Entered my first tournament on the weekend. It was an escalation tournament, a local one, I went there with a good friend of mine. I went a bit bomber mad in my list and tooled them all up pretty well, making sure as a minimum they all had one proton bomb each. Seeing as they do critical hits which go through shields, three of them flying in formation is a pretty terrifying sight to behold. Not my usual play style, I usually go for as many ships as possible but due to time limits in tournaments I decided to mix it up a bit and try to take fewer ships. Here's my list:
Tourney 60 Pointer - 57 points
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Captain Jonus (28)
TIE Bomber (22), Draw Their Fire (1), Proton Bombs (5)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot (29)
TIE Bomber (16), Concussion Missiles (4), Ion Pulse Missiles (3), Proton Bombs (5), Munitions Failsafe (1)
Tourney 90 Pointer - 90 points
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+
“Howlrunner” (18)
Night Beast (15)
Tourney 120 Pointer - 120 points
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+
Scimitar Squadron Pilot (30)
TIE Bomber (16), Proton Torpedoes (4), Assault Missiles (5), Proton Bombs (5)
Tourney 150 Pointer - 150 points
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Academy Pilot (12)
Alpha Squadron Pilot (18)
So, my first opponent using my 60 point squad was using scum, I'd only faced my friends rebel squads up to now so this entirely new faction was interesting to see. The start of the match saw me going head on against his Y-wing along the left of the board with his two Z-95 Headhunters swinging around from the right and catching me in a nice pincer movement, I did a fair bit of damage to the Y-wing in the first pass, hitting him with an ion missile and dropping two bombs on him but with their concentrated fire they took down my tooled up Scimitar bomber. So at this point things were looking very bad and I assumed it was game over. Jonus had nothing left up his sleeve after all.
But my opponent wanted to maximise his points so he flew over asteroids at every turn in his keenness to finish me off. Occasionally losing a shield here and there, he shrugged it off feeling a total victory was in his sights. But with all his pilots being of low PS, Captain Jonus shot first every time. So as they closed in to range one, I finished off his Y-Wing one turn, and the next (and final turn of the game), I managed multiple criticals against another Z-95 Headhunter and saw me destroying it by the skin of my teeth. And miraculously I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Neither of us expected that, but I was of course very happy with the result.
My 90 point match didn't go so well. Up against a Tie Phantom and Firespray as well as two academy tie fighters, I'd never seen either of the former in action and wasn't able to do much damage to them. I made a lot of mistakes in this match, and learnt some lessons the hard way, such as bumping during a K-turn doesn't allow you to do a 180 but you still get the stress. Yep, he wiped me out. But it was good experience.
My 120 point game saw me go up against yet another Firespray as well as a heavily tooled up Soontir Fel, Dark Curse and another high PS tie fighter who's name I forget. Feeling sore from my previous encounter with a Firespray I tried to circle around and steer clear of him, but this was unsuccessful and we ended up flying into each other in the end anyway. Dark Curse's ability was the perfect counter to Captain Jonus being paired with the other two bombers, so he flew straight at me laughing and easily surviving the encounter. I decided to chance dropping two proton bombs after this, hoping it would do some serious damage to his Firespray. His intended manoeuvre was to take him clear of them but unfortunately for him he bumped into Howlrunner and got caught with two nasty criticals. With so much damage dealt I had enough confidence I could finish it off and focusing my squad on him, I took down the firespray. In the end I lost no ships but couldn't take down Fel before the final turn as he used PTL well to evade me and steer well clear. But a good win all the same, and now I am not so terrified of the Firespray.
My final match for 150 points was against rebels, finally! Two Y-wings, two X-wings and a B-wing. One of the X-Wings was Wedge paired with R2D2 which I've fought against a fair few times so I knew what to expect from him. Wedge flew solo but the rest of my opponent's squad flew in close formation. And what better time is there for an assault missile? That's right I fired the missile at the ship right in the middle and the resulting explosion caused some nice damage all round. I followed this up by dropping all the three proton bombs just as his two elite pilots circled around towards me. Doing some insane damage, I cleared up the rest and got the total win without losing a ship. Just before destruction one of his ships dropped its own bomb, damaging three of my ships! Using my own tactics against me! But it wasn't enough to turn back the tide.
Lots of fun had, I managed to come 2nd in the tournament, and my friend who I went with came 3rd. Everyone at the tournament was really friendly, so I'm hoping I'll get to go to another at some point.