(WARNING - LONG!)
Hello fellow X-wingers!
My name is Joe Kaufmann. I've been playing X-wing since 2014 and have loved every minute of it. I've also had some success, which only adds to the fun for me. I'm a competitive gamer by nature but fully respect what you, the X-Wing community, have going on here. (a super fun game, amazing community, great tournament scene, etc)
A little about me:
- I'm primarily a Magic player that happens to be living in an X-Wing world. I stick to Legacy and Vintage, but venture out for other formats when they're relevant. I believe a lot of my success in X-wing comes from my limited success as a magic player. A lot of the concepts are similar.
- My house is decked out in Star Wars and my wife allows it. So yeah, she's awesome.
- I often complain about dice in casual games of X-wing (I'm guessing I'm not alone here). You're ALWAYS going to see me playing lists that re-roll/modify dice with great efficiency.
- I love this game and it's important to me that my opponents and I always have fun. That said, if I'm in a tournament, I am playing because I LOVE competition and I like to win. If I get out-flown, I'll be the first to tell you, but getting better is part of the fun for me.
Past success:
- First Place - Sector Tournament Series (5 rounds and top 4/8, I don't remember) - Held at FFG Game Center
- First Place - Quadrant 001 Championship - Twin Cities (5 rounds and top 8) - FFG Game Center
- 5-1 Flight One of Worlds - lost in round 1 of top 32 to my first experience with Corran Horn. I learned a lot from that one...
- Won the first 2015 Store Championship in MN. (5 rounds and top 8)
Props:
- My wife, she's awesome and will probably never read this, but she supports this, so she gets the top shout out.
- The people I playtest with! You know who you are, you're all awesome and I genuinely think any one of you could have won this thing.
- The rest of the Twin Cities X-Wing crew. You guys/gals are all amazing, as well.
- FFG for creating an awesome game and being willing to address it's "downsides." Keep it up!
*** In advance of my tournament report, please excuse any details I miss/fudge.***
I take only basic notes throughout the tournament, so I had to do this from memory. When the video archives are released, I'll review again for any major things I remember wrong or forgot.
Report:
Leading up to Regionals, I hadn't been gaming much at all and hadn't played X-Wing since the Store Championship. There was a big Magic tournament the weekend before, so I had been prepping for that. 82 people for a legacy tournament. First prize was a Beta Bayou and I took it home! That's a different tourney report though. 
I had a lot of catching up to do but settled on dual IG88s due to my playstyle and love for their dial.
Round 1 – BYE
Round 2 – Feature Match v. Alex W.
Alex is one of many superb local players in the Twin Cities and I knew this would be a challenging match to start the day. I was quite excited to face him for the first time. As previously mentioned, I thrive on that excitement and had to hope it would boost me ahead of him. (pun intended!)
He was flying Dash in a 2400, without VI, which I was very excited to see. Dual HLC can rip through these big turret ships pretty efficiently and that was the primary reason I played the list that I did. Dash carrying the Outrider title and an HLC of his own meant there was donut hole for me to exploit with boost. My initial excitement was soon diminished as Dash was flanked by something I hadn’t tested before. 2 gold squad Y wings with Autoblasters, one of which accompanied by the Stress Bot. Alex knew that I hadn’t played in a while and informed me that Evade tokens don’t work against the autoblasters. After confirming with the TO, we started the match.
B-Bro ended up taking far too much damage from Autoblasters in the early rounds.On top of that, I made a poor flying decision in an early, crucial, turn. His Y-wing lived one too many turns and it caused me significant damage. With only one health remaining and 1 Y-wing down, B-Bro had to run away for many of the remaining turns, dodging shots while C-Bro hunted down the other Y. After that, I planned and executed a couple range 1 strikes with B-Bro, while tailing Dash with C-Bro. Our pace was brisk, but time ended up getting called before I could finish off Dash. This was my only match that went to time and I got a full win with 42 points destroyed and 0 lost. I made a crucial piloting error early in this game and knew that I needed to get it straightened out soon. I felt very lucky to come away with a win here. Alex went on to make Top 16 without any surprise.
Killed 42 – Lost 0
Round 3 – Andrew K.
I was incredibly happy to see another 2400 (I forget the pilot, it was Leebo or Chewie). It was flanked by 2 B-wings this time, and I was looking to earn my confidence back. Andrew is another great local player, but I felt humbled after the close call in round 2. I reigned in my thoughts, created a plan and stuck to it. I picked off the B wings in short order and then moved on the 2400. I don’t mean any slight to Andrew, but that’s about all I remember here. The match went the way I felt it should with proper flying and average dice rolls on both sides. I played super aggressive as I was willing to sacrifice a Bro for a quick match. Knowing that Bro vs. 2400 was something I was happy with.
100 killed – 49 lost
Round 4 – Feature vs. Adam S.
Adam and I no more than sat down before he began talking about how much he disliked this matchup for him. He was flying Leebo and Chewie. In my mind, I knew better than to think ANY match is an auto-win and Adam struck me as a high level player. I settled in for a tough match.
While most of the game proceeded in a matter that I was happy with, I made a pretty big error toward the end of the game and had to shake it off pretty quickly. Adam was using 3 large obstacles and they were acrylic. I mistakenly thought they were all Debris fields and therefore decided I would sacrifice my low health Bro toward the end of the game in order to wrap up the match a little quicker. My plan was to make a “bad” piloting decision, land on a Debris field, and get one last shot to try and knock out one of his YTs. I announced this out loud, rolled for a crit (came up with an eyeball), and went to shoot. Adam stopped me and told me I had landed on a rock… This was my fault and I lost my Bro without shooting. Again, while on camera, I made an error and it cost time in the match, luckily for me, time was all it cost me. The match soon ended in my favor and I was off to ponder my mistakes.
Killed 100 – Lost 49
Round 5 – Chris Jenkins
At this point, I noticed that every one of my matches, thus far, had been against a YT or two. I was being rewarded for my meta decision and my confidence was really starting to peak.
I have a ton of respect for Chris as a player and he was the other member of our local group that made the cut at worlds with me in 2014. He and I have played some amazing games of X-wing with each other, but they don’t tend be close. Either someone’s dice are far above average, or it’s just a lopsided matchup. Today was no different. He was flying with a Falcon and Corran Horn. The Bros and I were barely touched as I took a much more correct approach, in my opinion, to this game. I played defensively, taking zero real risks until the opportunity came to go in hard and kill Corran. I knew he was my primary target as I really didn’t want to end up in a 1:1 situation with Mr. Horn. With that mission complete, I chased down the Falcon with little to no damage taken from there on.
Killed 100 – Lost 0
Round 6 – Feature vs. Jason Christopherson
He and I had a fun chat before the game, figuring we were both locked for top 8. We playfully mentioned that one of us should take the other down ASAP so we could go get food before the top 8. “Our wishes” were answered and I won the match rather quickly. I can’t say there was much noteworthy about this match. Hopefully FFG uploads the replays at a later time.
Killed 100 – Lost 0
Top 8 – Feature vs. ?Forgot name?
His list was unique and unexpected, to me at least. Luke with Lone Wolf, Airen Cracken, and Corran Horn, all at PS8 meant I gave up initiative as quick as I could. I knew that Corran was my real issue, but I figured he would split up Luke, so my plan was to go melt Luke’s Xwing down for scrap metal before Horn and Cracken really got to jump into the fight. It took me 1 too many turns to fry Luke, meaning one of the Bros took more damage than he could afford.
The match ended up boiling down to a healthy Bro vs. Corran on the run with full shields and 1 hull damage. Corran had to continue to turtle up and play defense. Stressing to keep focus and evade tokens until eventually coming up with a move to break the bumping stale mate. My plan was to continue to bump/chase until Corran had to make a turn, then use Intertial dampners, get a shot, and be able to move safely the following turn and shoot again. This worked, and I finally had my chance to kill Corran! However, after shooting twice and Corran living through it, my heart sank, knowing that we were probably just playing until time or until he K-turned and tried to get lucky and survive. As we looped around top the other side of the board, my opponent eventually made the mistake of setting a K-turn while being stressed and this is where it got interesting, but my memory is a little fuzzy from being so late and such a tense match…
Arguably, what I should have done was set a hard 3 turn and just put Corran off the board and sent him spiraling into space. What I did, however, was set a 1 bank so that I put him right onto a rock without any actions. In the heat of the moment, I completely forgot that I hadn’t actually moved yet. So, instead of being able to end the game with dice as planned, I had to complete my move and zipped right past Mr. Horn without a single shot. A couple turns later my opponent tried to boost and run, but I was able to get a shot off on a non-turtled Corran Horn and locked up the match. It was pure, crazy, awesomeness. I will not soon forget this game.
Killed 100 - Lost 49
Top 4 – Vs. Ryan Krippendorf
Ryan was a class act. He seemed to have a competitive edge/drive that I associated with and immediately suspected this to be a match that was going to end due to some sort of luck filled events. I knew if I got 2 arcs on either Phantom, and their green dice weren’t perfect, I knew I would burn them up quickly.
This is the first match that I felt the dice gods truly smiled upon me all day. Not that I felt my dice were ever bad, but this match ended far quicker than it could have.
I got what I considered to be excellent rock placement. We created a tight triangle shape, being flat against his side of the board and leaving a large open space on my side of the board. Initially, my plan was to let him come out from behind the rocks and let me coordinate my attacks. However, after initial movements, I realized the rocks were actually going to hinder him and I moved into the rocks to take opportunistic shots. Whisper did a little damage to one of the Bros, but Night Beast did absolutely nothing as I caught him on the run and HLC blasted him out of the sky.
Both Whisper and Echo had terrible luck, however. I snuck a single crit past each of their shields and both times it was a direct hit. Did this affect the outcome of the match? I really don’t think so. It did end the match quicker than either of us expected, however.
Killed 100 – Lost 0
FINALS. Rematch vs. Jason Christopherson from Round 6
I hate to say it, but this match just wasn’t that memorable to me. By this point in the day, I felt like it was my match to win and I just had to not fly terribly. We were both tired and I remember fudging movements a couple times on accident. We were both at our limits I believe.
I played hyper-aggressive to kill the 2400, fully willing to go 1:1 with Chewie and that’s exactly what happened. I killed the 2400 and lost an IG when Chewie had 8 hull left. The other Bro still had full health. Staying out of arc plus defensive focus tokens would mean almost never taking damage. I don’t remember if Chewie actually did anymore damage this game. The game slowly came to halt and I continued to play as if it were any other game of X-Wing.
My phone was lighting up and vibrating in my pocket from texts. My wife and friends texting me as I was about to wrap up Regionals and they knew it from watching the Twitch stream. The final shots were fired, we shook hands, and I landed in my chair for what seemed like forever. It was the end of another successful tournament and an incredibly fun day of gaming.
Killed 100 – Lost 49
I can’t wait for Worlds. SEE YOU ALL THERE! May all your re-rolls be crits.