This is my first post, I have been lurking for about 2 years, but I wanted to share my experience this regional season. Now that the account is made, I imagine I'll be posting.
The hook: I narrowly missed the cut in consecutive regionals running 3 rebel operatives, a z-95 and a y-wing stresshog.
The Set-Up: The day X-Wing was released to my local hobby shop, I bought in. However, it was at the end of the 2014 regional season that I attended my first tournament. A few months later, I was running events for Imperial Outpost Games, one of the largest hobby shops in the Phoenix area. I started playing tournament X-wing as a way to be involved in the community, meet new players, and challenge myself to improve. I'm a good tournament player, I typically can go 3-1 in local 16-24 person events, but I'm not a great one. I wanted to get better. I practiced. I tried all of the competitive lists. I played more. In one of the store championships this year, I was fortunate enough to finish 3rd running a Dash/Chewie list.
My issue was, I knew I was missing something important to go from good to great at X-Wing and for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. As the regional tournaments approached, I started practicing with my friend Trenden. Trenden is an expert player with a great history, multiple tournament victories, and an all around good person. During a practice session I had narrowed my regional list down to two choices and presented them to him. His response was, before I played either, was to try this Hawk list first. We played three games and I beat him for the first three times ever. I was in love. The important part wasn't that the list was so amazing, the important part was the list taught me what I really needed to know. How it is so important to not only know how to fly your ships, but understand how they synergize together.
For those of you who follow Phoenix X-Wing Squadron, have played in our community, played at a regional with one of our guys, discussed X-Wing on our Facebook group, you probably know HWKs have become a minor obsession. Maybe not minor. I'm going to explain the brief history of Phoenix HWKs. You can skip this section if you have no interest, but it is fun anyway. It was noted in Mesa, that we had more HWKs than Decimators in the field.
The History: In April (of 2015), I was running a 113 point tournament for Imperial Outpost. It was an attempt to break up the routine and challenge people to think differently for the day. Iain (Rooster) was running one of his two "It's Not Your Dice" training classes for the west valley community. If you were not fortunate enough to be there, here is the link to the Youtube video:
At the event, Trenden and I were discussing potential lists. He said he thought it would be funny to run the three named HWKs with Kavil. He dubbed them "BroHwks." It was a funny build idea using Palob, Torkil and Dace along with Kavil to control the field. It was funnier when he went undefeated. Discussion on the Phoenix Squadron Facebook group exploded with memes and pictures of HWKs. The next week, during a "random draw" league night I was running, a friend of mine disgustingly pulled 3 HWKs from the deck. He did not lose that night. Iain and Trenden decided to take it a step further and created HWK and Awe. HWK and Awe was three generic hawks with 3 generic Z-95s run as a swarm. Iain took second in the next local tournament knocking Trenden out. The commentary, memes, and hilarity continued, with a lot of Phoenix squadron never having seen the HWKs in action. Since the regional in Mesa was approaching, a lot of guys who would be coming out for the regional were starting to discuss in our group, and the general consensus was we were trolling them. Which we kind of were.
The Denver regional came and Trenden took his "BroHWKs" to Denver. He went 4-2 with two very close, heartbreaking losses. He was one moment of forgetfulness about Dace's ability from being in the cut in Denver. Back full-circle, he returned from this trip and recruited me into the ways of the HWKs with the list HWK and Awesome..
Regional Prep:
Regional preparation was beginning in earnest now. Trenden changed from his HWK ways for this regional and I would pick up the flag with the 3rd variant 3-hawk list:
HWK and Awesome:
Rebel Operative, Ion Cannon Turret
Rebel Operative, Ion Cannon Turret
Rebel Operative, Ion Cannon Turret
Bandit Squadron Pilot
Gold Squadron Pilot, Ion Cannon Turret, R3-A2, BTL Title
I started playing HWK and Awesome against a limited group of play test opponents. Like it was a secret I didn't want anyone to see, even though Trenden took hawks to a regional and they had been played a number of times in local events. The truth was, even though people had been playing them, been winning with them, and talking about them, no one believed it was any good.
I've now been playing (and winning) with them for almost 3 months solid, and I'm still not sure they are any good.
The important part - what I've learned from HWKs
What makes this list worthwhile, is what it taught me about synergy. This is a control list. It is not that dissimilar to Panic Attack. HWK and Awesome relies on ionizing the opponent to control one or more key ships. The Stresshog is vitally important for denying actions for multiple turns on at least one key ship. Two key factors: The stresshog has to either ionize "THE" ship. This is often Soontir Fel, Whisper, or Dash Rendar. The guys that the list has a hard time dealing with if they get to the full range of their action shenanigans. This forces me to think out moves well in advance of the current turn. The strategy of the hog, where he needs to be in order to keep a y-wing from being denied shots by an interceptor, yt-2400, phantom, or e-wing. The key is, I don't need to bring continuous fire, I need to buy a window for the HWKs to operate. It is also important to know each ship's roll in each stage of the game. The HWKs and the Y-wing are key early to ionize and get me past. I need at least 2 to survive to the midgame. The Z-95 is a blocking champ early, but he is also a valuable source of damage later when he can fire on stressed/ionized ships from safety if he lives. The Y-wing can win me a game by drawing range 3 fire while stressing only a couple targets. The HWKs are just awesome at every stage. That said, Soontir is surprisingly easy to kill once he stops his actions, especially if he is also ionized. It is a two-three turn process to stress him, then ionize him with HWKs, then bring guns to bear. The first thing I learned from the list is that the list forces that forethought. Without planning how to deal with a Soontir Fel or a Dash 3 or 4 turns in advance, you do not deal with them. That is an element that was missing from my game. Planning is key, not just for one turn but for several. It isn't about what I want to have happen this turn, rather what I want to have happen in 2 turns or 5 turns.
Control benefits a great deal from 2 ship-builds. I have a lot of ion cannons, but if I have a lot of targets, it can get tricky, especially if those targets have multiple evade dice. The current meta game said I would face two-ship lists, and if I can control half of those ships at any time, it is an edge. Furthermore, this list confuses your opponent. First off, it does NOT reward focus fire much of the time (unless you have a valuable, vulnerable target like Soontir without tokens or Corran Horn), but the second thing the list taught me was why target priority is important. Not only who can you shoot, but why are you shooting one ship over another. This is a reason why so many great players hate Biggs, he steals this and it is a bigger key to X-Wing than I realized prior to playing this list. I fought a couple 5-ship rebel builds and had to make decisions as to which ships needed ionizing most, and what order to fire my all PS 2 ions in order to maximize my hit chances and redundancy for having the ability to hit the key ship or ships. The best example of this came in round 6 at the San Diego regional. Fighting a 5-ship rebel build against 2 B-Wings, a Stresshog and 2 Z-95s, with less than 5 ion cannons, means I have to choose between hitting targets to have them move in or out of key arcs, move toward key obstacles, or to get a key point of damage through. Is it more important to remove a gun, control two guns, cause potential damage, deny actions? These are all questions this list faces most turns. As a result, I am thinking about each of these ideas each turn. Many lists, don't have all of these choices, but they are still things you should be considering each game and a wrong choice can cost you.
The third key point of learning for me was learning how to control my opponent. HWK and Awesome provides an entire board edge of really tempting targets. Obviously, a key to X-wing is to deny focus-fire as much as possible, or to try to preserve your most key ships while losing others. I won games in the two regionals I participated in losing the Z first, the stresshog first, or having HWKs targeted first. The redundancy in my list helped, but one of my big points of focus was to deny easy decisions for the opponent. First off, against high action ships, the stresshog is vital. My opponent knows this, so I'm going to make it the hardest ship for him to gang up on every time. The HWKs win by getting along side or behind you and controlling your movement and your ability to fire if you are not a turret. So, I am going to put my opponent into a position where they have to make it easier for me to get my HWKs in position if they go after the y-wing. I'm going to focus with a damaged HWK while taking target locks with my undamaged HWKs to try to encourage my opponent to split their fire. I'm going to make a daring, through an asteroid blocking move with a Z-95 early in the game, which if it works is a win, but if it doesn't, gives my seemingly least important ship as the best target. This puts the decision, the worry and the stress of the event on my opponent. There is nothing worse than an unshakable opponent with a plan, this list is good at making people deviate from that plan. If only, because they may have never played against anything like it.
My fourth and final learning point this list helped me achieve is to create a plan and stick with it. My plan with this list is to deploy my first asteroid range 2 or range 3 from my board edge on one side of the battle field. I'm going to create a shape of rocks that will allow me to either fly horizontal to the board edge or diagonal across the board along the edge of the rocks. Oftentimes, my opponent will start me off by 'cornering' the first obstacle for me. The plan is two-fold. First off, more than anything, this list dislikes range 3 shooting. I frequently found myself being shot on the opening engagement at range three, but I was behind an obstacle and had a focus token. 4 dice with a focus? Yes, please. Now, typically my opponent is flying toward me, toward obstacles at a player who has 4 ion cannons. I can turn into him if he is in a position to veer off, I can move slowly or quickly away, or oftentimes, I would split one hwk behind, the stresshog in front and the other two around the far side. The point is, I knew, before we set up the first model, where the fight was going to happen. Even against some of the best players, my visualization for where we were going to fight was only off a little. I also learned to adapt my strategy to different lists. The night before the San Diego regional, I realized I needed a better plan for fighting Aggressors. I decided I'd attempt to create a horizontal line of obstacles and stay as close to the board edge as possible, to make it easier to ionize my opponent. I used this in a game in San Diego to ionize Kath Scarlet off the board against a two Firespray list. I used the strategy against a dual aggressor list to trap an Aggressor who needed to avoid a board edge to face away from my fleet ionized. A plan that was created, discussed (and ideally practiced), then carried out works way more successfully than the games where you are fighting 'on the fly'.
I didn't realize I was learning all of this stuff the first time I picked up HWKs and Trenden probably had a great deal in easing me into this level of learning (Thanks Trenden!), but I also picked up a lot from the Mesa regional to the San Diego regional.
So what happened at regionals? Seriously 9-3?
The least important part, a quick run-through of the two regionals.
Phoenix/Mesa
First off, I started the Mesa regional 4-0 at Empire Games. Empire Games is an excellent facility and the tournament was extremely well run. I was able to beat a 4-ship rebel build by ionizing a stresshog and b-wing off the board when I got a pair of hwks behind him. I was able to destroy a three interceptor build by guessing a block on Soontir and Turr with a Z-95 and I won a third game that I wish I had documented. I think against a 4 ship rebel build, but b-wings and decimators are about the least-stressful matchups for me as it is easy to ionize them. Round four was the most interesting win for me. If this list has a name that it doesn't like seeing it is Dash Rendar. An unstressed Dash is the hardest match up for the ion-cannon toting hwks because no one is better at forcing range three confrontations turn after turn. He brought his very annoying friend Corran Horn. This does present a rather sizable problem for me. Corran and Dash are both ships I keep the stresshog pointed at. It is not impossibly hard to double stress one or the other, but both is an issue. In this game, I saw a moment where he was obviously baiting me to chase Corran, but knowing the limits to my maneuverability, I poured stress into Dash. I wanted to focus Dash, but he separated himself fairly far from Horn and was heavily stressed. I chose the moment I was most confident I knew where Horn would be and changed targets and was fortunate to burn him down with stress and ion fairly quickly. Quickly enough to get back to Dash with the stresshog still alive and Dash not finished clearing stress. It took a long time, but I was eventually able to chase down Dash due to the massive stress he had to dump, and get him ionized into a nice off-the-board control situation. It was a brutal match in terms of stressful moves and necessary predictions.
In the first four games, I had one game where I only lost one HWK and the other three games I lost one HWK and the Z-95. It was going exactly as I'd practiced. (I don't think I have ever won a match with the list up 100-0). Round 5 is when the dream died. I was on the top table against Richard Hsu. This was game was live on the Twitch feed against a very nice guy who also happens to be a fierce player. He ended up going on to win the tournament that day with Biggs, Wedge with Draw their Fire and R2D2, a stresshog and a Z-95. Unfortunately, it looks like the Twitch broadcast of the match didn't get uploaded to Youtube in time to be saved, but I was fortunate enough to watch the rematch after the fact. I lost 100-67 with only Wedge surviving. I did miss six ion shots on Wedge, a few of which could have ended the game right there, but Richard also was able to focus fire and destroy key ships. In the end, Wedge killed my final HWK and Z-95 without ever losing more than 1 point of repaired R2D2 damage. It was heartbreaking as I had several moments where I felt I was going to take control of the match, but just couldn't. I followed this up against Pablo Cazador. Another amazing guy who made top 4 at the regional, who happened to be friends with the person I beat in round 4 and was also playing Dash/Corran. Victory slipped away from me when 2 HWKs couldn't ionize Corran Horn off the board. The first HWK had a focus but rolled 3 blanks. The second used his target lock and focus only to see the naked green dice save the day. The next turn, he green banked away, boosted and started regenerating shields. Top 16 would have been mine at least, but 9 attack dice couldn't take the last two wounds off of a naked Dash. The following turn saw Corran move back into the fight and Dash shred his last stress. I was heartbroken falling from 4-0 to 4-2 and 2nd overall to 18th overall in two rounds. I consoled myself with beating 3 guys who made the top 16 and both losses being to guys in the top 4. I had the third highest strength of schedule in the tournament.
I checked List Juggler for all of the regional lists used this season thus far. Only 4 Rebel Operatives had been flown. I had just flown 3 of them to 4-2. The other guy (whoever you are, my respect), had gone 5-2.
The Mesa regional had been demoralizing. I was so close to my goal. I wanted, very badly, to get a HWK list on the regional top 8 report. I wanted people to see that list and go, "Wait, what?" On the other hand, in deciding to travel to San Diego for a second regional, I was spending hundreds of dollars on room, transportation, food. I also wanted to not go 1-5. Maybe my run in Mesa was a fluke. I started practicing. This time, against all of the lists I feared the most. I started losing. A lot. Granted, I was going up against the things I feared the most, against great local players, and against players who not only had fought against the various 3-HWK lists a lot, but some also had flown them themselves. Nevertheless, I was disheartened. On the drive, I tried to get Iain and Nick (another friend on the trip) to talk me out of HWKs. I played other lists the night before to try to 'click with something else'. Anything else.
San Diego
Saturday morning I check in at At East Games in San Diego. My first round opponent, Alex from San Diego is an extremely nice guy, flying in his second tournament. He had a non-standard fat Han with 2 rookie pilot build. He flies both rookie pilots onto a rock in the first turn. I lose the game. Dice, sub-optimal flying, nerves, I'm not sure. I still can't quite figure that game out, other than I let Han have too many 4 dice shots and could have been more patient in killing the x-wings. 100-42 and I'm already convinced I made a huge mistake in not bringing my Dash/Chewie list.
Round two faces me against Don from San Diego and his two-firespray build. Now, I had discussed brobots with Iain the night before, and had come up with a new strategy for fighting them. It worked exactly as I hoped, and while Boba's rear arc caused me some issues, I pulled off a 100-54 victory when I was able to ionize a 6 hit point Kath off the board. The third round, I played Don, who said he lived a couple hours outside of Sacramento and I finally got to face a Chripy-Fel list. The decimator is about the best target there is for a hwk wolf pack, and with only Soontir to worry about the y-wing plays goalie until Fel commits. It worked perfectly. I burned down Fel in 3 turns and chased the Admiral off the board losing a Z-95 and a Y-Wing for my trouble. The player was good and his list about ideal for beating mine, but part of the HWK and Awesome list is that about the best match up I have is Soontir and the Admiral.
At 2-1 I was off the proverbial cliff edge and at least feeling like I could make a day of it. Round 4 I went up against brobots flown by Sean from San Diego. While I wasn't able to ionize them off the board like I was hoping, my plan was solid enough to pin one down facing away from my fleet (moved that way to avoid the debris and board edge), while the 2nd one shot me. But, I got through the B brother fast enough that I had enough guns to bear to take down D eventually. Another 100-37 win (Or maybe 100-58, I can't remember) was just enough to bring me to 3-1. At 3-1, I started to hope.
Round 5, I faced off against another incredibly nice person, Geordan. He was playing Corran Horn with 2 Z-95s and a stresshog. I decide to put everything I can into killing Horn. A few turns later, I'm smiling as a stressed Horn is on a rock with one hull. Less so the next turn when Horn survives the turn, and starts regenerating shields. I end up making a desperate 3 bank with my stresshog while the hopeless HWKs try to turn around. I'm able to put a 2nd stress back on horn to allow me to stay in range and the range 3 shot at Horn hitting twice and seeing 4 blanks staring back pulls the game back from disaster. It cost me though, while the remaining HWK does its thing, the y dies to his stresshog and his Z-95 gets away. My stresshog dies as time expires and my single uninjured HWK lives but so does his 2 health Tala. A 6 point victory puts me in the modified win camp, and 4-1, but modified 4-1 doesn't look good in a field of about 80 players. This was easily the most dice-extreme game of the day. Fits of tremendous good and bad luck. The game was stolen from me, then stolen from him, then barely mine with a lot of extreme dice on both sides (Mostly evades). Driving home today, Iain tells me that the really nice guy I played that round was the guy who updates Yet Another X-Wing Miniatures Squad Builder. Probably good I did not know that before, as the gushing would have been almost as awkward (hawkward?) as when I would have tried to hug him. Your site is awesome. Thank you.
Round 6 faced me off with Michael, another of Phoenix Squadron. I think it was the only Phoenix-on-Phoenix action of the day, but in the end, I had a very narrow victory against a great local guy in a game that was totally going his way, except HWKs were able to ionize. He ran a 5-ship rebel list with a stresshog, 2 b-wings (tactician/FCS and FCS) and 2 Z-95s. I had one turn where I actually shot all 5 ships (Ionizing 4), but he was killing me faster than I was killing him. Fortunately, the spread out damage caught up to him and I had just enough ion cannons remaining to finish the job, with the help of him rolling a hit on every asteroid he hit. As time was expiring his last ship went off the board and my 1-health stresshog and remaining HWK helped me go 5-1 with a modified win.
It turns out, a modified win earned me 10th place. I have a shiny set of shield tokens and a great deal more X-wing knowledge. Wave 7 and a Raider will be here soon and I will not be able to attend Nationals or Worlds, which is too bad. The meta will change up again, and it is likely that I will not be able to HWK on for much longer. But, the lessons I've learned this regional season I hope will carry me into the next year. Perhaps the final point, I played 12 games during these regionals, (and dozens more practice games), talked to dozens of really amazing x-wing players and people. I met people from Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and California (at least) and didn't meet one person, in the bunch, that was anything other than awesome to talk to and play against. Plus, if I'm reading the data correctly, when this weekend's lists update, I will have flown 6 of the 7 rebel operatives reported to be used this regional season. Thank you all, I learned a lot and it was fun!
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