Privyet, community!
It's an overcast morning at beautiful Roseville, MN. (Not Roseville, MI). I bring good news and bad news.
The good first: As promised in the last S&V podcast, I am going to do some live reporting for the Top 16 Elimination Cut of the X-Wing World Championships, which start at 10 am CST, on this thread.
As for the bad: I went 3-3 (win 100-29, loss 0-29, loss 14-29, win 100-49, loss 100-0) and dropped after six rounds. More on that below!
Useful links
- The main World's thread can be found here.
- Here's the twitch feed.
- Here's the Challonge bracket
- Swiss standings page 1, page 2
Short Report
I ended up going dark side with "Master and Apprentice": Omni + Palp, Vader + VI + Engine + Title + ATC, Soontir + PTL + Title + Stealth + Autothrusters (99). I scrimmaged a whole bunch of Rebel lists against this particular list, and was impressed enough by it to take it to Worlds.
In round 1 I played against Dave from Toronto, who brought Dash + Title + HLC + Lone Wolf + Recon Spec, Corran + VI + R2D2 + Engine + FCS. The aces managed to ice Corran early, Dash killed the Master, and then the aces hunted down Dash and killed him. 100 - 29 win.
In round two I played Olie, the Nordic National Champion. Olie was flying ... my 2014 US Nationals List, that brought me top 4 in Swiss! That list is Han + Title + Engine + Predator + Luke + R2-D2, Jake + Title + PTL + VI + Prockets + Autothrusters (97). Naturally this great two ship Rebel build was on my short list of candidates, but in the end I was too scared of quad TLT to take it. I asked Ollie about this, and the said in a big tournament like World's you basically have to roll the dice and hope that you don't get your list counter! Practical thinking. As for the game itself, Ollie managed to kill my Shuttle and the aces did a lot of dancing around each other. 0-29 loss.
In round three I faced another fellow from Toronto (Toronto-ite? Torontillian?) -- I have his name marked down as Chris, but Chris was also my next round opponent, so sadly I got his name wrong :-( It was an exact mirror match! He lost in the initiative roll, but wasn't great for him but he did a good job staying alive. He ended up killing my shuttle, I almost killed his, and we went to time. 14-29 loss.
1-2 out of 3 rounds isn't great, but my MOV was excellent, and so in the fourth round I got paired with Chris, a gangly teenager flying Boba + Inertial Dampeners + Mangler + Gunner, Thug + TLT + Unhinged x2 (100). The aces managed to kill a Thug early, and then dismantled the other one while Boba raised hell. We ended up in a Boba versus Aces ending, and at time I nailed a Hail Mary shot from Soontir against a one hit point Boba to take the full 100-29 win.
In the fifth round I got paired against Adam, who was flying a neat four ship Imperial list: Black Squadron Pilot + Crack Shot x2, Carnor + PTL + Autothrusters, Redline + Extra Munitions + Cluster Missiles + Proton Torpedoes + Fire Control Systems. The combination of the Black Shots and Redline's munitions onslaught was too much even Soontir and his Palpatine "crew", but before Soontir died he and Vader did lion's work and mauled Carnor, Redline a Black, and Redline down. 100-49 win.
Now I'm 3-2 and feeling pretty good about my chances of being one of the few 6-2's who made the cut (my two squeaker losses I had good MOV (659 after 5 rounds). Speaking of which, I'll go on record now and say that only cutting to 16 is a dumb business marketing decision by FFG. You've got your most loyal paying customers flying to your headquarters (from all around the World), and you've got a chance to reward 32 of them with a fantastic experience ... making them happy ... making them buy more of your stuff ... making them promote your game voraciously ... money can't buy this kind of good marketing! And even better, you don't have to spend money to get it, it is free! (The newest word from FFG now seems to be that the reason X-Wing didn't have a top 32 cut is because none of the other games had a top 32 cut.) Oh, and while I'm ranting, also filed under #FFG #Marketing101 #WTF: this year there are no acrylic templates for the World Champion! I asked why, and got a mealy-mouthed answer. However, I'm pretty sure that someone is going to scoop up this marketing fumble and ship whoever wins the title a free set of templates, so all's- well that ends well.
On to round six. I am up against Nick and a very creative Rebel list: Jake + Title + PTL + VI + Proton Rockets + Autothrusters, Poe + VI + R5-P9, Kyle + Moldy Crow + Chewbacca + ABT (98). This is a great three ship Rebel list designed to hunt Soontir, which Nick did beautifully: In the combat phase Kyle passed a focus token to Jake an actionless Jake (he had run face first into Soontir), who then took the focus to barrel roll back, push off the focus to get a target lock on Fel, and then drop a 5 dice procket attack into Soontir, stripped his Stealth Device. Kyle + Jake combo FTW!! Anyways, the Shuttle and Vader brought Kyle down to 2 hit points (even after using Chewbacca), and I went for a gambling move by bringing in Soontir for a range 1 kill shot against Kyle. Soontir wasn't able to do the job, and Kyle finished Fel off with a 1-dice autoblaster shot (he had a weapons malfunction crit)! I resigned shortly thereafter with a dogged Vader and mostly dead Shuttle. 100-0 loss.
So that put me at 3-3 and no chance of making the cut. So I dropped there and proceeded to hang out with watch the top tables, which was great fun. And that's my report thus far, so I'm off to FFG Game Center to watch the top 16!
