focus actions to modifiy his dice on the following attack? No matter what it's a gamble, but one choice has an edge over the other, but you'd need to specify the entire game state to get a completely clear answer.

Smallest of small X-Wing life hacks for this very specific situation for this specific pairing (Leebo + Determination paired with Chewy)

When Chewbacca is dealt critical damage, you do actually get to see what the critical effect is before flipping it face down. I like probably almost everyone else just draw them as hits and never bother to see what the are, however in the case of Leebo (tracking Pilot crits) or R2-D2 Crew this can reveal vital information about the critical effects that have been dealt out of the damage deck.

I saw this happening in one of the world’s videos where the player had Chewy with R2-D2 on board so he could manage the possible effects of the crit flipping from R2-D2.

forgive my ignorance, but i'm clueless as to why you have recon spec on chewie? you don't run gunner and a falcon has no real use for a focus token on defense with only one defense die

wouldn't he make better use of of several other crew members that would be of more use? crew members that could be more point worthy, Dash, tactician, mercenary co pilot or even Lando?

forgive my ignorance, but i'm clueless as to why you have recon spec on chewie? you don't run gunner and a falcon has no real use for a focus token on defense with only one defense die

wouldn't he make better use of of several other crew members that would be of more use? crew members that could be more point worthy, Dash, tactician, mercenary co pilot or even Lando?

My guess would be so Leebo and Jan can feed Chewie an Evade and Chewie still has a Focus to combo with Predator to make his shots come off a little better.

forgive my ignorance, but i'm clueless as to why you have recon spec on chewie? you don't run gunner and a falcon has no real use for a focus token on defense with only one defense die

wouldn't he make better use of of several other crew members that would be of more use? crew members that could be more point worthy, Dash, tactician, mercenary co pilot or even Lando?

My guess would be so Leebo and Jan can feed Chewie an Evade and Chewie still has a Focus to combo with Predator to make his shots come off a little better.

yes you're correct.. i failed to see the jan ors upgrade card

thanks

How many Pilot crits had you already seen? And, how many Ship crits had you seen? For each of those the likelihood of seeing another diminishes. Did Han have any focus actions to modifiy his dice on the following attack? No matter what it's a gamble, but one choice has an edge over the other, but you'd need to specify the entire game state to get a completely clear answer.

Try again. That's always true. Quick exercise to help you to understand:

Assume first card drawn is a pilot crit. Then let's assume 4 more cards are drawn that are ship crits. What is the probability of drawing a pilot crit now? Hint: it's higher than the probability of the first pilot crit.

forgive my ignorance, but i'm clueless as to why you have recon spec on chewie? you don't run gunner and a falcon has no real use for a focus token on defense with only one defense die wouldn't he make better use of of several other crew members that would be of more use? crew members that could be more point worthy, Dash, tactician, mercenary co pilot or even Lando?

My guess would be so Leebo and Jan can feed Chewie an Evade and Chewie still has a Focus to combo with Predator to make his shots come off a little better.

It also adds some nice defensive flexibility too.

In the early game turtling chewie encourages your opponent to target Leebo instead - once Leebo has taken some lumps, you can switch to giving him the evade - forcing your opponent to either switch to targeting chewie or go all out for Leebo and ignore Chewie altogether - if you can keep Leebo at long range he can be a tough nut to crack with 3 green and an evade.

How many Pilot crits had you already seen? And, how many Ship crits had you seen? For each of those the likelihood of seeing another diminishes. Did Han have any focus actions to modifiy his dice on the following attack? No matter what it's a gamble, but one choice has an edge over the other, but you'd need to specify the entire game state to get a completely clear answer.

Try again. That's always true. Quick exercise to help you to understand:

Assume first card drawn is a pilot crit. Then let's assume 4 more cards are drawn that are ship crits. What is the probability of drawing a pilot crit now? Hint: it's higher than the probability of the first pilot crit.

Loving hindsight? Oh deer.

Every time I see this thread I want to quip, "That's why I only fly Firesprays." But it isn't true.

Smallest of small X-Wing life hacks for this very specific situation for this specific pairing (Leebo + Determination paired with Chewy)

When Chewbacca is dealt critical damage, you do actually get to see what the critical effect is before flipping it face down. I like probably almost everyone else just draw them as hits and never bother to see what the are, however in the case of Leebo (tracking Pilot crits) or R2-D2 Crew this can reveal vital information about the critical effects that have been dealt out of the damage deck.

I saw this happening in one of the world’s videos where the player had Chewy with R2-D2 on board so he could manage the possible effects of the crit flipping from R2-D2.