Last weekend I attended a winter tournament at the excellent Common Ground Games in Stirling, Scotland. After doing quite well with Brobots towards the end of last year I decided a change was in order. I like the idea of Punishers but could never quite get one to work.
Not one to let that stop me, I settled on the squad below:
Redline:
TIE MkII
Extra Munitions
Fire Control
Plasma Torps
Cluster Missiles
Omega Leader:
Juke
Comm Relay
Vader:
Advanced Targeting Computer
Title
Engine Upgrade
Veteran Instincts
In theory the Punisher deals with big, lumbering targets or scares aces he catches in arc, OL annoys the hell out of people and is a good endgame ship and Vader is Vader. The problem I often had in testing was getting damage through quickly enough with Vader and OL, especially because a lot of prime targets could dodge Redline.
Apologies to any opponents whose names or lists I get wrong.
Game 1: Fraser
My first game was against a squad I should do OK against. Fraser had:
Dash
Predator
Outrider
Mangler
Rec Spec
2 TLT Golds
He started in the top left and I spread out, leaving Redline closest to his squad to give myself some options, though I hoped to get a shot off at Dash. OL was more central with Vader set up to come in on a wide flanking manoeuvre.
Things sort of went to plan initially, though some awkward initial positioning from OL meant he was out of the fight for a turn longer than necessary. My cluster missile shot at Dash was lacklustre, only stripping 3 shields and return fire did the same for Redline while Vader managed a range 3 shot on a Y-Wing after establishing his target lock, taking off a shield or two.
Then we all clustered up in the middle. Fraser had an asteroid to contend with when moving his Y-Wings so I was able to predict where he was going and set-up a cluster missile shot in the side of his damaged Y-Wing, which should finish it after Vader shoots. OL continued to not do much but by locking on to Dash he reduced fire coming back at him.
Vader did his job and took the Y-Wing down to hull. Unfortunately Dash then managed to get a crit through on Redline. As long as it wasn’t Blinded Pilot I was fine. It was Blinded Pilot. OL took some damage from the TLT that had been spared a face full of clusters.
Over the next few turns I got rid of the damaged Y-Wing and then tried to chase down Dash. My opponent played him well though and it took too long to get back in arc, by which time the weight of fire from the TLT and Mangler had dealt with Vader and OL. That left just an injured Redline against a 2-shield Dash and a healthy TLT Y-Wing.
I’d disengaged the Punisher and by the time I got him back round to face Dash we were jousting. Dash fired first and killed me but I got a last shot due to simultaneous fire and the cluster missiles I’d been unable to fire due to the Blinded Pilot crit partially redeemed themselves by taking Dash down to half health.
Not the start I’d hoped for, but my opponent flew pretty well. Redline’s attacks were fairly poor but I’m not sure how much of a difference that would have made.
Result: Loss 50-100
Game 2: Andrew(?)
After that loss I was a little down since I thought I should have flown a bit better. Still, game 2 was a chance to pick myself up. I was up against:
Captain Yorr
Palpatine
Carnor Jax
VI
Autothrusters
Stealth Device
Vader
VI
Engine Upgrade
ATC
So, almost a standard Palpmobile list but with some interesting twists. I wasn’t really sure why Yorr was there and while Carnor is always annoying, an Interceptor without PTL is less scary than one with it. He gave me initiative so my Vader would move before his.
He put his aces in the top right with Yorr more towards the middle and I deployed similarly to my first game, with Redline and OL central and Vader ready to swing in from my left.
I wanted to control the range of the initial engagements here to give me time to get Vader into position. That worked fairly well and by the time we started shooting I had all my ships in range of at least one of his aces. He’d left Vader without tokens in order to set up a target lock on me and my Vader took full advantage with some good dice that punched through his counterpart’s shields from long range.
So the initial engagement left me pretty much unscathed and his Vader limping a bit. He was well-placed to get past my Punisher and start doing some damage on him so I sent Redline after the shuttle that had drifted into range, trusting to his shields to weather a beating. OL performed some tight manoeuvres to stay in the fight and the Vaders went after each other.
Redline took a beating but managed to get his clusters off on Yorr. A combination of mediocre dice from me and some good evasion from the shuttle meant only 3 shields disappeared. The shuttle’s return fire put a crit through on Redline and suddenly I had a damaged sensor array.
The Vader-off resulted in not much happening as we were both concentrating on staying alive. That changed in the next round when Redline disengaged to fix his sensors (he failed to do so) and some more tricky positioning put OL close to Carnor. My opponent made a mistake here and barrel-rolled Carnor right in front of OL (facing away from him) in order to get shots through on Redline. His shots resulted in another damaged sensor array (apparently he has 2 and both are vital!) but OL rolled 2 hits and a crit and Carnor blanked out on his 4 dice, taking him off the table in one shot. Then my Vader put a damaged sensor array on my opponent’s Vader to leave him with one health and no actions.
He dodged my arc for one turn but I managed to predict his position in the next turn and a range 1 shot finished him off. All that was left was to mop up the shuttle and with 3 ships chasing him down it didn’t take too long.
Result: Win 100-0
Game 3: Grant
I was happy to have dealt with the dreaded Emperor as well as I did, helped by a stellar performance from OL. I hoped I could continue against a very strange Dash/Corran list.
Corran Horn
Pus the Limit
R2 Astromech
Engine Upgrade
Fire Control System
Dash
VI
Navigator
Outrider
Autoblaster(!)
So Corran without his standard sparring partner in R2-D2 and a Dash that only got to shoot at range 1, albeit with unblockable hits. Grant is a strong player who has a habit of occasionally trying out weird lists just for the fun of it.
After wrapping my head around a Dash that only works at range 1 I set up in the middle to cover against any possible deployment. Grant put his ships top-left and Vader did his standard flanking move.
There’s not much to say about this game really. Grant went after Redline and did a decent amount of damage in the first pass but Corran was a little out of position and he’d used PTL to set up his shot on Redline and put himself in front of a debris field which meant he was actionless when Vader came screaming in to take out his shields. OL finished him off after Corran’s final shot had crippled Redline.
Redline eventually died but OL and Vader were able to avoid range 1 and whittle Dash down. I eventually won when Grant put Dash in a position to try to get range 1 of Vader that left him going off the board next turn. I avoided the turret shot and that was it.
Result: Win 100-39
Game 4: Tim(?)
After dealing with Dash I was up against my first Poe of the day, accompanied by Jake and, in another first, a stresshog. The list was:
Stressbot Gold Squadron
Jake Farrell
PTL
VI
Proton Rockets
Autothrusters
Poe Dameron
VI
Autothrusters
Weapons Guidance
R2-D2
Hmm, tricky. My approach to stressbots is to kill them as quickly as possible. In testing I was able to consistently kill one over 2 turns, sometimes only 1 if all three ships got good shots in. Time flew well and forced me to use one of Vader’s actions to avoid a proton rocket shot from Jake so the initial shooting didn’t take the stresshog down and saw Redline take a beating.
Then we crashed. The next few turns were a pile-up with a lot of inconsequential unmodified shots being taken at targets of opportunity. When we extricated ourselves I’d done very little damage but Redline was close to death. Poe finished him off and Vader took an extreme-range shot at the stresshog to strip its last 2 hull.
It was 2-on-2 now but Tim had the advantage of moving after OL and my target lock was often on the wrong ship. Tim continued to fly well and, again, we were often taking unmodified shots at each other but he got more than I did and soon Vader went down after achieving very little. Jake finally got his Prockets off on OL and vaporised him for a solid win.
I think I was outplayed in this game as I struggled to make Vader’s PS11 count and was often using actions to reposition, leaving my defence weak. There wasn’t as much in it as the final score suggested and this was probably my favourite game of the tournament with some tense flying and arc-dodging. The result just goes to show that offence is more potent than defence.
Result: Loss 26-100
Game 5: Stuart
After such a close game I wasn’t too down as I knew a good result here could see me move quite a way up the rankings. The opponent here had another Palpmobile list, but in a more standard configuration.
Omicron Group Pilot
Emperor Palpatine
Soontir Fel
PTL
Autothrusters
Stealth Device
Vader
Lone Wolf
ATC
Engine
This started out in strange and unfortunate fashion for my opponent. He deployed his shuttle facing across his deployment zone with Vader and Soontir right next to him blocking him in. I went for my normal deployment, waiting to see which target presented itself for Redline.
He proceeded to do the whole shuttle-bump play to keep it where it was but messed up slightly with a hard-turn-barrel-roll play with Vader and Soontir. This meant in the next turn when he tried a 1-bank with the shuttle and bumped Soontir his back corner swung off the table.
At the risk of this devolving into a discussion about etiquette and fly casual I’ll point out that I felt pretty bad for him at this point but I firmly believe the best way to learn is from your mistakes. Also, it’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not sure of the value of the attempted play in keeping the shuttle stuck in its corner. The same result can be obtained with a first-turn bump followed by a second-turn full stop, or even another 1-straight, so there was no need to try the bank. I also think the benefit of keeping the shuttle out of the game for that long is dubious at best. But I digress…
The rest of the game was actually quite close as he was clearly trying to play conservatively to come back into the game. I managed to get Vader down to 1 hull and he was only saved by a Lone Wolf reroll. Meanwhile Redline was doing his best to target lock the wrong opponent and Omega Leader suddenly became a blocker (probably much to his disgust).
The game dragged on for a long time with little happening. I lost OL, which meant the game was close for a while but I eventually killed Vader and that left Soontir against a PS11 Vader with 1 hull and a healthy Punisher that he didn’t have time to kill. The game ended with those three ships still on the board for a win to me.
Result: Win 65-26
I ended up 10th out of 28 (I think). I was happy with that as I’m aware my list isn’t the most competitive. I think once Guidance Chips comes out Redline will be more consistent but I’m not sure if I’ll run the same list again as I’m eager to try out the Tie Advanced Prototype.
Finally, I’d like to say a big thanks to Steve from Common Ground Games for running a great tournament in a great venue, with a very reasonable lunch deal, and to all my opponents. As with every X-Wing tournament I’ve been to the atmosphere was very good.