Hello internet.

Tomorrow morning I'll be competing in a local tournament at 100 points. Nothing too fancy but it has a few twists that make it super interesting:

1. Each player must field exactly 1 large ship. No more, no less.

2. If your large ship is destroyed, your opponent gains an additional 25 points towards his margin of victory. So the maximum amount of points you can earn in a round is 225 instead of the usual 200.

While I'd be tempted to just play normally, get full wins and steal 1st place that way, there's 1 problem. I hate large ships. I think I've only ever flown a YT-2400 (my own), but I recently picked up a Lambda shuttle for HotAC. So to reiterate, I only have the YT-2400 and Lambda shuttle as my large ships, but for small ships I've got pretty much everything. The following is my though process towards developing my list:

1st Stage:

My thinking was that my opponents would have been fixated on killing my large ship and designed their lists accordingly. So I would utterly reject their attempts to kill my own large ship in true Rebel style:

Dash Rendar (36)

Veteran Instincts (1)

Mangler Cannon (4)

Outrider (5)

Tactical Jammer (1)

Biggs Darklighter (25)

R2-F2 (3)

Stealth Device (3)

Green Squadron Pilot (19)

Chaardan Refit (-2)

Adaptability (0)

A-wing Test Pilot (0)

Autothrusters (2)

Push the Limit (3)

Total: 100 points.

The idea was to fly Dash in front of Biggs (he doesn't care about the debri I'd be taking so he can stay in formation well) and Biggs' action would be R2-F2, giving him a total of 5 Agility. That's 2 base AGI + 1 from R2-F2 + 1 from Stealth Device + 1 from An obstructed attack = 5 AGI. TIE fighters rolling 2 hits every time will never get through, and even a crack shot swarm has its work cut out even in two rounds of shooting. I went with Mangler cannon because I didn't want Dash to be stuck with a doughnut hole and without boost in the endgame against some imperial ace.

My reasons for the Green Pilot were for a semi-durable flanker/blocker - it can go down to PS 2 against Jumpmasters and mess with them.

2nd Stage:

Wild Space Fringer (30)

Mangler Cannon (4)

Outrider (5)

Tactical Jammer (1)

Biggs Darklighter (25)

R2-F2 (3)

Stealth Device (3)

Red Squadron Veteran (26)

Crack Shot (1)

Autothrusters (2)

Total: 100 points.

My thinking when changing the list was to create a stronger attack pool, so I replaced the A-wing with a T-70 X-wing and downgraded Dash to a generic. This gave me a nice Crack shot 3 die attack to put the hurt on enemy aces. I suffer a massive loss in Pilot skill, but gain a far more durable ship with better firepower. Since Biggs will be taking most of the shots my PS2 + 4 ships should be safe for the first few rounds. But what does everyone else think?

3rd Stage (last one):

Wild Space Fringer (30)

Mangler Cannon (4)

Intelligence Agent (1)

Outrider (5)

Tactical Jammer (1)

Kyle Katarn (21)

Twin Laser Turret (6)

Adaptability (0)

Biggs Darklighter (25)

R2-F2 (3)

Stealth Device (3)

Biggs Darklighter (25)

R2-F2 (3)

Stealth Device (3)

In case anyone has read this.

I played through the tournament. 8 players and each of them had played against me at least once before. The prize at 1st place was a free small ship plus the usual FFG goodies, which in this case were Alt-Art IG88 and VI cards. I ended up playing the second iteration above, as I thought it brought the most to the table. A battle report is now up at: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/225649-unusual-tournament-results/#entry2323684

The end result was that I won all 3 games. In the first I didn't lose a single point and destroyed all enemies, leading me to the first table. The second round was closer, with me down to 1 ship and a long range gamble killing 1 of my opponents ships, leaving me with a 1v1 where I was in the lead, so I ran away and won that too. Still at the 1st table I faced a ghost build with TLT and docked phantom, where my opponent did 4 damage to the YT-2400 in the first turn. In that final match I was saved by some skillful (not to brag) bumping over 3 turns which left the Ghost actionless and with absolutely no shots. That final game I won where my final ship on the board had 1 hull left.

So I took first place for the third time in six months, which I'm pretty happy about.

A few things I noticed about my list: Formation flying is crucial, as Biggs truly makes or breaks the list. My 40 pt YT-2400 punched way above its pay grade, and the only thing I would do differently in the list is to replace R2-F2 with a recon specialist on the YT.

Read it all, quite interesting, thanks for sharing!