Hello everyone.
I was recently hooked by x-wing and with our Store Championship coming I didn't let my lack of experience getting in my way and thanks to our kind store owner who lent me the three interceptors I needed, so with a grand total of just 1 game ever played, I jumped into the Store Championship.
I ended top 4 
This was my list: http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/193689/task-force-alpha
I was suggested to stick to the same type of ships to not get too much confused manouvring and since I only own the core and the imperial aces sets, 3 interceptors were the obvious choice.
There were 14 players attending the tournament and apart from 2 guys who had the same Dash+Corran Horn build, everyone brought very differents and, I guess, creative lists. There were lots of love to Defenders, just one fat Han and with everyone surprise, not even a single Phantom (I was told that the Phantom is one of the most loved ship in our store meta, but probably many were expecting way more ps 11 Falcons around and thus weren't willing to fly Whisper). Just one decimator was also present, something that, from what I see in this forum and on reddit is really different from the US meta (I'm from Italy).
Game 1:
In the first game my opponent was playing a completly new list who he had never flew before. It was composed by a r2d6 Biggs, Wedge with some stuff to hit harder and an A-wing with some ordnance (sorry for the lack of details, but I'm a noob).
He deployed in the mid while I opted for sticking to my right corner. The first turns I kept Fell as the central pivot of my formation, with Phennir speeding along the table border and Jax covering my left with less speed than the others while turning a bit to the centre. Opponent moved Biggs and Wedge to joust while setting up the A-Wing to flank. He then made the mistake that cost him the game: he did a 180° straight move with his A-wing which let my jax to ends up at 1 outside of his firing arc. The Royal Guard said thanks and proceeded to destroy his shields, while our other ships were exchanging shots at 3 of distance without results.
Jax and Phennir ended up the poor A-wing while soontir started to chip down Biggs, but after Wedge managed to not score even a single hit against a range 2 Fell and Biggs started to take damage, my opponent was discouraged and started to play poorly, allowing me to end the first game without losing a single ship while he kept only Wedge alive.
Game 2:
Having already fulfilled my objective for the tournament (winning at least a game), I came very excited into game 2 where I faced an hell of a list.
My opponent brought a naked Biggs, Key Falrander with HLC, FCS, Opportunist and maybe something else, supported by Jan Hors, with Ion Turret and Nien Numb. (I have missed something for sure, but as I said, I'm a noob and I still have to figure out lots of cards and pilots, especially for the rebel side).
She won the initiative and deployed in the middle while I placed my ship exaclty like the first game, with Soontir as pivot with Jax at his left side and Phennir as his right almost touching the table border.
My plan was to use my speed to reach her side and take her ship from behind, but trying to stay of Farlander fire arc made me split my force with Jax going near the center of the table while my other aces sticked to the plan. My moves in the end were pretty poor and Jax ended up ionized and critted with the awful card that made him unable to use his actions. A couple of turn later (which he kept getting ionized) my proud Royal Guard was no more, but in exchange at least I had destroyed Biggs shields. I was down in points but my ships were better placed than the ones of my opponent, who had moved Farlander too far from the real action and soon had the mustached rebel took down by the combined attacks of Phennir and Baron Fel, who had taken a damage.
The last turn call came with me losing by points and without any chance to take down Farlander despite the fact he had taken some hits and was now coming back to the fray, thus my only chance was to focus my fire on an untouched Jans. Luckly for me, my opponent chose to go greedy and try to kill Fell instead of running away with the Hawk, so after a grand total of 7 red dice, focus and target lock Jan Hors was down to 2 hull points and a crit card to flip.
**** Yeah, I love those 2 damages cards 
Game 3:
Having won the previous game I was now facing on of the best players of our store, a solid veteran who brought a really strong Outrider, Lone Wolf, HLC Dash Render coupled with an obnoxiuos Advanced Sensor, PTL, R2D2, Hull Upgraded Corran Horn.
He took the initiative and deployed Dash in the middle with Horn stretched out on his left side, while I did my usual start this time on my left side, as further as possible from Horn. My plan was to try to get at range 1 with Dash as soon as possible trying to not get chipped by his lascannon at 3 range since crits **** heavily on my interceptors.
While I didn't really manage to achieve that and after exchanging some mostly harmless shots, my run near the table border took him by surprise: by turn 4, after executing our manouvres I have Phennir at 1 from Dash, but most important Corran Horn has placed himself with no ship in his firing arc and Jax at 1 from him! The turns end with the destruction of all Horn's shields and some chipping of Dash's.
Despite the success of the previous turn, I'm not in a good position because both Jax and Soontir had pushed their limits and were stressed, so unable to put themselves in a good position to take advantage of the Corran's exposure nor had chance to get Dash in the near future. Despite that I'm still pretty confident on myself and still think I could get that, but it's in this moment that my lack of experience kicked: I completly ****** up Phennir manouver, sure that I had assigned a 1 90° to the left, which would have kept my at 1 from Dash and out Horn arc of fire, it was instead a 90° to the right, saving Dash and setting my Phennir up to Horn barrage. My opponent was very sportmanlike and was going to let me switch the manouvre, but since Phennir was the last to move I felt like that changing it would have been unfair toward him and thus Corran with his double fire ended the game for Phennir.
And just after this I failed to evade 1 crit and 1 hit with Jax, despite rolling 5 dice, getting the card that made all 90° manouvres red ones. After such a turn, I was really discouraged, had my ships out of position to shot something and the rest of the game was just a bloodbath.
This was my first loss, but considering that my opponent ended up winning the tournament, the fact that after the game he told me that at one point he was getting really scared, I considered me satisfied. I also learned a lot on how not to move my TIE 
Game 4:
The last game of the swiss phase put me against a fellow imperial. He was another veteran who played an interesting list: VI, HLC Colonel Vessery supported by a Lambda ST-331 with weapons engineer and with a PTL Soontir Fel as flanker.
He took initiative and deployed the Lambda in the center with Vessery on its right and Fel on the far left flank.
I went with what was becoming my standard start and with Phennir, Fel and Jax in my left corner as far as possible from enemy Fel.
I started quite slowly this time, while he sprinted ahead with Fel and manouvred his other ships to joust me, without knowing that doing so he was setting up his own demise. Going at full speed with a 5 straight and then boosting to adjust my angle, I had my whole fleet capable of shooting against Vessery, while he had Fell too far for doing anything and Vessery only seeing an evading Jax who also had the Lambda at 2. The shooting exchange went pretty poorly for both, because while I only managed to get Vessery shields despite the 10 dice rolled. The good part however was that Jax (who was also negating Vessery focus order) managed to survive unscathed both Vessery and Lambda fire.
From then on it was just a slaughter: Vessery managed to survive another couple of turns with good escape manouvres, but he didn't manage to do much else while the Lambda was basically out of the game due to its terrible manouvre dials which made really easy for me staying out of his firing range. His Fel almost managed to get down Jax, but since it was pretty much a 3v1 he went down with ease, scoring me another win and with everyone surprise my access to the semifinal!
Semifinal:
All pairings would have led to very hard match up for me, but the list I faced in semifinal was probably one of the worst ever to play against with a full interceptor fleet. My opponent had a Lambda, a Firespray and a Decimator with Vader. They all had tactical jammers.
I deployed on the farther corner from the decimator which was placed in the opposite corner, with the firespray on his flank and the lambda in the center in the earliest.
Having to face an automatic crit any time the Decimator shoots was like a nightmare for my no shields TIE (only jax had just 1 shield) thus my plan was to stay the hell out of range of the Decimator, take down the Firespray and try to survive hoping that by the time 2 of my interceptor were down, the Firespray would have been out too and the Deciamtor had got enough damage to allow my last ship to take that beast down.
There isn't much to say about this game because I basically suicided due my noobish lack of game knowledge. After the first turns that were going fine, with me manouvring in order to reduce damage, I had destroyde FIrespray shields. But in order to survive Firespray and Decimator fire, I moved Jax through an asteroids thinking that this way I would have been able to boost out of Firespray fire arc and put an evade. The fact that you can't issue order after a run throught an asteroid made me regret not having tried to collide with the Firespray and meant death for Jax.
After that my game was just trying to chip down the Firespray to lose with at least the satisfaction of having dealt some real damage, but the next Vader crit on Soontir Fel got him out of the game too since it was the one that ignores pilote skill and elite card and then was easely taken out.
My heroic Phennir jumped around firing arcs managing to reduce the Firespray to one hull without taking damage, but as soon as the last turn was called, the fatigue of a full day of games came to ask its toll, and I parked my beloved interceptor on an asteroids to get smashed by the combined enemy fire.
Final Considerations:
X-wing is definitly a great game and I had a great time at my first tournament. All my opponents were funny to play against and offered lots of comprension for my little mistakes. I'm quite proud of my performance, because if it's absolute true that I got lucky getting an expected win in game 2 and was almost granted a free win by my first opponent due his early mistakes, my win in game 4 was due me outplaying my opponent and I can go out with the satisfaction of having only been beated the guys who ended up 1# and 2#!
Edited by Sunitsa