So, this past weekend I made the trek across country from the west down to the south coast to the Brighton area, not specifically for X-wing (I was visiting my girlfriend. She plays too, though!), but there ‘just so happened’ to be an event going on at Dice Saloon so why not kill two birds with one stone, hmm? After almost abandoning it following the last event I went to, I was convinced to stick with my most recent list:

Carnor Jax + VI + Royal Guard TIE + Hull Upgrade + Autothrusters
Omega Leader + Juke + Comm Relay + Stealth Device
Captain Kagi + Emperor Palpatine + Sensor Jammer

I’ve been running it with a shield on Carnor and a 2 point initiative bid until now, but I decide to switch it up a fraction, dropping down to a hull upgrade and putting stealth on Omega Leader. He’s almost an auto-win if he gets into a 1-on-1 endgame, so I thought I’d try and boost his chances of making it there.

We were almost late getting there, after just missing the train, but thankfully managed to still make it. I’d also not been feeling great for a few days, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to hold up both mentally and physically across the day. The plan was to drink plenty of water and pray to the dice gods.

19 players were in attendance, and we’d be playing 4 rounds of 75 minutes.

Game 1 vs. Greg (Whisper + Chiraneau)

So first up is a two ship build. For some reason I seem to play against a lot of Decimators lately; the last Winter kit tournament I went to I played 3 games on the bounce against VI Chiraneau. I won all of those matchups, and I like this one on paper too. Jax with VI is so good in these, because he totally ruins Whisper’s day. Greg has Kallus onboard though, and sensibly targets the interceptor since using it on Kagi is a bit of a waste, and utterly pointless against Omega Leader. My aim here is to clear Whisper ASAP and then turn on the Decimator. I think Greg knows this though, and played keep away with Whisper for the early part of the game. I’m not too worried, since it’s effectively 3-on-1 in the meantime. I take Chiraneau’s shields for the loss of 1 or 2 from Kagi before Whisper finally joins the party. With all my token-affecting abilities, Greg is having trouble getting any damage through on any of my ships, though very unluckily manages just 1 hit with Whisper at range 1 against Kagi even with FCS – I then rolled a natural evade to add insult to injury. After 3 or 4 rounds of maneuvering, I finally get the drop on Whisper with my aces and take her out. The Decimator speeds down towards the bottom corner, trying to loop back around into the fight. Unluckily for my opponent, he misjudged a 4 straight maneuver, and after two rounds of hard-2s in the corner, found himself off the board. I’ve lost a couple off shields on Kagi and that’s it, so a full win 100-0.

Game 2 vs. Becky (Kavil + IG-88B + Torkhil Mux)

I am extremely familiar with my next opponent, given that I’m now matched up against my girlfriend. What are the odds? We’ve played this match up three times before, and every time I’ve won 100-0, to the point where I’ve been ‘banned’ from playing my list in casual play with her. We both know who we have to kill first – I need to clear Kavil, and she needs to kill Omega Leader. And so we both promptly do that! I made probably the biggest mistake of the day here, using Omega Leader’s tokens and Palp to stop a mangler cannon shot from IG-88 instead of just accepting the 1 damage and losing my stealth device. Instead the follow up shot hits me harder, and on top of the shield, Omega also takes a crit – console fire. It’s somewhat academic though, as he’s blown to bits the next round. Now Jax has to do some serious work. And he does, completely shutting down Mux and his blaster turret, and I clear him with 2 rounds of fire. We’re then stuck in an endgame of IG-88B vs my shuttle and Jax and this is her dilemma – if she goes for the shuttle, Carnor tucks in behind and deals damage unopposed, denies tokens, and IG-88 falls foul of the shuttle’s sensor jammer. If she goes for Jax, Palp is free to help nullify any damage. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she goes for Jax, who dodges around and eventually gets the Aggressor down to 1 hull point. And then the thing repeatedly refuses to die. Seriously, at least 3 times I scored 3 hits, only to bounce off, even without tokens to defend. I’m starting to get frustrated as time is on my mind (plus I’m ill, which doesn’t help) and after what seemed like the billionth time of asking, IG-88 finally erupts in a ball of flame, giving me a 100-29 victory.

Game 3 vs. Matt (IG-88B + TLT Syndicate Thug x2)

Another multiple turret match up, and against a very strong opponent too – Matt made top 4 at Nationals last year. Much like the previous game, I know I have to take out the TLTs first, I just don’t have the health reserve to have them chip away at me for too many turns. I get a pretty good opening engagement, and clear the first one relatively quickly, though Carnor loses half his health, only surviving several of the shots due to autothrusters and Palpatine, and then for a brief moment Matt thought he’d killed him, having forgotten about the hull upgrade. I get the second Thug off the board, but all my ships are hurting and the IG starts to pick them off. Carnor is the first to go, after Matt expertly blocks my k-turn, causing Carnor to bump Kagi and leave him tokenless at range 1 in front of the Agressor. Omega Leader manages to chip away though, and I get IG-88 down to half health, but lose Kagi soon after, leaving me with a 3 hull Omega against a 4 health IG-88B. The game got very tense at this point, because one wrong move could spell disaster. I’m fractionally ahead on points due to the half health rule for big ships, but there’s still just over ten minutes to play. The aggressive side of me is screaming to k-turn or s-loop around for shots and try to finish off IG-88 but I manage to reign it in – I’ve thrown away winning positions before by being too greedy for shots and kicked myself for it afterwards. I tell myself it’s better to play for the modified win and then be in a must-win in game 4, rather than throw this one away and leave no chance to finish top overall if I do. So what follows is an intense game of cat and mouse. IG-88 is in the trail position, but being a large base ship if I go slow using turns and barrel rolls, he has to either risk a k-turn/s-loop himself, or simply overshoot. Matt keeps doing 1 speed moves, presumably hoping I try to turn around for a shot, but I don’t. Time is called as we’re placing dials, so one more round to go – I stay tucked in close, and Matt’s turn maneuver bumps again. Game to me, 76-71. Whew! A very, very tense game, even for those who’d gathered to watch apparently!

Game 4 vs. Ben (PTL Dash + Rookie x2)

So to decide first place, we will be having a battle of the Bens! I know if I lose I’m going to plummet down the order to somewhere around 5/6th due to having a modified win, it’s happened before several times. I’ve not played against Dash with my list before now, but he’s obviously the big threat with that HLC. I want to get him first if I can, as I’m fairly confident in being able to clear rookies if I have either of my aces left at the end. Ben is obviously trying to keep Dash at arm’s length though (and rightly so) making it difficult to focus fire, especially as he has Nien Numb to help Dash go pretty fast when he wants to. Thankfully without Kyle though, it means he doesn’t always hit quite so hard. The opening engagement sees me get a couple of hits on the lead Rookie with Omega Leader, and the following round he banks past for fear of a block, leaving my other two ships to clear the X-wing. Unfortunately, I slightly misjudged Carnor’s positioning and left him just in arc of the second Rookie with no room to boost or barrel roll to safety. Dash is also in range of the Interceptor, and between them Carnor bites the dust. Not the greatest trade, but I still feel as though as long as I can get down to Omega Leader vs just one of his ships (either will do) then I have a great chance. Dash plays keep away around the board edges as I try to keep up, just getting in some range 3 fire from time to time. Juke with Omega Leader’s ability is gold here, even at range 3 with a focus, Dash is taking steady damage. I try to ignore the other Rookie as much as possible, though get a couple of hits in with the shuttle at one point. Kagi lives a turn longer than he probably should have when a k-turn from the Rookie barely lands him on a rock and spares him from a shot that round. He’s not long for this world though as the X-wing destroys the shuttle from behind, but I get Dash off the board the very next round. So now we have the endgame I was playing for – a full health, still Stealth’d Omega Leader vs a Rookie X-wing. The Rookie has an R2 and Integrated (they both did), but after I slap on the target lock he’s got no way to modify any of his dice. The R2 is sacrificed to nullify a weapons failure crit, 3 naked dice is tough to hurt Omega Leader with, 2 is just almost impossible. It’s pretty academic though, as a turn or so later the ships joust into range 1 and Omega Leader obliterates the X-wing, giving me a full win 100-71. Another tense game, though probably not quite on the level of game 3, but also a very funny one – both Ben and I were clearly flagging mentally at this point and we had to both laugh several times about our distinct lack of range/arc perception. This was probably the game I enjoyed most all day.

So after what has seemed like an eternity, I finally stopped putting myself on the top table in the final game only to lose (towards the end of last year, I made top table for the final game in 5 out of 6 events and lost every single one). Pretty happy with how I played throughout the day, despite gradually feeling worse as the event went on. And as a bit of a bonus, as well as all the usual Winter kit prizes, there was some extra prize support supplied by Cog o Two for the top 3, which meant I also got a set of Imperial acrylic maneuver templates. A big thanks to Mark (TO) for running the event, everything was kept to schedule and just generally everything went smoothly. That’s always nice. Sadly I won’t be able to attend their Store Championship as it’s scheduled the same day as another I’ve already signed up for, but if you’re ever in the area I’d highly recommend dropping by to play.

Great work and write up, I'm also from Brighton but couldn't make the day but as an Imp player I'm glad it did well.

I have often been thinking of running the Kagi (SJ), Carnor & other ace list. It used to be Storm with the range 1 denial but Omega Leader is a perfect fit.

How do you find the damage output of the list? and the VI over PTL on Carnor? I'm going down to the store champ and thinking of running a version of this? (maybe a standard Palpl shuttle with Vader and Jax)

Damage output can be a little hit and miss at times. Omega Leader is fairly reliable, but I find you tend to hit extreme highs and lows depending on how Carnor's dice work out, especially if you have to use his action for repositioning rather than being able to take a focus. At PS8, Kagi helps make up for this though, you can target lock and deal out some reasonable damage, as a lot of people forget that despite it's lumbering movement if you have the shuttle pointing in the right direction it's still a 3 dice attack.

Despite this, I'd still take VI on Carnor over PTL every day of the week. Quite simply, you -have- to be able to deal with things like Soontir and Whisper at PS9, and VI Carnor is excellent for it. Nullifying Soontir's token stack, and shooting before Whisper can cloak is absolute gold. Combined with the fact you're moving after them you're taking away the majority of their strengths. It also lets you put Carnor where he needs to be, rather than having to guess, which in turn adds to Omega Leader's survivability against the ships he doesn't have the target lock on. And if you get Omega Leader into the endgame, you've almost certainly won.

I'm in the process of experimenting with a few different pilot combinations, but I think I will struggle to find one as synergistic as these. Soontir and Vader might be individually better pilots, but here the overall list is greater than the sum of its parts.

Nice stuff. I haven't flown VI Jax before so I would need a little practice I guess (so used to barrel rolling and boosting). With Kagi in the shuttle do you tend to be aggressive or do you fortress up at the start?

The synergy in he list in undeniable, my only worry is that if one ship dies does it all start to crumble? I'm guessing from the report its a no, but you are obv very practiced with it

I hadn't flown any of the ships in the list prior to devising this (in fact the amount of games I'd played with the Empire could be counted on one hand), so I was probably quite lucky that I wasn't used to playing PTL interceptors and then have to adapt to VI.

As for Kagi, I stall him for as many rounds as I can in the corner at the start with a combination of bumps and 0 moves, until I have an idea of my opponent's lane of attack. After the initial pass it's hard to get much more offensively out of the shuttle, so you need to maximise the amount of shots you get to take, and for me personally I find that the best way. I'm sure others like to play it differently, and it's just a case of finding what suits you best.

Losing a ship isn't the end of the world. I've had multiple games where I've lost one ace early and still gone on to win. Both are very capable of surviving and dealing damage at the same time, and Palp is always there to help out. This is partially why I like these two over Vader - in my opinion the Interceptor and FO have better dials, letting you dance around much more nimbly when you need to; the 1-hard turn is such a good move. (Another reason I like VI over PTL - you keep that Interceptor dial fully accessible instead of being limited to greens). So long as your last ship remaining isn't the shuttle...

Nice report and a very interesting list. I've only fielded Omega leader once without much success - I'm going to have to take another look...

Nice report and a very interesting list. I've only fielded Omega leader once without much success - I'm going to have to take another look...

What did you equip him with? I find he has an occasional game where he flops due to poor dice rolls (I had one event where I rolled double blanks for his attack 4 rounds in a row) but the majority of the time he does some serious work.

Nice report and a very interesting list. I've only fielded Omega leader once without much success - I'm going to have to take another look...

What did you equip him with? I find he has an occasional game where he flops due to poor dice rolls (I had one event where I rolled double blanks for his attack 4 rounds in a row) but the majority of the time he does some serious work.

It wasn't so much the equipment as the target locks - my opponent did some amazing flying and I never managed to get a target lock in the first place! Omega leader is definitely on my list of pilots to do more with.