Here's a link to the tournament description and my thoughts behind the list I flew: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/225553-unusual-tournament-advice/

The List:

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)

Round 1:

I was facing off against a fellow named Andrew, who was equipped with a Chewbacca Falcon and two T-70 Blue Squad X-wings. Chewy had nien numb, VI, and a few other trivial upgrades; no engine upgrade was a relief. I should mention that these 3 ships were all he owned at that point, as he'd had to sell all his ships recently and begin again, so he was a little rusty.

I started out in my standard formation for the tournament and flew the YT in front of the two X-wings so they could take advantage of the Tactical Jammer's protection. I had set up the asteroids to joust and Andrew played the same. We ended up on the left side of the board (from my perspective, as it will always be described) and went straight for each other. After an initial first exchange in which he did nothing to Biggs with his few shots and I utilised crack shot to push through 3 damage onto one of his T-70s, I proceeded to use the YT to block 2 of his 3 ships, and it was game over from there. Chewy took serious damage while bumped and he lost both of the escort X-wings along the way. At this point I had suffered only a few damage to Biggs, so I flew him out of the engagement and pursued a non-boosting Chewy with my two other ships until he fell.

ResuLt: 1:0

MoV: 225.

Round 2:

Here I faced off against Gary, who I had played multiple times. I knew him to be a diligent player, but also adaptable to varying situations. He ahppened to be running a list very similar to mine: a YT-2400 (Leebo) with VI, Mangler and Outrider title. He then had Jake Farrel with prockets (but wired + adaptability as hiss EPTs) plus a Blue squadron T-70 with nothing good on it.

I again started in formation on the right side of the board, but hadn't managed to cluster the asteroids enough to force a joust. Because of this, he set up on my fer left. I decided to go straight through the rocks ("asteroids do not concern me"), and he flew his YT and Jake around to flank me while his T-70 moved in for block. The first round of shooting went well for me, with him doing nothing and me getting his T-70 down to 1 hull. He then used his T-70 next round to block me onto a rock (a move I should have seen coming) and fully move his "aces" behind me. Jake Procketed my full health T-70 and got it down to 1 hull and stripped Biggs' stealth device, while I got Leebo down to 3 hull remaining. Jake then pursued my YT while Biggs attempted to take down Leebo, and my T-70 desperately tried to stay alive. Jake did some legendary work on my YT - peppering away with 2 hits at a time and reducing me to 3 hull as well. Meanwhile Biggs and Leebo had a joust in their area of the board, with Biggs taking Leebo down to 1 hull and dying in the process. I managed to block Jake with the YT while my T-70 had a shot on him. I rolled Hit, crit and he rolled evade, blank, blank, blank (at range 3, so autothruster saved him). Jake and Leebo then destroyed my T-70, while I managed to take Leebo off the board. It was then 2 hull Jake (my mangler had done its job well) versus my 3 hull YT. I knew I couldn't beat autothrusters, so I gunned it out of there and survived until the end of the match. My Mov was only 1 higher than his, so it was a near thing.

Result: 2:1

Mov: somewhere around 350.

Round 3:

I was paired against Owen for the third and final round. By this point, only he and I had gone 2:0, and his MoV was slightly better than mine. The tournament winner would be decided during this game. I didn't have much experience against Owen, but I new that he knew what he was doing, and he knew it. He was running a Kanan Jarrus ghost with Rec. specialist, Jan Ors, TLT and FCS. Plus Kyle Katarn in a HWK with blaster turret, rec. specialist and moldy crow. His remaining 18 points were tied up in Zeb in a docked attack shuttle.

We had set up the rocks and debris (I brought the 3 largest debris I had, and he brought the smallest 3 rocks he had; the ghost doesn't like turning.) as a column in the middle of the board - front to back. I set up on my right in standard formation. He set up across from my ships, but facing towards the left edge of the board. As I moved forward at maximum speed, he movd towards the left at 3 speed, collecting focus on the 'Crow as long as possible. I made a mistake and broke formation by flying the YT 1 too far, and then changing the banks on all my ships to be the opposite of what I'd intended. The end result was that the Ghost could shoot my YT at the far right of the board while my other two ships were off in the middle of nowhere with no shots at all. The ghost then proceeded to do 4 damage to my YT on that first turn while I did 1 in return. Did I mention that I drove the YT over a debris and suffered a Crit, so my YT was on 1/2 health after the first round oc combet?

I recognised the absolute danger here and took my YT on a 3 bank left, then barrel rolled to block the ghost. I boosted my other ships wither into range 1 or outside range 3 so that the ghost would have absolutely no shots - and no actions. For 3 straight turns I blocked the ghost while peppering it with massive damage. Biggs lost his stealth device but killed the HWK with the YT's help. This left a ~ 8 hull ghost to verse a 6 health T-70 with a crack shot still unused and a 5 health YT. I messed up my next run and did a 1 hard the wrong way with my YT, this opened up the ghost for a range 1 shot on the T-70 and a TLT shot on the YT. That then left my T-70 and 4 health and the YT at 3. The Ghost was down to about 4 hull now. By this point, the fight had carried over to the bottom left of the board and I could predict with total certainty that the ghost would do a 2 hard left to stay on the board. The YT was still turning around after his wrong turn so it was down to the T-70. At range 2. Against a TLT. With 4 shots. After the first two shots I had managed to evade 1, using autothrusters and a natural evade. This left me on 1 hull and the Ghost on 1 as well.

I flew the YT into range of the ghost, then it surprised me with a 3 straight, giving it a choice of a rear firing shot on the T-70 or a front firing shot on the YT with focus. He chose this point to deploy the Attack shuttle, and I desperately hoped he wasn't doing a 4 Koigran maneuver, as that woul guarantee both my ships ded that turn. Thankfully he tried for a 1 hard, leaving it stressed and bumping the X-wing. As a result the ghost used its final attack of the game to wipe out the T-70. I then destroyed the ghost (finally!) with a mangler cannon shot. So the score card was 1 YT on 3 hull against a full health attack shuttle. I was going for a full win here so I decided to try and kill the shuttle. Some amazing rolls on Owen's part took me down to 1 hull (dam direct hits) and him with a blinded pilot card. I moved, he moved and blinded pilot prevented him from attacking. Even though he had an evade token, I fired the mangle and rolled 2 hits/crits. All he needed was 1 evade to win the game (I couldn't survive another round). Blank. Blank. Good game.

Result: 3:0

Mov: somewhere around 500.

Conclusion:

The build was pretty amazing in the unique tournament I was playing, but I'm not sure how it'd go in standard tournament play. I should mention that my dice rolling was phenomenal all tournament. I rolled triple hits half the time, and occasionally triple crits throughout the day. That... may... have helped me to victory. The squad building post linked above) has my full reflection on the day.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like a blast... And a well deserved tournament win. Your third opponent was probably quite frustrated as it sounds like it could have easily gone either way. Reminds me of the idea that you have to be good AND have good fortune to do well against equal opposition.

Curious what your opponents felt about your build, did they give you any feedback on how they would have approached you differently?

I want to try this format in my casual group of three players and see how it goes.

A question: I always wonder how folks are able to provide such great detail in their recaps. What is your method for preserving the move-by-move and even dice rolls? (I've tried taking photos each turn, and this seems to help me, but I still can't remember the rolls unless they are extreme, like your triple-crits).

I happen to have a truly good memory. So as soon as I can after the tournament ends I write the whole thing down. I'm not sure what the time stamp is on your side, but I actually posted this recap at 11:45 at night, just so that I wouldn't forget anything by morning.

The main parts of it is, as you said, preserving the move-by-move. However, readers don't want to hear "I did a 3 forward with ship A, a 2 forward with ship B and a K-turn with ship C," they just want to hear the general progression. Then, the reader's imagination will sufficiently fill in the blanks. Highlighting a key turn of maneuvers per round is what I try to do, just to add a bit of tension.

I believe that the 'best' way to recap a single game is with a video, but 75 minutes runs a bit long for 6 games of video. My reports tend to be a bit on the long side, but I'd rather have the detail than forget it. Additionally, since it was only a 3 round tournament I didn't have too much to remember.

The one thing I would definitely do in future tournaments (especially large ones) is to have a little notebook to write down each opponent's name, full squadron, what the result was (including win/lose and margin of victory). I could then use that as a memory jogger.

It was a very interesting format, because Imperials were at such a unique disadvantage. All their large ships are so vulnerable, so none of the imperial players placed in the top 3. All my matches were against rebel squads, but each with a different large based ship. I feel like I had successfully "countered the meta" by bringing such a tanked up Biggs, who carried his weight in most of each game by preventing shots on the YT-2400.

Perhaps just a requirement to "bring a big ship" would have been enough to encourage the imperials, without the penalty. Of course,miss possible everyone then runs Palp-Shuttle of course, which might have been boring.

Then again, maybe good to see more rebels on the table.

We had 1 Palp-shuttle in the Tournament regardless. Overall I believe we had 5 rebel players, 3 imperial and 0 scum. For some reason our rebel presence is strong. The theme behind "you must bring exactly one big ship" was that it was a cargo ship, and if you lost the cargo you would lose additional points.