I attended the Seattle X-Wing Regionals. It was my first X-Wing tournament and the first organized play experience I’ve had since I used to play Warmachine and Hordes tournaments 9+ years ago.
I brought triple ‘Vipers! Unfortunately, I only got to play the list 2x before the tournament. However, I so infrequently get to play that 2x is actually pretty decent for me. :-)
Nest of 'Vipers: 96 pts.
Thweek (32 pts.): Mk I/II, AT, FCS, Glitterstim
Dalan (32 pts.) Mk II, AT, Predator
Guri (32 pts.) Mk II, AT, Predator
With a 4 pt bid I had choice for initiative in all six games. Up to the morning of the event, I had cloaking device on Thweek. I swapped it out after reading some articles & posts online where everyone praised Glitterstim. I found myself missing CD though. Folks often want to drop Thweek first, which means that he is vulnerable on the first approach since I can’t as easily get him out of arc…the +2 greens and 2-move reposition upon de-cloaking are great for that. I will definitely be putting CD back on for future matches. I also thought that having 3 of the same dial was going to make fatigue less impactful over the course of the day...I think that played well for me. :-)
The End Result:
I got 2 wins & 4 losses (with my last game being a hair away from a win); placed 116 out of 154 players that day. Two of the losses were 0-100...but one was largely due to some of the coldest dice I’ve ever encountered; the other was a straight blowout and my ships just withered away. Overall, I don’t feel it was a bad showing for my celestial serpentine tourney debut.
Game 1 vs. VI/regen Poe, stress shuttle Ezra, and Lowrickk:
Thweek drops early and Dalan gets really stressed about it then eventually drops. Guri is greatly displeased by all this. Puts down Lowrickk, then drops Ezra; I think she may have been down a shield at that point. The next 20-min or so were Guri and Poe dancing with lots of shots exchanged. In the end, my damage output could not out perform R2-D2’s shield regen. We estimated that R2 brought back a shield 6+ times over the course of the game…that guy should involve a roll or something! :-)
57-100
Game 2 vs. resistance bombers x3:
Bombers equipped to lay withering fire with AC while mitigating some damage so that it takes too long to get through they 36 HP and you die in the process. It was not a good match-up for him as 3 green with AT was a bit too much for him to penetrate for the most part. He did get one ship down though. Predator vs. a list with lots of generics is CRAZY good.
100-32
Game 3 vs. loaded Dash and Miranda:
I prevented Miranda from getting any harpoons off; she did a big R1 primary to a ‘Viper’s face and not much else. Dash’s HCL with Rey’s focus token melted my poor little snakies. The worst loss of the day.
0-100
Game 4 vs. Brobots B/C with FCS, HCL, glitter:
I got so excited to have the chance to get evades on Thweek that I did not take the top PS - FATAL MISTAKE! Had I gone for the PS, I would’ve had both Thweek and Dalan repositioning after the bros. I actually flew pretty well this game and set up lots of situations where I got shows without return fire. However, my cold dice just could not penetrate his 3 greens and frequently acquired evade tokens. You know it’s bad when your opponent starts lamenting YOUR dice! :-)
0-100
Game 5 vs. QD +3 Nu’poons:
I really wanted a win with full MOV and played aggressively. Zipped up Guri & Dalan with 4-straights in round 2; after the bendy barrel rolls I created the perfect pocket for QD to enter…and she did! I ended up taking out her shields without a single shot back. For the most part, I kept the ‘poons from firing due to getting into R1. Those gunboats sure don’t turn around so well compared to a ‘viper with a 1-2 turn + bendy BR. In the end, he did drop Thweek and Dalan. A tense game with many swings. Again, predator vs. a list with 3 generics is CRAZY good!
100-64
Game 6 vs. Asaj + Bumpmaster Scout:
I’d never played against Asaj and did not know how she worked. I did not even know that the mobile arc had a regular gun on it! As such, my opening was REALLY bad. Thweek got uber-stressed then taken out; Dalan or Guri bumped the master and got ionized into a pile of trash! I did not write down who I had at the end…I think it was Guri. I chased Asaj for the last 15-20 minutes after getting a couple decent hits on her. One less evade rolled in the final round and I would have dropped her hull low enough to get 50% points and pulled out a win. For such I lousy early game, I at least felt good about pushing things into an actual “game” rather than a slaughter. I didn’t quite make lemonade…lemon juice perhaps??? ;-)
47-64
After-Action Review:
This regionals had a much greater diversity of lists than I anticipated. From the FFG forum posts, I anticipated 50% Fenn/Ghosts + 30% wookiees + 20% other stuff. I did see about 3-4 all wookiee lists and maybe 5-6 Ghost lists (with one being double Ghosts). I personally found this very pleasing as I feel it is more fun to play a variety of stuff. That said, I was interested to see how the ol’ reptiles would do (or utterly fail) against Casper the Fenn’dly Ghost…I guess I did not pull off enough wins to get matched with one. :-D
Looking at what a ‘viper does and its dial with hard 1s…it seems like it should have an evade action; this would really change things. I LOVE the bendy BR!!! It really is what makes this list fun. There are soooo many oddball places you can fit your ship into. Min-maxers decry ‘vipers as useless because they don’t fit the traditional Soontir ace slot. I don’t think they need to in order to be playable, you just can’t play with the certainly of Soontir back in the day when PS 9 was a big deal and missile/bombs were poo-pooed.
I really prefer the CD to glitterstim on Thweek and will go back to it. This may be due more to play-style (or my inability to keep Thweek out of harm’s way on round 2). I opted for predator over PtL to mitigate the effect of stress and keep my access to the full dial. The 1 & 2 turns are fabulous with the bendy BR but they are white. I think unconventional placement is the key to using these guys well and limiting myself to 1 banks and straights for greens is just too restrictive.
Will I play triple ‘vipers again? **** YEAH!
