A long time ago, I was looking over a game of warmachine and breaking down some mistakes I had made. My opponent asked, "Are you seriously asking me how you could've won harder" and my response was, "No, I'm asking myself if I can beat you next time". The number 1 mistake, in gaming, warfare and even life in general is not analyzing your victories as well as your defeats. A win that's just an accident, while fortunate, is not repeatable.
After arriving at the conclusion that jousting in 2.0 was both getting too dangerous and too random to achieve consistent results, I started looking at other options. I've played non-joust lists before (most notably annoying A-Wings back in the super early days of 1.0), but it's definitely not my most well-practiced type of play. While looking both at how successful non-joust lists worked and putting together a set of criteria, the squadron I initially arrived at was 2x Resistance A-Wings (Tallie and L'ulo) and 2x Resistance X-Wings (Nien and Ello). More X-Wings just wasn't offering enough flexibility and more A-Wings just wasn't hitting hard enough. Ultimately Tallie ended up getting traded for Zari. I never really liked Tallie's pilot ability, she was mostly just a cheap I5, but this lead to a problem where I ran out of blocking options and combined with her mostly non-existent pilot ability made her skippable. Zari meshed a lot better with the list and she might be one of the best blockers out there. She's also the same points as Tallie with the same upgrade options, so it was a 1:1 trade.
| Zari Bangel — RZ-2 A-Wing | 35 |
| Crack Shot | 1 |
| Heroic | 1 |
| Ship Total: 37 | |
| Half Points: 19 Threshold: 2 | |
| L’ulo L’ampar — RZ-2 A-Wing | 38 |
| Crack Shot | 1 |
| Heroic | 1 |
| Ship Total: 40 | |
| Half Points: 20 Threshold: 2 | |
| Nien Nunb — T-70 X-Wing | 55 |
| Heroic | 1 |
| Integrated S-Foils | 0 |
| Pattern Analyzer | 5 |
| Ship Total: 61 | |
| Half Points: 31 Threshold: 4 | |
| Ello Asty — T-70 X-Wing | 56 |
| Heroic | 1 |
| Integrated S-Foils | 0 |
| Ship Total: 57 | |
| Half Points: 29 Threshold: 4 | |
Objectively, this list is pretty bad at jousting. It's not super durable or really throwing a crazy amount of heavily modified dice, in fact it's a lot of single mod only options. In that respect, I did take some practice to figure out how to effectively split the squadron, then reassemble it around the other players ships. Once you get to the close range fight, the pilot abilities that mostly center around close range maneuvering (Zari can bump other ships and still get actions, Ello and Nien can tallon roll without losing actions) should theoretically give you an edge over a lot of the other ships out there. But, the 2 questions to ask are 1) can I pull it off consistently and 2) is it enough. Went to a small tournament this weekend and I like using opportunities like this to see where I'm at.
Round 1 was against Rebels Wedge/Han. I was able to bait him into going after Zari and put some quick damage on Han Wedge with only minor return fire, before I saw a chance to take Wedge off the table by doing a straight 4 over debris with Nien to get within range 1, shed the stress and throw a lock along with Zari and Ello while he was trapped on the table edge. I did make a huge misplay with Nien which put him in a position he shouldn't have been in and then he took an Ion crit and walked off the board. Fortunately, even with Ello and Nien down, Zari had trapped Han in a corner for enough turns to pound some damage in including a structural damage crit, so by the time Han got out of the corner, I was able to play very conservatively with the A-Wings for the rest of the match and eventually Zari got the kill.
Round 2 was against First Order Midnight/Quickdraw/2x SFs.
In this game everything just kind of worked. I made a really good early guess with L'ulo that put him right next to Quickdraw in a position where she couldn't even barrel roll to avoid Range 1 or the bullseye and L'ulo dropped all of her shields when had nothing to shoot at. There were 2 potential mistakes with L'ulo that, in retrospect, were far too aggressive given my favorable board position, but I didn't end paying for either of these plays. In fact, after one of them, I literally said, "I doesn't matter if I roll high!" and proceeded to roll a full string and kill his last ship.
Round 3 was against Resistance Rey/Bastian/Jess. The initial joust went well and I made a few early gambles with Zari to try and limit Rey's options. The first one, I wasn't' confident in because I wasn't sure if it would work. It involved an intentional bump with a boost linked to a rotate, but I was gambling pretty hard that this wouldn't mess up Nien based on the relative positions and where Rey would stop since Nien had taken a beating at this point. It ended up working and Nien was able to Tallon into a boost out of Rey's arc. I also made 2 relatively good guesses with Zari that let me lead rey by the nose to the board edge and then they for a pretty good circuit around it, This let Nien and Ello get the breathing room they needed to finish off Bastian and Jess without taking additional damage. I did make 2 major mistakes later. The first was pushing Nien over debris anticipating a turn to try and shake me, but in practice all this did was trade Nien for super minor damage and he proceeded straight. The second mistake was when Rey and Ello were facing off after her sloop. Rey was at 2 and for some reason my reflex at the time said a Tallon Roll wouldn't have worked, but looking back, the only way a Tallon Roll wouldn't have worked is if he somehow landed in a position where the Tallon Roll wouldn't have allowed me a shot and also called the roll and rotated his arc. If neither of us shoot, I just pick up a free lock which basically guarantees the kill next turn, it's also possible a roll back gives me a shot with mods without him getting one and if he does something weird like a hard turn, it's just an unstressed bump which is fine. I went with a K-turn which still would've worked if Rey hadn't gone 3/3 in hard hard rolling results or if Ello had rolled slightly higher, but it happens.
Round 4 was against Scum Boba/4x TIEs. I'm not sure I deserved to win this. The opening went off without a hitch and I took apart the TIES without losing a ship, and then proceeded to setup about 4 turns worth of blocking on Boba with Zari, but my brain stopped working at some point and I forgot that I was forcing blocks, so I was tripping over myself despite having almost complete board control. Ello managed to drag this game across the finish line, but man that was some garbage play.
Overall, the list is doing what I want it to do, but there have been some consistent themes to work on. Nien has been feast or famine with some amazing plays that have proven crucial and bad gambles that haven't payed off. I definitely need to more closely evaluate when I'm looking to use his ability and whether or not it's safer to just not bother based on the current board position. I'll have to think more on L'ulo's role. It's tempting to say I'm being too aggressive, but I actually think that's the point of the pilot at least to some extent and I do weight whether or not I can afford to bump damage at the expense of defense. More thought and testing is required, but it is a **** fun list to play.