this is going to be another summery as I didn't have time to make notes again.

on to game 3 - this one was against the eventual tournament winner - a lady called Toni - who had pulled together a rebel list from her boyfriends rebel cards reasonably last moment when she decided she didn't want to fly her imperials this time (she is a previous tournament winner with a TIE swarm). So she threw together: Chewbacca (old) with Lando, C3P0, Wired, and Experimental Interface, escorted by Nym with enhanced scopes, VI, TLT, Havoc, Genius, and Bomblet generator. It should also be noted that Toni is the only person I flew against at the tournament that wasn't one of my HotAC wingmates, and had never actually seen me play X-wing up to this point (though she had seen me play Attack Wing, but I shan't utter that name here......)

I've got to admit, having just been on the receiving end of and Emon bomblet, i wasn't too keen on facing a second one so quickly. This was also the first time my list had been tested against TLT, and I was fairly certain the outcome wasn't going to be pretty on my 1/2 agility ships.

so we setup, high cluster of asteroids in the center a narrow gap down the left flank and a more open path down the right - I deploy the U-wings on the right flank up against the table edge with dash on the inside of them, both of Toni's ships end up in the opposite corner - she sensibly decided not to head on a larger force with more per-round damage potential.

the first few turns saw us both racing down opposite flanks trying to get behind the other force to turn in and engage, I actually end-up flipping the title on the U-wings for the first time this tournament just to get the formation turned around in time to engage a wild Nym that had cut a corner and started getting some range 3 TLT fire in on the U-wings.

now at this point (half way in, only minor damage on my side, none of hers) I made a choice that may or may not have been a bad one - honestly I'm not sure.

I felt that I needed to keep Nym at arms length whilst I dealt with Chewi, and decided to send one U-wing to harass Nym whilst Dash and the other U ganged up on he freighter. Now this both did and didn't work, the U-wing i sent after Nym did force him to the far corner of the table and out of the game for several turns. Unfortunately, Toni managed to make the most of her ability to control bombs and absolutely pounded the U-wing, finishing it off with a beautifully executed double detonation that managed to push 4 damage onto the U-wing and kill it. On the other side of the asteroids a combination of token stacks and immunity to crits had managed to keep Chewi alive far longer than I had anticipated, and Toni had, sensibly, ignored the U-wing on that side of the table and decided to focus down Dash. This left me in the dieing turns of the game with a full health U-wing vs a half health Nym and Chewi. Needless to say, this exchange didn't go the U-wings way and I didn't manage to finish off either of Toni's ships.

End result, a 100-27 loss and confirmation that I really don't like TLTs and bomblets when I'm flying low Agility ships.

during the last 15min break between the games the TO decided to drop the bomb that, in theory, there were still 4 people in the running to win the tournament (we had no visibility of the rankings during the tournament, and weren't told who the 4 people were). As you might of expected, that caused something of a reaction and got everyone motivated for the final round.

it was also during this round that more comments were made to the effect of my flying being somewhere in the realms of unpredictable/crazy, again I'm going to take it in the spirit the comment was intended and take it as a complement.

more later.....

right, game 4, last game of the day, still everything to play for. so it was another round of less-than-detailed notes I'm afraid.

I got drawn against my HotAC wingmate Nathan and his Keyan Farlander, 2x TLT Y-wing list. Nathan got initiative and we ended up with a triangle of asteroids (all the big ones) aligned in the middle of the table with its base towards me and the point towards Nathan.

with slightly more room on the left side, I stuck with my now standard u-wings close to the table edge with Dash in-field of them. Nathan setup pretty much opposite and we both slow-rolled the first turns, him to try and stay at TLT range and me to focus-bank Rey.

after 3 turns I decided to make my move as the y-wings reached the edge of the asteroid field. I went flat-out and managed to get one of the U-wings into the range 1 donut hole of the y's and out of arc of the b-wing. Unfortunately the other u and dash were just outside range 1 so i took a bit of a beating. However, i did manage to take most of the shields out of his y-wings in return

turn 4 - this is where the game turned when, for reasons that should become clear in a moment, it really shouldn't have.

we were engaged in a close melee in the asteroid field and I managed to get the U-wings to form a reasonable kill-box that his y's flew straight into. Dash fired first and pushed a triple crit onto the nearest y-wing, direct hit, console fire, and the crit that ejects a secondary weapon. I had to pause for a second here, as I remember that being removed from the crit deck with the new damage cards (which we had all been told to use for fairness). It turns out Nathan had accidentally been using his old damage deck the whole tournament, and had suffered an ejected TLT in every game. Needless to say that probably had an effect on his scores to that point (we were both 2-1 at this point). I offered to let him flip a different crit but he decided to just keep playing, his TLT less Y wing now had no shot, and the other one was too close to everything to fire either. The U-wings ganged up on the y-wing that had its tlt and managed to whipe it off the table.

i now sent Dash after Keyan and boxed the surviving y in with the u wings, more APL damage and the Y-wing was toast.

credit to Nathan, he kept swinging to the last, managing to get Dash and a U wing down to half health before I caught him in a three way range 1 kill-zone with only 2 hull left.

In Nathan's defence, he has some rather serious health issues, and was having a particularly bad day with his medication, so this game was played at a much slower pace than the other games, and I had a far more "casual" attitude to things like missed actions and honest mistakes (hence the crit offer).

so the result - officially a 100-37 win to me, but personally I don't consider it any more than a draw as my opponent was clearly not at his full ability for the game. Though he still managed 7th out of 10 so he did alright.

my final placement was 4th, which was a shock to me (my target was 6th at most), but what shocked everyone was the other Matt in the tournament coming 3rd with a triple T-65 + ARC170 list that didn't include Biggs.

the day had been great fun, with no arguments or any other drama that sometimes accompanies competitive play. All the players came away happy, and we are looking forward to more events in the future.

just for my own amusement I've put what details I can into list juggler for this tournament