I finished my participation at X-Wing regionals in Seattle today. Over the span of 4 years, I went from placing dead last to making the cut at one of (the?) biggest regionals, and I believe I have a few things to say about gitting gud.

#1. The game is the game.
Perhaps you think that barrel roll isn't a real "Barrel roll" (it isn't) or that there is power creep pushing out legacy ships in favor of new releases. Maybe yes and maybe no, but while it may feel good to complain about it, it's not going to improve your game. The game is what it is, and you have to adapt to it, instead of resisting it while putting together your list.

#2. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I will risk sounding like a pompus *** and quote Sun Tzu here, because it's **** true of wargaming. I can't count how many games of Warmachine I've lost because my opponent would pull a combo on me, wreck my s*** and I'd be standing there with a puzzled look on my face. Know the meta. Play the meta lists to discover their weaknesses, and play against them to discover their strengths.
If you don't know that Ezra stressbug with Hera is going to pull a 3K while stressed and catch your ship with a snap-shot, you're going to have a bad time.

#3. Practice. Stems from #2, but also you need to practice your list so you don't forget triggers and abilities. Knowing a list is very different from playing/playing against a list, unless you have some kind of computer brain that remembers everything and can sim a whole game in your brain with a realistic opponent.

#4. Obstacles and setup. It's been gone over by better players than me, but I'll add this. If you don't have a plan for obstacle placement, at least try to put a couple of obstacles on your opponent's side of the board, at about 2&1/2 range away from their edge, to break up their approach and "funnel" their movement into one of three predictable "lanes".

-Pew pew

Koing or Konig? I don't know what to believe anymore.

47 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Koing or Konig? I don't know what to believe anymore.

I misspelled it when signing up, and am too lazy to fix it.

Mystery solved!

Congrats on making the cut! How'd you fare?

41 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Mystery solved!

Congrats on making the cut! How'd you fare?

I've been analyzing my game, so I'll take this opportunity to dissect it. I lost the first sortie to Robin's 2 Rho HLCs and Vader. I was flying Nora, Ezra stressbug and Lowhrick.

(board sides are from my perspecitve, when using "right and "left") After Robin deployed his gunboats on the left end of the board, I deployed my squad directly across for the joust, and he deployed Vader on the right end to setup a flank.

My first and probably biggest mistake was putting Ezra on the left side of the formation. This meant as we were closing the joust, Vader was able to flank unopposed. If Ezra was on the right side, he could have 1-banked to put Vader in his arc, and possibly got the stress shot(s) or made Vader fly more conservativley. I had to 2-turn Ezra though the formation to line up his shot on Vader, and that cascaded into a bad joust, with Nora co-ordinated barrel rolling to avoid the traffic jam, and Lowhrick getting into range 3 of the gunboats with no supporting fire from Nora.

I still heavily damaged all three ships, but lost Lowhrick to the joust. I did take out one of the gunboats when it flew back around, but Vader was able to fly around behind Nora.

Ezra was suitably annoying, tossing out stress, but couldn't get 2 stress (with a snap shot) on Vader before being shot down.

And it ended with Vader staying behind Nora, and arc dodging her while getting his shots in.

It was a great game, and I was hopeful that I could pull it off in the middle, but Robin played very well and I'm pretty stoked just to have made the cut in the first place.

Our match was on the #1 table with the recording setup and should be put up on the net shortly. I'll link to it when it's up.

video is up.