12th June 2016 BitC Inaugural X-wing tournament
This was my first Tournament after playing X-wing with friends and family for about 3 months. Like most things I went in with both feet and have collected a lot of ships/cards etc… to be honest there is not much I do not have (ghost, hwk and 2 of the epic ships). But my fav ship is the Firespray-31 and that is what I have been flying for the last month or so in various forms :- Boba Fett and Kath Scarlet (mix of VI, Dengar, Gunner, engine upgrade and glitterstims) or Kath and Emon Azzameen with Proxi mines, Boba fett and Mangler cannon added to the mix.
After playing a couple of warm up game against nasty imperial lists (palp aces and imp aces) the night before I was still in two minds as to what to play. In the end I decided to go with the list I would have more fun with :-
Kath Scarlet – Vet Instincts, Engine upgrade, proximity mines, Dengar, Glitterstim.
Emon Azzameen – Proximity mines, Slave 1, Extra munitions, Mangler cannon, Boba Fett, Glitterstim.
Goal for the day? Try not to come last, fly well and enjoy it. If a win comes along in the process all the better!!
So after swapping all my cards around that morning I arrived in good time to a lovely place to play X-wing. Board in the City is a café for Board gamers in Southampton, Hampshire in the UK. 300+ board games of all shapes and sizes available to play at your table. The place is great and homely. After the strays had finally signed in we had 14 people for 4 rounds of Swiss.
Round 1
Dash in the YT2400
Chopper in the Ghost
First surprise of the day – my Proxi Mines do not work quite as I had thought!! They are an action so get put down after I move and take my action - Noooooooooo?!?!?!? Ok, I needed to re-think a little after this bomb shell (fnar fnar). VI on Kath now seemed a little wasted as moving first could have been better a lot of the time.
I ended up losing the game 100-42 because I got obsessed by the massive Ghost ship instead of taking out Dash when I had two healthy ships. The ghost did go down first but shortly followed by Emon (wasting most of his ordnance) which left an injured Kath no hope against Dash.
Round 2
Boba Fett in the Firespray-31
Dengar in the Jumpmaster 5000 with Punishing one title
It was a Firespray Love in!! Really nice to see on the board. I thought Dengar was going to be the danger so went after him with both ships. Using my Proxi mines well (I think all 3 did 7 damage) I managed to take him off the board with the loss of Emon. Then it was a Firespray off with Kath vs Boba. It ended up with Boba (2 hp left) landing on a Debris field in range 1 of the back of Kath (1 hp left) who had a focus. Boba shot first with 4 unmodified dice – 0 hits!! , Kath responded with 5 hits using dengar and the focus -
Win 100-78
Round 3
Palob in the HWK - TLT
Guri in the StarViper
Kavil in the Y-wing – TLT
All these guys were Attani Mindlinked which created me real problems. Kavil was mostly rolling 4 dice TLT shots and both roles had a focus to use. This was basically 2 damage per round!! Mistake I made was not killing him first and flying Emon too close to the edge with no chance of return haha.
Loss 100-30.
Round 4
Han Solo – Millenium Falcon with C3P0
Poe D – X-wing T-70 with BB8
This was a fun game because both of us did not really care about the result. We talked about the draw haha but got told to play it. Karl flew his Poe straight at my Firespray's and he basically exploded. He did manage once again to get Emon off the board but the nearly Full health Kath mopped up the highly Mined YT-2400.
Win 100-48
Record 2-2 and came 8th which gave me the extra Ion tokens with my VI card!!!
Lessons learned :-
1) Know what your cards do before going to a tournament!
2) If a bump will mean you can position better next go, then take the bump.
3) From the experience I had if I can get the ordnance to do some work I am more likely to win.
4) Had a blast playing and watching (all of my games were over in under 35 minutes). Everyone was very nice to me even when getting stuff wrong (see Proxi Mines lol).
Overall it was a very positive experience and one I would like to repeat. I lost to the guys that came 1st and 3rd and won vs the guys that came last and 2nd last so I can’t really gauge how I did. I feel I flew well in 3 of the games but tactically could have been more aware in the 2 games I lost. Bring on the next one!!
