I started posting over in the Squad Lists forum. At this point it seemed apt for me to shift over to here, since I'm mostly reporting results.

As a player, I'm in a conundrum. I seek challenges and I love tournaments, and I have a strong competitive streak. Unfortunately, the reality of my life makes it difficult to indulge in that. I simply don't have the time or flexibility to play the number of games it would take to put me in the true upper tier. I characterize myself as a "serious casual". I try to compensate by studying, reading, and contemplating the game as much as I can.

After having read a lot and benefitted, I felt I needed to give back, too, especially since the process of writing down also helps settle my own thoughts. While I started posting this over in the Squad Lists forum, it seemed appropriate to shift here now, as I'm reporting results.

I took my list to another local tournament. I've started calling this squad "Marked for Death" because of the target lock synergy. It consists of:

The Inquisitor (Inqi) with TIE /V1 title, Autothrusters, and Push the Limit

Omega Leader (Omega) with Juke, Comms Relay

Colonel Vessery with Heavy Laser Cannon and Veteran Instincts

I'd previously run this list and had some success with it-- but flukes do happen and as infrequently as I play consistency can be an issue. I was eager to get more games in to get a better feel for its true potential.

GAME 1

My opponent was running a three-ship Scum list with a loaded Dengar, a loaded Zuckuss, and a Bugzapper Z. He started with his Z centerline, so I spread out a bit, with (from West to East) Vessery, Omega, and Inqi. I out-thought myself here: thinking I would take advantage of Dengar's dial, I aligned most of the rocks towards one edge. Unfortunately, I put them along... the East edge, which would really have hampered him if he was trying to turn *right*. Instead Dengar and Zuckuss set up shop in the Northwest corner, with plenty of room to wheel into the middle. Whoops.

I started off in echelon, with Vessery slow-rolling, Omega moving up, and Inqi dashing forwards and boosting in. On the next turn Inqi took a potshot at the Z but underperformed while everyone else started closing range. Turn three is where things got interesting. To avoid a block, Inqi blew past the Z while Omega Leader got in its face, and Vessery set up for a range three shot on Zuckuss. Zuckuss was pointed straight East by now with Dengar on his wing. He actually pegged Inqi, and Dengar took a shield from Vessery by using 4-LOM to lock out his focus token. When Omega failed to polish off the Z, my opponent took care of that with the Feedback Array to strip Inqi's other shield.

(In hindsight, I could see the other reason why he did that, but it sure caught me off-guard at the time.)

So now Inqi had target locks from two intimidating ships and was pointed northwest-- he *maybe* could turn in but he'd be toast if he did, since Dengar and Zuckuss both out-PSed him (VI on Zuckuss). Instead I disengaged with Inqi, taking a target lock on my way out, while Omega charged in and Vessery did yet another 1-bank.

My opponent K-turned right into my lap.

This, I think, is the other reason he'd blown up his Z-- to ensure it was out of Zuckuss' way. There were other ways to do that, I'm sure... be that as it may, the K-Turn put Zuckuss right in front of Omega, with Vessery to his south, and no actual shot for Zuckuss to take. Zuckuss didn't survive that crossfire. 34 ineffective points went down with him.

Because of a rock, Omega had to turn north, preventing him from engaging Dengar; that left Vessery to handle that himself, so he K-turned. I considered a barrel roll, but I wasn't sure what the geometry would be if I did. In the event I should have done it. When Dengar turned he ended up with Vessery in his arc. 4-LOM locked out my focus token, so even though Vessery got his lick in, the revenge shot killed me.

BUT-- that left Dengar ioned. Omega Leader then did what any Academy Pilot could do: he did a 1-turn and a barrel roll to pin Dengar on a rock while Inqi came back around. Inqi pummeled Dengar, and a second turn on the rock finished him.

I'm not sure if I'd call the win "unearned", as I did a few maneuvers I was proud of. Still, winning a game because your opponent does a K-Turn to deny all his own shots is not the most satisfying way to win. I also came away unimpressed with loaded-out Zuckuss. This was not a good notion to have in my head.

The more I think about it, the more I think I could have kept Vessery alive. Dengar had already accumulated two ion tokens by the time Vessery's turn came around. That meant he was going to end up on a rock thanks to my block. That would, in turn, mean no return shots, and safety for Vessery. Still, it's oh-so-hard to turn down a four-dice double-modified attack, especially since the next turn wasn't as clear to me in-situ as it was in hindsight.

Still, I came out of that game feeling good... and was promptly put in my place.

GAME 2

My opponent was rubbing double U-Boats and a Zuckuss with K-4, VI, and tractor beam. This time I got the rock placement right, putting a barrier along the West edge. He set up the U-boats in the corner anyway, one going straight, the other ready to do a 1-turn. I set Omega right outside the barrier while Vessery and Inqi went in the middle. Zuckuss started facing the barrier... and I came up with my plan.

Zuckuss would be my target. I figured it would take the U-boats a few turns to navigate through the rocks, and if they rushed they'd be actionless, which was acceptable. My firepower would be more effective against Zuckuss than the Boats; if I took care of him quickly, which was certainly possible, I'd be in a much better position. So, at the start, I slow-rolled Omega to pick up my evade, while Inqi and Vessery sprinted centerline and boosted/barrel rolled for more distance.

Those were the last correct decisions I'd make.

On the next turn I dialed in some 3-banks for my center guys while Omega turned west for no particular reason-- perhaps to see if I could get to the right of the U-Boats. True to my prediction, one U-Boat went slowly to try and negotiate through the rocks. The other bumped behind it. This is where I lost my mind.

Instead of barrel rolling *out* to continue my sweeping motion towards Zuckuss, I decided this was the perfect time to engage. After all, with no action the one would be guaranteed to have no torp shot, and I'd outrange it anyway, plus I could dodge arc on the one. Inqi and Vessery barrel rolled in to get arc and stay out of the lead U-Boat's arc, while Omega also rolled in (though this, stupidly, put him facing a rock). I opened fire, and...

In my original post asking for feedback on the list, I cited a weakness of being unable to alpha-strike a U-Boat even at full power. This engagement, because of all my rolling, was at decidedly less than full power. Even if the dice had been with me, what happened next would still have happened. Zuckuss yanked Inqi forward into the U-Boat's arc, and my shots failed to inflict serious damage on it. Inqi ate a torpedo to the face, losing his shields, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was I was now committed to a close-range engagement I didn't want.

On the next round the game went to heck. Inqi got blocked on a U-boat's face. Omega had to go over the rock to turn in. Vessery seemed like he had suspiciously good position for a close-in engagement, right up until he got tractored onto a different rock. Of my three ships only Omega had a shot, which he rolled double eyeballs for (naturally), and in return Inqi got plastered.

The next turn was almost worse. The only way for Vessery to escape the rock and a block was to run at high speed, and a savvy K-turn from my opponent (plus some nice turret shots) took Vessery to the brink. Omega did a whopping one damage and in return got crippled by a torp. It was all over but the mop-up from there.

Ohhhhh boy. They say you learn more from your losses than your wins, and I sure learned a lot from this. Let us count the ways...

1) I changed my plan at the wrong time. The right time to change the plan would have been at the point of setting dials on the second round. Alternatively, I could have stuck with my plan and delayed the engagement one more round by barrel rolling away. Either approach would have been preferable to what I actually did. What I actually did was allow the exact thing I was trying to avoid (getting in arc of two enemies at once and suckered into close range by the tractor beam) without the action economy I needed to make my attack stick.

2) Tractor beams are terrifying.

3) I need to break my strange nonchalance about Omega Leader and rocks. This was the third game out of four where I ran Omega Leader over a rock-- in a match against Brobots I actually ran him over the same rock in back-to-back rounds. He's a TIE Fighter. He needs that darn focus token, and he doesn't need to take unnecessary damage when it's entirely avoidable. I don't fly like that with other ships. I don't know what's going on.

4) R4 Agromech is a killer upgrade. I'd always respected it, but I'd only ever seen its impact on things like Deadeye and BTL Y-Wings, where the target lock and focus token are spent separately. Using the focus to get a TL to affect the *same* attack actually works out very well! Afterwards I crunched the math and it's a 7/8 chance to hit, only slightly worse than the 15/16 you get from having double mods up front. And with the Jumpmaster being a large-based turret ship, meaning range one shots *all the time*, its spooky-accurate primary is more effective than I'd anticipated.

5) You need focus tokens against Zuckuss. He changes the relative effectiveness of evade and focus tokens to favor focus. We all know the attack die is more powerful than the defense die, but if Zuckuss can accentuate that difference by having mods the defender doesn't have, the defender is toast.

Phew! That took longer than expected. I'll post the rest later.

Good write up so far!

I think there are a lot of players underestimating R4 agromech + 'piddly' 2 attack die turret. The torpedo scout is threatening at all ranges, although it is still slightly less so at R1 (unless out of arc).

If you want to get more games in and don't have a lot of opportunities to play on the table top, VASSAL is a good alternative. Your situation is very similar to mine, and I find I can get my X-wing 'fix' thanks to VASSAL (being able to play at least once a week is nice!)

Just to elaborate on point 5, I mentioned it specifically because I kept getting in situations where I had an evade token for defense, but no focus. Zuckuss overwhelms evade tokens. The breakpoint for focus versus evade is four green dice, and Zuckuss can easily push you there. The fact that he has so many options for getting double mods to interact with his pilot ability is amazing.

Anyway... on to the rest of the report!

GAME 3

With a 1-1 record and a pretty bad MoV, I was firmly on the bottom half of the ledger. But whenever I find myself in that situation, I cheer myself with the knowledge that my opponents are, too...

This game was against Poe and Red Ace (a.k.a. Tank Ace) in their standard configurations. The third ship here was Sabine Wren with Juke (?). He deployed Wren along the western table edge, with Tank Ace nearby, and a Poe-shaped hole between them. Having a fairly good idea of my opponent's trajectory, I set up an envelopment, with Vessery opposite Tank Ace and Omega and Inqi spread further east.

He moved fairly quickly, dashing forward with 4-aheads. I replied with a slow-rolling Vessery, 2-ahead + Evade Omega, and an aggressive Inqi, who did a five plus boost-in to start the envelopment. My opponent stayed aggressive on the next turn, with Wren and Tank Ace both coming ahead. Vessery barrel rolled to control range and dodge Wren's arc, while Omega banked in front to accomplish the same. Inqi, for his part, did a 3-bank (he can go really fast when he's not stressed!) and achieved lock on Poe, setting up my shots.

This was close to an ideal engagement for me: range 3 across the board and all my ships able to focus on a single foe. My opponent's shots at me did nominal damage to Vessery, and in return Poe took a hull hit.

On the next turn Wren tried to turn in to get into the furball while Tank Ace surprised me with a 4K (my rolls had taken me off his axis); I suppose it made some sense, since he wasn't in a great position to land a block and if he'd tried and missed he'd have had no shots at all. For my part, I set up a killbox for Poe, with Inqi banking in and tanking up, Omega Slooping, and Vessery doing a 4K + barrel roll combo that actually put him directly behind Omega. Poe did a 2-Turn right in front of Omega. It was lovely.

This turn was as good for me as my game two turn three was bad. Poe took a shield from Inqi, and in return got wiped out by Omega and Vessery's combined fire. That freed Inqi to shoot Wren and spook her into burning her evade, nerfing Juke; that left her and Tank Ace with unmodified range 3 and 2 shots that did nothing to me.

On the next turn... I think I saw what he was trying to do. He flew straight East with Wren to try and set up a block on Omega and swung Tank Ace in behind to take advantage of the shot. Instead, Omega disengaged, Vessery indulged his 4k habit, Inqi cruised in, and Wren went kaboom. (He'd likely have been better off banking northeast with Tank Ace to try and overwhelm Inqi with Wren and Tank Ace together; instead he ended up with no shot at all.) It was just mop-up from there, with me chasing Tank Ace down and actually killing him before time expired, for a change. (Fun subtlety: if Omega Leader shoots Tank Ace first, while he has an evade token carried over from a previous turn, Tank Ace can't use the token he has because Omega says "no", *and* he can't use his pilot ability to grab a second token because of Comms Relay's wording. Tee-hee!)

This game was a walloping. My opponent was cooperative and my ships performed pretty much as designed. I controlled range, set up an initial encounter in my favor, eliminated the priority target, and outmaneuvered the chaff. I learned little that was new.

GAME 4

This opponent was running a classic Chiraneu-Whisper build. An oldie, but a goodie. My ships were a little beefier than the Soontirs that Chiraneu-Gunner-Vader truly feasts on, but Tactician could still ruin my day, and I was at a PS disadvantage that could complicate my life considerably.

This had implications right from the start, where I was forced to set up with zero foreknowledge of my foe. So I spread out, Omega in the east, Vessery in the center, and Inqi in the west, planning to use my speed to re-concentrate once my foe committed. He promptly overloaded the east. In a way that was fortunate, since Inqi could recover and close distance faster than Omega would have been able to if my foe had deployed contrariwise. On the other hand, Omega needs time to setup to best advantage, and my foe gave me no such time. On turn *one* he made an ultra-aggressive move with a boost by Chiraneu that stripped Omega's banked evade token and a shield in the bargain, even though Omega had done an ultra-conservative 1-turn exactly to avoid this.

This caught me off-guard, and (spooked) I flew Omega the heck away; I needed him, in my head, to even the playing field against Whisper. While my opponent wheeled towards the southeast rock, Vessery and Inqi flew in to pick on Whisper and Chiraneu, respectively. In fact I'd originally planned to have Vessery pile on Chiraneu, but when Whisper whiffed on her shot against Vessery and went into the defense cloaked but tokenless, I was tempted by the shot, only for the dice to fail me. Inqi, for his part, was immensely gratified by the prospect of straight damage going through on Chiraneu, and resolved to take that shot as frequently as possible.

Believing my opponent would maneuver based on the ships already engaged, I dialed up a Sloop for Omega. Whoops. While Vessery ended up blocking Chiraneu (he had to do a straight to shed Tactician stress), Whisper went to chase Omega, dodging Inqi in the bargain. Once more Omega took damage while losing his Evade; once more Inqi plugged away at Chiraneu.

Omega's odds of surviving the next turn were low; my odds of successfully disengaging were nil. I banked in to at least try to do something, while Vessery did his usual 4K and Inqi continued his slow banks. Somehow Omega ended up right in Whisper's way, saving me that shot, but Chiraneu stepped into the gap and Vadered Omega into oblivion. (The 2 damage Chiraneu took from Vader there was more than Omega had inflicted.) This time it was Inqi that had the gorgeous shot on tokenless, de-cloaked Whisper, and again the dice failed me. At least Vessery piled the damage onto Chiraneu-- something he couldn't keep sustaining at this rate.

The thing is, Chiraneu with engine upgrade is fast, fast enough to get away from Vessery-- though not fast enough to evade Inqi. Tanked-up Inqi at range 3 is a good match for Chiraneu, even with Gunner; that was an exchange I could continue indefinitely. Because of that, protecting Inqi from Whisper became Vessery's big mission. The first turn he finally managed to push 2 damage onto Whisper. The next round I overshot a little bit. Vessery had done a 4-ahead, and my opponent had decloaked towards Vessery. Since I wouldn't have a shot, I tried a barrel roll to block. It *almost* worked, but my opponent cleared enough of the 1-turn to draw a bead on Inqi. Of course, at range 2.

Double-stressed, Inqi tried to do a 1-turn to maintain range from Chiraneu, while Vessery banked to threaten Chiraneu if he approached. It didn't quite work. Chiraneu boosted into range 2 of Inqi, turning off auto-thrusters and turning on his pilot ability, and Vadered for the rare double K.O. It was a good use of Vader; if he hadn't, Vessery would have easily finished Chiraneu himself.

This left a shieldless Whisper against Vessery. It was time for brute force. I relentlessly K-turned, using barrel roll to protect my flanks in response to my foe's de-cloaks. Eventually, by denying Whisper shots and scoring occasional blocks, I compelled my opponent to disengage to try and re-cloak and reestablish his advantage. He could never quite get away, and I threw 4 reds against 4 greens until math obeyed.

It was a fun game, and games involving Whisper tend to be full of mental gymnastics for both parties. I could have burned down Chiraneu faster if I'd focused fire more, yes, but I still feel that taking shots at Whisper when I could was correct; you don't know when your next decent opportunity will come. Plus, I've now won games despite an early loss of each ship. That is to say, in my games with this list, I've suffered early loss of Vess, early loss of Inqi, and early loss of Omega, and won with the survivors. This is reassuring. Having no center of gravity can be happy. It's especially gratifying that it was Vessery who closed this game out, because despite being the most expensive of the three ships, he might be the weakest of them one-on-one.

Good times!

Good post!

I'm in the same situation as you, except I've not had any time at all to play in a tournament yet!

I can relate to all things you mention.

I strongly suggest you download Steam's game: TableTop Simulator (TTS). It has X-wing with awesome grafics. Watch some new youtube clips of TTS X-wing, you will be impressed!
Thats how I play nowdays And in the future, I will aim to attend a real tournament!

Btw I liked you'r list alot! Think you will have fun times when Imperial Veterans gets released. As a sidenote, you can play the Imperial Veterans ships/upgrades already in TTS

I'm pretty much in the same situation as the OP. I like this game a lot and regular life takes up a lot of time. I do a lot of mental preparation and discussing for tournaments that I do get go to, because I don't get as much play time as I'd like.

I like that list a lot, the similar PS is good, as is the target lock cooperativity. I'm with you on Vessery, though. It's always a little disappointing when he's the last one, because he's all of a sudden a lot less impressive for his points. I solved this by typically equipping him with Lone Wolf. When nobody else is around, he suddenly becomes way nastier. It doesn't really work in the OP's squad for point and pilot skill reasons, but it's an upgrade I like on Vessery a lot.