Hi folks. Let me start by giving a little bit of background with my X-Wing experience. I played my first game a little less than two months ago, after occasionally buying an expansion or two because I thought they looked cool. Since then I've been playing primarily as Imperial, mostly because I love the TIE Defender from the books and video games, and adore both Countess Ryad's ability and the TIE/D title. I've had some success at local tournaments (squeaking into second place on a couple small tournaments in Topeka, KS), and decided to take the plunge, and the three-hour drive, and try out a regional tournament.

My list has been slowly evolving since I've been playing, as I'm sure most of yours do as well. I'm not going to say mine is perfect, but it's gotten to the point where I can't think of many ways I'd want to improve it. My experiences are posted in the "Two TIE/Ds and ????" thread in the squd building section, but for the sake of simplicity, here's what I ran in Omaha:

It's a pretty simple and straightforward list, designed to maximize my damage output with the two attacks while saving my focus token for defense. The Bomber is there mostly because I had the extra points, and Systems officer hands out free target locks, which help trigger Vessery.

Round one was against Rey/Lowrick build. I've played against something similar a while back and decided that my best bet was to take out the Wookie first, and then focus on Rey. Thankfully, I caught Lowrick in a pincer between the two Defenders and took him off the board in less than two turns. I missed an opportunity to tractor him on to an asteroid, but I was worried about moving him out of range/arc and pulled him a tad bit closer instead. Oh well. Rey was a bit harder to pin down, but the Countess was eventually able to get her ioned, and finally got a kill shot through on the following turn. I almost lost Countess that last round, as she was down to one health, but I got an extremely lucky 3 natural evade roll, and she survived. Round total: Me/100, Opponent/0.

The only picture I remembered to take of my games all day. Shortly after killing Lowrick, and before Rey got her second Ion token.

Round two was a tougher matchup from the get-go. My opponent was flying a Quickdraw/Rho/Rho list with HLC and long range scanners, an interesting combo I've not played against before. I tried another pincer, but in turn, got caught between one. Vessery died after taking hits from QD, and both Rhos. I had hoped to be able to hop behind the Gunboats, but that didn't work for me, and the Countess bought it next, taking the Injured pilot critical damage card (her ultimate bane) before going down. My Bomber tried a turn, but he took died without landing more than a couple hits, and the round went to my opponent. Good die results and rerolls helped him, but I really sucked with my deployment and planning, while he was great with his. Round total: Me/0, Opponent/100.

Round three was an interesting change of pace, as it was a group of fighters I've never played against, and rarely even seen: a Poe (which I have played against), Tycho, and Wes list. Poe was the usual slippery bastard that he is, with Black One, BB-8, etc, while Tycho was the Psycho variant with PTL and Rage. I think he was in the 20s with stress by the time he died. Wes was built a little light, with Integrated Astromech, but I don't recall much else. I killed Poe first. I've played against him a few times, and completely hate him because of how slippery he is. Thankfully, continually ioning him and tractoring helps prevent arc-dodging, and I finally got him shortly before he'd fly off the map. Wes died next, surviving just long enough to take fire from everyone for a turn. Tycho ran, and started playing the "you can't catch me" game, but I finally got him back in arc and took him down. Everyone had some damage on them, but all of my fighters again survived. Round Total: Me/100, Opponent/0

Round four was the list I've been both dreading and wanting to play against: Fenn Rau and a Lothal rebel with Maul and Ezra. I've never played against either the Ghost or Fenn, so it was quite a shock actually seeing what it could do. I've read about it but hadn't experienced it before. I went after Fenn first, and ioned him pretty early, taking him out the next turn (with the Bomber, if I remember correctly). Unfortunately, I really was not prepared for the guaranteed 2 hit per turn-minimum of the Ghost. I don't think I managed to evade more than one or two TLT hits the entire game, as he would continually Maul/Ezra his die into three hits, and I simply couldn't roll enough natural evades or focuses to avoid it. If TLT wasn't enough, the 4 die primary attack really hurts too, and usually soaked up my focus token for the round. Vessery melted pretty fast, followed a couple of turns later by the Countess. The bomber lasted another round, but that was it. I had barely scratch the paint on the Ghost, taking away its shields and giving it a single damage card by the time the game was over. While I'll agree with everyone that the list is beatable, I definitely understand the "nerf the Ghost/TLT" crowd now, as that list annoyed me more than anything else. Round total: Me/26, Opponent/100

Round five was quite frustrating. My opponent flew a Poe/Nym list. Poe was Black One, R2-D2, autothrusters, etc, while Nym was his tanky self with bomblet generator and harpoons. Since I hate bombs, I focused on Nym first. Countess took the worst from the initial joust and bomb, losing shields, 2 out of three hull, and had a harpoon sticking out of her, and my bomber wasn't much better, taking two crits from the first bomb, plus a bit more damage. (both resulting in Damaged Sensor array) Thankfully, Countess was able to ditch the harpoon her next action, having gotten behind an ioned Nym, and the two Defenders were able to take out Nym, and hurt Poe. Unfortunately, this began the most frustrating part of the game: chasing Poe. For the next hour or so, I chased Poe from one side of the map to the other, hitting all four corners of the map in the process. Countess died after taking out Nym, so I didn't have the Ion control I used so successfully against Poe in an earlier game, and tractor beam just wasn't enough. I had Poe down to a single health, but he kept R2-D2ing shields. I'm pretty sure I stripped his shields completely 2-3 times by the end of the game, but couldn't kill him. The same could not be said for him, however, as he got a lucky roll to my bad roll, and took out the bomber, giving him a slight lead in points. The game went to time and resulted in a loss for me. Round total: Me/50, Opponent/59

Round six was much better, at least for me. My opponent ran a Scum list, made of ships I really don't have much experience with. It consisted of Kavil, Tweek, a Scyk (heavy variant), and Constable Zuvio as a bomber. I faked out an attempted pincer and brought all of my fighters up together. When we started shooting, it got ugly for him fast, and he lost a fighter per round, first the Scyk, then Kavil (after being ioned), then Tweek, and finally Zuvio. Dual double taps from the Defenders were pretty brutal for him, especailly the Ion cannon on the Countess. By the time it was down to Zuvio, he was more willing to eat his own bombs than to stay in arc for both Defenders, and barrel rolled back into one in an attempt to arc dodge (which cost him one damage, and didn't really help, as I just tractored him right back into the Countess' arc with Vessery) The Countess took a little damage before the end, but I ended the game with all three fighters intact. Round total: Me/100, Opponent/0

And thus ended the tournament. I went 3/3, and ended up at 39th place, out of the original 95 players attending. Out of the guys from my local meta that went up, I had the second highest ranking. I had a great time, and I'm looking forward to doing it again some time, hopefully after I've gotten a little better.

Nice report. Thanks for sharing. Did expertise pull its weight? What did u do to stay fresh for games 5 and 6?

1 hour ago, DarkJello said:

Nice report. Thanks for sharing. Did expertise pull its weight? What did u do to stay fresh for games 5 and 6?

Expertise was definitely worth it. Focus to hits free, every time? Oh yeah. Helped a lot when chasing down Poe in round 5, as it freed my action up for barrel rolls or target locks. Only time where it didn't really play a role was at the tail end of the final game, where I stressed Vessery intentionally by flying through debris to sandwich in Zubio. Got the tractor and the kill shot without Expertise, but otherwise, it was crucial.

As for staying fresh.... can't really say I did. I was feeling it by the last game, and had a base case of "Airborne knees" by the end of the day. Thank the Lord for Mutant soda and caffeine, or I wouldn't have made it home.

Thanks for your battlereport. That's a pretty good result considering you've only started playing 2 months ago.
I like that you found a list for yourself that you're comfortable with (opposed to just taking the top meta list out of list juggler). It seems you've faced some pretty tough matchups. And Ghost/Fenn is just a beast. It's very difficult to tackle, especially if you face it for the first time (or the second, or the third...).

9 minutes ago, cybu said:

Thanks for your battlereport. That's a pretty good result considering you've only started playing 2 months ago.
I like that you found a list for yourself that you're comfortable with (opposed to just taking the top meta list out of list juggler). It seems you've faced some pretty tough matchups. And Ghost/Fenn is just a beast. It's very difficult to tackle, especially if you face it for the first time (or the second, or the third...).

Thanks. I'm still learning how so of the upgrades piggyback off each other, especially with lists I've not seen in my local meta. That's probably why I did so poorly against the QD/Rho/Rho, I really wasn't used to facing a fair number of those upgrades, and certainly not combined like that. turned brutal fast.

As for building my own list, yeah, I really don't have any interest in the current meta-lists. I've actually avoided picking up Nym and the Ghost precisely because they're the big "in thing" right now.