This past Saturday (2/20/2016) I attended my first tournament of this season. Unfortunately, the start time the venue listed wasn't correct on their events calendar, so I was almost an hour late. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one. This meant I had about 45 minutes to play my first match instead of the normal 60+. I rolled with the punches and got started anyway.

My List:
Latts Razzi (YV-666), Weapons Engineer, K4 Security Droid, Tactical Jammer
2 x Cartel Marauders
Torkhil Mux

The overall strategy with this build is to use Mux's pilot ability to drop any one enemy pilot's skill to zero during combat, meaning that pilot shoots last. This mitigates ace pilots like Poe, Wedge, Vader and Soontir. The YV-666 uses target locks it has to drop enemy ships' agility by 1 for an attack, letting it and the 2 Marauders fire away to hopefully greater effect. The lack of upgrades and relatively low pilot skill of my build means I get to move first, but I also shoot later. Essentially, I pick a target, blast it to bits, then move onto the next one.

That was the plan.

Round 1 vs Daryl:
He flew Poe Dameron, Kyle Katarn w/crew, and a Warden (K-Wing) with Twin Laser Turret. The short of it is I put a lot of damage on the K-Wing, but wasn't able to finish it off before losing my ships to Poe's firepower and the TLT picking apart my HP at range 3. I flew well and had solid position, but cold dice means little damage got through and too much damage was inflicted on my guys. Daryl flew well and it was a pleasant, if not deflating, matchup.

Round 2 vs Jamey:
He flew Miranda (K-Wing) with TLT, and 2 generic K-Wings with TLT as well. This was a repeat of the first match, where I took a single K-Wing down to 1 hull before my ships were wiped out. Jaymie flew smart, and once his wounded K-Wing was in danger of dying, he retreated to the rear of the board and let the other two clean up. Again, I didn't make many flying mistakes, but I couldn't throw down enough firepower fast enough to take out a ship before mine were in dire straits. At this point, I really started to feel the hurt from not having a direct counter versus the TLT/K-Wing matchup.

Round 3 vs Robert:
He flew two generic B-Wings, a K-Wing with an Ion Cannon, and a Y-Wing with TLT and a stress bot (droid that throws stress at its target and its owner). This was by far the most entertaining matchup of the day. In the initial exchange, I lost my YV-666 in a fire exchange that destroyed his Y-Wing and half a B-Wing. I managed to destroy the second B-Wing and damage the K-Wing down to hull before losing one of my two Marauders. His K-Wing managed to Ion Mux for two solid rounds before destroying it, leaving just one undamaged Marauder to finish off 3 HP on the K-Wing. At this point, we had about 10 minutes left in the match, so he, admittedly, decided to run for it and keep the points lead. I did manage to catch him a couple of times and inflict another 2 damage, but he was out of range at the buzzer with only 1 HP remaining. Great match, and a modified win for Robert.

Round 4: Bye
Too many folks backed out of the tournament early, so I didn't have an opponent for my fourth scheduled round.

Overall, I learned a lot about my squadron and have made some adjustments. I still plan to fly a very similar list this season, but will make adjustments to my loadout and adopt a much more aggressive opening game so weapons such as TLTs don't get to peck apart my ships before they have a chance to punch back.

As a side note, since I was late to the tournament, I missed out on the lunch break while finishing up my first round. By Round 3, I had a hunger-induced migraine kicking in, and Robert was gracious enough to offer me some Advil he had with him. Saved the day for me.

Much respect, man.

Way to go Jamey.