I had an awesome time at this championship. The previous few tournaments I went to, I tried to make a meta call and bring something fun- so Super-Dash with a Cracken Swarm or Poe with some BTL-A4 Y-wings, and both times I did lackluster. Since this was the last store championship for me probably this year, I decided to just go full fun and forget the meta. I brought the Murder Squad.
Wes Janson with VI, R2 and Integrated.
Wedge with Predator, R2 and Integrated.
Keyan with Advanced Sensors and Opportunist.
I actually ran this group a few times right after Rebel Aces came out. When I heard about Integrated, I got pretty excited because I didn’t have to change a single thing about the list, just slap on Integrated, and it was now strictly better. Very cool.
I brought the 3 biggest asteroids, wanting to cover as much of the board with terrain. My guys aren’t very maneuverable, so I wanted to try and limit my opponent’s ability to dance around as much as possible. I typically set up the asteroids in a way to allow my guys a way to bank through the field, since it’s very hard to block k-turns on a bank approach, and my team is very good after k-turning. My formation was Keyan and Wedge in the front, Wes behind Wedge.
This isn’t a very defensive list, and I usually spend my focus on attack- but I was curious, so I kept track of the number of evades I rolled (counting focuses I turned to evade) and over the course of 5 games, I only managed to get 8 evades. That seems a little low. My attack rolls though…
Match 1 against Alex
He brought IG-88A and B, with the same load-out of FCS, Glitterstim, Crackshot, Autothrusters, HLC and the title. I set up near the middle, he put himself in the upper-right corner. I came up and banked in and on our first approach he had both IGs at range 3 of Keyan and Wedge- Wes was just far back enough to not have a shot. He popped Glitterstim with both IGs.
I spent my focus with Wedge and predator- I got 2 hits but nothing went through and Keyan also failed to do damage. He returned fire between the two IGs on Wedge and did five damage.
I rolled one evade on the second shot and Alex said, “Ok, that kills you.” I told him I had integrated, so I asked him if he wanted to use Crackshot to actually kill Wedge, and he said yeah. So, first round, I had lost a third of my list and had done 0 damage. Fortunately, he had popped 3 of his 4 one-shot cards and had stressed IGs, limiting his options for the next round.
He went slowly with A, while B turned away from my ships, needing to get some space to swing back into the fight. Keyan Advanced Sensors Target locked and did a hard one, coming right into A’s flank. I had placed the wrong maneuver on Wes’s dial though- he was doing a 1-bank instead of a 1-straight and I bumped into Keyan. Fortunately it looked like pure genius, because both Wes and Keyan had range 1 shots and because of the bank, Wes was JUST out of arc on A. B had no shots. So I laid into him and got 4 natural hits with Wes (no action needed!) and Keyan plowed some more damage in, leaving the IG with a crit (weapons failure.)
The next few turns were spent positioning and me taking potshots at A, while B took long-range shots at Wes. A died before shooting again, but Wes died soon after. Keyan and B laid into each other- he rolled more dice, but Keyan had more mods, so I was almost always getting 3 or 4 hits on my dice, and I never had a stress after the end of a round, leaving me with an open dial. It came down to both of our ships having K-turned, with range 3 shots. (I had barrel-rolled to try and get into range 2, but it was still just out). We each had 2 hullth left. I rolled 3 hits, he managed to get 2 evades and took 1 damage. Then he managed to hit Keyan for 2 damage with his HLC and it was over with 1 hullth left on the IG.
I lost, 75-100. Could not believe how close it was, considering how quickly Wedge died. Wes and Keyan are brutal together, and Keyan’s pretty great end game. Those times I caught him K-turning and me not, let me roll 4 dice with Opportunist, so target-lock “focus” shots were coming out a lot. Alex later made it to the top 4.
Second match was against a Palp-shuttle with Mangler Cannon, Stealth Device (odd decision) and 2 Onyx Tie Defenders. He was pretty psyched about Imperial Vets.
This match went badly for me. I banked in to his Defenders, while his Shuttle came down the edge to flank me. First round I chewed into one Defender pretty hard, while he returned the favor to Keyan. The next round, I made probably the game-losing mistake- I didn’t have a great way to keep all my guys pointed at the damaged defender, so I had Wedge K-turn, Wes go straight and Keyan did a hard 2 around an asteroid to just get out of arc, so he could spin around later.
Unfortunately, while Keyan managed to survive a Tie Defender potshot, the Lambda was just in range and managed to kill him, while my 2 X-wings failed to kill the damaged Defender. I should have had all my guys hard 2 into the Lambda- it would have put them in an awkward position near the edge, but range 1 shots from all of them might have killed the Lambda and he wouldn’t have gotten Tie Defender shots.
Wedge got slammed hard with a shot then and he died soon after. Wes managed to bring the Defender down to 2 health, and did 2 or 3 damage to the Lambda, but I got hit with a Blinded Pilot. I decided not to use Integrated, leaving me with two health and the astromech, so “three” health. I just booked Wes out and Focused, while his k-turning Defender BARELY caught Wes at range 3. Between focus and Palps, he got hit, hit crit and I rolled blanks. Not even an eyeball, so I died even with integrated.
I lost, 32-100. If I had been able to kill the Defender, it would have been easy for Wes to outfly the Lambda and I could have picked it apart, but I made some bad calls and had some cold defense dice. Rough game.
At this point, I was pretty demoralized. I figured my list wouldn’t be winning all the time, but I thought I had a good shot against that Defender list and I just got smoked. Still, I had 3 more rounds to get through and a lot more Murder Squad to fly.
My third match was against Tom, who was flying a Triple Imp Ace List- Soontir with AT, SD and PtL (because how else would you fly Soontir? Awesome ship, love to play him.) Omega Leader with Juke and Comm Relay (Never seen this ship played, but was intrigued into seeing how good his ability was) and Whisper with Adv Cloaking Device, FCS and VI. He might have had something else on Whisper, but it never came up.
I was pretty excited to see this list, because I thought my squad would do well against Aces, and I thought Wes Janson would specifically make Token-heavy ships very sad (like Omega Leader or Soontir). Plus, my PS10 Wes would make Soontir and Whisper have to guess for their movements, so I liked that too.
He took initiative. When possible I always try and give initiative to my opponent, letting them place the first rock lets me see what they’re trying to do with obstacles and gives me the ability to ruin it for them, and I always considering moving last more important than shooting first, although Wes does generally prefer to shoot first, I didn’t fly against many 10s.
I set up my squad in the right corner, he put Whisper directly across from them. Omega Leader was near the middle and Soontir was all the way in the upper-left. Because of the rocks, I knew Whisper didn’t have a lot of options for fancy decloaking stuff, so I barreled right at him. We approached head-on and my squad engaged at range 2, but he had some awesome defense rolls and I only managed to strip his shields. The next few turns I only got a few passing shots at Whisper- a decloak followed by a K-turn lead to him being behind my whole squad.
Omega Leader came in and target locked Keyan, which was annoying since I couldn’t even spend stress against him, but Soontir was having to struggle to come in, I think I initiated combat a lot sooner than my opponent had expected. We took pot-shots at each other, neither one of our groups able to fully pour fire into any one ship, although Wes Janson kept Omega Leader from getting any damage in. Both my X-wings were hurting when I managed to do a barrel-roll K-turn right behind Soontir with Keyan, and Soontir crashed into my X-wings trying to get away.
I chewed into Soontir hard and did 2 damage and stripped his Stealth Device. Next turn I managed to catch Whisper and clear her off the board with 4 hits from Wes Janson (2 evade dice aren’t going to help you there) and then Omega Leader was finished off shortly after. Soontir tried to run, but my PS and abilities didn’t let him get very far or evade very well, and he died to my withering assault.
Win, 100-0.
Game 4 was against Brett, who was running the standard Soontir and Oicunn with Dauntless, Engine Upgrade, Gunner, Darth Vader, Proximity Bombs, Rebel Captive and Intimidation.
Brett was hilarious, awesome guy, glad I got to play him. When he was showing him my list, he went "Wes Janson? Who's that? Is he even an X-wing pilot?" Funniest part is I think he was kind of serious.
Asteroids were set up in kind of a loose V with the end pointing towards the upper right corner, basically meaning there was a nice open spot for my guys to go down the field, but it got tighter near the end. I set up near the mouth of the V, on the bottom left. Brett put Oicunn and Soontir on the top-right, facing to the left, with Soontir behind Oicunn.
First turn I went three straight with all my guys, he moved a little slowly along the top edge, but he was well-positioned to have Oicunn enter the asteroid field. Next turn he hard-turned into the field and I did 2 and 3 banks in, so I was coming up pretty fast for X and B-wings. If he hadn’t entered the field, I would have been able to pop out of one of the corners at that speed and snag his guys on the corner, so my positioning was working well for me. Soontir kept trailing the edge, looking for a turn to flank my guys.
The next turn was the crucial one- Oicunn barreled 4 straight and then boosted towards my squad, barely missing an asteroid, obviously hoping to force bumps and mess up my formation- the distance the Decimator can cover in a turn like that is insane. I however, remembered that Decimators are crazy fast with boost, and only went 1 straight with all my guys, putting me perfectly into range 1, without a single bump. He was surprised, but not worried. Not yet. Soontir was still on the outskirts, looking for a way to come in.
Wes got a good batch of 3 hits, mostly clearing out the shields. Wedge got 4 hits (predator+focus equals lots of hits) and slipped some crits in, and then for the first time that day, I got a range 1 opportunist shot with Keyan and I got to roll 5 dice with target lock “focus”. I got another 4 hits and 2 of those were crits. None of the crits were extra damage, but 1 was Stunned Pilot (he gets damaged if he overlaps, one of the worst possible crits for Oicunn) and the other was Console fire. I don’t remember the third, but I think it was one of maneuver limiting ones like Loose Stabilizer.
After that he counted out the damage and was stunned that I had just inflicted 11 damage on his ship with just 3 ships. I was thinking “It should have been 13”, but I wasn’t unhappy- that Decimator was hurting. Desperate to get some damage out with the Deci, he attacked Keyan and Darth-Vadered, which only took off 4 shields total. Next turn he bumped Keyan, taking off his last shield, but took a damage from the overlap and then from console Fire, so he had 1 health left at the start of the combat phase. Ouch.
Because of the angles, I knew that there was pretty much no way Oicunn could block the k-turn from Keyan, so he ended up perfectly behind the Decimator, and Wedge’s K-turn put him a little farther back. I wasn’t confident that Wes could K-turn, and I didn’t want Soontir to do anything cheeky, so I banked Wes towards the gap Soontir had been edging towards. Not wanting Wedge to get Rebel Captive’d, I forfeited his shot and let Keyan shoot, figuring with 4 dice and target-lock Strescus, it would be virtually impossible to not get 1 hit in. I got 3 and cleared Oicunn.
Next round Wes and Wedge pointed themselves at Soontir, while Keyan cleared his stress. I think the Soontir tokened up and had to use a focus to avoid damage from Wes, or he just rolled enough evades to not need his evade token, either way, he had a focus and an evade left and Wes took the focus (Soontir had the chance to kill Keyan with a lucky shot and I wanted to minimize the odds of that happening. Then Wedge popped his stealth device, even with the evade token and Soontir did 1 damage to Keyan.
The last turn, Wedge k-turned behind Soontir and Wes and Keyan blocked him in place, letting Wedge get a range 1 shot at a token-less Soontir. He asploded.
Win, 100-0. Wes and Wedge demolish Soontirs.
Final game was against Dan, who I think was ranked third, with a 3-1 record, so he wasn’t super-happy that he got paired down with a 2-2 guy, but he was a good sport about it. He was running the exact same IG list as the one I had lost to round 1, so I was looking forward to a chance to redeem myself…or prove that I got lucky to even do as well as I did.
I set up on the right corner, he went in on the left corner. I staggered my approach so that I could come in through a line of asteroids in the middle, and not wanting to get flanked, he turned in. Unfortunately it was too tight for his IG’s to stay together, so he had to space them out with A in front. We met at range 3 of each other, with Wes again too far to shoot. It was very similar to the first game, except this time only 1 IG could fire, rather than both. At the extreme range, I only managed to pop 1 shield, while he did I think 2 or 3 shields to Keyan.
The next round looked good for me though- because of the asteroid line, he couldn’t break off without crashing into either my ships, or landing on asteroids, so I correctly guessed he would slow-play it with a 1-straight. My 1-straight with my guys put them all into range 1, so he used Glitterstim and evaded, figuring he could survive the fire and this turn shoot with both IG’s and clear a ship off the board.
Wes shot first, and I think he did no damage, but Dan had to spend his evade token and Wes took the FCS target lock (Wes was great at preventing damage). Then Wedge fired 4 dice to 2 defense, and I got 3 hits and a crit and Dan blanked, not even eyeballs to glitterstim. So he took a crit and it was…reduce agility by 1. So that meant Keyan, with Opportunist was rolling 5 dice to 2. With only three health left on the IG, I knew if I scored 5 hits, it didn’t matter what he rolled, he was dead. With the target lock+Stresscus, I did score 5 hits…and he blanked again anyways. So, super-dead IG.
He returned fire, deciding he needed to kill Wedge and did like, 3 or 4 damage to Wedge with his surviving IG because my defense is terrible. (He acknowledged after the game that he should have just picked Wedge from the start, dividing his fire didn’t do him any favors.)
I was very happy that he had chosen glitterstim over inertial dampeners, because that turn he was in a good spot to block my k-turn if he stayed still, but he could not so I knew I could k-turn. Wes’s k-turn was at a slight angle, so he didn’t get a shot, but Wedge was right behind him. Keyan collided, so I got a range 1 shot from Wedge that did 1 or 2 damage, and he had no return shots. Next few turns I stayed on his tail, using Wes to prevent him from rolling modified dice when he s-looped or k-turned and just stayed at the perfect range to k-turn behind him when he was stressed- it happened at least one or 2 more times that Wedge and Wes got right behind him, although his dice were strong enough to let him live a few rounds.
The last round saw him pointing towards a debris, with no stress and about 2 health left. Wedge had 1 or 2 health left, Wes was unhurt and Keyan still had about 5 or 6 left. He did a ballsy 4-k over the debris, taking 2 stress. Wedge just went straight, unable to keep him in arc. Wes banked in, catching the IG and I had predicted the 4-K with Keyan, who did an advanced Sensors target-lock, followed by a hard 1 to catch the IG in the side with a range 1 shot. Between Wes and Keyan, I blew him up before he got to shoot at Wedge.
Win- 100-0. Dan was a good sport about it, there were a few points where he could not believe I was successfully k-turning behind his IG, we had to take the ship off the board and measure it, and my base was overlapping the template we used to measure and he thought I bumped, but I had a bit of clearance once the ship was placed back down.
A friend of mine was at the tournament, using my stuff to run a quad-TLT team. He had to use the old damage deck, since I only had 1 new one, and when Dan heard how he was getting hit with the “discard secondary weapon” crit, he gave me one of his extra new damage decks. Super cool move, great guy.
I ended up coming in seventh- I had the second best MOV, with 707 I think, but losing those first 2 kept out of the top 4, and they only had a cut to the top 4. Still, I was pretty happy that I just did 3 perfect games in a row and I had obliterated some Soontirs. Oh, and revenge on the first list I lost to was nice to.
Probably the best part about the tournament was that 4 of us from A2Z games (a store that closed down at the beginning of January) all managed to go together AND we didn't play against each other at all, so after the tournament, we had 20 different X-wing games to talk about. That was a busy conversation.
Murder Squad is best squad.
