I’m tempted to try this build…

Chewie, Wired, Experimental Interface, Lando, C3PO, Falcon evade Title.

Leebo, Determination, HLC, Outrider Title.

It’s a fairly easy process. Chewie moves up, Falcon Title Evades, and used EI for Lando to gamble after 3PO says 1 Evade. Hopefully he ends up with 3 evades.

The idea is that the Falcon will tank with evade tokens to the point where people are gunning more for Leebo. This gives him more time to keep shooting.

If they go after Leebo, I am playing the meta a bit. With scouts around, and Guidance Chips, I’m seeing an increase in Crits. Chewie already doesn’t care, and Leebo with his Determination EPT, and his ability to draw 2 face up and choose the one he wants, might allow him to throw away a damage point or so, or shift away from major explosions.

Wow what a weekend!

So I was lucky enough to attend the regionals for Xwing in SLC. It was held at the Salt Lake Game Con. Really top notch fun.

I’ve faithfully reported every game I’ve played on this chronicle and so I felt I was a little out of practice going into this event. But as I’m married, 2 children and own a house, life works the way it works. I did have some time in the previous week where I spent time reviewing each card, going over interactions, and workout how I wanted to fly.

Let’s talk about my prep!

So after some long deliberation I decided to stick with what I knew, and I went with Horton Salm running a TLT, Plasma Torps, Extra Munitions, R5-X3, and Guidance Chips. I had Nera Dantals running Fire Control System, Proton Torps, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips, and Deadeye. Last, I Had Jake Farrell running CHardaan Refit, Awing Test pilot, Auto-thrusters, Push the Limit, and Wired.

I did get a practice game or 2 against the U-boat Menace, and I thought I had a good chance played just right against them defeating me again. Against the many rebel builds, I thought I also had a good chance, but it would depend on what showed up and how I could work on it. And the last was dealing with Imperial Aces. I spent a good deal of time working out what Horton’s TLT did to imperial aces. Combined with the firepower from Nera, and with Jake’s ability to be a blocker and in their face. I felt on average, I had good answers to all imperial aces… but one.. Soontir Fel. Doing the Math over and over, he was able to consistently avoid the TLT, and he wasn’t getting hit with Jake’s meager 2 dice, and Nera was just going to get swatted as she is slow and goes nowhere quick, and gets arc dodged. So I had a plan, avoid Soontir, Outfly the rebels, Torp down the Scum.

I spent some time reducing my stuff into a small toolbox that made it very easy to haul all needed equipment for this, made sure to get a good 8 hours sleep, got up, stretched out, had a sensible breakfast, listened to a book on the drive to the venue…

To find out I was 40 minutes too early, due to misinformation given out on what time we could start. I’m going to talk about this more at the end of the post.

Any way I’d been there the day before to sign in with the TO, I was ready to go, and eventually, 67 of us were gathered, and we got table assignments and went to it..

Let the games begin!

Game 1. I was playing against Tyson a Back to Dials podcaster, and he was running a Tie swarm. He had Vader, Howlrunner, and 3 Black Ties with Crackshot.

Overall, I didn’t like the odds, but I felt I had options. I’ve played a game against the swarm, I knew I didn’t want to face a firing line, so I went to line in a way that I thought I would work on Vader first, disrupt his formation with Rocks. This would have worked but for several issues. Tyson is a much better player than me, and was easily able to formation fly through rocks. Faced with an opponent who had a plan, Skill and opportunity, the game quickly resolved poorly for the good rebels, and he gunned me down. I was only able to destroy a single black tie in return, and put some damage on I think one or two other ships.

Loss: Him 100, Me 15.

Game 2. I matched up against Brandon K. An excellent opponent. I felt this wasn’t going to be a problem till I saw he was running Palp on the shuttle, Inquisitor, and… Soontir. I admit my heart sank a bit. But I felt that I had a plan to deal with other Palp aces, and I’d make that happen, and then see what I could do against Soontir.

So when I’ve played and watched Palp aces, with only 2 fighters, the trick seems to be getting one of them down. Traditionally this was hard as players were trying to match against the aces with high PS aces below. In the new meta when you have to also be able to hit hard enough to deal with u-boats, Rebel aces don’t hit the meta. This puts the palp player in the driver seat, but also gives them a chance to work on there will power. And that is where I identified a flaw and went to work on it.

I formed up in the center with Jake in the middle and Nera and Horton on either side. I flew all out straight at a slow speed and he moved into position with his Aces, while the emperor hung out on the back line. Turn 2, I moved up, focused with Nera, Jake moved faster and went into Focus, Boost, Evade, and as needed he moved up to engage. This is where the test comes in Soontir shot Nera and took 2 shields of my evade. Then the Inquisitor shot, and most importantly used Palp to ensure the hit leaving him with just a focus. Horton unloaded his hyper accurate TLT into the Inquisitor as planned, but a good evade roll that took his focus saved him from the first hit and he lost a shield. Jake shot him and took his last shield. Nera unloaded a Proton Torps into him, and a hit and a Crit got through killing the inquisitor for the cost of 4 of Nera’s shields. At this point, I knew I wasn’t out of the rough, but I felt I was on the green. After that I followed my plan. I somewhat ignored Soontir as I maneuvered to take shots on the Palp Shuttle, getting a excellent torp shot off Horton the next turn where he dropped 4 shields, followed by Jake dropped the last shield and putting the first damage on it. Around this time Soontir easily dodged Nera’s last torp load, and gunned her off the table. Jake and Horton combined to kill the Emperor with Horton’s last Torpedoes and some gunnery, leaving me with Horton out of Torps but otherwise fine, Jake with no shields, and Soontir. After this we went I’d guess 4 turns with Horton sometimes arc dodging, Soontir hitting a debris field twice, getting stress but able to consistently evade Horton’s TLT, and the shots Jake gets in. With seconds to go in the round, Soontir guesses right, and gets 3 hits, and Horton is lost after time is called.

Loss: Him 72 points destroyed, me 64 points destroyed. So only 8 points away from victory. Ironically, I do feel this game, even though a loss was my best game, and I learned the most. Unfortunatly one of the things learned was that my early calculation was right, and I didn’t have a way to deal with Soontir.

Game 3. I was worried at this point about getting a Bye. I knew I had to be close to the bottom, but I was in it for the haul, and I was given an opponent, the esteemed Eli from Colorado.

Eli was also flying Imperial aces and I was secretly relieved to find out he was running the Inquisitor, Vader, and Carnor Jax. He was using the same model for Jax as Brandon had used for Soontir so I had a moment of panic. Luckily, it was just Carnor. I haven’t flown against Carnor, but I knew enough to adapt from using Focus to works from Target Locks.

The game started normally with Jake leading the way as quickly as possible. The Inquisitor basically had the same fate as the last game, eating a face full of Nera’s Torpedoes to head back to the box. Carnor suffered a miscalculation and landed on a rock, while Vader quickly killed poor Jake. His doing this left him in a spot where both Nera and Horton had excellent shots with Nera having a Target lock and Focus. Horton’s TLT drops his shield, and Nera scored an impressive 4 Crits that he couldn’t evade all of to leave the game to just Nera and Horton Versus Jax. Jax isn’t the damage avoider Soontir was, and he was gunned down leaving me with a Victory for the day.

Win: He destroyed 28. I destroyed 100.

Game 4.

I was determined to build on my success, so I jumped back into the fray ready for anyone. Anyone was Jake Thompson, running a Dengar/ Bossk list. This might not have been a problem for me but Jake is local for me. Some of the ideas for Nera and her play style were directly attributed to him and discussion with him. Either way I thought I had a chance.

Things went off the rails when he ignored Jake, and Dengar put a full load of torps into Nera, killing all 5 shields with his Plasma Torps. Next Horton shot Dengar with his TLT, knocking down 2 shields, and Dengar’s ability kicked in so Jake shot the other load of Torps into Horton removing all his shields. Bossk completed the catastrophe and shot Nera off the table. This serious hurt my chances of winning I felt. I was right. The next turn slow Horton’s Why? Wing was easily removed from the game with a short range Dengar and Bossk shot, with him not getting a shot due to TLT short range. At this point through, Jake went on a show about how to live against getting shot. Consistently maneuvering he managed to get a few shots in taking a shield or 2 against the bigger ships, he lasted till time.

Loss, He destroyed 72, I destroyed 0

Game 5. Determined to see if I could get another win, I went into the fight ready. I wanted to end in the top 64, and I by my calculation I had a MOV of 179, and that feels pretty terrible after 4 games.

I was dropped against Trey. Trey is a quiet guy, but he had a pair of Brobots to speak for him. So we dropped rocks and started the game off. Invariably Brobots seem to want to deploy odd and go with some castle technique and Trey followed this. Unfortunately his Brobots also didn’t roll to hit on defense of offense so each of them quickly were dispatched after a Plasma Torps followed by Proton torps from Nera and Horton.

Win He destroyed 0, and destroyed 100.

Game 6. I was paired for the last game against Rand. Rand had a scum fleet, with a Slaver, a Ywing with TLT, Torkil in a HWK 190, and a Binayre Pirate in a Z95. An eclectic fleet for sure. I could tell he had a plan though.

The standard game play ensued, with him maneuvering the slaver into a position where Nera was in trouble. Horton used the ignore rocks droid and lined up a massive salvo of his plasma Torps on the Slaver dropping 5 shields (best ever!). Jake promptly followed this up by missing with his shots. Nera then Unloaded the Doom, hitting with all 4 Torps, with 3 as Crits after modifications. The Slaver fails his green dice, and loses his last shield. He pulls three Crits, that come up Direct Hit, Direct Hit, Direct Hit, killing the Slaver. Wow. I do feel bad for Rand. That was some incredible misfortune on his part. On the other hand, I’m glad that was the last game of the day, so I could properly savor that.

After that it was a route. He did take shields and put some damage on Nera and Horton, but the Binayre Pirate didn’t last past the next turn as Nera torped him down, Torkil lasted another turn till Horton used his last torps to drop him, and Jake chased the Ywing off the table.

Win, He destroyed 0, and I destroyed 100.

This left my MOV at a more respectable 379 out of a possible 600. I’m enthused about that.

In the event I managed to win Acrylic extra Munition tokens, a Alt art Hera card, and a Recon Specialist card. A fair haul, and one I’m happy with.

Okay so let’s talk about the event. I love the Salt Game Con. Lots of fun. I saw many friends and had an enjoyable time with my inner geek. But there was a fly in the anointment. It had been announced that FFG would be there, bringing ships (I was hoping the wave 9) and having displays and product. Then the day or so before the event they backed out. That sucked and I’ll be honest curtailed some of what I saw as an excellent chance to showcase the game for them.

And for the final bit, let’s talk Xwing. I like and enjoy Xwing. I’ve actually added in a bunch of ships to my fleet. I now picked up Imperial Aces, Scum Most wanted, a HWK290, and a Lamba Shuttle. I have a lot of ships ready to be played. What has happened though is the Meta I can attend has fallen apart. Several of the prominite players have quit or gone to complete fluff bunny, and so I don’t anticipate getting many reps in. I intend to keep playing as much Xwing as possible, but I think I’ll be spending more time working on Armada where there is a core of 4-6 players that seem more into the game.

So I've not updated this in a while as I've been playing Armada.

Some of the reason you saw Xwing die in the part of Utah I play in was due to the some of the things addressed by the FAQ. So I'll be watching a little to see if its worth putting on the pilot suit, if this fixed some of the underlying issues. If it does, I think I'll put Nera back on the table and see if people forgot about her abilities with Torps, using her now somewhat exclusive Dead Eye.