My boy and I went to our 1st ever store champs today and had a ball!

Expected to get roundly beaten in every game but hoped to get a nice, full introduction to the local community. Achieved the 2nd with flying colours and failed the 1st with similar amounts of airborne hue.

Only 3 games but 3 very friendly and generous opponents. Here's the real kicker, I turned up hoping to get tournament games but, not having any official 2.0 material as yet, would've happily accepted some of the casual side games on offer. They didn't even bat an eyelid at letting me hop in and proxy. Kudos.

I took Rexlar and Ryad, both with Outmanoeuvre and Advanced Sensors.

Round 1 against a very new player, who nevertheless, had more experience playing against actual adults than me. She had Howl, 5 Academies and APT Rhymer. Rocks went badly for me and ended up almost entirely clustered down my end, extending slightly up the right side. I lost lots of lanes.

TIEs started just left of the centre in a 6 block and slow rolled 2 fwd for a couple turns, which slightly threw me. AI TIEs dont do that.... Ryad started left corner, pointing 45 degrees right and was hoping to turn up and scream past as many arcs as possible. With them going slow, I held off and hid behind my corner rock instead.

Rex, starting just right of centre went fairly quick and wide up that side, drawing the scary Rhymer to him. I wanted to smash him and flank the TIEs. But I went shy, once TLd, and concentrated on avoiding his range 2 APTs instead, whilst waiting for a positional advantage.

The TIEs then turned towards Rex, him still playing coy but getting a little paint on Rhymer. In response, Ryad started trying, and failing, to find arc/roll hits, with too much Adv Sensoring around an awkwardly large rock, (my own, doh). The TIEs turned back her way. Rhymer was also forced to turn away from Rex, arc and rock, so started gunning for Ryad as well.

Time was suddenly running short. The swarm started to break a little after K turning down my end, through small rocks. Rex pounced on a stray and nuked it. Last 2 turns, actual real damage might have finally started to occur...

I got Ryad in a great spot, which unfortunately had a big rock in it. Followed by another great position, which unfortunately was a few mm not great, with a bump into the target. Meanwhile, I dialled in a 1 hard for Rex, which would have also been great if I'd dialled the right direction in. It did at least get him out of the way.

Then time was called

If not for that litany of error, I may have won the game by more than a single Academy pilot. The smallest win condition the TO said he'd ever seen. Yay us! Still, the TIEs switching targets was probably key, after that, I had good options available. If they'd gone all in on Ryad and let Rhymer die, they might have been able to turn on Rex and just swamp him too.

I was scared of the swarm and without actually trying to, or wanting to, played the uninspiring 'kill 1 TIE and run away' tactic. Except I ran away 1st, then killed 1 TIE.... Expect the unexpected!

I hurriedly tried to pile in and kill more at the end. And I'll blame the bad flying on that

Next up, more scary bombers. Deathrain, 2 Sat Salvo/Barrage/APT Gamma bombers and Gideon Hask. He set up grouped slightly right of centre. Rocks were lots large and centrally spread, biased to my right. I surrendered initiative and moved last.

Set up for me was the same, but Rex angled in the left corner this time, Ryad a little right of centre. Ryad ran up the right, the Gamma's turned to her. Rex went left, Deathrain and Hask turned to him. I was happy with this.

Both D's went fast, dodged arc, dodged bomb and landed the Outmanoevre hits. 2nd turn of combat, same, this is gonna be easy.

But... ah... full health Ryad seems to have hung her base off the board by 5mm on that Adv Sen boost and 3k... lol facepalm my bad, I should've taken the harmless bump- 'DADDY!'

Dang. This is gonna be hard.

But Rex did serious work before succumbing. He handily, nay easily, obliterated Deathrain and Gideon. Then the Gammas Ryad should've dealt with, caught him on the rebound. We thought it may have been possible to get the win by simply running away (The TO wasn't doing half points on small). But Rex weren't going out like that. He believed in the destructive power of the Dark Side and it had been with him so far. Stupid Dark Side.

Finally, the maddest of the 3 and an opposing squad I found, instantly and surprisingly, more scary than the others too. Fenn, expensive Guri and UNKAR PLUTT! He gave me Initiative as well, so both his aces could dodge mine.

Rocks fairly big and clustered centrally. He deployed the Quad centre and the aces opposite my right corner. I did my thing, with Rex angled in the left and Ryad right of centre.

So straight off, I decide to just go left and kill the Quad before he can spoil my stuff, I figure I've got 2 turns before Fenn and Guri can get really on top of me. And then we'll just hope for the best. I get him down to 2 hull and take a hit on Ryad from a long range Guri. Rex takes a hit from Plutt.

Next turn, Ryad boosts right and 5ks, towards Fenn and Guri, figuring my oppo might misjudge just how far that takes her. For Rex, I dialled in a 1 hard, aiming to BR 1st and end up looking in Plutts earhole...

So the Quad helpfully does my pre move BR for me, at the low, low price of minus 1 AG, so I get an evade. However, I misjudged my oppos BR. Unkar went 1 fwd and is now looking in Rex's earhole, with a magnifying glass, and Rex has no shot. And is stressed. Unkar also drops a Seismic, damaging both of us. Poor Rex. I had kinda banked on killing the Quad in one go but left a bit too much crazy in the gamble.

Ryad, on the other hand, sits laughing maniacally, behind Fenn and Guri, both stressed from linked actions. Fenn suffers some unnaturally good natural dice and loses 2 hull. Rex manages to survive the turn on 2 hull himself. Despite everyone shooting at him. Much +1 dice, -1 dice biz was had on his greens.

Ryad loves where she is and simply 1 banks. I say simply, she fit between the Scum pair by the slimmest of margins. Plutt moves not far and drops a Seismic on the Big Centre Rock.... Rex hops over him with a 3 bank, keeping his stress and in the unhappiest of spots. Then it gets silly. Fenn, worried by Ryad and the Seismic, is now too close and attempts to clear on out. Guri aims to blast Rex from extreme close range and crashes into him. The bomb goes off and it's damage for EVERYONE. The Quad self immolates. Fenn takes 1, Ryad then takes his other and off he goes. Guri loses her extra shield. Suddenly, it's 2 v 1 in my favour, though Rex is smoking.

I feel like I know the things Guri is capable of and my oppo had been using her Adv Sen and linked actions kind of cyclically, limiting his manoeuvrability. So, basically, I largely sacrificed attacking mods to set up a series of range 2/3 kill boxes for her to faff about in, where I knew he would have to break the cycle and take a gamble. He didn't quite get the chance and, low on health, conceded, with both sitting behind him and preparing to roll 7 reds into 4 green.

So a 2-1 with a fairly abysmal MOV and 3rd of 8. The loss being a total throwaway ofc, many lols. Very surprising. Much more importantly, a really fun time with some good people and a seemingly solid reason to invest in 2.0 and give it all a whirl.

I was super impressed with the ability of the Defenders to suck up my mistakes and keep chipping away, occasionally laying down a big hammer blow. The main thing for me was Adv Sen, making them impossible, or at least extremely difficult, to predict or block. I gave up a lot of modded shots, just to make sure I stayed out of too much trouble, aiming to keep my options open and pounce whenever I could. My opponents had massive dificulty guessing where I might be next turn and had to second guess their own manoeuvres a lot of the time. That helped leave the door open for the standard move, action sequence, big modded shot, coup de gras.

I felt very lucky in the last game. Fenn and Guri seem a couple of high skill ships though, possibly in contrast to my own. I think he probably could have wrecked me if he'd been even a little more conservative. But hey, it's all about many things going boom!

I know I could've faced some things that would've ruined my plays, (there were some double tapping Ion Cannons I didnt fancy). My opponents could have made different choices. Fortunately, I did not and they did not. And my boy made some beast rolls on the reds

His greens were poor. I would punish him with chores for this lapse but he continues to point out how I ran full health Ryad to the hills... So we'll call it even.

Thanks for reading, (if you did!).

Edit. Seems I waffle a bit. So also, well done, if you read it.

Glad you wrote it and it's good to find groups - tally ho

Part 2. Another store tourney for me and my mini wingman today.

Once more into the breach with Rex and Ryad.

More faces, a couple we've met before but not played against and the core of another group, 30 miles up the road from us, very welcoming and happily encouraging us to visit for some casual time. The community continues to impress!

Game 1, against a lovely guy I had met up with for a practice game in the week, coincidentally. Flying Hera, Benthic and AP5 in the docked Sheathipede. Sub optimal, everyone says, but he's determined. Hat's off!

He deployed R2 apart, roughly central, Ghost on my right, U on my left. Previous game, he set up too far apart and I simply nuked Benthic before flying both my ships off the table while dealing with the Ghost (it was late :D). Rex was at deaths door by the time of his departure though. 4 blanks, 1 eye on 5 greens do not a happy Rex make. Even with his standard focusevade action. Consistent 4 hit attacks from the Ghost need to be watched....

So I decided this time to ignore the U boat and bring down the whale first. I put Ryad centre (to tempt), and Rex right corner. Flew Rex fast up the right and pulled Ryad across with a 3 hard and boost. Shrugged off an early shot and plinked a few of the Ghosts shields on the 1st real engagement.

Then I just found the U, heading right, R1 behind the mothership, far too tempting a target on the follow through. Went for a block on the Ghost with Ryad, taking a focus with AdvS, slipped Rex past it and started pummelling poor Tubes. Left him on 1 hull on the following turn, all the focus in the world is not handy when green dice are taken away. The Ghost, having leapfrogged Ryads block with Hera's ability, does a little damage with its Dorsal.

Benthic bails, Ghost poops AP5 and swooshes off down the table with a 4k, out of the fight for a turn. AP5 gets rough treatment from the D's, their primary target having slipped the net.

Tight manoeuvres see me lined up to make the support ships sad as the Ghost returns with its (tiny) big guns. Fortunately, after I again go for the Ryad block, Hera switches her move to change the angle of the bump, miraculously clears and lands slap on top of a rock.

Support ships duly evaporated, I suddenly realise that the small amounts of damage I've taken have added up and I now need to chew up a big, fat burger whilst suffering a slightly dodgy stomach.

Things were actually finely poised at this point, as I notice I'm actually only 1 point ahead and 1 decent primary shot from Hera on either of my ships could put me well behind. However, AS Defenders are not so easy to catch and the 2.0 Ghost has some pretty poor arc coverage. It still takes a few turns to down it....

Downside, my boy was super impressed with the size of the Ghost, it's big primary and it's ability to poop ships. Now he wants one for Xmas. Me pointing out that our current list seems ideally equipped to ruin it, phases him not at all.

Game 2, against one of the excellent locals, a very well practiced player and the eventual winner on the day. He brought Sai, with Vader looming over him in the passenger seat. 2 Brocket Scimitars with proxies and Deathrain, toting his usual stack of horrible things.

Shuttle and Deathrain go well left. Scimitars centre. Some big rocks in my half of the table. Ryad goes centre, Rex goes left and angled in.

Ryad pegs it right, through the rocks (including 1 popped for no damage), aiming to draw the bombers away. Rex... well, I went all balls and gambled. 3 banked into Deathrains face. The Lambda was now angled in and maybe a base length further back, still well near the edge. The Scimitars had yet to take the Ryad bait and were further back after consecutive 1 straights.

So I boosted into the Lambdas grill, aiming to dodge Deathrains R1. Failed, (not even joking) by all of 2mm. We had to get the laser out.

So Vader, the Lambda and 1 of the Scimitars all pile pain into Rex, Deathrains fully modded 3 hits being particularly galling. Rex is on 1 health suddenly. The distant Scimitar... I swear, not getting the range bonus is probably the thing I like least about Brockets. But you know, munitions, can't complain.... Apart from you only have to focus those gits.

Derail. It's a symbol on the card, no range bonus, if they'd just left that off Brockets, I feel like there'd have been no complaints about their price. Too late now. Move on. I should've dealt with them better.

Next turn, Ryad is swinging in, ALL the bomb carriers figure Rex is dusted and head her way. Rex is mean though, even on 1 health. Figuring the shuttle will stop (it does), I AS a barrel roll into a 1 hard, Rex will be out of arc, R1 in its side and doing bad things to it.... But no. Laser pointer again, I'm in arc by, like really, really, not even a mm. Seriously

Vadered.

Well. Lesson learned, I went in really hard and fast with him, all guts and glory and got super rekt. Still mulling over what might have happened if I had deployed him 3mm further to the left. If I'd been smart with him, the Bombers might've have been drawn off by the time I engaged, I definitely feel like Rex was capable of munching up the 2 chunky numbers my opponent sent forward. Just maybe not in my rash hands

So, kinda boned now but Ryad led everyone on a merry old dance for many turns. Tied the Scimitars in knots, put some major hurt on one of them. Avoided all their bombs and finally (heavily bleeding from a couple Brocket hits), 3k'd behind the Punisher and prepared to make him suffer. Unfortunately, a seismic that had been dropped for a free action, that for some reason, I believed was out of range of a rock that I didn't even consider ending up in range of myself... so that I'd promptly just mentally dismissed it and forgot about it.... EVEN THOUGH HE POINTED IT OUT AND MOVED IT THERE FOR LATER.... turned out to be all of those things, obviously, and knocked off her last hull .

I was schooled, quite simply. My opponent was really clever in the way he corralled Ryad, well aware of what she could do, blocking pre-positions and mining 5k's. Still, I really did enjoy the game a lot. I didn't feel like I'd approached things too badly overall and my opponent was at least partially stymied by my antics, (fruitlessly bombing his own ships a couple of times). Not that it showed in the points. At all.

Brockets.... Grand Inquisitor has to pay his ability and a force token for that biz.....

Game 3, a great guy with a lovely casual approach and an interesting line up of Juke Rex, Marksmen Howl, Mauler and Scourge. All the 5s and uncomfortably, out bidding me and moving last with everyone.

TIEs, so I go for a rock cluster, cluttering the space just right of centre with a couple of outliers. He appears to conspire to the same arrangement. TIE trio angle themselves in on the left side, his Rex bang in the middle of the board. I've set my Rex right corner, Ryad just left of centre.

Similar to the Ghost match, I zoom Rex up the right side and drag Ryad over. His Rex, (we'll call him Brath), storms forward with a 5. No nonsense. The TIEs 3 straight, towards the asteroid field. Brath shoots at Ryad for nowt.

I take a risk and bypass Brath. We're all getting into the rocks and I figure he'll have a little trouble getting the 3 speed moves in to keep tabs on me. I do kind of leave Ryad hanging for him on the 2nd engagement, I want to bait him after her a little while I go gunning for TIEs. If I can get down to a 2v1 on him, my Outmanoeuvre EPTs should pay off. He and Ryad take a shield or 2 of each other.

Rex just straight up eats Scourge. Then he gets Howl dead in his sights at R1 with no comeback. She gets holy greens. Position is such that he's then off after Mauler, manoevering in such a way as to throw Howl off track. Ryad lurks and, with asteroid help, puts Brath off his pace.

Twice, Rex has point blank R1, out of arc attacks on Mauler. Outrageous green dice mean it takes a 3rd turn, the pursuit now well clear of the rocks, to finish him off.

In the meantime, Brath has given both my D's a couple hits, Juke being unkind after AS'd moves. I didn't give that enough respect. Howl however, has gotten in a bit of pickle and landed on a rock. So Ryad kills her. The green dice have returned to more expected levels of terrible.

Now it's 2v1. Oh. My. Go-odness. So much back and forth with zero damage. We're not far off just 4k jousting in the end, to get it over with. Defender v Defender does not count among the most thrilling of match ups, it seems. It's almost in the balance again as either of mine could now drop to a good hit.

We go to time. The last possible turn, I finally get the sod. Managing to block the 4k with Rex, it's obvious and 'forces' a 3 hard, I finish him with Ryad, from out of arc. Feeling like I made kinda hard work of that 2v1 in the end. Too much AS.

Funnily enough, my opponents plan was identical to mine. He wanted to distract me with TIEs, soften targets, and finish with Brath. I wanted to tease Brath, quickly stomp TIEs and then finish Brath. Could've gone either way. Took longer than I wanted on the TIEs but he hardly touched me with them, all his softening was done by Brath himself. I just knew that if I targeted him 1st, he could take ages and the TIEs would do bad things if ignored. Easier to skirt 1 attack than 3.

We get 2-1, again, 4th overall and happy days. I was exhausted though. The welter of options AS opens up on these things, the number of arcs you have to plan around... my head was practically throbbing at the end. When they announced we had the bye for the final match, my relief was physical. As much as I love this pair, my mental fitness may require something more direct

One thing I'm particularly happy about is the amount of times I've been told that you don't run Defenders without Juke or with AS and that 2 ship list are asking for trouble. And yet a noob like me has managed 4-2 in tourney games with them, losing only 3 ships to enemy fire. (Remembering pointedly the 1 I threw away). They may be well below top tier and they certainly have heavy counters, **** Brocket Bombers. But I've loved every minute of flying them, pulling out plenty of surprises and giving my opponents heavy puzzles to solve in every game so far. They definitely do work. But **** me, they're intense!

Once again, thanks for reading. And massive thanks to the X Wing community I've found so far, top notch. It absolutely has to be stated about how great everyone has been with my mini wingman. He's had faultless treatment and been repeatedly made to feel special.

Maybe also worth mentioning that if you don't have a 9yr old nattering in your ear for the entirety of every game, the twin D's might be a little less demanding. But that wouldn't be half as much fun.

(Besides, I actually took plenty of decent advice from him today, with several of his choices being a vast improvement on my own)

(And he continues to roll pretty good dice)

TTFN.

A very busy weekend for us just passed, our 3rd and 4th tournaments now played. So another essay. More for my benefit than anything

Saturday, I had a change of pace in mind, lining up AdvS, Outmanoeuvre Ryad with 2 Juke Sigmas. Sunday was the boys turn to lead, he had picked Dash and Luke....

So, day off Friday, we ran both against each other a couple times. He trounced me in both

Change of plan! Let’s give Rex and Ryad a send off, we know where we are with that.

Game 1, Saturday. Line up against my sparring partner with his Ghost and U Boat. Coincidentally again! This is probably the 7th game we’ve had against each other in the last month or so... Details are honestly very fuzzy indeed.

So, we’ve been here before with these 2 squads, it’s a tough match up for him. He was lined up slightly differently though. The Sheathe started undocked, the U now has Deadmans Switch and Hera is rocking VTG and an ICT.

My approach normally would be to divide slightly, go in all guns blazing, arc dodge and blow everything up asap, we have the power! But the extra arcs from the Sheathe and the threat of Ion made me hedge a bit more.

Midway, I had got some decent damage on the U, taken some plinks from Hera, (AP5 was rolling double hits almost constantly too). So I had Ryad go finish off the U while Rex danced with the Ghost at distance for a bit. I remember him taking a desultory swipe at AP5 as he swung round again.

Can’t remember how it went but Ryad died after the U was gone, (Deadmans caught me by surprise). Rex was still fairly healthy, the Ghost was not yet halved and AP5 had wandered off into lots of no man’s land. So Rex just started diving aggressively into Hera.

What I took to be possibly the last turn, Rex lost his last shield to an Ion shot and Hera was on 2 hull. I worked out that on points, I was actually losing now. I’d probably gone in a bit too hard with Rex but I didn't want to risk the Ghost getting its primary on me.

But then we were told there was 30 seconds left. My opponent showed legendary sportsmanship by saying we still had time to start another turn, so we should. Even knowing full well that Rex would just finish Hera. I was caught up in the moment and just went with it. Boom Hera, win us. I feel bad about it now.

2nd game. The guy who brought Guri, Fenn, Unkar against us in our 1st tourney. This time he had 2 proton launching Cutlasses, APT Jonas and Deathfire, also carrying Proxies. He knew what our Defenders were like and resigned himself to a miserable time.

Unfortunately, we obliged. We ran a lot. We plinked a lot. He rolled no dice on many turns. Our dice were so cold it drew the eventual bloodbath out into a slow and horrible death by poking. It dragged on like that to full time and a win on points. It was fairly close at the end as I piled in to just try and finish it well, losing half points on 1.

I felt quite bad about it and at that point pretty much decided to give up the dual AdvS D’s dream. They are unfun to chase around while they deal their minimal damage. If they roll hot reds, they’re fun for me, but if they don’t, it’s attrition warfare that I will often take all the way to time. I really don't want to bore my opponents to death.

Game 3 against a genuine next level player, he didn't lose a game this tourney, or the last one I saw him at (in 1.0), winning both. He had a really well put together list of Scum Han, Fenn, L3 and Unkar and used it expertly. I got pasted, only managing to kill the Quad. Which also Deadmanned me. Goshdarnit.

It was fascinating though and I got a lot from it. Going over where it went wrong was fairly easy, I'd seen Fenn set to flank my right, the Falcon go left with the 2 support creeping fwd, left of centre. My plan was solid, box Fenn and hurt him, when he runs, we go into the large space right of centre and work our way through and round his squad from there, restricting Han to his lousy 2 die primary.

I set up the whole trap badly though. My 2nd set of dials, edging slowly left to keep the rest of his squad tempted that way and draw Fenn further down the right, made it impossible to get the best 3 speed moves to box Fenn at the optimum range. But I hadn't really seen it at that point. The 3rd turn, I went hard 3 with both anyway, which put me too close. He 3 straight and boosted, beyond Rex and into a R1 faceoff with Ryad. Like he'd measured it, although I'm not sure he actually wanted to be there. Both came out undamaged.

4th turn, Fenn would run away, Han would turn in. So I set K turns on both Defenders, aiming to AdvS split, potentially block Han with Rex and send Ryad away for shots and good follow up options.

Enter Plutt. He tractors Ryad onto a rock. My poor and obvious 3rd set of dials had opened the door to him. That blocked Ryads AdvS options and, once she moved, Rex's best too.

There were a few more turns but that was game over. My visible options after that turn were really bad and saw Ryad melt fast. The 1st I saw, to try and get after Fenn through the rocks, was arguably one of the worst... Rex had few decent choices available after that.

It was a great experience though, I really appreciated the lessons I took from it, almost entirely based on turns 0-3 but also the menace of little buggers.

That was tournament end, due to a few factors. Giving us another 2-1, but with probably the worst MOV of those.

We did play a 4th though, against @player2072913 ’s Whisper/Sloane TIE swarm. 3 Academies, Del and Wampa surrounding the Wicked Witch.

Whisper went left of centre a fair way, the TIEs were loosely formationed up in my top right. I set up centre. Middle of the board was fairly empty, so I dialled in 3s and angled to give myself the option of going left and right around the swarm.

By player2s own admission, he then played a few turns of ‘the worst X Wing he’d ever played’, (sorry), which ended up with almost all the TIEs rear ending each other, parking on/moving through the same large debris and generally arranging themselves as if they’d just been dumped on the table by the fistful

I like to think it was my own genius approach that caused the pile up. Even if it's entirely not true.

Now Ryad had AdvS in behind Whisper and Rex had lined up at R3 on her, with a boost and evade. Positioned laterally along the far board edge. Natural dice suck. She lost 1 shield.

I was expecting Whisper to decloak down field, away from my Ds and gave Ryad a 3 straight to roll out from her rock and follow. Rex boosted and 4kd along the back line to make it harder for the TIEs to pin him and set up a Whisper pursuit back down my end.

Whisper decloaked fwd instead, long range from Rex. Ryad rolled into her 3 and looked to fly off round the back of the swarm. The long way round, it turns out.

It would've been better if I'd waited and lined up a stronger attack on Whisper, while the TIEs were confused and stressed. I was just too hasty and a little desperate to get in on her. Now the TIEs were straightening themselves out and starting to build boxes.
It had been a long day of long games for both of us by this point.

So now, Rex was facing a few shots, including one from Wampa, who was directly in line of fire from Ryad. So I instructed the boy to shoot at, BUT NOT KILL, Wampa.

Hit, hit, crit, blanks on the greens, dead Wampa, 2 stress for Ryad. Natural dice will always provide laughs. You shouldn't shepherd them along too much.

Kinda left Ryad with not much choice. Cleared 1 on the next turn and took a bunch of damage from player2s now more cohesive swarm, leaving her on 2 hull. Rex carefully moved into pursuit position.

Next turn I put in the get out of dodge 5 straight for Ryad. Looking at where she'd end up, I took a risk and k-turned her for shots. Thinking it might be unexpected. At R3, 4 green dice gives her a chance!

Whisper rolls 3 hits, Ryad rolls bugger all and dies. Game feels up and time is practically done so I simply charge Rex into the middle for a heroic last shot at Whisper before death.

It was an enjoyable game and a really different and interesting puzzle to solve. With it more or less handed to me early on, I did feel like I could've made a few different choices and earned a different result. But with further thought, and remembering those options more clearly, I'm honestly not sure I would've found the answer to this particular riddle. It would likely have ended the same way but quicker, if player2 had come in the way he'd intended. He took 2nd on the day with his thorny puzzle.

These 2 Defenders are really hard work. They're frankly ridiculous set up this way, they have ALL the options. They can absolutely batter things and they'll live as long as you want them to. But they're nicely balanced with AdvS, if you use it, you gain a lot, but you give up a lot. It's really difficult to get them right, using them to break your predictability into and out of engagement. Combined with the crazy amount of arc dodging you have to do when 2v5 or 1v4, it's hard to not end up chasing the game.

I like them like this, but I’d need a lot more time to really get into them properly. That would not make me a particularly entertaining opponent. I need something different to do the gitting gud with. Slightly different.

Well. Another great day with the community, lots of interesting chat about the game, and the choices therein. Thanks for reading. Next up, the following day, the boy is flying Rebel Heroes!

19 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

By player2s own admission, he then played a few turns of ‘the worst X Wing he’d ever played’, (sorry)

Well, maybe ever was an exaggeration, but the worst I've played recently, and definitely worse than anyone in the top 2 should be playing!

Coming from primarily flying rebel 2-3 ship lists in 1e, my first 3 games with a swarm broke my brain .

But it was a great tournament, and it looks like you and your boy have as much fun with 2e as I do. Looking forward to a rematch! ?

20 minutes ago, player2072913 said:

Coming from primarily flying rebel 2-3 ship lists in 1e, my first 3 games with a swarm broke my brain .

My brain can barely cope with 2

Awesome that you've been using Defenders set up the way I like them. I stopped using them because they were almost too easy to fly well. They're a real power in the game right now, capable of making up for poor decisions in a similar way as old Vader or Soontir Fel. I'll be revisiting them again, but I've been having too much fun with other Imperials. It seems as though they did well versus a great variety of lists. Well done! And thanks for the reports!

6 hours ago, Bad Idea Comics said:

Awesome that you've been using Defenders set up the way I like them. I stopped using them because they were almost too easy to fly well. They're a real power in the game right now, capable of making up for poor decisions in a similar way as old Vader or Soontir Fel.

This is very true actually. I've got so much to learn in my approaches. The Defenders can bail and do things on the fly, so much so that I'm almost not learning tbings at all.

Just.... get to there and wing it.

Well, we all lost a lot of points on our ships there. Who won?

It's kinda scary to think of them in competent hands. They're a neat pair, both will force you to gang up on them. Whichever you dont, will smash things.

If I can get to a point when I'm capable of playing 2 of them hard, fast and lethal, I'll come back to them.

Edit. Because I cant give them up that easy.

Onto Sunday and a store just a few miles down the road. This is my 3rd visit on a tourney day, lists tend towards the casual so an ideal opportunity to give my wingman free reign.

I did have a lot of input on our upgrades, suggesting and trying various ‘decent’ load outs with him. He was not too keen on dropping regen but 4 dice attacks are very appealing. We took all debris and went with this-

T-65 X-wing - •Luke Skywalker - 83
•Luke Skywalker - Red Five (62)
Proton Torpedoes (9)
Supernatural Reflexes (12)
Servomotor S-foils (Closed) (0)

YT-2400 Light Freighter - •Dash Rendar - 114
•Dash Rendar - Hotshot Mercenary (100)
•Lone Wolf (4)
Perceptive Copilot (10)

Total: 197/200

On the day, we worked much more as a team than usual, I had certain ideas, as did he. I did try to let him lead and defer to his decisions, occasionally changing to a manoeuvre I thought would be more beneficial, but we probably ended up with roughly equal input. Its an intense business for a 9yr old, keeping concentration for that long. I'd say overall approaches were more mine, trying to demonstrate more abstract objectives. It's a fairly simple and fun list though, circle and focus Dash at a distance, react and do all the super things with Luke. Nothing too much to think about.

Game 1. It must be alphabetical or something. We had the same opponent as our 1st game, last time down here. A relative newcomer to the game. Last time she had Rhymer and a Howl swarm. This time, a heavily laden Soontir (74pt!), APT Rhymer and a couple Barrage Bombers, one of whom was Deathfire I think.

We started the same in every game. Running 2 straight along our back edge from the corner, with Dash in front. The Bombers had deployed top right, with Soontir central. So we went right.

This game really all hinged on one mistake. Our plan was to circle Dash round and kill Soontir from range. Luke would slow, dodge and torp the Bombers before running. Then 2nd part worked fine on the 1st couple turns.

The 1st part, Soontir turned towards the right side on his 3rd turn, away from Dash. For the 4th/5th turn my opponent had aimed to set up a box for Luke, in our right corner, k-turning 2 Bombers, slow rolling the 3rd and bringing Soontir round and in behind. Unfortunately, she dialled in his initial 2 bank in the wrong direction, sending him up the table and onto debris. Where he rolled a crit and pulled Panicked Pilot. With Dash in the vicinity, all this was A Very Bad Thing.

It was a shame, since the box was good. No. 1 son is a bit bold and liberal with the red moves, so we duly k-turned into the middle of it. An earlier talon roll had set the stage. He had a few Supernatural options but the simplest was best, save the force and take 2 relatively unscary arcs. Dice were with us, he lost 1 shield.

So now Luke runs off. Dash brushes fragments of Fel from his shoulder and starts trucking back down to finish Bombers off. A 2nd misaligned dial clinches it. Rhymer had intended to 2 hard after Luke but turned the opposite way instead. My opponent conceded.

I did try to demonstrate, kindly, that Rhymer was never going to APT Luke. The loss of Soontir had already set the result and Dash was set up to wreck things. I'm not sure I really helped.... It's sad when these things change a game.

Game 2 was a nice match up. Boba Fred has been at every one of these tourneys, we've chatted a fair bit but never played. So he brings his current project, strong Boba, with Trick Shot + Title Lando carrying an explosive escape pod. We gave initiative for the Luke/Boba match up.

Lando left, Boba right. We go right. Boba comes fast so rather than splitting, we wait and put 8 dice into him. He loses his shields, I believe Luke also lost his.

We were really in control for a while after that but somewhere along the line, we lost it. Lando was heading over to us, so Luke kited Boba off left and kept him from rolling dice for a few turns. Dash and Lando broadsided each other for a bit, the Falcon naturally coming off worse. After a few turns of kiting, Luke had swung round and put his 2nd torp into the Falcon. L3 crew nerfed it ?

Here is where we went wrong. Lando turned to come down our right end and motor left. Dash followed but it put him on the outside and into the corner. We made a hard decision to roll off debris and out of Landos R1, picking up a stress. The trade was going to be his 4 reds into our 2 greens and 3 red back from us. We elected to throw 4 back instead, since Lando would have 4 either way. Staying range 1 and focussed was clearly the better option.

It put us in a position where only a hard turn would keep us on the table and led to positions where we had to give up a couple of shots completely. We probably shouldn't have have followed at all, and finished Boba away from it. I swear off Dash barrel rolls for good. Avoid corners instead.

Dash was on 5 hull by now and Boba was back in. Giving up on Luke and putting more pressure on Dash. Luke was slightly out of the way. Fred then predicted Dash wrong, pulled an outrageous Talon Roll through debris with Cybernetics and Han Gunner going on, ending up with about 5 stress. Dash and Luke finished him from out of arc.

At this point, I was so determined not to forget about the pod that I forgot what it did. I was worried about it popping out and blowing immediately and ended up cornering Dash again, who was now really unhealthy. Then he died.

So 3 hull Luke against 5 hull Lando. We didn't want to joust it and turned, hoping to outmanoeuvre it instead.
Almost worked. The final turn had Luke R1 off the right rear corner of Landos side arc and a just popped pod an inch from Lukes front left corner. We were down on points and needed to kill the Falcon, which was now on 4 hull, with a Hull Breach and piling up crits. I chose to roll towards Lando, hopefully out of arc, and give him 4 dice. We landed in arc and gave him 3 hits. All turn to crits, none are the magic Direct Hit or Fuel Leak..... Combined fire from the still living Lando and the pod finish Luke.
Boy was gutted but it had been a pretty epic match and the finish was high drama.

Final game. Lining up against a fella playing his 1st tournament for a year and a half. He was easily as enthused by 2.0 as I am and great to chat to. He'd brought Sai/Vader and 3 Crack Shot Saber Squadron pilots.

Previous game, Sai/Vader had stopbumpchokebaffled a Reaper to death, up against the board edge. For several turns. Horrifying.

Shuttle went right, Sabers spread themselves evenly across his end. So we went left, kill all the Interceptors before Vader turns up and keep Luke out of it's way

Pretty much the way it played out. He brought the Sabers screaming fwd, which gave Luke the opportunity to Super his 1 bank in with a pre-boost and send an early torp in, from tight behind a rock. Saber pulled the Ion crit and would be facing a rock next turn. Dash failed to kill the central one and took a couple hits.

This torped Saber was obviously doomed, Luke rolled into a 2 straight and finished it. The other 2 were now heading his way and suddenly Luke was down to 2 hull. I don't exactly remember how. Dash had failed to kill either, now Vader had turned up, he had to go deal with that. Got himself a passing bumpchoke.

Epic heroic showdown ensues. This is where I really wish I'd taken a picture. Both Sabers are next to each other, a little offset, facing a stressed Luke. Death or glory. Luke 2 banks into them, bumps the 1st one and evaporates the 2nd one in combat. Turns round after that, kills the other, then runs to the hills. Glory!

Dash has a slightly awkward time downing the Lambda, trying not to get too close, but PerCo effectively neuters the Dark Lord. Eventually, catching me by surprise, the Lambda hits full speed, gets guns on a distant Luke and blows him up.

Final turn, Dash has pursued his prey into a corner again.... dammit. In its arc, with no shot and ready to maybe get killed as well. BARREL ROLLS out of arc and blows more than the bloody doors off Sai with a natural and unavoidable hit, hit, crit.
Huzzah!

Huge change of pace today. Much less plotting and scheming, much more simple zoom and booming. The list has some parallels with the 2 Defenders but the damage output being considerably higher, with survivability somewhat lower (plot armour included), games are more fun and less taxing. I enjoyed them a lot, we'll use them again. But as something to improve my own game with, I don't feel like they're the thing I want to put time and practice into. Light relief, for me.

If you liked Super Dash and Dancing Poe, this list as it is, would ring a lot of bells. Lone Wolf, Rey-like crew, BB8 PTL shenanigans and a form of permanent focus for the flyboy. It has it's obvious nerfs but the similarities are clear. It's a good 2.0 translation.

Well, they belong to the boy anyway, so I'll be practising how to beat them

Depending on whether you need the bid, you may also consider R4 Astromech for Luke.

3 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Depending on whether you need the bid, you may also consider R4 Astromech for Luke.

I really did consider that strongly. With all the red moves no. 1 likes to pull, (I did have to stop him 4k-ing Dash), R4 might've been handy.

Reason I went torps instead was because I knew we'd be flying by the seat of our pants... So I kind of thought, Luke is a great closer and can run, people might go for him 1st. He might die 1st. Part of me thought to play into that, have him Super surprise people and torp them a couple times before he dies, let Dash close. Dash can be surprisingly resilient and deadly with LW and PerCo at R3. If you don't persistently reroll blanks into blanks with LW. And trap yourself in a corner.

But I'm not sure that thinking had any impact on our games

Tournament 5 in the bag and it was a doozy!

I even remembered to take a couple of pictures. Just a couple....

The list. Well, after last time out, I was looking for something less strenuous and more direct... Turns out I'm just not that kinda guy. We took Rex, Echo and Rhymer. The new Rex is more direct, but we didn't fly him that way. If Rhymer is direct, he dies before delivering the APTs, or very shortly afterwards. Echo... is the very epitome of not direct. So once again, lots of puzzling and pondering, and considerable flaking towards the end of the day. But you've got to enjoy the piloting, chugging towards the enemy and chucking loads of dice, does not make for interesting flying in my book.

The field.... was something else. With a lack of tournaments going on in the area this weekend, we had 18 entrants, the numbers swollen by a contingent of squadron members from a large collective further North, (there is not much South that isn't France tbf). Ship counts were fairly high, a few 3 ship lists, including ours, and 1 with 2 large bases, the rest were all 4 and up. Which saw us outnumbered in every match. Not only that, the quality on show was also high. It was a tough day!

Game 1. Ironically against a local and one of our current casual opponents, although this was only the 2nd time we've played. A good player, finishing 6th on the day, with a squad he knows well. He'd been trying a 4 ship Rebel list, which I felt I had the beating of, earlier in the week. Unfortunately, one of our other casuals had trashed it that night, so he played it safe and brought Rex, Barrage Jonas and 2 barrage wingmates. I said to my colleague he should've let the Rebels win....

His Rex (Brath) and mine deployed vaguely opposite, down our left. With mine holding FCS over his just Juke version, I felt I could just go with the Rex-off. The Bombers started further right and turned in early to pressure our Rex. Echo and Rhymer had a nice view of their side panels and things looked advantageous... Rex could bail on Brath, k-turn and together, we might smash the bombers before ganging up on Brath.

Mistakes were made. I'd boosted in on the 2nd turn, a R2 trade with Brath went 1 nil to him. I'd intended to 5 straight and boost after, flying safely past the Bombers and well away from Braths inevitable 4K. But I'd misjudged the distance on the previous boost, the straight would skim Debris, leaving him focusless and taking shots. I 3 banked to avoid it and had to boost to try to escape Braths arc. We also needed to thin the Bomber fire on Rex.

Well, Brath still had arc, just. Jonas took everything and died to a console fire but ofc, he could still shoot, even though his friends would no longer benefit from him. I should've tried to toast one of them. They rolled all paint anyway, Rex went down in flames. Too soon, far too soon.

Watch and learn, Rex .

Rhymer didn't last long, but Echo certainly did. The remaining 2 Bombers managed maybe 1 shot on her over the full clock. Attempting to tackle Brath, while staying outside their kill boxes was some effort. We got him down to half, whilst staying on full points ourselves, but just ran out of room and couldn't get the angle on him we needed to earn a more honourable 67-68 defeat...

A good battle, but messing Rex up on the 2nd turn made it an incredibly uphill one.

Edit. Just remembered that, a turn after Rex's exit, my opponent popped Brath onto a rock by the slimmest of margins. I had him pincered between Echo and Rhymer. The APTs went into him, Echo's dice went into him and we only managed to strip shields. Technically, with slightly favourable dice, we could have taken him off the board at that point. I think Rhymer died at the end of that engagement phase....

Game 2. Less mistakes were made. The other side of the table was a beast. One of the visiting squadron had set up Vader Jendon alongside 3 Barrage Scimitars and a Barrage Deathfire.

Joust? Um, no thanks.

They were trundling down the left, obviously aiming to turn into a big space I'd left around halfway. So Echo sits down there, come chase me! Rex and Rhymes pour on the gas and scarper right. They'll use the rocks as cover, coming into his formation from top right. Those same rocks making it highly unlikely he'll be able to turn to meet us.

And so it was. We did some pretty major damage to a couple of the Bombers, avoiding much in return. Rhymer ended on 1 hull, having done his thing, take a shot, smash that thing with APTs, then bug out. Echo put a few dents in things from her hiding places, neatly and continuously skirting the Lambda, which had it in for her, fruitlessly.

MOV was slim in the end. I believe it was around 50-20 to us. We were late setting up and missed a crucial extra 8 minutes in the end game. Took a few too many dice to finish Deathfire. Rhymer didn't quite have time to reengage after reloading and Echo had only just turned her attention to the lumbering shuttle, whipping 2 unanswered shields off it on the final turn.

A happy win in a tough game for us. We had decent dice, while our opponent bemoaned his own.... those that we gave him... he had apparently never played someone who ran away so much.... I prefer to think of it as running around . Seemed a wiser option than running to .

Game 3 was probably the harshest lesson we've had. Very smart player. Jan Ors with title, mostly buffing Attack Shuttle Sabine, ably supported by ProTorp, Swarm Tactics Wedge and a naked Blue Squadron Vet.

Went wrong right out of the gate. He slow rolled everyone down the left. I sent Rex right and held the other 2 back, centrally. Lots of space on my left side, with the rocks mostly right and across his half.

3rd turn, I had the choice of turning Rex in or continuing the flank. I took the flank, fearing his turn in. Sent Rhymer over, feeling he'd be able to get his shot off. The big gamble, Echo decloaked their way, went 4 straight and boosted, I thought she'd either scoot past a couple of them, or simply end up out of arc as they turned in. There may be a barrel roll on as well, (there wasn't). We aimed to down something before Rex came round to swing the odds.

My opponent simply called it, edged fwd, aiming to catch the slippery Echo and remove that threat before it became unmanageable. With Rex too far away to achieve anything. He took the APTs, and Echo's dice, rolling all evades with the BSV on both attacks. Echo and Rhymer simply disappeared on the next 2 turns. At this point, 1 against 4, I just gave the dial to the boy and let him go for it.

Er.... whoops .

Rex is still a proper mean machine. With 4 ships shooting at high I with buckets of dice, bunched right in and blocking almost all his options, without self bumping due to some excellent piloting, Rex still managed to get about and half point Wedge. Final turn, with the 4k screamingly obvious, flipped it to reveal our 1st and only Defender 2K of 2.0... Like.... what on Earth were you thinking?! And so he died.

The boy actually set up this off his own back, taking the pic with unusual relish .

Tbf, the boy had called a move that actually might have been decent, had Sabine not managed to slip into the tiniest of tiny gaps.... apart from having awful options thereafter, due to the stress. But fair play to him, he lasted well and did some damage.

Game 4, 13th place playoff! Seriously, our MOV was terrible.
Friendly chap from the visitors with a slightly foul mouth.... flying Swarm Norra, Mouldy Roark, Thane and Sabine.

He set up fairly spread along his edge, which I found a little unusual. From left to right, Thane, Sabine, Roark, Norra. I'd created an obvious space with the rocks, slightly off centre on my side, like I'd been doing all day, intending to run around it. Here is where I'd like you to consider turning around....

I put Echo opposite Thane and Sabine, come get me.... Rex a range band right and Rhymer on his shoulder. The Rebels go 3 fwd, Norra slightly slower, Thane boosting in. Rhymer slowly moves that way, Echo shifts to the right, Rex rushes off towards the top right corner at maximum velocity.

Everything was rosy for a few turns. Rhymer engages Thane and Sabine, putting the latter on 1 hull before a 4 straight bail between them. Echo catches up with Rex and they put Roark on 1 hull. That bastard refused to die.

With Rhymer getting all kinds of roughed up on the left side, picking up a Hull Breach. I don't even bother wasting actions flipping crits for Thane to peruse. Panicked Pilot means he's never turning round, so just give them something to tide them over while Rex and Echo mop up over here.... The dice grant us that time.

However, a right royal **** up has occurred. Roark just won't die, even though he's picked up a Stunned Pilot, plus a Loose Stabiliser and will explode if he turns. I was properly flaked by this point and actually did drift off for a moment. I could've easily killed Roark with a decloak block but it doesn't even occur to me until too late. Instead, I park Echo in a nice Roark/Norra killbox, thinking I'll get him before he fires.... And then park Rex on a rock. And then Roark fires 1st with Swarm Tactics anyway. Echo gets halved.

Rhymer finally dies and now I'm losing.

Echo pulls a big move, bails from the scene of the crime, misses the arc he was aiming for on a drifting Sabine and spends his 2nd Col Det charge to park on a rock. But can now only decloak to the left to get off it.
Rex 4Ks unexpectedly through debris, out of Roark and Norras arcs at R1 and STILL, Roark Will Just Not Die.

2 turns remain, Rex again goes for the unexpected, switches to Sabine, dodges an arc with a BR and blows her up. We're still losing.

Hail Mary final gambit. All 3 of my opponents ships go for maximum distance, Echo attempts a barely even considered decloak 3 turn and boost, (Afterburners), which would have given her range, if the 3 turn hadn't stranded her on the rock she’d only just left. Rex also 3 turns and boosts, gets the R3 shot on bloody Roark and blows him the **** up! WIN!!!

2-2, but with our horrendous clawing victories and solid defeats, we were the worst of those

Oh my darn and golly gosh. What a hefty day. The lessons were laid on thick. I'd really felt like I had been making strong progress with this list, the things I'd been picking up about timing my engagements, baiting manoeuvres, laying devious kill boxes... all had given me a degree of confidence going into this. Only Thursday, I had held in my hands a victory over the player and list that went into the final game in 2nd, (he lost and finished 4th, unfortunately). 2 Barrage Bombers, Vader Sai and Deathrain. That game I'd blown with a boost into an imminent Proxy, giving up half on Rex instantly.

Then, in the heat of a strongly competitive tourney, I found how quickly good positions become utterly disastrous with one bad decision.

But I like to walk the knife edge. Many of the lists present today were geared towards high ship count, high health, high damage, wide coverage. One list had 7 ships in a Drea swarm. Another had Drea with 3 Kimogilas and an Escape Pod. 3 Kimos!! There were Barrage Rockets galore. The winner, we've faced before, he always wins. Redline, Deathrain, Whisper. He'd win our local spots with anything but still....

Lots of lists that take no small amount of skill to trudge about, but almost all lists that you don't want to park aces in front of.

Well, ****, I just like to see my opponent scratch their head, wonder where on the table I'm going to end up and see how the gambles play out. Landing out of arc of 4 ships and being the only one with a shot, is a very satisfying thing. It's not the easiest way to learn how to compete at this game, but it's definitely absorbing and highly entertaining.

Once again X Wing community, all the thanks!

Today was rather different! Well, in some ways it was much the same... but...

Boba with Fearless, Marauder, 000, Han, Baffle. Old Mr T with Swarm Leader and an entirely Overzealous Recruit.

Something that has recently emerged as a bit of favourite on the home table. Another day at our laid back local, so the boy is in charge. While lists here trend to the fun and the casual, he has chosen something of a monster....

As the participants prowled the room, eyeing the assembled squads, many an indrawn breath was taken upon sight of our streamlined, pitiless professionals. And their recruit.

I totally forgot I even had a camera for most of it.

Game 1.
It gets silly, it really does. This is the young lady who we've played game 1 in our other 2 tourneys here. Last time she had a fat Fel with 3 Bombers. Same here too, although the load outs had changed a little. APT Rhymer was here with us again. Deathfire is one of the other 2.

Our deployment had been practiced a bit. Our play, notsomuch. We put a rock R3 from our edge and central, then create lanes and turning zones from there. The Recruit deploys, before almost everyone, every game, behind it. Once we see where everything else is, Boba can be put down for a joust, Old T the other side of the Recruit, who can 4 straight out and roll either way, as the flanking manoeuvre demands.

Fangs flank with Fel, Boba sets up to charge the Bombers. We floor it forwards unceremoniously. Fel and Mr T slap meaninglessly at each other as they pass and we then run smack into APT Rhymer, who ducked out of the Boba joust, surprising us. Wham, Recruit does his bit and comes out with a single negligible crit. Rhymer gets cut in half.

Boba and Bombers trade off, they've failed arc, 1 takes 2 from Bob.
Fel is now swinging back up from down South, flicking a damage onto Old T. Boba leaves a Panicked Deathfire and friend chugging off, skirts a proxy for 1 hit and proceeds to help shut the lid on Fels box. The Recruit, in the same vicinity, chops down a just turned round Rhymer.

Deathfire and chum turn around in our deployment zone to find themselves all alone. Just 3 angry, healthy Mandalorians screaming in, guns blazing, the light of Mandalore shining behind them. All of which is entirely true, given the play mat, (see above). It was glorious. Vode An!

Game 2.
Our erstwhile sparring partner. This time, no Ghost, it was experimental kinda day.

So Norra, Dutch, Sabine, AP5. Plenty of Ion and some bombs. Standard deployment didn't really work here. Dutch, Sabine and AP5 were opposite the Recruit, Norra far left. So we put Boba right, have the Fangs fly over and slot in behind him as we crash through a small rock window into Dutch and shuttle accompaniment. Norra will be late to the party.

So Dutch lasted only long enough to drop a proton for Boba, who just DGAF right onto it while cleaning Dutchs rear windows with butt fire. Bob had taken a fair bit of whack on the way through though and was now sporting a Fuel Leak. The shuttles had dented Old T somewhat as well, and now Norra was here. It was kind of knife edge.

Norra brought Proxy trouble, which limited Fang options. The Recruit turned away while Mr T ended up bumped onto one and halved.

The shuttles had taken some pounding as well though. AP5 straight up ran away. Sabine considered chasing Boba but that was clear suicide, so bailed on that and bumped the Recruit instead.

Norra finished Teroch.

Time was about up. Sabine careered, forlornly to her demise, through a rock whilst stressing out about something. Boba caught a hiding, reversing AP5 and squashed it.

All we needed to do in the final turn was run out of range, but the boy turneď Boba in for a futile final trade off with Norra. Our Mandalore, stay out!

(I like to think this is teenage Boba, finding his roots at home for a few weeks holiday).

Final game. A top 2 clash!
And it's off to Endor for a battle against Jendon and some Bombers, around the 2nd Death Star, for some reason. I’ve no idea what we're doing here. Must be after bounty.

Godammit. Jendon has Sloane. Groooooaaan as best laid plans crumble to ash. 2 Bombers have ProTorps, 2 Barrage.

So our approach vectors have exactly this sort of thing in mind, the rocks have played out exactly as we'd wish. Unfortunately, I got it wrong. My fault entirely. All day, 80% of decisions were the boys, with me mainly advising on better angles or just rock avoidance. I’d given him this approach play and we'd gone from it in different ways in the 1st 2 games. This time, we were going to go all in on it.

And I misjudged. Or gambled. Boba was opposite EVERYONE on the left. Fangs centre and a bit further right. 1st turn, Bombers 2 straight. So does Boba.

ALERT.

3 straight and boost or not boost would have given us what we wanted on the next turn. 2 straight did not. Opponent went 1 fwd, we couldn’t get Boba close enough to bump or bypass. We got R1 on 2 of them, but I had also mistaken which 2 had the ProTorps. It was neither of those.

So Boba just got instarekt and that was pretty much that. We put a little hurt in with the flanked Fangs, but we'd hedged them a bit, fearing the Bomber turn in, away from Bobas joust. The fire from which would melt them. So they were too far away to help Boba reduce the incoming missiles and so on.

It did put them in a good place when the Bombers did turn in, so they put up a fair resistance. But ultimately, the expanding and contracting KTurn net they would up in was just too sticky. And not R1 enough.

If we could have got the range game right and dragged Boba through the wall with a few health remaining, the Bombless Bombers would not have lasted long. The Lambda would've had all 3 hammer it down quick smart. But our overconfidence.....

And Maths....

A good game against a classy opponent, (overswagged, he gave us the metal evades, which was a lovely touch).

A beautiful day in all. The theme was so strong and it's always a lovely, friendly and relaxed game down here, with this crowd.

So, wow. This list is seriously fantastic. Just amazeballs fun and simple, really hard to target and hits like dropped bricks. Highly recommended!

The points on Han are obviously going to go up, it's an insanely powerful combo. But in this list, the Fangs are sensational. Terochs ability didn't proc once but the ST I5 onto the Recruit is gold in the 1st exchanges. If I could still run Boba, Han and 2 Fangs with minimal add ons, after Jan, it'd be hardly less scary.

So that was us. Using powerful things to punch less optimised things flat and running afoul of our (my) crazy gambles, like usual

And the only other picture I took was because the captain of the ship demanded it. Far and away, the star of day, stupidly resilient and deadly at R1 and no slouch out of it, our Overly Zealous Recruit. In the background here, rolling 3 natural crits into nasty Jendon, before rolling 3 natural evades on a follow up Barrage Rocket. The boys dice were as on point as always. My Zealous Recruit.

Hello again! A small local tourney today, only 6 attendees, a bigger draw elsewhere claimed a few...

Also, today I had to fly solo. Could I cope without my wingmans hot dice and sensible advice? Scary stuff! It did mean I remembered pics, as I had to send updates to the boy.

Still not settling on a list. Tried an experiment today, a tilt on one I’ve posted elsewhere and intend to get more into. Vermeil, Ryad, Echo.
But today, the experiment...

You’ve probably seen the Scum 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Well I present, The 4 Taxmen of the Apocalypse. Its not quite the same thing....

TIE/sa Bomber - •Major Rhymer - 40
•Major Rhymer - Council Tax (34)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (6)

TIE Reaper - •Major Vermeil - 51
•Major Vermeil - National Insurance (49)
Tactical Officer (2)

TIE/ag Aggressor - •Lieutenant Kestal - 47
•Lieutenant Kestal - Poll Tax (36)
Ruthless (1)
Dorsal Turret (4)
Barrage Rockets (6)

TIE/ph Phantom - •“Echo” - 62
•“Echo” - The Bailiff (50)
Juke (4)
Fire-Control System (3)
•Director Krennic (5)

Total: 200/200

Had several hard choices to make on the upgrades and how it would impact the way they flew. In the end, I kinda just flipped a mental coin.

They all start 1 corner and then spread. Vermeil stays between Kestal and Rhymer, using stress to slow down. Rhymer flanks up the side edge, Kestal along the back edge. I try to not to leave too much more than R3 between them. Vermeil will aim to support and overtake Rhymer but can switch early if necessary. Echo slips behind Kestal on the back line and will just make it up from there, chipping and preparing for the end game. She optimises Kestal and slaps in a TL at the convenient time. Ideally, I get at least 3 guns on my chosen target in the 1st engage, spreading damage taken on everyone but Echo.

Game 1. Got demolished by this chap a few weeks ago. Really nice guy and a good opponent.
Wedge, Swarm Tactics. Thane, something not Torps. Sabine, Juke. Jan bloody Ors in Moldy Crow.

Sabine had deployed top left, which baited me into going opposite. The rest then went all the way right.

1st engagement.

So, the positions in the pic. He had obviously gtfo with Sabine. I had aimed to send Rhymer around the back of that centre rock, giving Vermeil the option of going either way, hoping to bait his ships into turning in. Meanwhile, I was slowing Echo and Kestal as much as I could, sensing danger.

He carried right on at Kestal. A good call from him, as suspected.

So I’d had to abort Rhymers original course, an option I’d left open, although it was less than ideal. Chose to keep Vermeil going at them rather than away. Ultimately, this fed him the Kestal he wanted.

His green dice in this combat were stupendous. Rolling 80% evades on Wedge, meaning only 1 shield lost. His reds were predictably good, being modded wherever they fell short. Kestal barely survived.

From here Kestal went round to the right of the bottom corner rock, with some coordinating action. Which meant that Rhymers APT on a Vermeil blocked Wedge, only came in with a hit, hit, crit.... Not the greatest of choices but I was keen to get at Jan, and probably erred as a result.

Echo had ghosted off up the table with Thane in pursuit. We'll come back to that.

Back in the scrum, 1st Rhymer and then Vermeil went, taking Jan Ors and half of Sabine with them. Then Kestal joined them on the side. And off went Wedge on Thanes tail, joining the Echo pursuit.

Bit of clever shimmying from Echo left her in a 1 on 1 with Wedge on the final turn. Thane and Sabine well lost on other parts of the table. My opponents dice were fantastic all game and here he rolled a natural 3 hits and a crit, with no mods available. Which simply incinerated Echo. She was set to kill him if she got the chance to shoot. I hadn't counted on Echo surviving or overcoming his 3 ships, there wasn't time. But it was nice to get to that face off at least.

Good game, good fun. Didn’t quite get the balance right after having to adjust on the 2nd and 3rd turns. Unfavourable dice merely tipped the game further from me than it already was.

Game 2. My erstwhile casual chum again! Last time he had Y Norra, Dutch, AP5 and Sabine. This time, Evaan had replaced Dutch. Dorsal Turrets, Proxy Mines and Pro Torps are very evident.

Central, slightly wide deployment from him. Deep right corner from me.

1st engagement.

This is me basically screwing everything up. Would you like some Pro Torps? Of course, I guess.

I’d also mistimed Rhymer and Vermeil, leading to bumps and lost actions. Echo is ok but Kestal didn’t want the bump she got.

However, as good as my opponents dice were in the last game, luck repayed me with interest here. I was up against possibly the worst dice I’ve ever seen. Kestal was quite happy to lose just 1 shield to Norra’s torp. Even Evaans was weak. But Kestal is squishy enough to now be at deaths door. My own piddly, not at all set up attacks do a decent amount of damage, in return.

From here, things just went from bad to worse for him. Next round, the dice were again one sided, but still no big shot from Rhymer, just the 2 hits and crit. But Echo and Kestal slipped off to whack at AP5. Kestal dies in the process.

I knew bombs were coming from the Ys, so Vermeil and Rhymer clear off down the table to turn round. Echo does Echo things and sits on AP5, with Norra not quite able to peg her.

Sabine, Evaan go for Vermeil, Rhymer. Sabine bravely leads the charge and Vermeil simply splats her, at R3 through a rock. 3 hits into blanks.
Rhymer and Evaan go to the side table next.

Vermeil struggles somewhat to get a vector on Norra but Echo is just brilliant. I took several risky moves in the asteroids, with 2 proximity tokens filling a chunk of the same space. All paid off handsomely. Echo buries Norra.

Dice were decisive all game. Score in the end was 200-144, which shows the difference they could have made. But Echo is really something.

Game 3. A chap I’ve not played before. Had really nice chat about our 9yr old boys playing the game, he’d spied me and the kid at a previous tourney.

Wedge and Super Luke with ProTorps and a neat looking Squad Ldr/Tac Officer Sabine.

This was an awesome game. No offence to block of dice players but it’s always a pleasure to go up against a repositioning ace quad. With Luke Supernatting, Sabine doing her thing and then coording a thing onto Wedge, there was a lot of possibilities, and a lot of flying. It’s the sort of thing I love doing myself.

Deployment is top left for him, I go bottom right.

1st engagement.

Really not sure where I’m going with Vermeil here..... Um.... I think I'd expected him to turn in a lot earlier and had to adjust Vermeil to keep coord range on Rhymer, and I'd neglected to pace him the previous round.

Things went very alright from here though. The ProTorps were split and Sabine was adrift, so all my ships survived, which is the main thing. In return, Kestal had done her trick on Luke, stupid Jedi. Echo had battered Wedge a bit.

Weird things then happened which were all a bit alright as well. Kestal turns right in front of Luke, effectively pre-arc dodging him. Echo attempts a crazy 4 fwd, diagonally towards top left but gets blocked by a Sabine boosted Wedge. Rhymer turns in on Wedge, Vermeil sacrifices arc forever and just goes straight. I want the coord on Rhymer.

End of this round, Vermeil, Rhymer and Kestal have developed limps, but Sabine is gone, another notch on Echo's fusilage. Luke has suffered more Kestal pain and Wedge has hull showing.

And then it all went completely alright. Got some smoking Vermeil bait running round the top of the table and into multiple coord range. Rhymer swinging back up round the centre rock to light up Wedges path. Kestal rolling along laterally behind Luke. Echo stationing as a sniper on the left hand side.

Luke turned North and zapped Vermeil. Then this happened.

So Kestal, Rhymer and Echo boxed Luke big. Luke kills Kestal. Echo strikes the Jedi down. Job done.

Properly fun list today! Massive amounts of cogitating necessary on the interactions between ships. Because they all activate at the same step, there’s an awful lot of crossover possible. The plotting of which is honestly beyond me.

I love it, and I love using Kestal, but I really struggled to make it tick today. Optimising Kestal paid off on a few occasions. Having the FCS on Echo also came in on a couple of occasions. But I’m not sure the combo was worth anything much though, today.

Kestal was targeted 1st in game 1 and 2, disappearing before doing really anything. The rockets drew attention. I think Rhymer was believed dodgeable, being a 1 hit wonder, but if I hadn’t messed the synchronized activation with Vermeil up, he’d have done major damage in all 3 games. That can be enough to swing things.
If Rhymer then gets away and has a chance to reload, he suddenly becomes a huge control element against damaged ships, even without the coord.

So Kestal becomes more expendable. I guess. Echo, always awesome, gets a more selfish load out. But then Kestal become a bit rubbish.....

Ruthless, I didn't use once. In another variation, I had Echo on Ruthless as well and Intimidation on Vermeil. That was a tactic I just didn't go with, valuing the ongoing coord more. But I didn't really give up on it entirely, I just ended up not using it.... Twice I had the chance to damage Echo.... unhelpfully.

I don’t know, it’s a difficult balance.

But it’s a fun squad with some cool tricks, I’m sure better players than me could do decent work with it, tweaked along the right lines. I’ll probably just stick a Defender in it.

Addendum . The choices I make when list building.

Realising I can drop Echo to just Juke and slip a Predator Soontir in for Kestal excites me suddenly.

Then I feel the disappointment at losing the I4 symmetry and a niche ship and resign myself to just trying it for one game.

Very interesting hearing about your double Defenders. Been tempted to do that myself but a two small ship list scares me!

3 hours ago, SDCC said:

Very interesting hearing about your double Defenders. Been tempted to do that myself but a two small ship list scares me!

Thanks. It scares me too!

I think if I was playing at a higher level, I would have struggled to win any games with it, it's such a difficult list to fly well. But I do think that with a lot of practise and expertise, it's a very capable thing.

I would like to go back to it at some point, having flown a standard Juke only build a number of times and learned more about controlling engagements in general. If I could limit myself to 2 or 3 AdvS moves a game....

It's funny though, having picked up a fair bit more nous since then, I feel like I might be worse with it now, it's strengths suited my noobishly random unpredictability

Well, for the sake of completeness, let's do this.

Another tourney for man and boy!

My lack of enthusiasm on the write up is down to 2 factors. A) I forgot pictures, which I'm most gutted about. The 1st engagement snaps were a fantastic aid to memory and analysis last time. Text walls are not user friendly. B) We (I) lost all 3 games!!

This week, we headed to our local again. Good turn out, with 16 present and a surprisingly tough field. The boy would normally be in charge here, but the big break over Xmas meant I was desperate to field a squad I've had a decent bit of casual time with. Rank was pulled.

Vermeil - Juke, Kallus. Echo - Juke, Col Det. Onyx SP - Juke.

The day before, I'd thrown together a silly No Glory list to consider for a casual night we have coming up. A Bounty Hunter, Starviper and 2 Fangs. All I1&2 and naked. Set up a game against the boy and promptly lost to it with my 'well honed' tourney team..

I should've taken this as a sign.

So how I set up is with a small rock 3x3 from one of my corners, both if possible. Vermeil then goes tight in the 3x3 corner, turned 90 degrees to face inwards. Onyx goes behind the rock. Echo goes next to him, set up so a 1 hard will have him dead centrally deployed in my zone on turn 2 with a cloak token.

From here, they can all go pretty much any direction at any pace and change position with each other as desired.

Game 1. Familiar territory again.... My old mate I've played against a whole bunch of times. We regularly meet up with a handful of others nowadays, so he's less my sparring partner and more my squadmate

His current list is Edon with Sim, Seismic and Prox, Tallie, Greer and L'ulo. Gone up against it a few times with my squad and kind of roasted it, despite being somewhat outflown. So I was feeling confident, having improved my approaches.

In fact, my 1st game against it with these ships, I went for the Bomber 1st and got annihilated by the A Wings, a solid lesson. Avoiding it for as long as possible has been far more successful.

We did remark beforehand about how he'd yet to beat me in tourney, despite a generally 50/50 record between us.... Jinx!

I deployed opposite corner to Edon, with him top left. Sometimes he deploys him central, so I was happy with this. I knew the A Wings would arrive 1st if I came out slow, so I should have time to mostly swat them before answering all those tricky device questions. L'ulo is target no.1 and gets Kallused.

So I engage on the opposite flank to Edon, with the A Wings coming in from various angles and ranges, L'ulo closest.

He's learned a thing or 2 about using the As now though and rather than rushing in, makes sure to get his arcs and mods lined up to much better effect. So this 1st portion of the battle is rather bloody...

My arcs converge on Tallie at R3 but I'd rather take 2 shorter range shots at L'ulo and split my fire a little ineffectively.

L'ulo manages to survive and slip out the back, so Greer goes on the chopping block next.

Vermeil goes pretty soon, thanks to a Fuel Leak on the 3rd hit he takes. I also lose a bunch of health off of both fighters. But then they finish off L'ulo, Tallie's next, and it's time for the Bomber hunt.

Only problem is, my hunters are now both on 1 health.... avoiding a post move Proxy on the head by blockage and then dialling in a 3 hard, I land the Onyx a couple mm onto an already placed proxy and roll 2 hits.... I really can't remember what went wrong with Echo, but it can't have been good. I've a feeling she blanked on 4 hits from L'ulo.

Still, last few turns, I'm now looking at a win. Echo floats about, cloaking and teasing rather than shooting, while the Onyx halves Edon.

Last turn, Onyx is in a tough spot, having come in too fast. If Edon 1 banks away and drops his last prox, the only way I can avoid it is with a 1 hard. So we 1 hard. Edon hard turns the other way instead and gets a turret shot on the untokened Onyx, 2 hits, 1 dodged and kablam, defeat!

Not much I would've done differently in this one. I could've maybe run but I still needed 1 hit on Edon in the penultimate turn to put me ahead. Always such a fun game against his squad and he was overdue the win

Game 2. A much less pleasant prospect. Wedge, Garven, Dutch and AP5. Coming slowly forward in a lateral line from a central deployment, with ProTorps and action sharing out the wazoo. Rocks are very clustered in the centre of my board half. I deploy right. Vermeil is going to go in on Garvens side of Wedge and Dutch, I'm sure he'd rather lose Garven before those 2. So I choose to try and do that quickly and set Kallus on him.

Part of my thinking with Kallus is that I'd rather he get bumped through the enemy squad, rather than hidden away on an endgame ship. I may have this wrong.

I messed this up on the 1st turn. I've practically no experience in dealing with a torp alpha and it showed. I overcommitted the Onyx right with a boost, which meant he was definitely driving into their faces.

Still, it was kind of a plan. I aimed to circle Vermeil and Echo out through the rocks and back into their flank from the left, while the Onyx attempted to draw them right and soak up some Torp.

2nd turn, I felt I had 2 options. He would either turn on the Onyx, or do another 1 fwd.

Option A. In response to the turn. Coord boost the Onyx left into a 5 straight and smash into the left side of his formation, with Vermeil and Echo going a little wider and safer, to come into the flank while they react to the Onyx.

Option B, in response to the 1 straight. Coord boost the Onyx right into a 3 bank and skirt his leftmost arcs, while Vermeil and Echo turn in, ready for a later turn from him.

Neither actually added up and I goofed by doing the wrong half of each. Thinking he'd 1 fwd, in case I threw the Onyx at him. I not at all fancied leaving my squishier ships in torp arc, or having the Onyx end up R1 of EVERYTHING. So Vermeil and Echo went a bit wider left for safety, Onyx went wide right. Which basically gave me nothing.

He turned on the Onyx fast, which I should've probably expected. Garven on the left end of his line pulled a 3 bank, which took him well away from my flankers. They all unload on the D.

Doing the other 2 halves of my options, bringing my flankers in and boosting the Onyx into a block would've been golden.

Still took 4 ProTorps to down Onyx, with AP5 enabling the crazy amount of mod sharing he had, even on rolls and K Turns. Managed to get rid of Garven and AP5 on the turn in from the flank, but with Onyx not there to draw and tank more fire, I lost Vermeil and shields off Echo in return.

So we've been here many times now. It's Echo vs the world. I was actually kind of gutted with this one. Echo being into hull made it very fragile work and left her susceptible to one good hit. Led them on a merry dance for a few turns, doing damage to both for none back, but eventually ran out of room and had to face off against an injured Dutch, with Wedge hanging out elsewhere. Death followed the rotten greens.

Lessons learned. Bad openings cost games. 2 halves of a plan do not a plan make.

Game 3. Another match against a squadmate, making his 1st visit here! He's a really good player but it had not gone well for him so far. Experimenting with a Silencer and 3 TIE/fo's, it had been a bit tricky finding the balance. We were both 0-2 and had never gone a tourney without a win before. This would great

So Muse, Scorch and Longshot central, with Blackout skulking in a corner. Big debris littered all over for him.

In the week, I'd faced it with Recoil in there instead. Muse and Scorch had killed Vermeil on the 1st engagement, without him even shooting, thanks to a preposterous crit chain. But I'd recovered well enough then to make me think I had a good chance here, if he could last a couple more turns.

I'd also learned that he gets palpitations if I shoot at the Stealth Device Silencer, whereas I was kind of scared of it and wanted to kill it early, only to obviously fail. So this time, I'd threaten it with Echo and the Onyx and make it run, while aiming to partial joust the TIEs with Vermeil. Then just pincer the lot, killing the TIEs 1st. Kallus goes on Scorch, I want him gone asap.

It sort of worked, but with neither of us doing decisive damage to each other over the 1st couple engagements, it evolved into a rather epic and cagey knife fight/manoeuvre fest.

At one point, Vermeil, Juked up, had a shot on a 5 health, bumped Blackout and rolled all blanks....

Final turn, the decisions were awkward. My ships were half the table apart, either side of 2 TIEs and Blackout. Echo was damaged and really didn't want to get hit again. The Onyx was next to a rock, side on to the FO and not yet halved. Vermeil was dead of course, as was Scorch. I needed to kill a TIE and take no more than a hit or 2 on the Onyx to win.

I absolutely ballsed it all up so totally...

Echo goes as fast as possible to skirt any potential turn her way, but still going for a wide shot on a TIE. A 3 bank seems so blindingly obvious for the Onyx, as well as blockable, that I opt for a tight 4k, which would give me R1 on a blocking ship and a chance to dodge anything lined up to take advantage.

Both ships land on Debris by a couple mm and neither has a shot. Every one of his ships has given up on catching Echo and turned to face the Onyx's 3 bank.

If had gone 2 hard with Echo and the obvious 3 bank with Onyx, I'd have had the kill shot chance on a TIE and been looking to tank the remaining red dice with the Onyx token stack. Instead, 3 hits went into him, half points gone and defeat.

Really great game though, I do love a dogfight. Could've gone either way at numerous points, so many decisions and dice rolls were potentially pivotal.

Losing all the games bothered the boy a bit but I felt pretty upbeat, they'd all been enjoyable in their own way, particularly the see-saw nailbiters in 1 and 3.

I can't help but change things, l love this list but I feel my education needs to be broader at this stage. Learning about different match ups and targeting choices, rather than zeroing in one list. So this one is gonna take a break. And, well, I just like trying different things.

Even though they look so great together.

These guys then. Echo, it just pains me not to have her in my squad. So much fun and such a headache for opponents to work around. I am totally smitten. Collision Detector is not necessary but with it, she gains so much I'd have to have a really, really good reason to run her without it.

Vermeil I've really enjoyed. Deceptively good in a knife fight, where people don't expect it, as well coming with all sorts of tools and options in the chassis. I've enjoyed medium bases enormously and the stress controlled Ailerons on top make it hugely enjoyable.

And the Onyx. Thing I've liked with this guy is that I can use him like a bludgeon. With previous lists, the Defender has felt too important and expensive to risk that way, even though it's well suited to a slugging match. With the other 2 capable dishing out plenty of hurt and Echo able to take on the end game, the Onyx is a nice chunky piece for drawing and surviving focus fire and then causing trouble the other 2 can take advantage of.

So now I'm looking at Delta's....

As always, super fun times win or lose, lots of good people met and chatted with.

Next time, the boy is insisting it's his turn again so we'll see what he comes up with!

Back once again with the renegade master...

Boba Fett - PerCo, Slave 1.

Old Teroch - Swarm Tactics.

Zealous Recruit - Birthday Suit.

So yesterday, a Hyperspace tourney at our casual home, sweet! 24 attendees made it the biggest we’ve been to.

My rank pulling last time out has the boy in the captain’s chair this time, which means it’s the notorious bounty hunter that is treading the boards for us this week.

We really work as a team. On differences of opinion, I’ll defer to his choice if it’s what he really wants and he has a plan. But i am full of suggestions and his attention does wander... so we’re a team

As said before, it’s a simple, strong list that requires a minimum of faff and headscratch. Points update gave us some slimming to do. Bye bye oodles of passive mods, hello the simple benefits of moving, focussing, shooting and only boosting when absolutely necessary.... and maybe also when not advisable....

A strong field was before us. I expected masses of FO and Resistance but it looked like Scum had the edge. The most common ship on the tables was the new Falcon, maybe followed by the ships we had ourselves. There were a couple Upsilons, thankfully in different squads. A couple of 4 SF lists. Several Resistance Bombers, including 2 lists that had doubles. Their A’s and X’s coming along in small numbers. The Empire brought several TIE Fighters, a few Strikers, a Vader. The Rebels responded with some Xs, Ys and another Falcon. A mix of just about everything, in numerous combinations. I think the SFs were the only actual potential mirror though. Good stuff.

I did remember to take some pics, but at entirely random moments, none of which were in the last game... doh.

Game 1.

Of course, we're up against one of the half dozen guys I play against on a weekday evening. There were 7 of us here, it being the local, so matching a couple of us up was inevitable. 1st time playing him in a tourney setting though.

He has Nien in Black One, Ello, Tallie, L’ulo. It’s a good list. Upgrades vary, crack, trick, heroic, optics... basically whatever he picks for a game will not trigger, when what he didn’t pick would have. It’s a thing.

We have Initiative. X Wings are together, R2 from the left edge, A's the same on the right. Recruit always sets up centrally, then Boba goes left corner, Teroch sits down the other side of the recruit, nice and close to him.

So we go crazy aggressive with Boba. 4 straight, boost right, followed by 4 straight, boost left. This has him dead in front of both X Wings, R1 on turn 2, after they both 1 fwd on turn 1

The A Wings hurriedly scamper over that way, which means the slower Fang approach hits them side on.

The second boost with Boba was a mistake though, his options are not great now and we end up cornered and toasted by all the good guys. However, we have put Nien down to 1 hull in return. He then skips town with Black One.

What follows is a glorious dogfight. Captured here by amateur cam. From the pic, Tallie moves up behind L’ulo, Ello, turns in as his only option, Nien tracks back across to the fight.

The Fangs annihilate L’ulo here, then turn back, catch Niens approach and do him over, Teroch loses a couple hull and we're into the final turn. A shield down on Tallie and Ello. We’re losing.

We sort of had the edge in the dogfight, so we need to decide, try and kill Tallie, or half point Ello. I reckon the latter will do it and be more achievable. In we go. Final dice roll of the game comes up blank, blank, blank, hit. Times up, we lose.

My math was bad though. Finishes 137-100. Halving Ello would have made it 137-131. Taking Tallie would have made it 137 all!

The real mistake was getting Boba nuked, the Fangs did real work but Boba fired only once or twice. We aimed to use him as a tank so the Fangs could smash in unmolested. Which worked for them, but we maybe should’ve tried to draw the A Wings away from Bob. Certainly turning him towards the corner, after a bailing Ello, was an error and closed down his arc coverage massively.

A great game though and the bad math made for an intense finish.

Game 2.

Lovely, generous chap here, so kindly and patient with the boy. He has FCS Vader, Skourge, Seyn, Howl and an Academy.

Here is where it all began to unravel, the 1st engagement, despite the couple turns following this going entirely our way.

Really lazily failed to judge the distance to that centre rock. The recruit in front was meant to boost right, through that gap, so Teroch could follow. But we'd just gone too fast, couldn't fit the boost and then Teroch bumped up his backside. So we just trade a Boba shield for a crit on Skourge here.

Afterwards the Fangs turn in, 1 hard and boostfocus for the Recruit, 2 bank for Terry, 4 straight and boost for Boba! The Empire has no arc on us at all, after 2 straights for the TIEs and a 3 bank from Vader. Howl explodes, more damage on Skourge and a bit on Seyn. Everything is awesome.

Now the TIEs are clearly going to K-turn, not entirely sure where Vader will go. Terry doesn’t want to bump so goes straight, he'll be facing away but we have options for him next turn. Boba T-rolls around the rock above the Fangs, in the pic. The recruit attempts to 4k behind where the TIEs will be, a fantastic position to gain, but fails by 5mm and bumps. Things suddenly look ungreat.

Teroch takes some bad greens into 2 hits. Recruit is now going to be out of the fight for a couple turns while he fixes his turnaround. Vader has gone for Boba, but Boba has moved into the exact space where the Fangs are in the pic, so Vader bumps him. Inconsequential damage is done to TIEs, Boba loses shields.

And then it all went completely **** up. Teroch swings out and round the top right, aiming to help Boba put pressure on Vader and avoid being killed by TIEs. So the TIEs all hard 1 onto Boba and lock him in place bumped on Vader, who 4ks behind him. Boba subsequently gets hurt bad and the remaining TIEs survive the round.

Teroch completes his swing, Boba remains blocked, Vader bumps into his rear. Bob and Terry end up suddenly dead and it’s the recruit v the world.

He’s a hero though, this recruit, as has been seen before. He takes revenge on the seriously dangerous Seyn and wipes her out. Her ability killed both his mates, rolling natural crits whenever Marksmanship didn’t trigger. Then he kills the Academy Pilot, before a final turn Hail Mary one hard onto a rock kills him...

I think we just chose the wrong place to fight here. Made it too easy for the TIEs to lock Boba down. Opted out of jousting them in the right channel, which would’ve kept them wide right, allowing the Fangs to come in the side and leaving Boba more room to turn and reengage. Oh well.

Worse still, we’d failed on the Mandalore mat, scene of previous glorious defences. The boy thought it was the ‘worst game ever’ and was pretty disillusioned going into the lunch break. I thought we might be in for a make or break afternoon of depressing defeats, coming after our last poor showing. Potential sad times.

Heading back in though, a nice bite and we were resolved. Death and glory. If we’re going down, we're going down fighting.

Game 3.

A Boba-off! Guy has Seevor, a generic Miner TIE, an Outer Rim Pioneer and a hefty Boba, toting Fearless, Proxies, Tail Gunner... something else maybe.

We get Initiative. His little guys start centre, his Boba range 3 from the right edge. Our Boba goes right corner, the Fangs centre.

We swing and roll the Fangs left a little on the 1st and 2nd moves, an offset joust on the small ships, keeping Boba on the opposite side of them. The recruit blocks the leading generic miner. His Boba comes up straight. Our Boba comes up his edge and turns in, pincering his squad. Nice.

Oh but his Boba now 2 hards and procs Tail Gunner, whoops. Still, classic TG, doesn’t amount to much, whereas Seevor is easily swatted by our combined fire.

We’d still not used Slave 1 at this point and dialled in a 2 bank with both directions looking viable. His Boba dropped a Proxy and closed off the one we hadn’t dialled in. Huh. Still, the dialled bank put the Generic Miner front and centre, R1 and stressed. Pop.

Things started to click now. One of the things I’ve struggled with on the Fangs is the turn after engaging. Picking up the stress from a boost/roll into focus as they move in limits them hugely on the follow through. Here we’d ended up stressing again initially, but managed it much more effectively on the next 2 turns, erasing the escape pod with minimal fuss and getting some shots on the evil Boba.

So here we are, avoiding more Proxy and nailing him, (the stressed Spray), down. With an extended view of what we've already blown to bits.

Then on the final turn, lining everyone up on him, facing us, but just failing to get the kill.

Both Fangs are on 1 health, Teroch is wounded and has structural damage but we were still worried enough by fat Boba to forgoe safety and get him hammered enough to set up a win.

A comfortable one, it turned out. With only half taken from our Fangs and only 2 hull left on his Boba. Mood improved considerably and pressure off for the last game.

Game 4.

Well it had to happen, we’d been expecting it all day. Up against our mate with his Resistance Bomber, Tallie, L’ulo and Greer. 24 of us here and we still just can’t avoid each other.

In prep, I’d taken a Kath + 2 Skulls version of the list up against it, in case point changes made the original unusable. Got roundly smashed, so expected a tough match up.

Going back to the boost and focus into engagement issues, this is exactly the opposition that has punished it the most. The A Wings just strafe through, minimise 1st contact troubles and then clean house with their rear arc, while you struggle to turn without making yourself a sitting duck for the Bomber. But we nailed it here. Taking it slower, we got set at R1 of the As, the recruit going slightly further fwd to threaten a bump, neither needing a boost for range control.

However, a massive slice of luck on the very 1st turn was fairly pivotal. Boba went 3 fwd, boosted and got R3 on a tokenless L’ulo. Rolled hit, hit, crit into blank, blank, focus, focus and stuck a wounded pilot on him.

Next turn the Fangs and Boba engaged for real at R1 and wiped Greer away in exchange for the Recruit, essentially sacrificed in his fwd position. L’ulo followed almost immediately, his 2 green and 1 hull not nearly enough.

Then Tallie. She attempted to get clear enough to avoid helping our offense but didn’t get far and went down fairly easy. Helped enormously by the Bomber beaching itself on a rock, giving Teroch the freedom to park R1 in front of it.

Across several turns here, we also had good work from the Slave 1 title. Having finally realised that you need to plan for it to get the value from it, rather than simply seeing it as an emergency swerve, as we had been. It was a crazily good 2pt in this game.

Finally, the whale hunt. Odds were heavily in our favour but the thing was still a big threat. Cat in the pilot seat with a Conner Net and Proxy in the middle of the map, surrounded by rocks, Teroch parked up it’s rear, Boba heading the wrong way. Plus a nimble enough dial to keep arc coverage pretty complete.

It was kind of a headache plotting the next couple turns, to avoid getting the final proxy on Terry’s head and navigate Boba through the minefield. We got it done though, stuck an early Structural Damage into it’s hull and then just blasted it away over the next few engagements.

Our friend earned the dubious honour of donating our fastest, biggest win ever, 200-44. I always go to time and suddenly had the luxury of 10min touring the room and catching up with other people’s games. Nice!

Even more surprising, our 2 wins had been grand enough to pump us up the table into 10th and some decent swags. Made us 2nd of the 7 squadmates who’d run today, something I shall certainly be mentioning regularly for the next few weeks.

By far the biggest plus was how much the swing in fortunes improved the boys mood. We were both enthused and elated in the end, which had seemed unlikely, before the break.

So another great tourney, lovely folks as always and although it may be repetitive, the kindness and patience everybody has with my rather active and incessant wingman (captain today!), brings me enormous joy.

The list itself is great fun. As I said the last time we used it, it’s simple on the surface but has great game once you start finessing it. The real key for me is Swarm Tactics. Being able to turn the recruits 4 focussed attack dice into an initiative kill or a simul fire threat, whilst also using him as blocker or a feint makes the list click really well. The beauty of him is that when ignored, he is fearsome in his own right. Boba draws all the aggro, Teroch threatens and then the Recruit is in their face, refusing to die and slapping things silly. His 44pt are just stupidly good value in this list.

Thanks for reading, catch you on the next one

And we’re back in the room.

Local store again, Hyperspace again. Squad choice had been made a few weeks ago...

So slim, so sleek. Fenn +1+1+1. 200pt without upgrades.

The reasons for this choice are quite simple. We like Fangs, we realised these 4 fit together, we tried it at home on a couple occasions, the boy taking them against me.... And kicking my **** with them . His choice this time out so that was that.

So I tried them on Fly Casual a bit and wrecked AI face. I'd been flying Fangs plus something in some casual games and generally, they had starred. Adding to the positive vibes from our Teroch and Recruit experiences. Excitement grew.

Looking around these past few weeks, I see The Fenntastic Four is not regarded as particularly competitive. I see the odd person that has run them in a large event has failed to deliver and I’m genuinely a little puzzled.

I managed 4 practice games on our casual nights and I started to get it. 2 steamroller victories and 2 heavy defeats. Now personally, even after today, I still don’t think dice variance is the real answer. I think it’s dial and obstacle perfection. Which is probably nigh unattainable, consistently, on a long, hard day and certainly barely attainable by me at all.

So I try to talk the boy into bringing Boba back in, since he’s going to be in charge. He’s not having it. So we reach a compromise, I will do the flying, he will take any credit we get, I will take any blame. Ok then.

I’m looking round the room and it’s Wedge plus Rebel beef everywhere, and my mate with 5 RZ-2s. 12 lists, 9 chunky Rebel numbers with alt arc Ys commonplace. I’m nervous.

Like really nervous . Playing for myself is fine but having the young lad and his lively spirits ready to be crushed brings an odd kind of pressure.

Deployment is set. We have Fenn facing along our edge in one corner, with the 3 Recruits spaced in front of him, also facing along our edge, a base length between each. We crowd the obstacles on that side, aiming for a triangle, leaving one whole quarter of the board open. Generally, this leads to 3 obstacles creating a R2 channel down our deployment corner. From here, we have options. The middle of the 3 Recruits can 1 hard in, roll towards the edge and 5 straight past the 2x2, for example, often unexpectedly.

We fan the Recruits out along the back edge or up that side, with Fenn hard flanking the other way. If need be we can close the Recruits up for a straight joust, if it’s favourable, or continue to spread and fan so if an unfavourable joust emerges, the enemy cannot damage more than one of them. If that happens, the other 3 ships have them boxed. If the one miraculously survives, he can block to swing the odds our way.

After today, it’s 5 games with this set up and it has worked every time. The losses have come from how things developed after turn 3 or 4. Well, apart from one.... Still, I have faith jn it and I feel like I know what I'm doing with it....

Game 1.

Wedge with Outmanoevre and Pro Torps (ugh), Kullbee, Magva. Regen biz too.

I was actually quite happy with this match up, the only list with less than 4 ships in the room and the Fangs really like it when they outnumber the opposing squad. But that’s a nasty looking Wedge.

However, at 200 each, we roll off and win on hits/crits, which we always swear by... Good for Fenn is this.

We set up on the left. He has set up together, just left of centre. We send the Recruits up the left edge, 2 in the channel, the 3rd inside our 2x2 rock. Fenn jets off along our base edge.

1st engagement picture would be priceless here, but I forgot to take one

Gosh dice. 4 natural crits on 6 dice, plus a 5th hit, go into the central Recruit. Boy rolls 1 evade on his 6 dice and pop. Um. Return fire takes shields off Magva.

Darn.

However, left side Recruit is in a solid flanking position, as is Fenn. The other Recruit jams himself into R1 block zone of both X Wings and crosses his fingers. This is almost plan A, just with 1 less Fang.

Magva pivots left for a point blank face off with the Recruit turning in. He won’t kill her but there’s only one winner in that situation, leads to much Chewbacca and R2D2ing as she cruises out of the fight and the Recruit bypasses to help whoop X Wings.

Init was huge here. Wedge has got his lock on Fenn and Kullbee is backing him up in the hunt. But Fenn now has 2 helpers of his own and can afford to avoid stress, opening up his powerful 1 hard against these boats.

The fight is now in the open quarter, so we have some freedom and some cover nearby for potential escape. Wedge has taken a quick beating and not managed to loose his torp. Ultimately, Fenn has to turn away from Wedge and head North around the rocks to avoid it.

But the Magva punishing Recruit has come in to finish Wedge off, while tanking R1 fire from the U that suddenly arrives up his rear.

Kullbee turns up the board to intercept Fenn. Fenn sees him coming, 1 hards in and knocks him clean out.

Mop up takes Magva to half and a comfy win.

The key thing in this whole battle was stress management. Keeping the Fang dial open and maintaining R1 is not easy, but if you can do it, they become real monsters. Variance showed it’s face. Early on, it was bad for us but I made the point to the lad, keep rolling and it will swing. Swing it did. The importance of keeping your ships in the game until it does is not to be underestimated.

PHEW!

Maybe we can relax a bit now.

Game 2.

As I looked round the room earlier, I saw 2 lists I really did not fancy one bit. My mates 5 A2s and.... 5 Y Wings.

This is fine.

So rock placement meant we set up right this time. As you can see, so did he. We sent that plucky guy towards them, to punish a turn in or attempt to weather a solo joust (lol). The others all went out into the middle, like so.

And it actually was fine. The Zealous Lunatic takes a shield off one Y and, sitting pretty at R3, with one Y out of range, laughs at my opponents awful 2 dice rolls. We're ahead

Next turn, the lone ranger 2 banks in, rolls out and blocks the group 1 fwd, taking a double tap and a single primary on the chin. In return, one Y is reduced to 1 health by him and his closing mates, engaging in their ear and out of arc.

Fenn has opted out of a potential Y turn in and 5fwd boosts North and in round the top central rock. Then we screw up a bit.

Hero Fang departs North, his only real option. The other 2 turn hesitantly in towards the now inevitable Y4k. Fenn is still remote but starts scooting back South, skirting the eventual turn in and hopefully, finally, getting in behind.

The screw up is one poor recruit landing inside R2 of the gathered storm. Yeah, he dies. But we do reduce the swarm to 4. It’s a bad trade, 41-44.

They 1 bank in from the K. The escaping joust hero turns away from, rather than to them and is essentially unhittable out at R3 and obstructed.

The other Recruit attempts to boost into their side, dodging 3 arcs but fails. Just. Miraculously, he only gets taken to half but ends up Ioned onto debris and going the wrong way. So its 66-41 now. But Fenn is ready at last.

Last 2 turns. Now Fenn is bang on a Y and hammers it as it attempts to pin the returning Joust Hero. 66-62.

The other 3 K turn, to catch Fenns turn and the Ioned Recruit, who also looks like he’ll turn their way. If we're honourable samurai....

However, we kept Fenn unstressed, so his 1 hard onto the tail of his chosen Y is safe as houses. The Ioned Recruit just says nope and flies off into the bottom right corner. Screw the code.

Fenn batters his Y some more, Joust Hero pops it. NOW we’re winning. 66-82.

But a minute left, one final, unexpected turn, uh oh...

Ride the dice. Joust Hero shrugs off a R1 double tap and a R1, unmodified Ion. Win secured.

Here’s the thing with alt arcs, you need to use them against Fangs. R1 double taps are not as scary with an auto evade every time.

DOUBLE PHEW!!

Game 3.

Swarm Wedge, Thane, Dutch, Horton Hears a Hoo.

Hold on, we're top table. I think something inside me gave up here.

Having gone to lunch full of satisfaction and feeling we’d achieved our goals for the day, we came back with nothing to lose.

Played this chap several times and got boned every time, but last time was closer....

And then I somehow forgot to think beyond turn 1.

So this is how awful looks.

Fenn has gone wide, because who turns towards the board edge and let’s him get up behind them? But he’s committed too wide and is now temporarily ignorable, with that diddy rock in his 3 hard. Since my oppo has no intention of turning towards the board edge, that’s fine for him.

For the Recruits, I’ve just got speeds wrong relative to the obstacles there. I want the leftmost one to go 5 straight and boost in, the next one over to hard turn in and block a 1 fwd from his leftmost ships (this games potential Joust Hero). The other one aims to hard turn in and punish a 4k, but he’s too stressed to 1 hard and roll. Fenn should be closer, to help him do his job.

So none of that fits, I fail to come up with an alternative and the Recruits all just end up sitting in front of the block, with fingers and toes crossed for crazy good dice. Which is just what my opponent gets. Though he’s full of TL and focus, should he need it. So his good dice were inevitable, ours were not.

Quite embarrassing. We gift a win to 3 fwd, 1 fwd, 1 fwd, 1 bank, K turn. Game over. Fenn splats Horton but it’s little recompense. 200-47 is maybe our worst defeat..... Ho hum.

Ultimately though, we're delighted. 2 wins is our happy place. With the hardest and most delicate list we’ve flown, we can’t fail to be well pleased.

And oh so interesting! The last game was the most direct example of how Fangs fair badly. The approach, the trap setting, the spacing is all so crucial. Mess it up even a little bit and you’re getting whitewashed.

However, avoid the stress, avoid the obvious joust, choose your moment and allow the dice to catch up with you, they genuinely become beast mode. Concordia is ridiculous.

Its really fun and refreshing to fly. No tricks, just dials and dice. You need the boost and roll, you need the focus. You don’t particularly want both at once. Unless you've set yourself up in such a way that the obvious blue move follow up is an unavoidably good thing. And that requires some long term planning, you can’t react with I1, you have to force the issue.

Oh and Fenn is just a great hammer

Busy times for us now. Extended tourney next week, another HS one the week after. The Fenntastic Four may be back pushing their luck for that one.

Peace out

Had a bit of a tot up of our numbers and realised that tomorrow, we will be attending tourney no.11.

So a simple lists and W/L grab from no.'s 1-10 has intrigued me.

1. Rex and Ryad- 2-1.

2. Rex and Ryad- 2-1.

3. Rex and Ryad- 2-2.

4. Dash and Luke- 2-1.

5. Rex, Echo, Rhymer- 2-2.

6. Boba, Teroch, Recruit- 2-1

7. Echo, Vermeil, Rhymer, Kestal- 2-1.

8. Echo, Vermeil, Onyx- 0-3.

9. Boba, Teroch, Recruit- 2-2.

10. Fenn, 3x Recruit- 2-1.

11. Rex, Echo, 7th Sis....

So 2 wins is clearly our thing. 18 wins, 16 defeats overall, not too shabby. Curse that 0-3

If ever set a target success ratio in any game, it's 1.5:1. But that comes after competence has been established, so a vaguely 1:1 ratio pleases me on the learning curve. I've never been high echelons in anything I've played, (except maybe Starfighter Assault on PS4, fite me bro ), so slightly above average is my happy place.

I think we're there now, on the competence front, so I'm hoping to begin picking up the odd extra win and putting a little more daylight between the 2 numbers.

But my expectations are realistic, the margins in our wins are often low, they can become defeats very easily.

We're flying some delicate aces tomorrow, with our favourite TIE/D tank, so that potential swing from win to loss could easily see us come out in the negative, for only the 2nd time. Particularly if high health/many ships/many reds are the general opposition, as has been the recent trend.

Fingers crossed, we get some good dice and continue to come away pleased with our results. Last, and only, time out with 3 Imps was not so great.... Wish us luck!

Tourney no. 11 done and dusted!

Today's list, in all its glory-

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Echo- Juke, 5th Brother.

Rex- Juke .

Seventh Sister- she naked!

197.

Far and away the least wholesome and most obnoxious list in the room. Oh you rolled an evade, that's cute

Only 8 of us today, still squeezed in. This stores 1st X Wing tourney and just the beginning here, we all very much hope. Lovely locals, as always, and some totally cool and unique participation gifts. Get in.

There was an FO list, numerous ARCs, a couple B Wings, a U.... A couple enterprising souls with Han/Hera and Anakin/Wolffe.... 2 squads of 5 A's, one lot were Resistance, the other Rebels, both consisting of a red, a blue, a yellow, a green and a purple, (a couple from my own hand). Quite a sight when they met on the top table!

A nice casual affair.

For us, rocks are more flexible this time. Echo appreciates the fringes, likes open space as well for options, but I'm generally pretty comfortable moving her around obstacles and do like to get my opponents to have to deal with them if they go for her, she'll probably still have more options than them.

7th Sister is clearly happy doing the tight turns in there, while Rex wants big room to zoom. So we aim to set up a bit of a cluster and leave a couple wider spaces and some lanes for Rex, but we're fairly easy about it.

Game 1.

One of our casual mates. Tavson, Quickdraw, Muse and Long shot.

Played against this list numerous times now. Having kinda trashed it on casual night with our Imps this week and knowing exactly where I didnt want to be, I was fairly confident. His list has a weakness to aces. But he learns my approaches quick from our games and his firepower is formidable. He's a crafty bugger with the Upsilon as well and the TIE/fo's are not to be taken lightly.

Do not get shot at by Tavson is priority no.1. Do not trigger a horrible QD vengeance is priority no.2. If we can't get at QD without triggering the vengeance, we pick off the TIEs until we can.

1st engagement was pretty inconsequential, so here's the 2nd.

A nice big R5 killbox coming along

He had set his forces up top left. We set Rex up bottom left, with Echo and Sev central. Sev went to flank left, Rex trundled right, along the base line and Echo super fast up the right. This way, if he goes for Rex, we can hang him back, drag him down the board and have the ladies pinch and conquer. This is a slight departure from the actual plan, in response to his deployment and to mix things up from our earlier game. More on the actual plan later, where it became very relevant.

However, Echo proved a tempting target and pulled him right, meaning 7th Sister was free to come in and start taking pops on Muse, while Rex could casually stroll up and look for an opening.

Rex really didn't do a lot, it turned out. He ended up turning in and scooting through the middle of the battle zone, which is developing in the pic. Caught a block from the shuttle, rather than arc, our fall back hope, and lost 3 of his shields to QD, before racing out and K-turning in the bottom left quarter. Lost the Ups, as it gambled on him turning into the top right quarter. He barely touched anything on his flyby.

But Sev crept right in there to do her thing. Echo continued crabwalking her circuitous way around the outside, leftwards in the pic. Such was the tentative nature of things, with those big guns to avoid, we only managed to kill the 2 TIE/fo's with our light fighters. However, that same caution meant that a long range shot to remove Rex's last shield, was the only notable damage we took. I think Echo may have lost a shield...

It was a relief in the end. A knife edge walked. Getting caught and taking an extra damage here or there would have totally swung the game. He had to really hinge his positional gambles on where Rex was going to be, so we concentrated on just pulling him through, rather than have him doing work. Sev had just sidled in and proven hard to pin, despite a couple very risky moves that weren't caught. Echo was more or less in safe spots the whole time. The way we fan right out, sometimes means you really have to guess right to even catch one, and each needs some concentration of firepower to bring down. It's a long game against these sort of lists.

Game 2.

Another mate, a regular in this thread too, with his Ghost and Resistance lists. Both of us tend towards the cavalier when we meet... that favoured his 5 RZ-2s more than it did my careful and surgical squad

He has L'ulo, Greer and 3 I1s, Crack Shot and Optics all round, with Heroic for the Heroes. It's savage. A hard match up with a lot of consistent 2 hit/evade cancelling arcs to dodge. Oh hey, you brought 5 Seventh Sisters with turrets.... dang....

This was my 1st time playing against it and I kinda screwed the pooch early....

A little more on our approach plan, because we departed from it again, knowing how fast those things are.

Rex is big bait. So that's what he does, he aims to be far from the enemy approach, pulling it in the direction we want. We direct him towards an open space where he can turn, slowly at 1st and then all in on the speed as they close. If all goes well, he takes little to no damage and then buggers off for a bit.

Meanwhile, Sev will flank the other way, cutting through the obstacles and hitting R1 asap. The early battle is hers. She's a distraction, or she hurts you.

Echo will float between the 2, flank if they come central, joining Rex or supporting Sev, as need be.

You can see from the pic. Rex, fine for the flyby, space ahead of him for a 5 straight and a boost into the open North field. Echo has flanked too hard, although not disastrously.

Sev.... poor, poor Sev. That's a terrible spot. She should be the one flanking on Echo's side, though not as hard, and Echo should be backing her up, just right of the centre and near the base edge. Then either of our flanks can dodge out or turn in behind, as need be.

So Sev turns into the As for some reason, gets blocked and dies straight away. Rex and Echo are not even shooting.

However, although we're now almost banging our heads against a brick wall, things are not that badly set up. Rex turns back South and into the central space, taking a longer route to skirt a butt fire kill box. Echo moonwalks crazily around that right hand rock a bit, taking pot shots. We just need a window.

The As end up cornering themselves in that bottom left, making themselves a little predictable, with arcs failing to fully converge. Rex heads over, we need to kill things. Echo slithers a bit nearer.

Rex eventually 4ks into a R1 face off with a shieldless Greer and an I1 in the bottom left. Pop goes Greer. However, the I1 Crack Shots Rex to half. This is bleak.

Next, another I1 has managed to isolate himself a little, over on the right and looking to pester Echo. So both of our ships leap into R1 of him, with only one arc on Rex (L'ulo's, unmodified), and the I1's on Echo (focussed), this seems to be our ray of light. We've had to reposition to get there, it's a gamble, only Juke and 5th Bro to back it up. But this A Wing needs to go in this attack.

Almost inevitably, the 2 hits we get on our 8 dice are no more than our forlorn hope deserves.

And then Echo blanks on the I1's hit, hit, crit and has to spend her evade to keep the last one out of hull.

That was really our final play. We shove the ships about a bit more. Attempt a final, kamikaze attack on L'ulo to see if we can luck into some points for a slim chance of victory, and we fail at that, (he turned the other way ofc). The flipside of that gamble sent Echo to half points and a far more resounding defeat.

No dice complaints whatsoever, we asked for luck after bad moves, you can't bank that. Plus, it's always a pleasure to turn a deserved defeat into a win for a friend. I'll learn my approach lessons on this one.

Game 3.

Oo an interesting one this, entirely new opposition in a part of the table. Magva in the U with Leia, we know. ARC Garven, we know. Ten Numb and Braylen Stramm in B Wings, we totally do not.

Fortunately for us, we have ALL the initiative and my opponent also totally does not know Echo, Rex or Sev.

He spreads out quite a bit. Magva top right, facing left. Garven along a bit, also facing left. B Wings angled in, top left.

Rex goes opposite Magva, I'm thinking about just charging her.... Echo and Sev in the middle, as usual.

Rex opts out of jousting both Mag and Garv, shoots past and laughs at Garvs attack. Sev is going where we want her too, but with the B's going for her, we have to send over Echo to help. Nothing to gain by letting her die again.

Rex is really just dragging the medium bases away from our girls now, wasting their time, so our little ones can arc dodge and beat on the B's one at a time, without excessive threat.

He split Ten and Braylen with rolls, further helping our cause over on this side. We swoop on Braylen, nearest the right edge. Unfortunately, I boost Sev to make room for Echo, so she fails arc but quite nicely blocks Echo's roll out of Braylens.... We trade shields. Thankfully, he has 4 to our 2, so that's a fortunate win....

I can't overemphasize how much our unpredictability threw him off his game. He bumped both Bs in a reasonably costly way straight after. Echo in particular seemed to be causing him nightmares, to the point where he quickly elected to edit her out of his thinking.

Which was kind of a good move on his part. It allowed him to chase Sev out of the fight and get her worried, a shield down, forceless and not contributing for a couple turns.

However, an ignored 5th Bro Echo tends to just sit there and beat things up. And so she did.

Meanwhile, Rex surprised Garven and Magva with his white 4k and set himself up for a series of fortunate bumps, meaning that though he wasn't doing any real damage, neither were they.

On the merge, an exceptionally fortunate bump, where I'd actually dialled the wrong 3 bank in. The intended direction would have had him neither shooting, or being shot. The actual direction had him out of Garvens arc, the one he intended to crash into, by a few mm but more fortuitously, lined up on a smoking Braylen, who he instantly crushed with some great natural dice.

I don't think it was a big swing, Echo was there to take the shot on Braylen too, but it was still more luck in our favour. As was a incredibly costly error, when Garven 4k'd onto a rock. Something my opponent was aghast at, experienced with medium bases as he was. It would've been a terrific position as well and may have helped stem the tide. I think the second guessing our list was causing him was really the major factor in our favour.

As it was, Echo took shots on Garven, weakening him, before Rex 4k'd back into our deployment zone and finished him.

Magva and Ten then managed to get the final point of damage on Sev and Echo required to halve them. Thankfully, I feel really bad when my opponents look like going away with nothing.

But Ten then joined his B Bro on the side. The R1 face off with our Twisted Sister in the U Wings shadow not at all going in his favour. Echo was remote after attempting a roll out of range of the U, but not getting quite far enough to avoid the last shot of the game.

Half points on Echo and Sev is 55..... Seventh Sister is a crazy bargain.

So 2-1 again. Our happy place. The relatively landslide nature of the last game also propelled us into 2nd, a most happy place!

The list is really quite singular. I love it. Each has a particular role and they fulfil them in very different ways.

Rex being the obvious target is a massive lever. That he's so hard to hurt if you play him right, makes him all the more useful as bait. End game, if he's been swanning about untouched, he is an almost impervious monster.

Seventh Sister being so cheap and nasty gives us a great little piece of interference. Ignored, she can really tear things up with no fear of losing many points should it suddenly turn. She more or less solo'd QD in the week and did way more than her points worth of damage in 2 of today's games.

Echo is Echo. She goes where she wants. She shoots what she wants. She cannot be touched twice. 5th Bro elevates her from an elusive pest to a genuine terror. Watch out.

OMG She's right there! How?!?!

Cheers dears. Fly the casualest. More next week.... phew!

Hum..... Well. I had a bit of a problem deciding what to run in our next HS tourney. The Fenn Four are great and all. They've since been proven quite fearsome in capable hands, which I was really pleased to see.

But I like Imps, been wanting to give HS a go with them. I like the Firespray still. The Viper is in now as well.

In the end, I gave up and asked the boy what he wanted. Fenn, Recruit, Starviper.... Ok.....

Guri? She's quite expensive.... not sure all the things you want on her will fit....

Dalan! Riiiight. Ok, I'll see what I can do.

So I took this for one casual game.

StarViper -class Attack Platform - •Dalan Oberos - 82 •Dalan Oberos - Elite Bounty Hunter (54) Outmaneuver (6) Advanced Sensors (10) Proton Torpedoes (12)

Fang Fighter - Zealous Recruit - 44 Zealous Recruit - (44)

Fang Fighter - •Fenn Rau - 71 •Fenn Rau - Skull Leader (68) Swarm Tactics (3) Total: 197/200

Won the game thanks to some extraordinary dice and had huge fun with his shenanigans. So we took it Saturday.

Expectations then. Low . Today, we're here to raise some eyebrows, show off some tricks and entertain both us, and our opponents. Dalan hinges supremely on Initiative. It's going to be extremely hard when he doesn't have it and I don't have the leet skills to do him justice against all the hot stuff. So forget win/loss. Ok done deal.

However, this list might have some potency up it's sleeve, and people can become a bit edgy when they have no idea what the **** you're doing, which will be fun.... So we'll see....

Winging it through one casual game and doing stuff for lols is not high on the 'Good Practice' chart, so I sat down at our table the night before and started to try and wrap my head around what we were actually gonna do.

I got as far as setting a general rock field and deployment options. Moved them around a little bit. Kinda felt like Dalan is beyond planning, he just needs a zone and ended up sitting there with a brush, applying bling to him instead.

This felt like entirely the right frame of mind to adopt.

10 people in all, the complete gamut of ability. So a couple draws I drastically wanted to avoid at all costs, no matter the squad they had

An extremely interesting array of ships. Anakin, Ahsoka, Wolffe took the win, with much inevitability in their chip away and regen run. Boba, Guri and pod were fearsome. Only a couple Rebel Beef. Vader brought some TIEs. And some more below.

Game 1.

So. The boy had been pretty excited about today. X Wing with his choice, of course, sure, great. And massively buzzing about spending the last of his Xmas money on one exact Pokemon box.... That the store didn't have.

Hrrm.

Midnight. Null. Quickdraw. Backdraft.

Hum.

So now I kinda realise I have no idea what I'm doing. Because I don't want to joust the SFs and get ranges wrong with my squishy jousters. And I can't send Dalan to pick on the lower Init squishy TIEs. Because they're I6/7 and will kick his ***.

But with deployment and subsequent approaches felt like I had an in. I didn't line it up well, the Recruits turn in is good, but Fenn's out is very bad and his in is... I dunno. Risky. His straight will fit, but I didn't like that at all.

But this turn kinda went ok. Fenn and the Recruit (midnighted) whiffed but Dalan put the hurt in on the I6. I wanted to kill it but feh. Recruit took some damage. Fenn may have too...

I can't clearly remember the sequence after this pic. I have 2 turns jumbled into one here, but key predictions failed me, before the dice did.

I sort of expected Midnight to sloop, she needed to shoot again before inevitably dying, with the Recruit and Dalan behind her, Fenn likely headed that way.

I turned Fenn 1 hard right, aiming to roll for cover and block, or take R1 from Null. Taking a partial extra risk on BD following up.

Continuing, I hoped the Recruits turn and boost would eventually cover a slower approach from a BD preferring to shoot Fenn at R2, as well as potentially block QD....

Midnight 2 banked and rolled, blocking Fenn, she was trying to cover his escape hard right, not North, which hadn't occurred to me. Null crashed into Midnight and stopped short of Fenns block. BD came up fast and dodged the Recruit.

I felt that 1 hard left from Fenn would have solved many, many issues, but I wasn't 100% sure it would fit.

Fenn then instantly picks up damage on non straights from their 2 R1s. Concordia keeps him alive.

Dalan kills Midnight.

Fenns a bit shafted now, he'll go slow fwd, roll for cover and aim for R1 defences.

QD 4kd straight through the rock, instead of into the Recruits block, so I can only pray about her now, but Null will be away for a couple turns. The Recruit has BD. Dalan creeps down to track what he can. Declines the shot on QD, Fenn will not survive it.

Recruit halves BD. Fenn just blanks and dies anyway. Dalan rolls nothing good on his shot at Null, and takes damage from BDs double tap... I think. It's not that clear.

So we chased around a little bit more but the Recruit just spit up and died the second he was fired on by BD, Dalan just eventually got boxed.

Almost from the start, the boys bad mood deteriorated with the way things just melted before our eyes, and that brought me down.

It was so easy to look at the dice here but I'd taken big risks with them and had no clear idea on where I wanted to be. So it becomes easier to see where we actually went wrong. We'd been offered a good 1st engagement but just didn't get our angles right for the subsequent turn in on the SFs. I'm kind of happy with how I planned our response, but just manoeuvred it badly. Then said ok dice, bail me out a bit please. Dice said nope. Fine, my bad.

Game 2.

Our friend. Our 5x RZ-2 nemesis.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. This list has been horrible to me!

With 3 higher Init ships, in the Empire game last week, I felt we found an answer to it, but threw it away. In the week, I faced it with Fenn +3. It was hilariously obnoxious. We mutually, silently, agreed on the joust, to see what would happen. Upshot was that I kinda got what I wanted but fluffed it, only thing that died was mine. Then, with Init, the A Wings just zipped about making fools of the 2 Recruits with boost/rotate/optics. It was immensely frustrating. But Fenn had disengaged a little, so cut a swathe back in, one A at a time until there was 1 left. 4 turns of absolute destruction.

Aces then. Mitigate, isolate, reach the tipping point, follow through and clear them off the board.

This was really intense. I forgot pictures. We had a good 1st engage, skirting and range controlling their charge well. Rolled some blanks, took more damage than we gave, 2 crits into shields from Dalans Outmatorp shenanigans. Dalan and the Recruit took about every hit it was possible to take

Oh my word the boy was grumpy now! Then I knocked a banner off the wall with my chair, it hit him on the head and scratched his nose..... Only a little. Neither of us actually properly noticed, as we fought a vaguely running battle with it for the rest of the game..... which actually started to turn quite nicely!

It's that tipping point! I realised after losing with our Imperials against them that it's important to know where that is in this squad. We were close to it without realising, then. In the week, Fenn breached it in 2 turns.

Our next couple of engagements were crucial in reaching it. We turned into decent positions in the next one, setting up to R1, OutmaTorp init kill combo, but could only take a couple more shields or so, in return for some serious hurt and couple of horrid crits on Dalan and the Recruit.

Fenn disengages, there's still too many of em. Recruit has to follow through and do the same. Avenues for both are good. Dalan has to go straight. This has to be fine. He's nearly dead, if he can get 2 more turns of shooting, we might be good.

He does. Dice obey, Init kills an I1, taking pressure off the Recruits escape. Gives Greer a pat for next turn. Dies. Fenns back and halves L'ulo. Tipping point reached.

Fenn turns in, takes Greer out. And the point is breached.

An I1 A, half L'ulo, Fenn and half a Recruit converge top left.

Perfect. Fenn hurls 3 Recruit throws 4 focussed, at L'ulo, on 2 ag, at I6. The I1 A, I think had no shot.

We do nothing. L'ulo throws 3 at Fenn, he drops to 1.

My opponent then bumps himself by accident and that blocks Fenn onto some debris he was Talon Rolling past.

I believe we again traded some pointless dice, but I was mostly banging my head against the wall and having banner trouble again

Crap.

Then this last piece of nonsense, where I chuck in the towel and deserve the horrible dice.

Oh man, I've never been so disappointed with a result, I think. We were crushed.

Also unfortunate, neither of the 2 As I painted are among the survivors in the only pic...

BUT, it took barely a moment to mentally accept what a great game it had been, and be thankful for pushing the squad so close to a win in difficult circumstances. And as always, our games are never not a pleasure. One of us will get a win, that's a net gain.

And lunch was upon us, which always fixes a day up proper.

So the dice had sucked and we felt lost in the wilderness with the list, but how far we'd come in the last game gave us both renewed hope, and we'd not be facing the big guns now.

Game 3.

Guri! Dang it. Dalans arch rival had a big edge over him here. But no AdvS for her, ok, challenge accepted!

Small problem. Huge cloud of flies around her. 3 MGTs and 2 Z-95s.

This was not too bad. But trying to plot my our way around the screen to Init kill Guri, heading for Dalan, started giving me a headache. So I just thought blast it, we're here for fun, dice must swing, let's just have at it. Flip side of the mood was still hanging about in both of us though, and I sort of couldn't be bothered to spend time planning, only to lose it in dice. A major game winning strategy if ever there was one.

Turned in badly after this pic, did Dalan tricks for the sake of it.... Dice sucked hard and punished us for laziness. But we did manage to kill the 2 Z-95s, too slowly.

More laziness, couldn't be bothered to disengage Fenn, so Talon Rolled him. Blanked on Guri's 3 hits and died. Dalan I kept in, just to shoot at Guri in petty defiance, then whisked through to disengage and run away....

The reason being that the Recruit was flying hard and had found a tipping point!

1 MGT went down, soon after the 2nd Z. He latched onto Guri's skirt as she chased Dalan, staying R1 of the TIEs, awkwardly for them, shooting her at R2, while Dalan tried to avoid her R1.

Dalan inevitably, nonchalantly, dismissed by his superior. But ha! Recruit nails her.

No AdvS for escape and no focus at that range. I wink to myself.

How long left?!? 1 Recruit, even a half one, will ruin 2 hurt MGTs. Boy calls a Talon Roll. I see it too, it's obvious, it's our best move. But look, he 2 banks, rolls and blocks it, easy. Or 1 hards and rolls that one..... Then no shots for either of us, we need shots now.

So I 4k. A risk. He doesn't block the Talon Roll. We die. All the while, the boy trying to subtly remind me we have Structural Damage.

Hangs head in shame.

So. Really not in the right mood now. I'm an idiot. We find some reasons to have a laugh, the boy resolves to buy his Pokemon box elsewhere in the week. Lets go to the pub. Oh there's another game. Oh joy

Game 4.

Ok, bottom table, nothing to lose. A newly unboxed and random CIS list, on the other side of the table. Maul, Grievous Blub, 3 Hunters, upgrade free apart from Mauls Stealth Device

I was beyond pictures at this point.

Joust a crazily aggressive Grievous to little effect, dance under Mauls lovely array of natural hits. Dalan gets sorta caught by the droids and trades with them. Kinda painful.

Dalan starts amusing himself with the Vultures but is somehow just not really hurting them. End up, ridiculously, putting 1 dmg on each. So the Recruit ignores Grievous tagging at R1 on his backside. Should take a few turns of dice to burn him down, all the while he'll be polishing droids off with Dalan. Fenn can simply ignore Maul, turning away, blocked and stressed on a failed sloop. Chase at R1 behind Grievous and delete him. Then it's Mauls turn to deal with Fenn and Dalan.

Well, that all basically just worked. Took probably 3 turns too long, since we couldn't roll paint to save our lives. Which, had Maul not somehow flown himself, only 2 shields down, off the table while turning back in, would have been a problem. But he did, so it wasn't. Had to trade the Recruit, and half Fenn and Dalan, since the latter both got shot at once.

Whiiiich was a crappy way to get our only win.

Omg, what a sob story. I really hope my attitude didn't come out as we played and chatted. I tried, and sort of always did, keep my head up. But after the 1st few rolls, I just was pretty fed up. However, the pitiless slaughter at the end did perk the boy up a fair bit.... Hearing we were last kind of punctured that a little, heh.

Pub dinner with the fam warmed us right up.

Anyway. Great bunch of folk cheered us up considerably before we even left the store. We came away with an ARC-170 and some gold bling, thanks to excellent prize support and the generosity of others. Always a great crowd, wherever we go. Plenty of laughs were had, far more than my focus on grumpiness might indicate

Looking back, I actually feel like I can get some decent results from the squad. Which is a massive plus, quite apart from the tremendous community experience.

It's a kooky thing, but I've been finding a real like for slightly offbeat triple ace lists recently. Unpredictability can really make up for obvious deficiencies in overall efficiencies.....

Moving on, I think we have more of an idea on the balance we need here now. Torps are out, they need double mods and we don't have the ability to ensure them, Dalan doesn't want the attention they bring, no matter how hard they flukily hit. Teroch comes in. Obvious improvement in overall adaptability.

I hope this all didn't come out too salty. I genuinely was on the day, and although I thought I did a bang up job of taking it lightly, trying to keep our spirits up and being a good, friendly opponent, the mood was still there, distorting my efforts.

Our luck has been strong in the past few weeks, won a lot of games where it could be contributed to favourable dice. But, mood aside, I've also had a pretty sharp spotlight shown on my gameplay errors in our last few defeats.

Basically, I do not sufficiently prepare for failure.

We had some good responses to poor trades and dodgy set ups today, but not consistently. I ended up in bad places, and more bad trades, after rushing into them against unexpectedly surviving ships. Strong odds of deleting a ship are never going to come in every time. Better odds can always be found, leaving myself without the options to find them never ends well.

That to me is a positive conclusion. We did some good things today. With an odd set up, we at least beat some odds as well.

I can only dream of what might have happened if our dice had been good and I had responded better. The list has some quite frightening offensive potential, we managed to spread some considerable fear whenever we started picking up our dice. Mostly in ourselves, but still.

Big break now. Easter on the way. Republic are in the house, boy immediately smitten after stuffing me with Anakin a couple times today....

Good times ahead.