So how was it?

What went well or not?

What did they use for play surface? It looked like shelf paper.

I saw on the Day 2 video one tourney game where all the ships were in very close range. How do you move accurately out of that?

I was the tournament, but I got sick, so I had to leave after 3 rounds. It was awsome, but there were a few little oddities.

1st - TIE fighter tend to have high defenses and lower attacks. Rebel ships on the other hand have higher attacks and comparably lower defenses. But iin the tournament was not set up for Rebels to be fighting Imperials, anyone could fight anyone. That seemed like a no brainer when I read the tournament rules, It allowed anyone to play build what ever fleet they wanted. Unfortunatly I played Imperial and as it turned so did most people. Every Battle I played was against other Imperials. Remember TIEs have high defense and lower attack. It was very hard for us tokill each other. I even had one battle where neither of us lost a ship before time was called. That leads to the second oddity.

2nd - Victory poinst were calculated by how many points of your ships you still had left at the end of the battle, not how many points of ships you had destroyed.So in the battle I mentioned before, where nobody killed anything, I recieved a modified victory because my opponant had not spent all 100 points. He only had a 98 point squadron. I had 2 more points than him. I pointed out to the judge that I would be okay if he wrote it down as a draw, but the judge didn't feel comfortable just changing the rules of the tournament. My experience was not unique. I know it happened a couple of other times at the torunament, and it probably happened more.

3rd - I had 6 ships in my squadron. No surprise, Imperial ships are cheaper. But everyone else I played was an Imperial. they usually had about 5 ships. so there were 10 ot 11 ships on the 3'x3' play area. It got really crowded. Trying to avoid cfollisions so that you could still take an action became a big part of the game. there were rounds where more than half of my ships, colided into something

These are all my complaints, but in truth it was awsome. The movement system (other than the collisions) was even cooler than I had imagined. The action mechanic was really cool. Like I said I was feeling sick, but I stayed for hours.

One More thing. I would like to appologize to my fellow player for playing sick. I hope I didn't infect any one. The tournament was going to be the highlight of my trip, and I didn't want little things like throwing up get in the way. sorry.

#2) Keep in mind that the advantage he gets for a few fewer points is that he "has initiative", which means he wins ties and gets to go first for shooting on the same skill value, etc.

It is the nature of the beast, and it happens sometimes in a tournament. The difficulty, I think, lies less in the game but with the players. Without a lot of time to practice, players weren't familiar with how to handle Imperial vs Imperial match-ups. Obviously, in such a matchup you need to make sure to concentrate your fire and work hard to get at least one kill. More missiles would be extremely useful, for example.

The guy who won used 3 X-Wings and 1 Y-Wing.

dvang said:

Don't forget when two ships with the same pilot skill attack one another it is simultaneous.

Nicco said:

Who won? Congrats to whoever it is!

Was there any sort of prize support (or at least a prize for the winner)?

There is a video of the winner:

Hrathen said:

Concentrating the fire from two or more fighters against the same target should alleviate the problem of lack of shotdowns in a duel between vehicles with high defense and low attack. Although I am beginning to wonder about a houserule that gives some bonus to fighters who concentrate their fire against the same target, representing the difficulty to avoid simultaneous fire from more than one enemies. Something like two or more fighters attacking simultaneously the same target (so they should have the same Pilot Skill - unless I make a second houserule allowing high Skill pilots having the option to "delay" his shooting to a lower initiative) having the option to combine their attack dice in a single attack roll.

Nicco said:

Well, he has a nice trophy sitting on the table next to him!

Agrivar said:

The problem is completely solved when you have Imperial fight Rebels.

I actually think you could have a cool tournament where you were required to build two lists an Imperial and a Rebel. And then randomly choose which player in each bout uses which list.

Another thing that could fix the Imperial on Imperial problem is simply to increase the play area. With so many TIEs on a 3'x3' they are colliding all the time. That doesn't mean they take damage, but they are denied actions, so they can't fight as effectilvly.

I imagine as we get more familiar with the game Imperial vs Imperial will have little to no problems

Also after re-reading the rules, seeing the game play in the various videos/pics on the net and my own familiarity with miniature games I have to wonder if maybe a 4X4 table would be better - especially if you are using terrain like asteroids

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the rules state that when you "crash" into another ship you just move to a position where the bases touch, agreed upon by both players, and both ships lose their action phase because they're trying to dodge. Yet I heard that in the tournament several TIEs collided with each other and were destroyed. I think. Did they change the ruling on ship collisions during the tournament, or did I just read the rules wrong?

You have the rules correct. I don't know what happened in the tournament, but there is a critical hit card that causes collisions to inflict damage I think so maybe that?

The game rules state that when one ship would "collide" with another (i.e. end its movement overlapping the other ship's base), it moves as far as it can along its movement tile until the two bases are touching and stops. The moving ship then gets no action for the turn, and both ships cannot attack each other that turn.

There IS a critical hit effect that causes ship collisions to potentially do damage to the afflicted ship.

Asteroids work a little differently. If you move through or onto an asteroid, you roll an attack die and resolve the result as though it were an attack (ignore Focus icons).

Regarding ship "collisions" and their effect on the game, it's best if you don't think of them as two ships actually "colliding" or "crashing." They actually represent a ship expending extra effort to avoid a collision (hence the loss of action). That's a pretty dogfight-y concept and adds a lot of interesting gameplay potential to the game. There was at least one round during the tournament where I threw my TIE Fighters in front of a ship to hinder its planned movement while my TIE Advanced came at it from behind.

By the way, this is Adam Livingston for anyone who was at the tournament. It was a blast, and I'm looking forward to doing it again!

Tawnos said:

Can anyone post what the winning fleet was? Other top fleets? I only had enough room in my budget this weekend to pick up the core set, a Y-wing, and a TIE Advanced, so knowing what strategies are working could help direct future spending. I've realized that I can build an 80 point fleet with just the X-Wing and Y-Wing, but I'm thinking that going that big on two ships (which would end up with a vanilla X-Wing or Y-Wing as the only other ship I could add and stay under 100 points) is not the ideal strategy.

I know the guy who won was running 1 Y-wing and 3 X-wings. I forget exactly which pilots and upgrades.

As for myself, I actually threw my squad together 15 minutes before the tourney started. After 4 rounds of Swiss, I finished 5th at 3-1 with 13 points. JUST missed the cut to Top 4 due to a partial victory in Round 1 instead of a total victory, which was a bummer because my tie-breaker would have put me at the 2nd seed, as I recall. This is what I was running:

• Darth Vader, TIE Advanced - Determination and Concussion Missiles
• Storm Squadron Pilot, TIE Advanced - Concussion Missiles
• Howlrunner, TIE Fighter - Expert Handling
• Mauler Mithel, TIE Fighter - Expert Handling

I realized not long into the tourney that, despite their relatively higher initiative values, Expert Handling wasn't great on Howlrunner or Mauler Mithel, as most pilots who could Target Lock them would move after them. I think I used Expert Handling a grand total of once. If I'd had time to really think about it, I'd have come to the conclusion that most people wouldn't have enough minis to run Rebel swarm, so any competitive Rebel squad would have high initiative pilots like Luke and Wedge. And I think I was the only person running more than 1 TIE Advanced, so….didn't get a lot of return against Imperial squads either.

I can't say if Determination was a great pick or not for Vader. No one really targeted him a lot during the tourney. He's one tough SOB.

I've got some co-workers interested in trying the game, so I'll be experimenting with some various squads over the next few weeks.

Hey guys. Was just wondering how long each game lasted roughly? Were they played to a certain turn number, or last man standing?

Thanks!

I heard they lasted anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes from a FFG staff.

I was fortunate enough to be the tournament champion, and though I might be bias… I had a blast. Just about everyone I played against had a great attitude and seemed to be there for the right reason… to play a great game and have a good time doing it.

As for my fleet list, it consisted of the following:

Luke Skywalker (Xwing) with R2D2
Garven Dries (Xwing) with R2 Astromech (?? without my cards in front of my I think this is right, its the one that treats all 1 and 2 turns to green)
Rookie Pilot (Xwing) with R5 Astromech (?? the one that allows SHIP criticals to be turned to normal hits)
Gold Squadron Pilot (Ywing) with R5 Astromech (?? the one that allows SHIP criticals to be turned to normal hits)

My strategy in the fleet build was "as many ships as possible". I knew that the Imperial Fleets would have a lot of numbers and in the 1.5 games I got in before the tournament (playing late into Thursday night) it seemed that more ships was superior to more upgrades (except R2D2, he is a must have) in dealing with it. The Xwings were my attack ships and the Ywing was my bait and damage sponge (as there were no points to allow an Ion cannon, though if the tournament allowed 105 points it would have been my next upgrade).

I won't give away my general in game strategy, but in the championship round it was called "Kill Vader"!

Hope that helps, I think I will be writing a summary article for Fantasy Flight Games… so more to come.

And because I can't resist…

"May the Force be with you!"

Any body at the tourny have a some recaps on how the battles actually turned out, maybe even pics with recaps? Thanks

I used this force in the tournament (scored 8 points):

Vader with concussion missiles and squad leader

Stele with cluster missiles and marksmanship

Dark Curse

Winged Gundark

Warklaw said:

Congrats on the win. Welcome to the SWXM Hall of Fame!

Yeah, Warklaw is like our IRL Wedge.