Hey all! So I've never posted a batrep on here before, but I'll do the best I can with what I can remember from yesterday. We have a relatively small (but growing!) group of X-Wing players at my local FLGS, so there were only 5 people present. Before starting, we all agreed that because of the small number of people and the fact that there were Byes involved we would do 3 rounds of swiss and then cut off to the top 2 for a final deathmatch. That way even if you lost a game you still had a fair shot of getting to the finals and winning it all.
I brought Scum to play and had Emon Azzameen with Recon Specialist, Andrasta, 2x Proximity Mines, Experimental Interface, and Inertial Dampeners; Kavil with a Blaster Turret, R4 Agromech, and Veteran Instincts; N'dru Suhlak with Lone Wolf. Total of 99 points. I'd flown Emon with two prox mines before and, although they can be a gamble, they offer some majorly increased damage potential in two rounds throughout the game, which definitely came in handy, especially against Fat Hans. The fact that he can't prevent that damage helps to either strip his shields or lay down some crits, both of which helped mightily.
My first round matchup was against a Fat Han build, which I was dreading facing since I only had three ships to attack with, one of which was a lowly/fragile Z-95. The specifics were Han with PtL, Gunner, C3P0, and the Falcon Title, Biggs with R2D2, and a naked Bandit Squadron Pilot. With my lowest pilot skill being 6, I got to deploy after pretty much knowing where all of his ships were going to go since Biggs would be next to Han. He placed his Z-95 in the middle with Biggs off by the edge of the map, I played Emon and Kavil across from where Han and Biggs were, and N'dru pretty far to the other edge to come in and flank his Z-95. Over the first few rounds of combat I killed the Z-95 and struggled to bring down Biggs who was having some amazing green dice rolls that game. Eventually N'dru, and Biggs both went down and it was down to Kavil with one hull left, my Firespray with four hull left, and Fat Han with (I think) four hull left as well. At this point, something interesting that I had never encountered before ended up happening: Emon and Han unintentionally blocked each other out the corner of the map. They bumped in such a way that neither could make a maneuver that would get them past the other without flying off the map. Since we would constantly end up bumping each other and Kavil was safe and sound across the map, we decided to call it there with about 10 minutes left in the round. Started off 1-0.
The second round I was matched up against the first round Bye, who had brought a Chirpy/Soontir build. Chirpy had Vader, Dauntless, Expose, Rebel Captive, Gunner, and maybe one other thing on him but I forget. Soontir had the standard PtL, Autothrusters, Stealth Device, and Royal Guard Tie Title. He had the pilot skill advantage here, so I set up my ships in the middle with the goal of trying to block Soontir between the asteroids and my ships, and set up N'dru a little ways off just outside of range 2. Chirpy and Soontir both went in the middle of his edge, with the Decimator having a clear path straight forward through the asteroids and Soontir a few inches off to the side. My general strategy is to kill turrets first whenever I see them on a board. That way, if it comes down to one vs one at the end I don't have to deal with something that can always hit me (and with a four-die attack in this case). Following that strategy I focused Chirpy down as fast as I could, but due to him bumping Emon a bunch of times I didn't get as many attacks in as I wanted to. Soontir ended up going for N'dru, who admittedly lasted wayyy longer than he (she?) should have. Lone wolf helped out there. Kavil's damage was greatly mitigated because of Rebel Captive though. Preventing him from focusing and him having to take a few non-green maneuvers to avoid rocks cost me dearly. Eventually Chirpy and N'dru died though and it came down to Soontir vs a 1-hull Kavil (drew two direct hits on him in a row) and my 4-hull Emon. I felt pretty good about being able to take him down until I flew Emon off the board by a few thousandths of an inch. We had to break out a range ruler and run it along the side of the mat to confirm it, that's how close it was. With Emon gone Kavil stood no chance against Soontir and I lost. 1-1 after round 2.
Next was Round 3, and I was tied with another guy who I hadn't played yet for the Bye. We agreed to roll off for it and he received it, which essentially meant that I now needed to win and beat his MoV if I wanted to get into the top 2 for the finals. I was up against a significantly different build than what I had faced in the previous two rounds. It was Jake and Tycho paired up with Corran. The A-wings both had PtL, Chardaan Refit, and Autothrusters on them while Corran had an Engine Upgrade, PtL, and FCS. I was thankful to see that Corran didn't have R2D2. He set up his guys in a formation to my left, and I set up Emon and Kavil on the right, and N'dru closer to being directly across from his ships on my left. I started off by having Kavil perform a hard 2 left to fly along my edge and N'dru did a hard 2 right to fly directly at Kavil. I didn't want N'dru going in alone against those 3 because he/she would have been a goner. Emon flew up towards the asteroids with a 3 bank left. Next round consisted of me doing a K-turn with N'dru, slow-rolling forward with Kavil, and turning in to the middle of the board (and asteroids) with Emon. There were some range 3 shots exchanged between Kavil and Jake, who was leading the pack, but little to no damage dealt if I remember correctly. The next round was spent coming closer together with Kavil taking some damage at range 2 from Corran but otherwise being okay. The next round was probably my best round of maneuvering that day. I managed to bring Emon down from the middle of the board and position N'dru so that Jake was blocked right in front of Emon at range 1. Corran and Tycho then flew directly in front of Kavil, expecting that I was going to slow-roll with him again. Instead, Kavil performed a 3 bank right maneuver that brought him out of both of their arcs, leaving all three of his ships with nothing to shoot at. Kavil and Emon brought down Jake that turn. The rest of the game was spent with me trying to chase Corran down with N'dru and Kavil and Emon finishing off both Corran and Tycho and they came around to engage him. I felt pretty bad because his green dice let him down the entire game, even with him focusing and evading with pretty much everyone. Having a 200-point margin of victory was surely enough to propel me to the top of the listings though, and was going to the finals 2-1.
The final match was against my first round opponent (Fat Han build), who had won his next two games after the first round. We set up similarly again, with the minor difference of Han being next to the edge of the board instead of Biggs. Similar to the first game, N'dru came swooping in from the side to try to take out the Bandit, although had a little bit more trouble this time due to being too close to Kavil to get Lone Wolf and his/her pilot ability to trigger. Fortunately, the bandit got stuck on a rock in round 3 or so and took a hit, leaving it with no shields. Instead of firing at the bandit, however, I had N'dru take a range 3 shot at Biggs which ended up barely killing him after taking some serious damage from Kavil. Han had a couple of shields plinked off from Emon (who managed to keep Biggs out of arc one round) but was otherwise healthy. With Biggs down I was feeling pretty good, as I still had 3 ships left who could lay some serious hurt on Han. The bandit was killed the round after Biggs before it could shoot, but Han managed to bring Emon down to 1 hull. Emon, before going down in a blaze of glory, laid his last proximity mine right in front of Han. Han ran over it and (I think) took the crit that lowers his primary weapon value by 1. After seeing that I was very confident that I'd be able to bring him down. Emon died that round, but Kavil and N'dru chased Han down, who ended up carrying a stress for a few rounds which really hurt his damage mitigation ability and made it so that he couldn't get rid of the crit. I used N'dru to block him when he did manage to get a green maneuver in and Kavil finished him off. I ended up winning 3-1.
Overall it was a great tournament with a high diversity of builds. The one build I didn't play was a Boba/IG-88B build that seemed pretty interesting. All in all everyone had a good time and we're hoping to be able to do another tournament sometime in late September. I'll try to have some more notes on the matches next time and maybe some pictures as well. Until then, fly casual!