This was my first large event. Previously lived in Hawaii on Oahu and the largest group we had for a store tournament, I believe, was 20. Going to an event with 66 people was definitely a big change. So first up, location: game cafe in Missouri; list: 7 tie swarm with 5 academies, howl with stealth and ptl, black squadron with wingman. Took me till this morning to realize this, but I was the only Empire list to make top 8 (CORRECTION - obviously the dual defenders is empire lol). Goes to show how mind fragged you are after 12 hours of xwing furballs.
Had a bye for the "first game"
Actual first game was against Titus from the village geek in McPherson Kansas (awesome store and staff go check them out!). He had the ps6 decimator pilot with moff j, isard, and rebel captive I believe. Next ship was Kath with tactician and hlc (might have had another upgrade, I can't remember right now). We flew around a bit but Kath bumped into the deci and that's when I was able to get a bunch of hits in. Unfortunately Kath rolled just one or two evades and went down quick. I lost 3 ties and chased down the decimator and that was game.
Next game: Doug Kinney. Ok so the name sounded familiar so googled then immediately texted my Hawaii buddies that I was gonna die very fast. The intimidation factor was high. Doug was pretty cool and we had a fun game. He had rexlar, and rear admiral with fleet officer. We both turned into the middle with the big rock blocking shots from my ties to his TD. I got some shots in and took down his shields but the next move was going to be critical. It was either block the td from the kturn, or gamble and bump the conga line to hopefully kill the td if he didn't kturn due to the sort of obvious kturn block I could do. I ended up bumping the conga line and the td did a one soft into it. TD went down and decimator followed with me losing 2-3 ties.
Part two to come later, time to hit the gym.
Ok on to the third game. I was surprised to find out that I was going to be "showcased" for the next match on twitch. This match was one of the first matches I was not looking forward to that day, 3 talas and fat han. To start, he started pretty slow just 1 forward while I moved up 5 and tried to get into position for the middle turns. Next turn a soft 2 and he did a 1 forward again. Next turn straight 2 for me and he came into engagement range at range 3 I believe. The talas did some damage and so did I. I think we might have each burned one ship a piece this turn, however it took me two more turns to finish off the Talas and I think another academy went down at this point as well. The extra turn for taking down the Talas was decisive a this point. I knew it was going to be hard to chew through Han with the time that was remaining. I chased han for a bit but took some damage but hadn't yet lost anymore TIEs. However, I was honestly surprised I was at this point in the event. I figured I'd come to the event, get the Fett card and call it a day. Now I was in the position on whether or not to chase all the day, risk dying, and losing or playing it smart/safe and seeing if my opponent would constantly go for range 3 shots. The combo of han and gunner was hurting me here. I also HATE playing where my opponent forgets something and I have the option of taking advantage of it. At one point he forgot about the gunner re-roll and I reminded him. I want to play fair, not cause anyone to lose because they forgot something. I did this in game two against Titus as well, he had that evade roll against attacks with his deci and I wanted him to use it. I would encourage people to do this as well, because it makes the gaming environment more fun to play in and not just a cutthroat "I gotta do everything I can to win" sort of thing. Anyway that's my two cent rant on that. On the last turn I did turn away, I had a ship take damage but it was not enough to kill it and that was game. Well played for both of us and that was definitely my most stressful match of the day.
So game 4 started 5 minutes after game 3 against Biophysical's double Defenders. Again I started 5 straight to get into a good middle position later on and try to see if I could use the big rock on my right to my advantage. Next turn is a one hard bank and im looking good for the next turn till he starts shooting at me lol. One Academy gets one shotted and I think howl runner might have lost stealth device, or an academy died. This is the first game where howlrunner had lost stealth device the entire day. The focus/evade combo definitely helped out against Doug Kinney's TD and to answer Icareane - depending on the first shooting turn, Howl was not in range for the first pass, so the academies had to be targeted, however against Doug, she was in range and he tried to get her with the TD, the deci did not have her in range that turn I believe. Sometimes people waste a lot of time to try and bring howl down, sometime it works, sometimes it doesn't. From the games I won during the event, I won pretty well except game 3. However, for the games I lost, I lost hard lol.
Anyway for this match, I had one small victory on turn 3, I blocked both Defenders onto the big rock during a turn. However, some of my ships couldn't target either, but I was able to do some damage and get the hull upgraded TD down to just two hull. We moved and shot and during this game 3-4 academies got one shotted. I kept trying to pluck away at the wounded TD but the dice weren't there. Walked away from a fun game and I was happy to have been beaten by two TDs. Biophysical flew it well and it was a fun and definitely unique match for me.
Game 5 was against soontir with all the fun upgrades of PTL, I think auto and stealth, shuttle with vader (this made me nervous for obvious reasons) and whisper. I'll skip to the middle engagement. Soontir shot at Howl I believe, and Howl evaded, then the swarm shot back. The dice and rock advantage were not with soontir, he lost stealth and was down to I think 2 or 1 hull. I even managed to strip a shield off of whisper. Next turn, soontir was blocked and was killed, shuttle used vader to crit howl but lucky for me it didn't do much. Again another shield was stripped from whisper. Two ties were damaged and the shuttle was hurting. Next turn shuttle dies and whisper damaged a TIE. Another movement turn and the one tie, with mods, that could shoot at whisper manages to get a critical and take out the last remaining hull point on whisper. I didn't lose a TIE this round and I was starting to wonder if I had somehow made top 8 as I was 5-1 at this point.
I was genuinely shocked when the list came out and I was number 7. I did not go to the event expecting to make it into the top 8. At this point I believe it was 8pm, the top 8 matches were going to start at 8:30 and I was again to be on the twitch feed. This was going to be the second game of the day that I was not looking forward to playing, chewie and corran.
So at this point, I'm feeling glad because I got some nifty dice and some shield tokens. My wife had played but had not scored enough wins to make it high enough to keep playing. She cheered my on while watching on the big screen in the lobby area. Fatigue definitely played a roll in mistakes I made this game. Corran had no actions at one point and I tried to see if I could take him, did damage, but not enough and then he got all those shields back from r2d2. Academies died one at a time from predator chewie (yep those 2 rerolls hurt a lot). I managed to get chewie down to 1 hull left while howl tried to fight on after losing all her wingmates. It was still a fun game and I left feeling pretty happy with the way things turned out. All in all, a good day and met a lot of good people. Saw a lot of awesome paint jobs as well.
Thankfully I didn't fall asleep at the wheel on the way home and am able to type this up. All in all, looking forward to playing at more events now that I am on the mainland.
Edited by klyver