On Sunday February 22nd, we had a store championship in Vancouver, BC. I believe there were 18 participants. Me and a buddy of mine entered after missing the first 2 in our area. Hopefully, someone will get the data and enter it into List Juggler as there were some interesting squads.

I ran:

100pts
Leebo + Lone Wolf + Recon Spec + Heavy Laser + Outrider + Engine
Corran + Veteran Instincts + Fire Control + R2D2 + Hull

My buddy ran:

100pts
Patrol Leader + Rebel Captive + Vader
Howl + 3 Academies

My squad originally started as the Dash (LW, HLC, Outrider, Recon) + Corran (VI + FCS + R2D2 + Shield) list. It did very well but it can get into trouble when going against lists with 4 ships or more. Also, Dash is really good with Debris, but the LW (and no engine) Dash doesn’t really like asteroids that much (you lose your action barrel rolling off one). So I found that I flew LW Dash just like any other ship…trying to avoid asteroids. Because of this I decided to just run Leebo instead. I also switched the shield upgrade on Corran to Hull. These changes opened up the 4pts needed to get an engine upgrade on Leebo to help fight the 4 and 4+ ship lists.

My buddies list started as just a Patrol + 5 Academies. Removing 2 academies allowed him to replace with Howl and Vader + Rebel Captive crew. The lowly patrol leader was equipped to take on phantoms now, and the list should be decent vs most other matchups.

We had 4 rounds and a cut to Top 4. Rounds were 75mins each.

Round 1:

Opponent:
Wild Space Fringer + Tactician + Ion Cannon + Tactical Jammer
Keyan Farlander + Stay on Target + Advanced Sensors
Biggs + R2F2

The asteroids were placed very tightly in the middle of the map. He placed his ships in one corner. I placed Leebo in the middle and Corran in the opposite corner. Game started out very slow. He was doing 1 forwards/banks, keeping Biggs behind the WSF. Leebo went straight into the middle while Corran flew 5 forward to try and start flanking. As he was moving up slowly I decided to turn Leebo away from his ships and into the asteroid field. The only ship in range for a while was his WSF so I went after that. It took me a better part of 60mins to finally take him down. My LW + Focus HLC was a little lackluster in the first half of the game. Corran took some heavy damage pretty early after blanking evades. He was down to 2 hull pretty quick. After that he was basically on the run from Biggs and Keyan the whole game, regenerating a shield and taking evade. The WSF went down first. Then finally Corran went down to the constant TL+Stress KEyan shots. At this point I was down on points. Time is almost up and in the final round I got a shot at Biggs with 2 hull left with HLC + LW + Focus…Biggs dies and I win the first game. Some interesting notes are that I only got hit once with the ion cannon the whole game (on Leebo) and Tactician never went off once. Win 5pts and 121 MOV.

Round 2:

Opponent:
Sigma + FCS + Stygium x2
Oicunn

Scary list with lots of firepower. Plan was to take out the Sigmas as soon as possible. We set up 3 asteroids in the middle of the map and the rest loosely near the middle as well. Placement was not as tight as last game. He set up in a corner while I set up my squad the same as last game, Leebo in the middle and Corran on the outside. Again the game started off slow. He was very cautious with the Sigmas. I ended up going after Oicunn while dodging the arcs of the low PS phantoms. I was always ready to take out a phantom if I had the opportunity. He got VERY few shots in with the Sigmas. Finally, Oicunn went down followed by each sigma. I had Leebo at 1 hull with Corran at full health at the end of the game. Me and my opponent agreed that he was too tentative with the Sigmas and that it definitely cost him the game. Win 10pts and 321 MOV.

Round 3:

Opponent:

My buddy with Patrol + Vader + Rebel Captive
Howl Mini Swarm

Asteroids were set up with 3 in the middle and 3 in the corners. He set up all his ships in one corner. I set Leebo up in the center and Corran straight in front of his ships feinting the joust. He goes 5 forward with his ties and Patrol follows behind. Leebo goes forward as well. Corran does a 2 turn and barrel roll away, getting ready to run down my side of the board. Turn 2 is where it all went wrong for me. Original plan was to do a 5 forward with Corran to run away while leebo takes range 3 HLC shots at the ties. But I decided to get the crazy idea that my buddy would turn into the middle of the board to give chase to my running ships…so I decided to do a 2 turn back to face him with Corran to set up an early flank. Guess what he does instead? To my horror he goes forward with all his ships again. So now Corran is facing 4 ties and a decimator all with howl reroll in range 2-3. Leebo also turned away from the fight, so I had to barrel roll back in to get a shot off, luckily I still had Lone Wolf to help a little bit. Outcome of the round? I think I do 1 damage to an academy and Corran is almost dead. Mistake #2 on my part was turning Leebo back into the fight. Ultimately he was trapped in a corner and then went down first. Somehow Corran managed to stay alive longer than Leebo. I probably could have ran away and regenerated with Corran until time, but I still would have lost on points. Some interesting observations from the game. Corran took a total of 5 Vader hits from Oicunn. The only damage to Oicunn was the 10hp from using Vader on Corran. I took about 4 HLC shots on Howl, he took no damage. I couldn’t kill anything the whole game…it made it impossible to recover from my poor opening. In the end I was only able to take out Howl and one academy. In the end I flew poorly and he flew very well. In a rematch it would be a different game. Loss 10pts and 351 MOV.

Round 4:

Opponent:
Han + Predator + Title + C3PO + Gunner + Engine
Luke + VI + R3A2 + Engine

Basically a traditional high PS, low ship count, initiative bid list designed to kill high PS phantoms. Unfortunately for him my list is also designed like that, but it does much better against other high PS low ship count lists. The other sad thing is that he did not face a single high PS phantom in his previous 3 games…neither did I. This matchup was probably the easiest for me. HLC and Corran’s double tap go through a C3PO+evade falcon pretty quick. Luke would go down really fast if I decide to go after him. He gave me initiative so that Luke moved after everyone else. Asteroids were set up very tightly in the middle. I did my normal set up with Leebo in the middle Corran on the opposite corner. He had Luke and Han in the opposite Corner. In the opening exchange, Han was the only one in range so I went after him. In the middle of the game he landed Han on an asteroid. This sealed the game for me. Han was down to 1 hull for a bit of the game as Leebo was out of range to attack. Full health Luke ended up in range 1 of Corran without being able to boost out of arc as his escape paths were blocked by Corran himself or asteroids…Luke got obliterated with 2 Focus/Target Lock 4 dice shots. Han ended up killing Corran and then Leebo finished Han. Win 15pts and 506 MOV.

So I ended up going 3-1. I did not face the lists I thought I was going to face. Most matches were challenging. Other observations I had was the lack of high PS phantoms (I saw maybe 4), the lack of Deciphantoms, and the abundance of low PS, high ship count lists. There was a 4B1Z list, a 1B2X3Z list etc.

Top 4 Cut

1. My buddy with the Patrol Leader and Howl Mini Swarm 4-0
2. Jake and 2 Regenerating, FCS, Shield Upgrade Knaves 3-1
3. Not sure the build…this might have been the 58 Dash and Vrill Gunner list 3-1
4. Me 3-1

Looks like I get my rematch…but at this point it was approaching 7pm, so me and my buddy decided to forfeit and go home, otherwise it was looking like a 9-10pm finish. I really wanted to stay and try my shot at the store championship/rematch but the wife would not be happy about it…lol. Would have been nice if the tourney started at 10am and ran a little bit more efficiently. Anyway, it was a fun event and I got my Soontir card and some focus tokens. Time to get some scum practice in and get ready for the Vancouver regional later in the year.