Over the years I've had reasonable success with X-wing, winning a couple of the local tournaments at Athena Games in Norwich, and frequently making the cut in others.

For the 2016 store championship I decided to make use of an opportunity provided by my win at a previous escalation tournament - a brand new Imperial Assault Carrier! This brought my TIE fighter total up to seven, enough for a full swarm, a rare beast in Norwich which doesn't see this list archetype much.

I considered a classic Howlrunner swarm, but was eventually tempted by the relatively new EPT Crack Shot, which I theorised would grant me the ability to punch through the super-defensive aces (the classic example being a stealthed Soontir Fel). I rounded it out with Wampa who can also hurt aces easily.

My final list was:

- 2 x Academy Pilot

- 4 x Black Squadron pilot + Crack Shot

- Wampa + Targeting Computer

I practiced with the list beforehand against a number of opponents, and with a 5-1 record I felt I had a decent chance of doing well. My ideal opponents were large ships that I could focus down - conversely I knew with only 2-attack ships I would have issues with well-defended or hyper-mobile opponents, even with Crack Shot.

Apologies to most of my opponents, but I've I didn't take a note of your names. Let me know and I'll update this report!

Game 1 - Palpatine Shuttle, PTL/AT/SD Soontir Fel, ATC/EU Darth Vader

My first game was against a modern classic, Palpatine and two aces. It can be virtually impossible to punch through the defences with the Emperor there to protect against poor dice rolls.

My opponent set up the shuttle to run along the back edge protected by an asteroid field, with Darth on my left and Fel on my right. In the first couple of turns I ran my swarm towards Darth - I was able to get shots, but didn't use my Crack shots because I figured I had to save them for Soontir Fel, who would be virtually impossible to kill otherwise.

Darth took down a TIE but was hurt in return. Rather than K-turn behind him though I took a hard-1 turn to the right to catch Fel who was trying to flank me. Luck was with me - Fel tried to evade my shots, but a boost and barrel roll only got him out of arc of half the swarm. Crack shot really paid off here, and Fel went down to my combined fire, Palpatine notwithstanding.

Unfortunately the turn had left me in a poor position, pinned against the asteroid field with Darth behind me and the shuttle coming up fast. I was forced to split my ships, and couldn't threaten both foes at once. A scrappy fight amongst the asteroids developed which saw another couple of TIEs go down in return for damage on the shuttle. I got shots at Darth several times, but was never able to take his sole remaining his point off.

The final score was a loss by six points, thanks to half damage on the shuttle - disappointing but perhaps not surprising with my list.

Game 2 - PTL/AT Carnor Jax, ATC/EU Darth Vader, Juke / AT Inquisitor

Second game and second aces list - uh-oh! Michael is a friend and long-standing opponent, and had been tweaking his list based on feedback form our gaming group, myself included.

Darth was on my left, the Inquisitor in the centre and Carnor on the right. Once again I concentrated against Darth, figuring he was both the easiest to take down and the most damaging threat. During the first pass, Michael had two choices - fly Darth straight ahead try to slip inbetween my swarm and the table edge, or turn away. I had the firepower advantage, and had the opposite choice - turn towards the table edge, or forge ahead and try and catch Vader on the turn. I chose the latter because it would set me up for the Kturn - and chose wrongly! Darth slipped through the net...

By this time the Inquisitor and Carnor were behind me. I k-turned but stressed 2-dice TIE fighters had no chance of hurting them at long range thanks to autothrusters. At least I caught Carnor as he tried to the same as Vader had a couple of turns previously, but even with crack Shot I only managed to do two damage.

From there things went quickly downhill. I managed to do some damage to Vader, forcing both him and Carnor to run for it, but I had exactly zero chance of catching either of them, and the Inquisitor was hitting me all the while. Continual k-turns simply left me stressed with my opponents dodging out of arc, and that just make the Inquisitor's Juke more effective. At the end I had lost most of my TIE fighters for plenty of damage but no kills.

Game 3 - 4-LOM + Tractor Beam and Zuckuss crew Mist Hunter, Cluster Missile / Glitterstim / Guidance Chip Kihraxz x 2, Z-95

My performance left me firmly in the lower rankings, but at least this was a match-up I liked. There was little finesse here - both of us fancied our chances in the joust, and headed directly for each other.

I got lucky to start with when, despite Zuckuss, I managed to evade my opponent's long-range tractor beam - in return I caused a decent amount of damage to the Mist Hunter. The next turn saw us close to short range - so much so his Z-95 blocked me. As I had anticipated the two Kihrazs popped their Glitterstim and, combined with Guidance Chips, their cluster missiles made short work of a couple of TIEs. It was still an exchange in my favour though when I killed 4-LOM and hurt a Kihraxz and the Z-95. Even better, I could K-turn while the Kihraxz couldn't.

The rest of the game went as expected. Only the Z could turn, and it was killed before it could fire, along with the damaged Kihraxz. The other then unfortunately k-turned over an asteroid, and fell without doing further damage to the concentrated fire of my five ramining TIEs.

At last I had my first win!

Game 4 - ATC + EU Darth Vader, ATC Advanced x 2, AC Advanced

I wasn't sure about the odds on this one. We had similar hit points and three evade dice apiece. I had more ships but the Accuracy Corrector and ATCs would compensate for that.

I set up in the centre, while the enemy also set up in formation on my right. The first turns seemed to go well when my opponent chased Wampa (acting as decoy in my lower right), allowing the rest of my swarm to get an unopposed shot at the nearest Advanced after I took a hard-right turn. Seven ships. Even Wampa had a shot, albeit unmodified following a barrel roll to evade one of the Advanced.

Seven TIEs, six of them with focus, two at range one, and three Crack spent Crack shots later, and I'd done... four damage. Even worse, the surviving Advanced was now blocking my k-turn.

I had two choices - split my swarm and go in for the kill with the ships that could 1-turn back towards my table edge, or turn away and give away my opponent time to k-turn or hard-turn too. I chose the former - but messed it up, landing one ship on an asteroid and blocking others.

Once again things went downhill from there as things turned into a scrap near my table edge. I did eventually manage to take down a single TIE, but I lost several in return. When time was called I was no nearer victory, and my opponent had a comfortable win.

Game 5 - Miranda + C-3PO + TLT, 2 Warden + Tactician + TLT, Warden + Jan + TLT

Shaun is another player I know. He's fairly new to the game, but is already well know for his love of TLTs. I knew I'd have to take Miranda out early otherwise the regen would undo any damage I could cause.

After a bit of maneuvering I caught her against the left-hand board edge. She swung in and collided with my swarm, denying three ships shots, but giving three others perfect range-1 shots with focuses.

Four TIE fighters later, and... I'd cause three points of damage to Miranda.

That set the tone for the rest of the battle. Unable to k-turn due to the board edge, I turned to chase the two K-wings who has got ahead of Miranda, figuring I'd just have to catch up with her later.

It didn't matter though, as a series of truly abysmal attack dice rolls meant I could never seriously threaten the enemy, while their combined TLT fire killed a TIE fighter a turn. Even when I did managed to hit, the Ks would dodge, twice rolling two evades against range three shots. I eventually managed to strip the shields from one K-wing, but by that point I was down to two damaged TIE fighters, and then it was over.

My post-battle estimate is that perhaps 15% of my attach dice were natural hits, and Shaun agrees, putting the figure at between 10% and 20%. Even with focuses, I think I rolled exactly one set of three hits from all my range 1 attacks, and three sets of two hits from all my other attacks combined (two of which were totally cancelled as mentioned above).

Game 6 - PTL CarnorJax, PTL Tetran Cowell, Outmaneuver Mauler Mithel, Academy Pilot x 2

I was now 4-1 down - I would have to win my last game in order to have any chance at that C-3PO card...

My opponent spread out his fighters with the TIEs in the centre, Carnor on my left and Tetran on my right, hoping to flank my swarm with his Interceptors. Instead of taking the bait, I kept pushed ahead cautiously in the first turn while the flankers zoomed ahead. This let me see their position, and I then turned left to take on Carnor while Mauler and had to push ahead or risk being right in my guns if I had done another two-straight.

My dice finally recovered, and without Autothrusters or a Stealth Device Carnor was toast against my Crack Shots. Thanks to the board edge I could then only K-turn with half of my force, with Tetran and the remaining TIEs coming up behind me.

This time though it was my opponent who had terrible dice. Despite being defenceless I only lost one TIE, and managed to take one out in return as well as damaging Tetran.During the next turn I was then able to block him with a de-stressing TIE, and he went down to my remaining Crack Shots - as did Mauler. After that it was just a case of mopping up the last TIE, leaving me with a very solid win.

I finished in 29th position out of 45, just inside the 32nd place I needed for the alt art C-3PO card. Overall it was a very disappoint tournament result - my swarms promise in testing utterly failed to materialise on the day!

I think my problems were three-fold:

- Poor flying on my part, and good flying from my opponents. I was a little too afraid of splitting my swarm when I could - this would have reduced my shots on any single target, but it might have given me at least some shots, some of the time. Would this have been enough against the super-defensive aces? Perhaps not, but it would have been harder to predict. In return whenever an opponent out-maeuvered me I was generally dead, and on several occasions I messed up my future turn's positioning in return for a chance at a shot on the current turn. Great if it pays off and kills an ace, bad otherwise.

- This links to point two though - firepower. The swarm puts out plenty of red dice, but it comes in penny-packets that have serious trouble punching through stacked defences. I will certainly fly mini-swarms in future, but it'll be a while before I trust a list with nothing but 2-attack ships. Perhaps Howlrunner would have made a difference, but she has a massive target painted on her head, and she restricts mobility while she's alive.

- Finally there were the dice. Overall I probably only had a little below average luck, but there were a couple of games where I failed to do any serious damage, just when it mattered. In particular the game against Shaun saw some of the most abysmal red dice rolls I've ever witnessed in an X-wing game! Decent luck still wouldn't have been enough, but it might have helped...

So, is the swarm dead? I don't know for sure, but I suspect if it's not then it's on life support. Perhaps someone else can prove me wrong, but for the moment I'll be looking for something different for tournament play.

Overall, despite the poor result, I still had a great time playing the game I love. All my opponents were great, and very sportsmalike no matter the result of each game. As for me, it's back to the drawing board for the Regionals in the summer...