This sunday I took part in the 5th Store Championship in Jambô, a store in Porto Alegre (in the extreme south of Brazil). It was a wave 1 and 2 only (which is what has been released so far in Brazil by our official FFG distributor). You can find the results in List Juggler. The format was a simple 3 rounds of swiss as there were only 7 people taking part, and we didn't have a top x.

My squad was composed of three bounty hunters without upgrades, coming to a total of 99 points. Here is my take on the matches I played:

Match 1 - Against André Ripoll, three times store champion.

His list was a tie swarm of 4 obsidian and 4 academy pilots. I was pretty nervous being drawn against the three times store champion already in the first round, and also because it was an 8 tie swarm.

The match was really good. I know asteroids are bad for me, but they are worse for him! So I mostly tried to set them so that they would be in the middle towards his side, and he tried to put his on the corners. I decided to take initiative to mostly shoot first and maybe block his ties, and this helped as I was luckily able to kill one of his APs on the first exchange. This provided me with a nice little morale boost. I was able to soak damage well throughout the match, forcing him to break formation early and thus he was not able to focus on any one of the firesprays. We exchanged three ties for a firespray, and towards the end I was able to kill his last AP. He then had three full obsidian left, against my two bounty hunters which had 3 and 5 hull each, if I remember correctly. It was a close match, but I have to say that André did have below average rolls with his reds. I remember this one time where he had 5 ties in range one of a BH, and he only managed to land one hit.

Time was called, and I had won for the first time against André.

Result: Win 61-33

Match 2 - Against Marcos Fantini, who had a bye in the first round.

His list had Boba Fett + Proximity Mines + Push the Limit + Engine Upgrade + Gunner and Kath Scarlet + Assault Missiles + Marksmanship

I gave him initiative, as I wanted to put asteroids in as much of a close clump as possible, out of the way. He placed the first to the right, which helped a lot. Our placement left a big hole on the left, where I set up two BHs and where most of the match was played. But he surprised me twice, once by placing Kath and Boba opposite, close to the cluster of asteroids and twice by shooting forward with Boba and boosting so that he got an early shot on my lone BH, which had turned towards my other two. He took off two shields right away.

But then the tides turned. Lady luck was on my side, and I rolled solidly both red and green dice. I also managed to land a crit which reduced Boba's primary weapon by one, and it took Marcos 4 turns to turn the crit face down. Meanwhile I was able to cripple Kath, and then take her down. When Boba was full attack again he managed to take one of the BHs before succumbing in the last round, as time was called. Marcos flew well, but that crit really helped me. And ****, I flew pretty well too

Result: Win 100-33

Match 3 - Against Caio Perez, the only other competitor with 2-0. Since only one of us could win the championship, this was a final of sorts.

Caio brought Han Solo + Push the Limit + Millennium Falcon + Engine Upgrade + Nien Nunb + Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles + R2-D2 + Shield Upgrade + Determination.

I gave him initiative so that, like Marcos, he would decide where the first asteroid would be and I would try to create a cluster around it. Luckily he also placed the first asteroid toward the side, like Marcos, and this allowed me to make a cluster albeit a little more spread out than in the last match. But again I found space to take my BHs without having to maneuver too much.

I started off targeting Wedge, but Caio foresaw that and managed to lure me, getting Han off to the side when we first started exchanging shots. Wedge lost two shields in the first exchange but him and Han managed to go into hull on one of my BHs. I thought then that the best thing would be to fly conservatively with the most wounded BH, and switch targets to Han. I know you should not do it, but I had to take the chance so I went for Han with all three BHs. The next exchanges continued being better for Caio, with Han landing solid hits on my BHs, but he also was not able to focus fire in a single ship. I then managed to block wedge and had three shots on him. One of my BHs was so crippled that he had three crits on him where one was the hard turn maneuvers, and there was nothing I could do to save him because he was in the corner. I hard turned once, getting stressed, but I needed a second hard turn not to fly off. But it was this one hull BH that was able to land the killing blow on Wedge. Then it was my two bounty hunters with 3 hull each against his Han with five hull. By now, the other two tables had finished and almost everyone was watching us. I managed to bring his Han to 1 hull in the last round but he was not able to finish any of my two BHs, so it was a very close victory in a match that is probably the most nail biting one I have ever had. He managed to bring one of the BHs to 1 hull, but he did not get a shot on it in the last round... Kudos to Caio for his Fly Casual attitude (as usual).

Result: Win 40-33.

All in all, a very enjoyable tournament, with close matches, and my second tournament win (out of 5 so far, with André having taken the first three). I hope I can take part in the next one! Thanks for reading.