100 Points

46 points

Corran Horn

E-Wing

R2-D2, Fire-Control System, Veteran Instincts, Engine Upgrade

29 points

Jake Farrell

A-Wing

A-Wing Test Pilot, Chardaan Refit, Veteran Instincts, Hull Upgrade, Push the Limit

25 points

Tarn Mison

X-Wing

R7 Astromech

Round 1 vs JP:

100 Points

58 points

Rear Admiral Chiraneau

VT-49 Decimator

Veteran Instincts, Seismic Charges, Gunner, Engine Upgrade

42 points

“Whisper”

TIE Phantom

Rebel Captive, Fire-Control System, Veteran Instincts, Advanced Cloaking Device

Round 2 vs Sithlord Dave

100 Points

27 points

Carnor Jax

TIE Interceptor

Veteran Instincts

19 points

“Howlrunner”

TIE Fighter

Veteran Instincts

18 points

Mauler Mithel

TIE Fighter

Veteran Instincts

12 points

Academy Pilot #1

TIE Fighter

12 points

Academy Pilot #2

TIE Fighter

12 points

Academy Pilot #3

TIE Fighter

Playing one of the best TIE swarm players in the Bay Area, our matches are always close (and I've never won against him in a tournament yet). I flew all 3 of my ships separately, keeping Tarn away from the swarm, Corran in the middle, and Jake on the side. The goal was to get Tarn around to flank the swarm, and keeping Corran flying very slow in the middle while Jake “threatens” the swarm as bait. Dave flew the swarm through the middle and tried to catch Corran, but I banked Corran to my right and then flew out of range of most of the swarm, while Jake was able to come around behind the Swarm. Tarn, meanwhile, was taking on Carnor, dealing no damage to each other (because of Tarn’s ability). After a few rounds, Tarn was able to kill Howlrunner before dying. In the crucial turn, Corran guessed right and got Carnor at R1 with a TL. Carnor took 2 shields off Corran, and Corran was able to blast Carnor out of the sky. The unfortunate thing is, there was an Academy pilot in R1 on the flank of Corran. I thought, “well, I can go and recharge my shields after this, and 1 shot from an AP should be ok. Little did I know, the AP did 3 hits, and I rolled all blanks. Corran dies in 1 round of shooting.

At that point, it was Jake against 4 pretty healthy TIE Fighters (including Mauler). Through Jake’s crazy 3 actions a turn, I was able to blast a TIE out of the sky at R1, and almost killed another. I rolled 2 crits with the help of TL, the TIE rolled blanks, and one of the crits was Minor Explosion. Dave rolled his red dice and got a… CRIT! Wait… those don’t hurt, DAMMIT!! In the end, time ran out and I was 13 points behind for a loss. It was a close game and and 1 evade on Corran could have changed the game. Losing by 13 points to a great player, and knowing my 3 elite ship build is weakest against swarms, I was quite proud of that achievement!

Result: 1-1 (oh well, that's what I expected from the list)

Round 3 vs John:

100 Points

16 points

Black Squadron Pilot

TIE Fighter

Wingman

60 points

Captain Oicunn

VT-49 Decimator

Expose, Rebel Captive, Ysanne Isard, Moff Jerjerrod, Dauntless, Experimental Interface

24 points

Omicron Group Pilot

Lambda-Class Shuttle

Darth Vader

Ok, 1-1, not bad for a list that was designed to “lose”. So for my 3^rd round, out of a tournament with only 4 decimators (out of 30 people), I meet my 2^nd one. Great. And this one can hurt with Expose/EI, ramming, and is tanky with Ysanne, Moff, and Rebel Captive. I start off far away from the Doom shuttle, and try to focus on Oicunn. I send Tarn off as the lead ship since he can shrug off some shots from Oicunn and the BSP. Corran and Jake flank as usual, staying far away from the OGP as possible. I don’t remember much about this game, but ultimately, I was able to focus all 3 ships on Oicunn for 2 rounds, and my opponent got himself one too many stress to clear, so Ysanne didn’t kick in and Expose couldn’t be used in that round. Once I killed Oicunn in the early rounds, he conceded because the shuttle and the BSP will have no chance against my 3 ships.

Result: Sweet, 2-1 with a good MOV!

Round 4 vs Eric:

99 Points

12 points

Bandit Squadron Pilot #1

Z-95 Headhunter

12 points

Bandit Squadron Pilot #2

Z-95 Headhunter

25 points

Blue Squadron Pilot #1

B-Wing

Advanced Sensors

25 points

Blue Squadron Pilot #2

B-Wing

Advanced Sensors

25 points

Blue Squadron Pilot #3

B-Wing

Advanced Sensors

Then came the 3^rd meta archetype I had to play, a Rebel super tanky swarm. The blues all had Advanced Sensors, so they’re super maneuverable and never loses their actions. 2 Z’s are annoying and takes up space. This was flown by a great player, Eric, whom I ended up meeting 2 more times at a later Store Championship. The game was all about cat and mouse chase. Jake flew around an asteroid near my deployment for a few turns, forcing the B-wings to commit to one direction or another. Tarn flew from the opposite end of my deployment, away from the B’s, to try to flank. While Corran wend slowly down the middle to draw the B’s in. Ultimately, Eric split off 2 Z’s to deal with Tarn, though they were ineffective and I only got one down to 1 hull. Jake was able to arc dodge the other flank behind the B-Wings and take some pot shots, while Corran takes on 3 B’s from R3, with an evade token, and survive the barrage with no shields left.

Corran then flies away to recharge while Tarn focuses on a B and a Z with Jake. 3-4 rounds later, Corran is good as new, and a Z and a B died along with Tarn. At that point, it was more cat and mouse and when time was called, Corran was able to arc dodge away, while Jake decided to take one more joust with the B’s (range 3) because I didn't want to just run away till time. With a focus and evade, and just enough evade rolls, I eeked out a full win 37-25! Crazy!

Result: 3-1 (WTF???)

Round 5 vs Jason:

100 Points

51 points

Han Solo

YT-1300

Veteran Instincts, Lando Calrissian, Tactical Jammer

49 points

Dash Rendar

YT-2400 Freighter

Veteran Instincts, Heavy Laser Cannon, Outrider

At this point, I’m already shocked that I made it this far with a 3-1 record, and then I meet the final/fourth meta archetype, the YT3700 (Han and Dash) list, at PS9 and 11. This list wrecked my friend’s (played by a very good player and the creator of YASB) Whisper/VI Chiraneau list earlier in the day, and only lost a close one before. Having flown my list 4 times now and having to come up with creative ways of keeping them alive, I definitely felt more at ease with how my 3 ships interact. Jason set Han and Dash up together and move forward slowly from one edge. I fly my 3 ships (knowing I have to focus fire) down the middle slowly and bank towards them through the rocks. Dash does a 1 hard turn towards his deployment zone, BR and is now far away with his HLC shot. Tarn takes 2 damage and things don’t look good. I decide to have all 3 of my ships shoot on Han, taking him down to 1 damage on his hull (he didn’t roll well with Lando that turn). Then Dash starts to move a little closer towards the action to stay at R3. That was the turn I pointed Jake the correct direction, 5 forwarded and boosted into Dash’s donut. Corran was close enough to also do a hard turn towards Dash and boost into the donut to double tap. After that point, Corran and Jake never left the donut until Dash died. Meanwhile, Tarn died to Han without dealing more damage. At this point, it was my 2 ships vs a PS11 Han. Thank goodness he didn’t have engine, as I would have lost the game for sure. With Corran and Jake taking turns shooting at Han, and running away if hurt, I was able to bring Han down after many rounds of firing.

Result: 4-1

Holy crap! I ended up 2^nd after the swiss round with this crazy list against each of the 4 strong meta archetypes, and I’ve never flown Tarn before (and haven’t flown an X-Wing since I started playing this game 6-7 months ago). What was crazier is that another guy made it to the top 8 with a 3 Rookie 3 Bandit swarm. Way to represent the X-Wings! At this point, it was close to 9pm and all of the top 8 guys agreed to play the elimination on another day, so I didn’t have to forfeit, whew! With the elimination set 1 month from the original tournament date, I better keep this list fresh and see how far I can go!

a month later.....

A month after the original swiss rounds, the top 8 players came back to play the elimination. It was kind of anachronistic, now that we’re a full month into Wave 6 and all of had to go back to the Wave 5 lists we had. But ultimately, it was a very fun group of guys and the store was super supportive of the event, so we were all happy to be back.

Top 8 Match vs Nathan

100 Points

49 points

Chewbacca

YT-1300

Lone Wolf, C-3PO, Nien Nunb, Millennium Falcon

51 points

“Leebo”

YT-2400 Freighter

Determination, Heavy Laser Cannon, Outrider, Engine Upgrade

First game was against an old rival (and friend) of mine, someone who has beaten me quite a few times in tournaments in the past. I set up my in the middle as always, he set up Chewbacca to his left (my right) and his Leebo on the other side. I put Corran and Jake both across from Leebo, since I know I had to take Leebo’s HLC out, and after that Chewbacca will be easy for Corran/Jake to takeout. He charges Chewbacca forward and I charge Corran/Jake forward as fast as I could. Tarn actually flies slow and stays out of Chewbacca’s arc. First turn, Jake and Corran both take R3 pot shots at Leebo for no damage, but Corran got his TL that way. Leebo rolled 4 evades in 4 dice, and Nathan joked about how that’s not a good sign since he probably used up all his evades. Unfortunately, that turned out to be true and the green dice sort of betrays Leebo after that. Granted, Jake and Corran were able to get into Leebo’s R1 for the rest of his life in the 3^rd round of firing. In one crucial turn, both Leebo and Chewbacca had a shot at Corran, and the first shot literally strips off all 3 of Corran’s shield, and then an unmodified HLC shot from Leebo rolls 2 hits, and I roll 2 evades (through a rock, thank goodness) to survive! If Corran died that turn, things would have been completely different. Corran flies away for 3 turns to recharge shields while Jake and Tarn finishes off Leebo and Chewbacca tries to take out Tarn. Thanks to R7, Tarn stays alive for the whole game with Jake chasing Chewbacca. When Corran finally comes back to fight, Chewbacca dies.

Result: Full 100-0 win

Top 4 Match vs Daniel:

100 Points

55 points

Han Solo

YT-1300

Predator, "Leebo", C-3PO, Millennium Falcon

33 points

Keyan Farlander

B-Wing

Advanced Sensors, Veteran Instincts

12 points

Bandit Squadron Pilot

Z-95 Headhunter

Another pancake, this time Han with PS9 Keyan and a bandit. This sone should be similar to the previous game, with my Jake and Corran designed to kill turrets. I won the initiative roll and gave it to him so I can move Jake after his PS9, which helped a lot. I do the same set up of Tarn in the middle, with him putting his Han on his left with Keyan and the Bandit in the middle. I decide to do my standard setup with Corran to my left in the middle (left of Tarn, away from Han) and Jake to the far left ready to flank. First turn saw all his ships rush forward into the middle, while Tarn stalls. Jake rushes to flank and Corran decides to turn away from the action so he doesn’t get double teamed (every time Corran gets double teamed, he almost dies). Tarn survives a few rounds of shots because of his R7, and next turn Jake and Corran is able to come back from his back to finish Keyan. Tarn ends up dying soon after (thank to Keyan’s parting shots), and then it was Jake and Corran chasing Han in a merry go around the big rock. The Bandit dies soon, after causing Corran to have to adjust his moves to avoid the block, while Han chases close behind. Thank goodness for Jake’s focus/evade and Corran recharging while taking a focus or evade token, I was able to keep both alive. We circle the rock a couple of times and then Corran is able to double tap Han with Jake’s help and finish him off.

Result: 100-25 Win

Final Table vs Eric:

Wow, how the heck did I get into the final with a list that I made up to NOT get into the top 8??? Plus, how is it in the Phantom-deci-super-dash-fat-han meta, do the TWO lone lists with X-Wings make it to the final??? Insanity I say! Eric and I high fived each other at the start of the match for “putting the X-Wing back into X-Wing Miniatures Game”. I’m very glad he made it to the finals with that cool list.

At this point, I’m pretty happy with my results no matter what happens, and I’m facing the type of list that I dread flying against (unless I have Echo with me), the Rebel swarm. The good news is they have zero repositioning abilities like a TIE swarm, the bad news is they all have shields and rarely die to a one-shot . After just playing a “Tarn Nation” list the weekend before in the finals and barely losing, I have to be very careful with arc dodging, use the asteroids, and try to pick off any ship I have the opportunity to pick off (even though X-Wings need to go, they also have more health and are harder to kill in 1 turn).

Eric sets up with X/Z pairs across his deployment zone, and I set up Tarn and Corran together on one side with Jake on the other, diagonal at 45 degrees. I move Tarn and Corran up slowly and Jake does a 2 forward and BR back. When I realized he was moving all 6 ships to take on Corran/Tarn, that’s when I lay the trap. Tarn keeps slow flying (1 forward/1 bank) while Corran breaks left around an asteroid and boosts away to from the swarm. He tries to turn a Z and an X down the middle to catch Jake and Corran, but the Z lands on a rock and the X get sa R2 shot at Corran. Jake and Corran finish off the Z (with me needing the double tap, I hate those shields), and then Corran flies off to recharge. Tarn meanwhile survives FOUR attacks from 2Z and 2Xs, thanks to 2 of them being at R3 and Tarn using his ability on the one ship that rolled a lot of hits.

Next turn, he swoops his 4 ships in at Tarn, but Jake and Corran also swoop in. One unluckly X-Wing K-turns thinking that Tarn will fly past him, but Tarn moves 1 forward and ends up R1 right behind a stressed X-Wing. Again, I needed Corran’s double tap and Jake/Tarn both shooting at the X-Wing to finish him off. The big problem was I also forgot to move my TL to that X-Wing when he was the last to shoot at Tarn the last turn. That one misstep I think spelled the beginning of my downfall. I was able to kill the X-Wing, but not before he was able to strip 2 shields off Corran, and Corran had a rock right in front of him. If I was able to have the TL on Tarn and use the TL to kill the X-Wing, then Corran would have had full shields and would have chosen a non-green move to get away. A few turns later, that mistake came back to haunt me. Corran flies through the rock, and as I’m very good at rolling damage against myself from asteroids, he loses the shield he gained back. The Z gives chase, but Jake finishes him off before he can shoot at Corran. Now the key moment of the game that still haunts me a little. I could move Corran forward to get the shield back, or do a 2 hard turn away from the 3 ships that are converging in the corner. I don’t know what I was thinking (and I took a long time that turn), I decided to do the 2 bank to get the final shield back, hoping that some of his ships will turn harder at Jake than Corran to cover arc. Unfortunately, they guessed right and converged on Corran. Corran took a focus and had a Z at R1, X at R2 and R3, while Jake had an R1 shot on an X. Jake only took 1 shield off the X (I was hoping for a miracle crit that blinded that ship), and then came very bad dice luck at the wrong time. 3 shots from Z, all hits. I roll blank, evade, eyeball. I use the focus to take 1 shield off. 3 shots at R2 from X, hit hit crit natural (he had TL, so it was high probability he would get all 3 hits anwyays). Ok, just need 1 evade to take it on the shields. What did I roll? THREE EYEBALLS. ARGH, should have saved the focus. Ok, it was 2 shields and thank god just a Damaged Sensor Array. Now the R3 shot from the TL+focused X. He rolls hit crit crit unmodified (again, with TL+F, he probably would have had the same results). I rolled blank and 3 eyeballs. Jeez! 9 hit/crits out of 9, and 1 evade, 7 eyeballs, and 2 blanks out of 10 green. The green dice chose the perfect time to betray me. Again, it was MY poor choice to fly into that trap (looking at the video, if I 2 hard turned away, only 1 ship could have shot at Corran and then Corran/Jake would have done the slip and come back to haunt the 3 remaining X/Z’s at their leisure. Instead, I took a stupid risk and paid for it.

Now it’s a full health Jake against 2X/1Z. It was pretty hopeless unless crazy stuff happened, but it was untimed so I gave it my best shot. After running for a few turns and dodging all attacks from 1 X-Wing at R3 with my focus/evade, I do a surprise turn around to take on the slightly damaged X. I did no damage to him at R2 (grrr) and an X and Z at R3 does 5 out of 5 damage (yes, with TL and/or focus, but still), and Jake decides to roll evade/eyeball/blank in the first roll (using the focus to evade everything from the Z), and then all blanks/eyeballs against the hit hit crit from the X. The crit ended up being direct hit. Ugh. The Hull upgrade saved Jake, but barely. If only I had Autothrusters at this point, it would have actually have meant that Jake took 1 shield or no damage at all. At that point it was over. I move Jake to take a final pot shot at that damaged X who K-turns and has no actions. Do no damage to him and he kills me through a rock with 4 agility dice (I rolled 1 or no evade (can’t remember).

Result: Lost 45-100 (it was bound to end )

Ultimately, I had a BLAST playing this list and the list did better than I could have ever hoped. Seeing 2 X-Wing lists in the top 2 was also a treat and I could not have lost to a better and nicer competitor than Eric. All in all, this was probably my favorite tournament out of the 6 SC’s I’ve played so far because of the people, the lists I saw, and getting that far without using a turret or a phantom. A big shout out to Silver/Kleintz who bounced ideas about this list for a while and encouraged me to try it out. That guy has a great mind for funky lists that are fun to fly and can reward creative flying. =)

Anyway, that is my battle report (and probably the only one I’ll write in this SC season, where I’m playing hopefully 8 of 8 SCs in my region) for “How I got into the final table with a funky 3 ship list”. Hope you enjoyed it!

List Juggler result:

http://lists.starwarsclubhouse.com/get_tourney_details?tourney_id=272

Nice going Ouch, that's a lot of turrets around there though...

Thanks! yeah, it was double pancake city at that tournament... Really wish I had autothrusters, haha.

Good job - is there anything more rewarding than playing a suboptimal list and still doing very well with it?

Good job - is there anything more rewarding than playing a suboptimal list and still doing very well with it?

Nope, nothing more rewarding. Definitely motivating me to play more wacky lists in the future.

Great! Glad to see the "terrible" X-wing doing well. I had a lot of fun with my sub-optimal Tie Bomber list, but it lost to the only list with Phantoms in the Final Four.

Nice work on the TIE Bombers. I'm still not brave enough to try that list yet, purely because I know what the phantom can do (my favorite ship).

Nice write up Kryzak. You are a competent opponent and quite fearsome on the field. If I recall, out of 6 Store Championships, you've made top 4, six times.

Thanks DarthDave. You still got my number in tournaments though, haha.

Good job - is there anything more rewarding than playing a suboptimal list and still doing very well with it?

Who says VI+R2D2+FCS+Engine Corran is suboptimal? Haha!

As far as my fear of ships goes, he's tied for the top spot!

Not that I am trying to negate how well you did! Nice Job!

Good job - is there anything more rewarding than playing a suboptimal list and still doing very well with it?

Who says VI+R2D2+FCS+Engine Corran is suboptimal? Haha!

As far as my fear of ships goes, he's tied for the top spot!

Not that I am trying to negate how well you did! Nice Job!

Oh don't get me wrong, That Corran is definitely NOT suboptimal, though if PS weren't an issue (darn phantoms, I love/hate you so much), PTL Corran is SOOOO much better.

The suboptimal part is more Jake and Tarn, while great ships, they're relatively fragile if their "trick" (3 agility with focus/evade or the R7 reroll) fails, which it did for me a couple of times. Plus that 2 attack dice on the A-Wing and the super non-mobility of an X-Wing just... hurts (me).

Nice work on the TIE Bombers. I'm still not brave enough to try that list yet, purely because I know what the phantom can do (my favorite ship).

I got one Phantom and almost killed the 2nd (forgot to drop my bomb before moving), but he had 3 generic Tie Bombers. It was rough.