Hi everyone,

Yesterday i attended a seasonal tournament held by the HQ gaming club in St Niklaas Belgium

A great shoutout to them for super organisation and awesome price support, there were 20 players attending, 7 of them were squadmates of mine in Ego squadron however,

so there was a likely chance of us playing each other, like we do every thursday.

My list was this:

Darth Vader with swarm leader, title, advanced targeting computer and twin ion engine mk2

howlrunner with adaptability (PS9)

scourge with VI

2x Black squadron with crack shot

Basic idea is to set up swarm leader with vader, first ping away tokens/shields with howlrunner/scourge, then killshots with the black crack

Downside however is flying a swarm correctly something i haven't really done a lot, as you will see in the coming rounds

Round 1: Alea iacta:

the fratricide begins in round one as i immediately get paired against squadmate Arno, he's playing his 8-ball list:

Carnor with PTL, title, stealth device and autothrusters

Quiz : PTL, title, autothrusters

Pure Sabacc: title, shield upgrade and VI

Asteroids are set pretty central, i start deploying everything the bottom right corner, he deloys diagonally opposite from me,

reasoning that if i fly towards him i have to cross the asteroids, breaking my formation and give him every opportunity to absuse his arc dodging shenanigans,

which would probably result in my first loss of the day.

i decide to do the opposite, racing straight ahead hugging the edge hoping to draw him in, and make him overcommit and thus deny him his arcdodging, if he doesn't take the bait,

i atleast avoid the rocks. He does take the bait however, he manages to avoid any rocks, but his formation is gone, sabacc overshoots the mark due to his title, carnor ends up just in range 3 of my squad

all of whom did a K-turn that round and quiz lags behind a bit. First round of shooting nothing much happens, second round much more interesting, carnor ends up in range one of most of my squad, which is both good and bad, Quiz still lags behind, but this is bad for me because of his text and sabacc is in range 2 of some of my ships.

Vader manages a nice shot on carnor with an added crit from ATC, he manages to evade all but the crit and loses his stealth device, scourge then turns carnor into space dust before he an fire. the rest of my shooting that turn is cold, so is Quiz, but sabacc rolls 4 hits and i blank out and lose a black.

the following turns are a bit chaotic but i manage to bump sabacc and kill him, losing my second black in the process, Quiz then proves very elusive for my remaining ships,

eventually time is called and i win this one no idea of points really but i had vader,howl and scourge remaining vs Quiz

Round 2: Veni, vidi, run like a chicken

Ego squadron is doing good as i get paired against Jan another squadmember, flying standard superdash and Poe with R2-D2, PTL, and thrusters?

man do i hate Dash, he can possibly one-shot everyone except Vader and he is elusive as hell, so i expect to lose this one from the start.

i setup hugging a corner, again hoping to draw him in and get at least half points on dash before i get vaporized by HLC, this doesn't really work out as i start getting damage on my ships and only barely scraping shields of him, Poe lags a bit behind in this game, in retrospect him not getting Poe in the fight early would prove to be very decisive.

about halfway throught the game i am two ships down vs some shields on Dash, and i'm about ready to call this one a loss, as i change plans, Dash is set up to move away from me, and Poe is navigating past a rock so i have a pretty good idea where he is going to be, i turn my remaing ships, vader, howl and a black towards him and throw everything and the kitchen sink at Poe, i get lucky with a roll and he gets very unlucky as the ATC-crit is a direct damage, which blows Poe away.

Fast forward to the last quarter and i have only Vader left on 1 hull versus a half Dash as the last round commences, is realize Vader is worth more than half a Dash and in a true showing of dark side bravery, vader zooms away to hyperspace, leaving Dash barely out of range 3, and giving me a rather yellow win.

after two rounds i'm ranked fourth going 2-0, but with a really sucky MOV

Round 3: yay not a teammate, no Rome quote sorry

After a really nice lunch compliments to the organisation i get paired againt Matthias flying the dreaded triple defs:

vessery, ryad and glaive all with evade title, Vess with Juke and Ryad with PTL

a real uphill battle here, with the only one on my team who can damage these guys is probably Vader, rock setup puts more rocks on the left side of the board he sets up his first defender on the right side

in a clear lane, thinking a straight joust would end really bad for me i setup on the left side, hoping to joust him in the center of the board and then make him K-turn towards the rocks.

Nice in theory, in practice however i totally botch my intial approach, scourge losing 2 hull from crossing a rock and Vader ending up ahead of the squad due to the rest bumping.

Vader then finds himself dogfighting 3 defenders on his own and gets shot down real hard, probably losing me the game right there, the rest of the game is me trying to scrape the paint off of

those defenders with my pewpewpew while he's blasting my Tie's away

clear loss this time, 0-100 i did manage to damage vessery once however

fourth and last round: tu quoque,..

last round and yeahh i get paired against another teammate, wtf cryodex!! This time its Greg flying Dengar/Kath

Dengar: title, expertise, unhinged , K4-security droid

Kath Scarlett: expertise, 4-LOM, Engine upgrade

Rocks are spread in a nice square this time, with a few in the center, this time i do wanna joust figuring that without Mannyroo Dengar isn't such a badass, and Katth well, lets just say i really

underestimated her,...

he denies me the straight joust so i cross the rocks to get at him hoping to deny Kath her rear arc, i botch up a little again and Vader ends up in a bad spot with a bad crit

(Roll once at the start combat phase, one a hit one damage), so naturally i roll a hit and lose him, but its still not so bad, because Kath passed my ships by a fair margin

and is effectively out of the fight for the next two rounds and Dengar is on hull, so i could still pull it off.

Flying a swarm isn't that easy however, and in the following round i end up with one Tie on a rock, and two others bumping Dengar, i lose another Tie and

do nothing to Dengar D'ohhh!!!

the following turns i manage to crit Dengar with the exact same crit that took Vader down, and karma takes him off the board, meanwhile Kath is back and she shoots my remaining fighters down.

Good Game Greg! 51-100 i think

i end up 13th out of 20, last of the 2 win pack due to sh*tty MOV, i do get a nice swarm leader alt for my effort though and had a total blast killing and getting killed by my squadmates

thanks for reading my ramblings and as always any comments are welcome

good flying

Dat is interessant...

was jij er ook?

nee, deze keer niet maar mijn vrienden naar Brussel vertelde een beetje me