So, I took my Boba Fett/Captain Nym to the UKTC! My teamates took Quad Agressors and Norra/Miranda and it was, we thought, a pretty strong team. We ended up with a 10 point bid which gave us the choice of initiative in every round of the day. We're not so sure that it was a better idea that taking those extra points to reinforce our lists, but that's a completely different debate.
Nym - VI, Bomblet generator, GC, Cruise Missiles, title, genius, AS, TLT
Boba- VI. Prox mines, GC, Cruise Missiles, title, Cad Bane, Glitterstim
=96
Round 1 vs The Good, The Bad and the Wookiee
The other team also had a Boba/Nym, a miranda+two wookiee ships, and my opponent - four TIEs - Backdraft, Epsilon Leader, Zeta leader and Omega leader.
It went pretty well - managed to PS kill Backdraft with my cruise missiles and my opponent couldn't get enough focus fire back on me. Bomblets and TLT saw to Epsilon leader, and Zeta leader ran into a prox mine. Omega went down soon after. It was a pretty terrible match up for my opponent, all things considered. Win - 100/0. The team won 2 games making the real score 1-0
Round 2 vs IG-1066-A
Well, our team was called IG-1066-B so it should give some idea as to how well we know these guys
They were rocking Palp shuttle/quickdraw/soontir, Bossk/ketsu and Miranda/Dash.
I ended up facing Ketsu-Bossk, a game we'd practiced three times with me winning two of them, mostly down to luck. The spike damage on these guys rivals mine, but I only have two cruise missies in my list so it needs a perfect approach. However, due to obeying the call of nature I was a little late to the table and rushed my set up resulting in a poor approach- fortunately not one that favoured Lee either! we had a bit of a cagey approach through the asteroids before meeting in the centre of my half of the board. No cruise missiles fired, but I managed to get a nice lot of damage in on Ketsu. The next turn really decided the game as Ketsu tried to K-turn passed Boba, but missed by about a millimeter, allowing a turn where she couldn't shoot anyone but recieved two more shots from my TLT leaving her on three health, and my bombs and Boba stripping Bossks shields. The following turns saw Boba die without me scoring any kills, but a decent bomb finished Bossk off leaving the last combattants of a one health Nym vs a one health Ketsu sporting a weapons failure crit. some very tentative approaching saw me score the needed killshot with a TLT before the return fire could finish it the other way. 100-50. Again the team won two games giving us a team score of 2-0
Round 3 - 186 squadron podcast.
Yeah, we were feeling good after lunch until we saw the pairings. These are some of the best players in the south east, and certainly out of our league. They were rocking Miranda/Biggs/Lowrick (my opponent), triple jumps and Vader/Quickdraw/Kestel alpha strike.
I completely muffed up my approach on this one, and just didn't manage to get any damage through at all. Boba did a drive by attack managing to do two damage to Lowrick before being out of the fight for most of the rest of the game. I tried to hide Nym on the other side of a row of asteroids rather than agressively bombing them, which I think was a complete mistake in hindsight! As soon as Nym died it was already over, but Lowrick had one hull left and I might've scored points, but I managed to land Boba on a rock for his last turn so no shot, and Lowrick managed to make it over a rock without killing himself. 0-100 for me
we lost all three games, so 2-1 overall. Really nice guys though, and definately in a league of their own when it comes to x-wing! They gave us some sweet alt art Reys as well, so we didn't leave the table empty handed!
Round 4 - Dux squadron
Smarting from our defeat we went into this one hoping to change our fortunes. there was a generic hawk, kavil and nym list which was my opponent, the imperial list was a spray, bomber and something else, and the rebel list was rey/poe.
I got a really good approach where only the hawk with cad bane aboard was in range, and nuked him with a cruise followed by TLT to no shots back, but that's where my luck ended. I hate to blame dice, but I was lucky if I rolled one die with paint on this entire game. Twice I had range one target locked shots with Boba, and rolled a single eyeball even after rerolls. My oppont had no such problems, with pretty much every TLT shot landing three unavoidable hits which just chisled away at me, and his single bomblet getting a blinded pilot crit on Boba. My opponent flew well, and apart from the approach made no mistakes, but it was my game to lose and the dice lost it for me
Ah well, maybe the team could make up for it? no. We scored one win, putting us at 2-2 (but marking the first win for our imperial player. yay!)
Round 5 - Crimson Aces (I think?)
Nice guys from Edinburgh. Really great team to play, and a really nice friendly session for the penultimate round of the day. I forget what you guys brought, but I was getting tired by this point! I drew Miranda, Biggs, Heff
Again, really close game. I managed to bomb Biggs off the table fairly early, but wasted Nym's cruise missile on Miranda - four shields, but she ran away and regenned and this was to come back to haunt me - I managed to forget that Biggs had to be in range one to protect people, so I switched fire to him to melt him down and left miranda to plink away and regen. Like I said - tired brain not good! Heff died quickly too to remove the threat of Sabine leaving a four hull Boba and shieldless Nym to chase down Miranda. I didn't manage it, Boba died to TLTs but did manage to put a direct hit through on Miranda, but she was regenning as fast as I could get damage through with Nym. This is where a cruise missile could've made the difference! It's also where the format of the tournament went against me - had it finished at the 75 minute mark I would've won, but the rounds were 90 minutes long to include pairing and set up and we started fairly quickly which gave my opponent the time to finish off nym. He deserved the win anyway as he flew like a pro, so I'm not bitter
loss - 60ish to 100. team scored 1-2 again. Team score of 2-3, and the early promises of glory had been long stolen.
Last round - Rey's Angels (I think!)
Hands down the most fun round of the day for me - these guys were great company for the last game!
They brought twin IG (my opponent), quad agressors and I didn't see their rebel list. He set up for a joust, which was find by me as I managed to score 7 damage on to IG-B on the approach and finished him off with a bomb. From there it lasted about three turns more - we were all too tired for a proper maneuvering game I think. The guy had regional dice and I think he could've made me suffer had we fought at the beginning of the day, but I feel I still would've won the match up.
Our team won overall too, putting us at 3-3 for the day which was more or less our target. It's interesting to speculate what could've changed if my two close losses has gone the other way - at the end of the day I can't say that the team would've been 5-1 as our matchups would've been different, but it's always a thought that sticks!
Anyway, it was a cracking day. Guardians of Tyr put on a great tournament, and the atmosphere was fantastic. Lots of the very best players in the country were there, and no suprise that one of the 186th Squadron teams met the Weekend Warlords in the final! As a player, I'm a little bit over playing 100/6 all the time, and I'm not planning on involving myself in the Regional circuit whenever that may be, but I think a return to the UKTC is definately on the cards for next year
Thanks for the great games to all of our opponents of the day, and making even our crushing defeats enjoyable.
Having played a faintly meta-list almost constantely for about three months I'm glad to be packing away Captain Nym for the forseeable future, and look forward to a return to more fun lists. Hats off to those really successful players who practice for months with the same list. I've put in half as much effort and can't face playing the list again for a while!
Triple T-70s are set to make a comeback in my KR multicase, inspired in part by James Hewitt of the Celtic Crackshots team, who also went 3-3 which is excellent going! They were a favourite of mine ever since they came out, so I'm glad to be returning to them. I'm also planning several lists involvling Luke Skywalker for the new year - our club has a wave 1-3 tournament where I'd like to run him, or if not for the Q4 tournament at my FLGS, and I'm also very concious that my Imperials haven't made their way to the table for quite some time, though with a HotAC campaign starting up in our club they'll make an appearence there at least.
Boba - you're awesome, but it's time for us to part ways, if just for a little while.