I just picked up my first core sets earlier this month (3/2/2016 to be exact) and dove into the game for the first time. I saw there was a tournament in local FLGS store for 3/20, and thought it would be a perfect opportunity just for participating, meeting the community, and maybe squeezing out a win or two. Over the next few weeks I decided since this was a few days after the wave 8 launch, that I would proxy and try online play to practice with a wave 8 centric build, to maybe catch the rest of the playing field off-guard and give me a fighting chance.

I finally settled on the following build after about two weeks of testing and tweaking with the very helpful players on VASSAL.

Contracted Scout

Deadeye

r4 Agromech

Proton Torpedoes

Extra Munitions

Guidance Chips

Boba Fett

Trandoshan Slaver

Gunner

Bossk

Zuckuss

Syndicate Thug

Twin Laser Turret

R5-P8

The idea with the build was to have the thug in place to whittle down the lower agility ships, and the slaver in place to demolish "Ace" ships with low hull/shield and high agility and not care about stress. The beauty with Zuckuss, is also having your opponent reroll "bad" rolls if you only had one hit on your dice to force gunner/bossk to trigger. Also having the U-Boat build with boba fett, allowed me to almost guarantee sneaking a crit in on those annoying ships that are hard to kill, but can be neutered by removing a card such as the Ghost and Shuttle.

My First game was against a 6 Z-95's, most with cluster missles and glitterstims. I was actually scared of this list when i first saw it since I have such a low defense value on all my ships that those cluster missles would do work. Thankfully, my opponent scattered their deployment accross the playfield which allowed me to centralize my force and charge them while they were separated. The first round my slaver killed a Z-95 with 4 hits, and forcing them to reroll their evades into nothing, and also getting another Z down to 1h. The subsequent rounds I handedly killed off 3 more leaving only 2 left with low shield/hull and them taking my Slaver as a consolation. So I had a full health Scout and Thug vs 2 damaged Z's. Then I did something really stupid. I selected the wrong direction hard turn and put myself on the map edge with the scout. The next turn it was inevitable and I flew off the map. The thug managed to keep both Z's out of firing arc and finished the job winning 100-73.

Result: Win 1-0

My second game I was excited about, they had brought a list that my slaver drooled over. Scum aces (Guri, Serrisu, and Talonbane) with Mindlink and some other defensive shenanigans. He set up in jousting position against my list and I thought it was too good to be true. We lurched forward to each other and in the first round of combat I killed Serrisu after landing a proton torpedo volley, TLTs, and some slaver love. The next round Guri took a beating. I had to call a TO over to clarify the ruling on autothrusters in an Auxilary arc and my opponent threw a temper tantrum, but took his beating and I took the win only losing half hull on my Slaver. 100-18

Result: Win 2-0

Since this was a somehwhat small tournament (12-14) people we only did three rounds, so this was the final match of the day. I got matched against the one list I didn't want to be matched against (Chewie / Generic Ghost). This list prevented me from leveraging the slaver bossk/gunner and would be an uphill battle. I started by focusing the Ghost and after 4-5 rounds of laying into him with proton torpedoes and focus fire I eventually got him down, but at the cost of my Thug and Slaver. It was then an attrition game against the scout and I fell to my untimely demise after being whittled down from lack of damage due to 2 attack dice and C3PO. In retrospect I probably should have focused the falcon first, and left the ghost for last since I wouldn't have had any issues in getting late game damage in. 49-100

Result Lose 2-1. Finished barely out of Top3 by MOV.

In hindsight, I actually had a chance to win the whole thing If i didn't fly off the map in the first round (would have been paired with palp aces, which I designed the list to counter), but you live and you learn and I had a blast. I hope to attend regionals with some more practice, and attend some more FLGS tournaments. Shout out to Tactical Advantage in Kingston Pennsylvania for making my first tournament an enjoyable one.