As is my MO at this point, I decided to work on finding a viable non-meta list to bring to Regionals this year. I’ve found myself in a bit of a rut since W4, preferring to play A and E wings and refusing to play big base PWT ships. There haven’t been many (T-70 counts close enough since there’s nothing else at all close) Rebel releases since then that fit my typical play style, to the point where I was considering switching up my factions at one point just so I could get some variety of play. Instead, I decided to just go a completely different direction of lists. I decided that while it’s not agile in the standard sense, playing a bomb centered K wing was a great way to still get the fast, living on the edge feeling of flying A wings, while still being a refreshing change. But with the knowledge that a loaded K wing wouldn’t last against concentrated fire, I decided I needed something even scarier to be the primary target. To that, I decided I was running a Ghost since no one seems to like the 4 attack primary, and it kinda plods along anyways.
But from there, I had no clue what to do. I was so far out of my element, and it’s not even really a minor part of the meta that I didn’t really have a good place to start. I knew two of the ships I wanted, and I knew I wanted Sabine, Extra Munitions, Conner’s Net, Seismics (or Thermal Detonators if I have the point) and Advanced Slam, and I knew I wanted some sort of turret and FCS on the Ghost. With the ABT as the cheapest option, that left me 26 points to play with. The two obvious directions to go seemed to be TLT on the K wing, and a Phantom on the Ghost, which left 2 points to play with on other upgrades. After a few games of this, I decided the TLT on the K wing didn’t leave enough between the Ghost/Phantom, so I dropped it, leaving the K wing as a pure bombing machine.
I tried numerous iterations on this, most with some success, but even when I won, I wasn’t happy with how the list performed. I ended up giving up on the Phantom, and I tried substituting various ships including a T-70 and an A wing… But it still wasn’t clicking. I was about to give up on the combo – there just weren’t enough points left over after paying for all 3 ships to make it a good list… Which is when I decided to drop down to just two ships and give it one last go, fully committing to the K wing and the Ghost. After some play testing, I ended up with Miranda w/ TLT, Sabine, Extra Munitions, Conner’s Net, Seismic Charges, and Advanced Slam. As for the Ghost, I settled on Kanan w/ TLT, Recon Spec, Chopper, FCS, and Engine Upgrade. I originally had Tactician and Tactical Jammer on Kanan (and Thermals on Miri), but after a few games decided that the EU was a requirement for the build. And with that introduction, let’s talk about the Michigan Regional!
Since I failed at winning a store championship for the first time this year (2nd twice, top 4 twice), I had to play the opening round. I ended up drawing a non-Palpatine Imp Aces list. I’m not going to lie, I can’t remember the specifics of it, all I remember is that Whisper never took a single shot, dying to a Conner’s net opening round + a salvo of TLTs. We both knew it was over then, and the rest was just cleanup. I never drew a hull card. 1-0, 200 MOV.
After gloating to my friends who did use a bye that I’m ahead of them (that’s about the only time it’ll ever happen), I set off to play my round two opponent. Miranda w/ TLT + Tactician, Poe w/ VI, AT, R5P9, and Gold w/ BTL-A4, TLT, R3A2. I won the toss and gave him init, and once again we setup in opposite corners, with me on the SW. After a R3 exchange without his stresshog, I had managed to do 2 damage to Poe. He regened one, but I slammed right to his side and dropped a net, doing 2 more damage, and preventing the focus token (and a shot). The next turn the ions dropped him on a rock, where he took another damage, and a barrage of TLTs finished him up. The Y wing had a R1 shot on Miri so she took a stress, and his Miri was taking TLT shots at Kanan. From there, it was just more mop up, I managed to get both Seismics off on the Y wing, and continuously dodged his arc. The final turn of his life he had 2 hull and a R2 TLT on Miri, but her shots killed him off before he could double stress her. Kanan had taken a hull damage, so one more would give my opponent half credit, so I kept him out of the fight for a while as Miri took on Miri. But it was clear that I wasn’t going to get my last conner’s net without slamming, and in the meantime we were just doing 1 damage to each other each round. So at one point I brought Kanan back into the fight at R3, but I put my Miri in arc at R2, he chose to double stress Miri, allowing me to take a free shot with Kanan, which put my Miri soundly more healthy than her Miri. So I proceeded to take him back out of the fight and the K wings continued to just dance around until his died. 2-0 400 MOV.
It seems like I cannot go to a single tourney without getting paired up against Phildo, and this one was no different. I am always fearful of whatever he’s running, because he always executes it flawlessly. I think I’m exaggerating when I say I have a ~30% win rate against him… It’s probably much lower. But anyway, he was flying Whisper w/ VI, FCS, ACD, and RAC w/ Adapability, Palp, RC, and EU. Whisper is the single Ace I don’t like to see. On the one hand, she doesn’t have AT, so I can hit her. But on the other hand, decloak (in the hands of a skilled player like Phil) means that it’s impossible for me to land a bomb on her. While it’s not the reason I lost, Phil’s greens were obnoxious. Over 8 TLT shots (half of which were TL+F) I ended up only hitting her once. Most of my shots ended up being 3 hits. And while he normally had a token, he never had to spend it. Nor did he ever Palp it. They were just naturally good. I had one opportunity to bomb her, but Phil was smart enough to realize it, and chose not to decloak, even though he ended up out of the fight for several turns because of a conveniently placed rock requiring him to turn away from the fight. Whisper ended up only taking one shot, but RAC made up for it. In the mid game, I was still going for Whisper, and I wasn’t taking regen shots because of that. I did end up getting RAC down to 3 hull, but there was no way to actually kill him. Plus 2 of that was due to he didn’t want to boost and give up his R1 shot on Miri for the kill. 2-1, 430 MOV
The round 4 pairing wasn’t any better. I faced Dave Pontier and his fearsome crack swarm (PS, his presentation of it was great. Backstabber rolls an extra die, Scourge rolls an extra die, Mauler rolls an extra die, HR allows ‘em all to reroll that extra die!). There was also Wampa and a Black Crack to round it out. I was praying that I wouldn’t face any swarms since they’re a pretty hard counter to my list. He setup in the NW, and I did the SE. Due to the nature of the rocks, I decided to go “slow,” forcing him to come to me through the rocks or keep running around the exterior. Either way, I figured it would mess with his formation flying. No such luck – he found an alley straight through allowing his 3x2 to stay in formation, the turn before the engagement the first row was about 2 bases outside of the engagement, facing E, at my 10:30 (with me facing N). I was torn between slow rolling, hoping he did the same, which would give me the R3 on the front row, and out of range with the second row – perhaps I could even kill a Black Crack before it shot… Or the alternative is to speed ahead with a 3 bank, and if he sped ahead as well, I should be able to slam and get out of most of the arcs, and possibly even drop a conners on one of them. I chose the 3 bank and the correlating 4 straight for Kanan, he chose to slow roll with 2 forwards, putting Kanan at R3 of all of them, but Miri at R2 of the front row and R3 of the second row, with no escape if she slammed. Between my 4 TLT shots, I managed to do 2 damage to the Black Crack, failing to kill it off. He ended up spending 2 crack shots (only had 2 opportunities) and got me down to 2 hull remaining on Miranda. I must say though, I believe I rolled 2 evades on Backstabber, and one against Wampa as well keeping me alive. I figured I was still pretty much screwed though – I had done 2 damage to his cheapest ship, and he had my 47 point K wing down to 2 hull.
But he didn’t have an exit strategy planned if he didn’t kill Miranda, and the bombs seemed to have scared him off. As such, he ended up blocking every single potential move that Miranda could do, but to do so he had to turn all of his ships outwards away from her. The only ship that got a shot was Howlrunner, who was action-less due to bumping into one of his own. Miri took a regen primary at HR (everyone was within R1, I couldn’t target ANYONE with TLT), for no damage, and Kanan reduced HR’s shot to 2 dice, one of which was a hit, and HR cracked the evade I rolled. Back down to 2 hull. Kanan killed off the black crack and took 2 shields in return fire. I was getting a bit more excited at this point. Since everyone had scattered, I knew there was no longer going to be focus fire on Miranda, meaning that she was going to take a while to kill, giving me time to thin the board before it was just Kanan. The next round had the two that shot at Kanan K turn, the one (remaining) that turned the other way (facing south right now) K turn, and Mauler (who bumped Miri) to K turn behind her. I dropped a Seismic to do 2 damage to him, and then proceeded to turn upwards and slam left to avoid the arc of the two that K turned behind Kanan. Kanan just moved forward enough to allow that to happen and then focused. Howl turned to give chase, but ended at R2 of both of them. Kanan reduced HR’s attack to 1, and she rolled a blank, unable to get another hull on Miri. None of the other TIEs had arc/range, so Kanan shot at HR for a damage. From there, Kanan 2 turned to stay relevant, and then boosted to block Backstabber’s green moves (he was the one that K turned to the south). Miri was facing the edge at a 45 degree about 1/4 ‘’ away from it, so she was scripted into a 2 turn. Knowing that a seismic was coming, he did a 3 bank with one of the TIEs that she had just arc dodge, maintaining his stress, and then 2 bank + BR with the other one. I dropped the seismic, getting both of them, and remained out of arc of both of them. HR continued to give chase, but was able to BR out of the seismic, but lost the shot because of it. Backstabber did manage to sneak RIGHT in front of Kanan, but didn’t have a shot on him, so he evaded to brace against the incoming 5 dice primary. Miri took the two shots on HR, regened a shield and managed to kill her off, BS took his 2 dice shot at R3 on Miri, who lost the shield again, and then Kanan killed off the one that took 2 damage from the Seismic. The next turn BS ended up right on Kanan’s butt, and Miri killed off the other one that was hit with the Seismic. BS took his shot, but it was only 2 dice due to the rear arc that I cannot use, but is there, and Kanan’s ability. 2 more shields gone on Kanan. And then there was a handshake offered, and we went and grabbed some of the hot dogs outside. 3-1 630 MOV.
I’m not going to lie, I was feeling pretty good after that win, especially since the entire match I felt like I was losing, right up until the moment I won. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet… I had yet another crack swarm to face in R5. He was running another crack swarm, but led by Vader w/ VI, ATC, EU, and Assault Missiles. He setup in the NW, and I setup on the SW facing E. Vader went in the middle. He was doing some weird things with barrel rolling left and then the next turn BR right, and then the next BR L. And he decided to fly Vader from the middle over to the rest of his guys, and ended up K turning him before a single shot got off. I’ve played against him before, and I could tell from both his flying and his attitude he was done for the day. I won’t go into detail, but basically I was able to force him to split up his forces into essentially 3 units, Vader and two groups of two TIEs, and I proceeded to pick them off one at a time. While I did use bombs, I don’t really think they were needed for the win. Kanan continued to prove his worth against swarms when he was consistently only rolling 1 die a turn (and half the time it was a blank). Since I was able to split them up, my two ships were double teaming and taking one of them off before it shot, leaving the other to roll 1 die against Kanan. I’m going to attribute the win here more to attrition than anything else. Matt is a better player than the game he put up against me. The first hull card (and the only one he dealt) was a Major Explosion, that chained into a Direct hit, giving him half credit on Kanan. 4-1, 804 MOV.
At this point, my quick math calculations told me that unless every single 4-1 player took an ID, my MOV was high enough that I would make it in regardless of the outcome of the fight. And since I only saw a few hands go up, I figured I’d offer my opponent an ID to save my brain some for the elimination tables. But he thought we’d both be out of the cut if we took an ID, so he decided to play it out. I was relieved to see that my R6 opponent was flying a more forgiving of a list, Chewy Kanan. I don’t remember all of the upgrades, but Kanan had ABT and Chewy had Gunner and C3PO, leaving 10 points for other upgrades. Neither had EU to my recollection. But 29 health was a lot for me to chew through with TLTs and bombs. I setup in the SW corner facing north, while he setup on the NE facing south (he had init). I went full speed ahead + slam / boost, while he turtled slowly. The next turn he did K turns instead of kyting me along, but it did telegraph what his next two turns were going to be. I ended up with shots on just chewy to begin with, and took out 4 shields, though one of those was because he messed up, failing to realize he could block one of the 2 hit shots by calling C3PO at 1. He did 2 damage to Miranda. The next turn found his Chewy out of arc at R1 of my Kanan, and nowhere to boost. Miranda was also at R1 of Chewy. I decided to switch my target this turn to attack his Ghost, allowing me to take a regen shot with Miri and still take 4 shields off of his Kanan. Meanwhile, I was out of arc of his ghost, so he took an ABT shot on my Kanan for 2 shields, and a R1 on Miri with Chewy, but due to me spending a focus, he only rolled 2 hits (out of 3 dice), and she evaded one of them. 2 shields missing from both at this point. The following turn, he proceeded to K turn Chewy (still not sure why), and turn in with his ghost. I dropped a seismic on Chewy and rammed into the ghost with Miranda. My Kanan turned away from everything lining up a R2 on Chewy and pair of focus tokens. Two more TLT shots brought Chewy down to 3 hull, and a Kanan focus on both of his attacks left Miranda shieldless. The next turn chewy did a 1 straight to clear his stress, allowing me to drop yet another seismic for 2 damage, and his Kanan was fleeing the battlefield. A quick regen TLT shot killed Chewy off, and then it was just mop up on his Kanan. He did decide to switch targets to go for my Kanan, judging (rightfully so) that he wasn’t going to be able to kill Miranda before I killed him. He did get Kanan down to 3 hull, but failed to pull him completely off the board. 5-1, 950 MOV.
I ended swiss ranked 3rd, and tied with Phil for the best MOV of the day. My top 16 opponent was a newer local player who went 4-2 running yet another crack swarm. Though he chose quality over quantity, dropping it down to 5 total TIEs, Omega Leader w/ Juke + Comms Relay, HR w/ Crack, Zeta Leader w/ Crack, Mauler w/ Crack, and Dark Curse. He won the init roll and gave it to me. I setup in the SW facing E, and he setup on the NW facing S. I made a mistake by not leaving enough space for Miranda behind Kanan, but that was quickly fixed when Kanan did a 4 forward plus boost. Miranda’s 3 + 3 ended up running into the back of Kanan, but then they were in the right order. I kept moving at max speed across the bottom, and made a joke about how since he gave him init, and it takes him 5 min/ round to set all his dials and move, I just need to run away for 15 rounds and then I win! He did not find that to be funny, called me out for being unsportsmanlike, and continuously asked if that was my actual plan. The very next turn, I hit the brakes and managed to catch DC and only DC in R3 of both ships, getting 2 damage on him. That was my plan… Along with the fact that I had drawn him right into the asteroids – he had to commit his dials to one of three directions before knowing where I was going. I could have either turned in to the left below all of his ships, I could have banked in straight in front of all of them, or I could have continued up the side, requiring him to turn left, give up a round of shooting, just to stay on me. He chose to split his ships up, with 2 going after where I would be if I turned in hard (which I didn’t), and 2 facing if I banked in, and OL turning to line up the shot for the next turn if I boosted past everyone. I chose to bank in with Miri and was able to slam behind Zeta and drop a conners, and chose to use the Sabine damage to kill off DC. Kanan went flying up the edge ending with only Zeta having a R2 obstructed shot on him. We both used our abilities to make it 2v1 for another shield. The ion from the Conner’s landed Zeta on a rock doing a damage, and the TIEs that banked the wrong way did a hard turn to come back into the fight, setting up the perfect place for a Seismic to hit everyone but OL (who hadn’t moved)… And then OL did a surprising Sloop to end up in the blast radius. 5 damage from a single bomb, not bad! Kanan had done a single point of damage to Mauler the previous turn, so I did the Sabine damage on him to kill Mauler off. Miranda took her shots at HR and both went through to kill HR, leaving just OL and ZL alive. Zeta killed himself getting off of the rock the next turn, and OL was in a positon for Miri to do a 1 bank and drop the final Conner’s, leaving him at 1 hull, which was not enough to keep him alive through 4 TLTs.
So finally, after 2 years of just missing the cut at each regional, I finally made top 8 and get my special dice! This was my goal for a good showing, so I’ve also accomplished my goal – but why stop here, especially seeing as I just won my top 16 match 100-0. I get paired against Alex Yuen, who was running Kanan w/ TLT, Tactician, Tactical Jammer, AdvS, Recon Spec, Biggs w/ R4-D6, IA, and Ezra w/ Rage, Chopper. Knowing what the general idea of Kanan + Biggs is, I decided I would come around behind instead of going through Kanan. Except this didn’t quite work out as easily as I thought it would – go figure the guy knows what he’s doing! He swaps positions with the two so Biggs is now in front. At minimum this prevents me from getting shot at from Biggs unless he wants to K turn and separate the two ships from each other. I continuously get my Kanan just out of range of his Biggs, which was great… But I also kept continuously getting my Miranda just outside of range of his Kanan. Which means I was losing the engagement, 2 damage to 3 each turn (go go extra shuttle shot!). So after two turns of failing to get Miranda a shot, I decided that it was better if Kanan had to shoot at Biggs and guarantee that Miri could shoot at something. After pulling off the shields, Biggs did a K turn, and Miri and Kanan finished him off, but not before my Kanan ate 3 naturally rolled hits from him, killing off my Kanan as well. Miri was untouched with all 4 bombs, and he had 5 hull left on his Kanan, I figured I was in pretty decent shape. With 7 hull left, I figured I was best to just finish off Kanan, though in hindsight I might have wanted to break off pursuit to limit the incoming fire. He deployed Ezra, who raged and got 3 hits, all of a sudden I only had 4 hull left on Miri. Next turn I took a regen shot with the TLT but still ended the turn with 1 hull remaining. The following turn, I dropped a seismic on Ezra, who decided to do a white maneuver to get me in arc and then use chopper to rage again, bringing him to 1 hull. I made a mistake here – I was in R1 of Kanan out of arc, so he technically didn’t have a shot – Ezra had a R1 shot on me as well. I didn’t even consider my options at this point, I had already mentally surrendered, so I took the R1 on Kanan for the kill, and then died to Ezra’s R1 shot on me. I’m pretty sure this was the most suboptimal move I could have done. With Kanan at 3 hull, Ezra at 1, and myself at 1, I should have done one of two things – I could have slammed denying everyone a shot, and run away the next turn. Ezra had 3 stress and 1 health, so he wouldn’t have been able to get arc on me again – if he 2 turned I could have dropped a seismic for the kill, and if he did anything else he wouldn’t have arc. This would have left me 1 hull against Kanan’s 3, which would mean that I would die if we exchanged TLTs (barring pathetic attack dice on his part), so perhaps I don’t even drop a seismic, and just hope that my two TLTs would have been enough to regen + kill. The other option would have been to take a regen shot on Ezra, 2v2, and pray that I kill him. If I did, then I would have won barring I didn’t blank on a TLT (again) against Kanan. As a final option, I could have taken the non-regen shot at Ezra increasing the probability of the kill. A regen shot has a 35% of killing him (50% chance of 2 hits * 60% chance of at least 1 blank + 37.5% chance of 1 hit * 15% chance of 2 blanks), while a regular shot had a 69% (42% of 3 hits + 42% of 2 hits + 60% of 1 blank + 14% of 1 hit + 15% of 2 blanks) of killing Ezra. The question should have been to regen shot at Ezra or normal shot at him… But as I said, I was single mindedly focused on killing Kanan, plus when I activated my dial, Ezra was at full health, so it didn’t really cross my mind as a viable strategy to kill him. I’m pretty sure that in hindsight, taking a normal shot would have been the right move. It would be tricky to never be shot at from Kanan, but it would be doable with Slam. Plus, if I get in the R1 bubble, even if I can’t shoot because I’m there, it’s more likely that I can get him with a bomb… Oh well.
Anyways, that was my experience flying bombs at regionals. I realize most people probably won’t read all 5000 words of it, but I figured if there’s anyone out there that’s interested in knowing if bombs are viable, or how to make them viable, it would be a good read. Feel free to ask me any questions if there’s a specific section you want more detail on.