This weekend marked the second store championship for the 2015 season in Calgary, AB at Trilogy Games. As a new player starting this January I have been devouring X-wing and signing up for everything I can get involved in. This was the second event I participated in; it featured a field of 20 players with 75 minute rounds, and was for many of us, the first chance to see what Scum and Villainy could do on the table. You can find the tournament results here:
However, if you're interested in more of an expansive battle report from a new player's perspective, then please read on:
My List: Re-Roll? Yes, Please
1 - YT-1300 Han Solo (46)
Lone Wolf (2)
C3P0 (3)
Gunner (5)
Engine Upgrade (4)
2 - YT-2400 Wild Space Fringer (30)
Mangler Cannon (4)
Gunner (5)
Squad Total: 99 Points
The idea was pretty straight forward; with the timing of Scum and Villainy being brand new I knew I would see autothrusters a lot and that a few folks would be trying their new toys, including IG-88s. I had a few conversations with folks on the threats of this expansion (all shall fear the mighty Y-Wing) but ultimately, I thought if I can make sure almost every Han attack produced 3-4 damage results through rerolls, and then followed up with at least a critical hit from the Mangler cannon or a damage through Gunner from range 1 then I'll be able to quickly remove ships and split up squads. PS 9 Han with an initiative bid also meant I wasn't too worried about Phantoms since this was also supposed to be the end times of all turrets. I wanted to defy that. My set up would be to try and cluster asteroids to help break up formations, especially since I am getting comfortable flying through the rocks with big ships, and then split my squad deployment so my opponent has to pick what to chase/shoot; the big threat in Han or the easy target in the Fringer. So without delay; bring on the rerolls.
Swiss Round 1
1 - Chiraneau with Expose, Experimental Interface, Rebel Captive, Moff Jerjerrod, Mara Jade, and Dauntless
2 - Soontir Fel with Push the Limit, Royal Guard, Stealth Device, and Targeting Computer
My opponent was a brand new player, he didn't have any S&V yet, so no autothrusters, and he wasn’t expecting to do well. He was here to have fun and learn, just like me. I did my standard deployment and my opponent put both his ships on my far right side. Soontir pushed first round to close ground with a barrel roll and boost while Chiraneau eked forward on a 2 bank. And then things went sideways for my opponent; forgetting about Soontir's stress (or maybe not knowing the rules yet) he dialed in a 5K turn to flip to the back side of my Fringer that moved up aggressively to start hammering criticals into the Decimator... I explained the rules to him about stress and red maneuvers, and seeing his surprise I promptly offer to let him redial a different move. However, my opponent accepted his mistake and asked what happens next; I set his dial to a hard 3 that put Soontir in the middle of the big rock. Soontir took a hit from the rock, losing stealth device, the Decimator lost 4 shields and took a critical, and 10 minutes later the game is done. It wasn't a lot of fun but my opponent was really good about playing things out. We spent the rest of the round talking about how he can use his two ships and even switched lists for 30 minutes to play a bit of a practice game so he could see how I would use it. My opponent for this round would go on to place 8th in Swiss with a 3-1, but had to leave due to time constraints and illness since he did not expect to make the cut.
Swiss Round 2
1 – Whisper with Veteran Instincts, Fire-Control System, and Advanced Cloaking Device
2 – Bounty Hunter with Ysanne Isard
3 – Academy Pilot
4 – Academy Pilot
My opponent this round was a local player within our regular group, and he runs versions of this list with some regularity. I had my initiative bid at 99 points while my opponents list was 100 points, which meant Han was looking to eat Whisper as soon as possible. I took initiative, and I set up in my standard deployment while my opponent also sets up a split formation, with the two TIEs and the Bounty Hunter to my right and Whisper to my left, jousting with Han. Turn 1 I aggressively bring up the Fringer to start on the TIEs and slow roll Han while he drove all of his ships up at speed 4, with the Bounty Hunter sliding behind the TIEs on a 2 hard turn. Whisper also moved up 4 and cloaked. A critical hit got through on a TIE from the first round of shooting that yielded a direct hit, so things started very well for me. Turn 2 pretty much sealed the deal, with the Fringer bumping the damaged TIE, but being in range 1 on the remaining ships, while Han moved up 3 straight and boosted near an asteroid to try and ensuring Whisper could escape. Whisper decloaked as best possible and but maneuvered very aggressively towards Han, finding cover on the other side of the asteroid, taking a focus. I Han re-rolled my first attack into a lucky 3-hit result, while my opponent rolled 2 evade and a focus and mistakenly forgot about Gunner after cancelling all damage. Gunner got me a hit, a critical hit, and a blank that I used Lone Wolf on for a second critical. Only 1 evade was rolled this time for Whisper, so shields were already down! Whisper shot for 2 hits and a critical back, acquiring a target lock through Fire-Control Systems, a focus that won’t be used, and a free cloak. I put C3P0 and Lone Wolf to work again, guessing 0 evades first, which was correct on a blank roll, and I rerolled that to an evade result. The Fringer and TIEs with the Bounty Hunter traded blows; another critical hit on the other TIE but no impact from the effect, and the Fringer suffered 4 shield damage. However, with Whisper on the ropes pointing almost directly at Han, she died to Han the next round and the Fringer cleaned up the TIE with two hull remaining, thanks to Gunner rerolls. The Bounty Hunter proved to be troublesome and time was called before I could finish it off; my Fringer was down to 3 hull, Han remained relatively untouched, and the Bounty Hunter on 2 hull thanks to double evade tokens from Isard that Han had to eat every time while my opponent simply took 1 damage to avoid Gunner.
Swiss Round 3 – Robot Encounter #1
1 – IG-88B – Push the Limit, Heavy Laser Cannon, Advanced Sensors, Autothrusters, IG-2000
2 – IG-88C – Push the Limit, Manger Cannon, Advanced Sensors, Autothrusters, IG-2000
After 2 rounds I am in first place with 2 wins and the highest MOV, losing 0 Ships and only missing out on 37 points, which is kind of uncanny for me. My next opponent is a very well-known and skilled pilot in our local area, and I know that he has been practicing with IG-88s on Vassal since they became available; when he talks about these ships he gets an evil smile that I didn’t every really understand, and I now see why.
I do my standard split deployment, and my opponent did almost the same, with the two Aggressors equally split at angles facing inward towards the table. I knew my opponent was going to move a lot so I clustered my three rocks near the middle while he put all of his in the corners as best possible; in other words, there was a lot of room in 2 rough lanes in the central part of the board. Turn 1 showcased the “power” of the IG-88s; I slow rolled to try and bring the ships in closer (no range 3 attacks and keep them in arc since autothrusters) while my opponent advance sensor boosted, because of IG-88C got an evade on both ships, focused with Push the Limit, and then revealed a green 3 forward. These ships moved half the table, triple actioned to turtle, and cleared stress. My mind is blown seeing it happen, even though I knew this would be possible as a concept; seeing it happen in front of you just seemed different than talking or reading about it. Turn 2 I advanced up with the Finger and focused hoping to block a boost from IG-88C, but I fell short because of the slow roll opening. My opponent does the same move again, with advance sensors into a straight boost and pushing for a focus, and then just bumps the Fringer with a short 1 bank. No shots there. The other one does the same, but move banking away from the Fringer and both are range 3 on Han while I have an out of arc range 2 shot from the Fringer. The shooting starts and the power of the action economy on my opponents squad explodes all over the place. Han managed to keep B in arc, but range 3 meant autothrusters are on, so with 4 green dice for my opponent my 3 hits are easily cast aside, (1 evade, 2 blanks, and a focus turn into 2 evades and the free evade token) I active Gunner, again no issues for the IG-88, 2 evades and 2 blanks with autothrusters meant no hits on 2 attacks with 3 damage results from Han. Han took 3 shields worth of damage in return that round and the Fringer whiffed totally with Gunner. The Fringer was promptly blown up in the next 3 subsequent rounds with shields being peeled off like I was a helpless banana and 2 direct hits from the Mangler Cannon on IG-88C doing huge work. I had 3 shields off of B and 1 off C after 4 rounds of shooting. Once the Fringer was gone Han failed to do even a single point of damage from that point on, and it was not for a lack of rolls. I learned a lot about these ships this game and I will TL:DR my thoughts at the end, but all I can say is that if you leave this ships the room they need, they will fly all over the place loaded up with tokens to modify every attack or evade 2-3 hits per attack.
Swiss Round 4
1 – Corran Horn with Push the Limit, R2-D2, and Fire-Control Systems, and Engine Upgrade
2 – Tala Squadron Pilot
3 – Tala Squadron Pilot
4 – Bandit Squadron Pilot
5 – Bandit Squadron Pilot
Another local player in our gaming group, but my first time facing this mini-swarm; the obvious target was Corran, and I knew that my opponent would try and make me chase him. I set up in my standard deployment, with my opponent splitting Corran on the right side of the table and the Z95s on the left. I positioned Han across from Corran and closer to the middle of the table, in the hopes of bringing Corran into the asteroids to set up some blocks or force him to the edge of the table and then possibly bring both my ships to focus on him. Turn 1 saw my opponent fully boost up and push for a focus, while I opened aggressively as well moving enough to get an opening range 3 shot on Corran from Han and the Fringer on the Z95s. I will say my opponent is staunch support of the “green dice do nothing” club and he really showed that in this opening round, with Corran taking 3 hits from Han on no evades or focus. The Z95s did some damage on Fringer, taking 2 shields with me only getting 1 off a Bandit. Sensing danger Corran double tapped to put the hurt on Han and got 3 total shields off after Lone Wolf and C3P0 failed to cooperate (guess 0 evades, get 1, oh well). In round 2 my opponent and I both made really questionable calls. I moved the Fringer to the outer edge, trying to dodge the Bandits (my opponent had initiative at 98 points) meaning I was out of arc for the Mangler and not in range 1 for the primary weapon. My opponent brought the Z95s to bear down on Han, but kept the stress on Corran and did the white 5 straight to try and naturally clear distance, but with Engine upgrade I simply boosted in for a range 3 attck, however into arc on all the Talas. Again, the green dice failed my opponent for Corran, but the Talas and Bandits brought the hurt on Han, taking all remaining shields and dealing 3 hull damage. While the Fringer plunked away for 1 damage. I should have accepted I was losing Lone Wolf this round and brought the Mangler Cannon around to try and finish off the damaged Bandit instead of losing as much durability on Han as I did. However, with Corran dead, I thought I had this almost all wrapped up. There was a tense moment when I foolishly piloted Han onto a rock with a turn (only one of the day! This is still a personal accomplishment) but thankfully my opponent didn’t expect me to do something so dumb and positioned his Z95’s so that only 2 could take shots, but these shots got in without any return fire. A critical hit from that attack yielded stressful hard turns for Han. The Fringer came around the back of the field, with Gunner doing huge work rerolling single hits and subsequent evades into a lot of hit and focus results on the primary gun until I could “Mangling” the Z95s that were the chasing down the wounded Han. Han recovered distance on some banks and boosts and the Fringer killed a Tala and dropped the shields on the other. In the end I piled on the two remaining Z95s to destroy them all with only a few minutes to spare, with the Fringer and Gunner being the heroes of the match after Han took a ton of shots for the team.
Cut to Top 8
1 – Corran Horn with Veteran Instincts, Flechette Torpedoes, Fire-Control System, and Engine Upgrade
2 – Dash Rendar with Push the Limit, Nien Numb, Heavy Laser Cannon, Outrider, and Engine Upgrade
An interesting twist on the Super Dash + Corran concept that, unfortunately, did not do anything to help my opponent against my squad. At this point we’re on hour 6 and match 5 and my opponent was showing some drag. We quickly set up and got going, he’s very happy to cluster rocks because of Dash and I again split my squad. Corran boosted up, and this time I have both my Fringer and Han in position to shoot from range 3, while Dash is hanging out at the back, centre of the field heading to my left without a shot. After shooting Corran is down 2 shields and lined up to run the gauntlet between my two ships if he boosts or take a range 1 shots if he goes to regen shields with R2-D2. I slowed right down and tried to pile together to finish Corran like last game, but the shield regen plus boost pays off, in a way, leaving Corran now barely behind my ships on my half of the field with only 1 hull and a critical PS0 damage result. Dash started unloading, taking 4 shields off the Fringer. However, with Corran effectively out of the match for a few rounds to regen and his PS advantage gone I switched targets to Dash rather chasing Coran. The Fringer and Han go after Dash as best possible, while Dash maintainied good position for a round or two, all the while piling the hurt on the Fringer. However, a few boost actions from Han put me inside Dash’s donut and all of a sudden Dash has all shields knocked down. Corran rejoined the fight after turning around and getting 3 shields back, and with the Fringer badly hurt, I decided to “sacrifice” the Fringer to Corran in the hopes of getting some shields off. The Fringer died bravely taking off 2 shields from Corran. Meanwhile, Dash got turned into space dust from Han who has moved into range 1 of Dash for the last 2 turns. PS0 Corran got the same treatment the next turn, thanks espeicially, to the PS0 critical result from the start of the match.
Top 4 (same opponent from Swiss Round 2)
1 – Whisper with Veteran Instincts, Fire-Control System, and Advanced Cloaking Device
2 – Bounty Hunter with Ysanne Isard
3 – Academy Pilot
4 – Academy Pilot
Whisper has returned, wiser and smarter this time, and being that this was the second time we’ve played today, my opponent made some different deployment decisions, including leaving the centre of the table much more open with asteroids around the edges. Again, I had initiative so this time I placed the Fringer on the right and Han in the centre of the table, while my opponent mirrors his deployment from our first game, only with Whisper farther to the left edge. I aggressively advanced both ships forward and boosted Han towards Whisper while he, wisely, slowed Whisper with a 2 straight and a cloak acition; the trap is set, or so it seems. Turn 2 and my opponent reacted to this position, again bringing the TIEs and Bounty Hunter to bear down on the Fringer, who stood his ground with a 1 forward while Han changed targets and turns back in towards the group and boosted through the open middle of the table into range 1 of the formation. Because of the outer asteroid placements my opponent could not decloak towards the left edge without going off the table, and a decloak right would have put his dialed 4 straight move across an asteroid, which meant he was headed across the board with a forward decloak as his only option or remaining cloaked, and out of battle for the next few turns. Decloaking and movement brought the Phantom back in range quickly, but with the battle raging in the back right corner of the field, Han sitting in the middle of board just waiting for a range 3 shot on Whisper, and the Bounty Hunter already down to hull and a TIE destroyed, it was turn 5 before Whisper fired her first shot. Needless to say the game wrapped up very quickly as the Fringer became the “victory” condition for opponent; as he said “I just want to blow up one dumb ship!” He definitely succeeded in that task, but both TIEs and the Bounty Hunter were destroyed in the exchanges, leaving Han and the Phantom to duke it out. Han continued to circled the centre of the map, boosting into Range 1 for the final kill shot on Whisper a few rounds later.
Finals – Robot Encounter #2
1 – IG-88B – Push the Limit, Heavy Laser Cannon, Advanced Sensors, Autothrusters, IG-2000
2 – IG-88C – Push the Limit, Manger Cannon, Advanced Sensors, Autothrusters, IG-2000
My Round 3 opponent had been running the field with his IG-88s, and up until his previous match had a strong lead in every match that I personally saw or heard about. However, take a look at the results list again at the top of this post for the tournament, and specifically, at the 4th place list, which seemed to have a huge impact on IG-88s action economy. Apparently the game was ultimately decided by a bad decloak and maneuver that barely put Whisper over a rock, which lead to a critical hit roll, and the dreaded direct hit, destroying Whisper. But I digress.
Cognoscente of our last match, I tried a whole bunch of different things this go round both in deployment and asteroid placement. I clustered my side and the middle of the board with rocks this time, I tried to draw my opponent in as much as possible to limit movement by slow rolling and turning to move laterally through my end. This time my opponent focused Han first, who lasted longer thanks to the Lone Wolf + C3P0 combo, but ultimately it was not to mean to be. Again, my red dice seemed to just turn off rolling blanks or single hits when I had clear shots. We counted and over 6 rounds of shooting I Han re-rolled, and used Gunner every attack to a maximum of 2 hits with focus, definitely below average. Positioning would allow me to get out of arc for both of the IG-88 ships from time to time with Han, which allowed me to shoot without return fire from either IG-88, but because of the clustered asteroids, I was often making a turreted shot at range 2-3 and with an obstruction. Again, action economy and 4-5 evade dice with autothrusters made it really easy to avoid 2-3 hits every time. I was more successful with Han living longer and getting IG-88B to hull with a single damage, but in the end Han was brought down leaving the Fringer to be destroyed in a turn or two. Ultimately, I feel like I ran into the Rock list to my Scissors list (that and I lost to a much better pilot) whereas if I had faced the Whisper touting list from my opponent’s previous Top 4 match, I may have been the Scissors list to their Paper list.
So I finished 2nd place, I had a great time, and I felt like I drew some good match-ups with all things considered. If you stuck the whole way through this, thanks and I hope you enjoyed. I welcome any and all feedback or comments. I’ll be posting some more of my brief, fun match-ups here from now on and maybe even get a bit crazy and start filming or blogging about this stuff.
TL:DR What I learned about IG-88s
-This ship can fly big, far, and fast. If you can get out of their arc, great, but you need to be able to keep up too. They’ll just take a long walk across the board and shoot you when they want to.
- You have to deny these things action economy if they are using advanced sensors and IG-88C you need to consider both the boost range and the movement range.
- If your opponent can just bump you, denying you shots, all they have to do is advanced sensors to evade and focus then green anything to bump.
- Advanced sensors.
- Advanced sensors!
-ADVANCED SENSORS!!!
- Don’t underestimate them. They are a thinking list and an adept pilot can make them do some very, very diverse maneuvers with all the tricks and tools.
Edited by Ehawther
