First game was against billy, and this was his first tourney. He ran

Luke with veteran instincts, stealth device

Wedge with push the limit and r5d8

Biggs with shield upgrade and r2d2

Interesting...I've run something similar to good effect:

Luke with veteran instincts, shield upgrade and r2d2

Wedge with swarm tactics and r2

Biggs with stealth device and r2f2

It was his first tourney, so I don't think he was quite experienced enough to really know how to fly vs a variety of lists. We talked about it some after our game, and in talking with him throughout the day, I think he did fly it better as the day went on. It was an interesting squad, though.

@Zathras, I've flown a similar list as well. I give Luke Squad leader so that he can give Biggs a Focus. Once Biggs Misses that first evade roll it is down hill from there.

looking fwd to some new battle reports from Gencon here soon! wish i could be there...

Quick update, after 5 swiss rounds, I'm 4-1. My only loss to a Biggs chewie wedge list where chewie had 2 hull left. Next up is top 16 single elim rounds.

Rock on, my friend!!!

Won my round of 16 match. Sorry, for all of those awaiting a report..."spoiler alert!"

Won my round of 16 match. Sorry, for all of those awaiting a report..."spoiler alert!"

Congrats Hothie, good luck to you and Robert and buhallin and Jeff Wilder and any other TC people. (A bit belated but you seem to be checking this often so if you see those guys tell them hi.

Those guys have all left. That's how good the competition here is.

Those guys have all left. That's how good the competition here is.

Well, I hope they all had fun. If I was rich, or didn't have a job, or I suppose both, I would love to have come to meet you all and play in such a serious tournament.

Good luck to you then.

Hothie, this is Lynne - GO TEAM IOWA, my friend. We are all proud to know you and call you our bud. We are eagerly awaiting your report on how the tournament ended.

Lost in Round of 8 to wedge Luke Biggs squad. R2d2 kept healing Luke and I couldnt kill him. Ill write a full report when I get home, and ya know, am coherent.

Well we all know you're a champ, anyway you look at it. Safe trip back, my friend, and we'll see you soon.

Lost in Round of 8 to wedge Luke Biggs squad. R2d2 kept healing Luke and I couldnt kill him. Ill write a full report when I get home, and ya know, am coherent.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm sorry that you got knocked out of the tourney but I'm happy that it was my favorite squad that did the deed. Luke is definitely hard to kill with R2D2 and an extra shield on his X-Wing. I know...that's how I run him and have yet to lose him.

Can't wait for the report!

@zathras23: you've never lost Luke? That's impressive.

Doug I saw James made it to the final 2, did you stay to see who won?

Hothie, hopefully you won't mind if I hijack your report to describe our top 16 match?

I played Wedge/Swarm, Garvin, Biggs, Prototype. I went 4-1 into the cut, and got matched up against Doug and his revised Additional Damage squad. My plan was to burn down the gunner BH as soon as possible, and then see where the battle took me. My 3 X-Wings liked being together, so the Assault Missile was going to be annoying, but I didn't want to try to do anything fancy where they separated. I was sure Doug would capitalize on that better than I would benefit from the reduced missile damage. So the assault missile plan was to hope for a poor roll.

We set up an asteroid fence slightly on Doug's side of the field, and I placed my A-Wing in the middle. He set his guys up slightly on one side of the field, so I put the 3 X's in that corner. I've found that, against BHs, putting a cloud of X's in front of him, an A-Wing blocking the turn, and the edge of the board on the other, helps the "burn down BH 1" plan.

Doug set up his formation in round one, and then got into the train formation in two, with the gunner BH, missile BH, and Howlrunner in order, 1 movement template between them (at a 45 degree angle). I went four forward with my X's in one, and then Biggs did a 1 bank, with the other two doing a 3 bank, to form a cloud like I wanted. The A-Wing was at range 2 on the flank of the front BH. We focused on the gunner BH, and did a significant amount of damage to him.

Sadly for me, the assault missile got 3 hits and a crit, and Biggs only dodged once. The crit was, of course, Direct Hit. And the gunner finished him off. I figured odds were that I was only going to take 2 from the missile, not 4! If Biggs lived through that first turn, I think things would have turned out much differently. I think Howlrunner also took out the other shield on Garvin that turn, because our 2 dice attacks (A-Wing and Howlrunner) were doing better than the three dice ones that game.

On the third turn, my A-Wing bumped into the front left corner of the lead BH. Oops! I meant to get just shy of it, to try to stop the turn. It might have ended up being a blessing in disguise, because his BH still couldn't turn, and in fact, ended up not moving anywhere. This stalled the whole train, so they all bonked into one another. My Garvin went one forward into my A-Wing, and Wedge went one forward and focused. I think I could have done that better if Garvin 2-banked in the previous round, then maybe he wouldn't have bumped. But maybe then the BH could have fit the turn, which would have totally ruined my day? I'm not sure.

So Garvin and Wedge destroy the gunner BH. My green dice continue to fail me, so that the BH and HR, with no focuses or anything, kill Garvin without much effort. If Biggs lived through that first turn, Garvin would still have been alive here, and I'd have 10-11 life of ships and 8 attack vs 13 life and 5 attack, which are odds I'll take.

At this point, my A-Wing flips around just in case he's turning the BH that direction, although I assume Doug isn't going to do that. The other direction turn (towards the center of the board) was open, and I couldn't get my A-Wing into there. He turns the BH that way, and then HR does a 1 turn to get into the spot to ruin a possible Wedge K-turn. I figured he was going to do that, so Wedge just went ... 2 forward? I forget exactly, but enough to get a range 1 attack on HR. My other choice that I was considering was a bank into where I knew the BH would be to prevent his shot, but then Wedge would have no shot, and would have to follow the BH at range 1 for the next few turns, which wouldn't end well for Wedge. Wedge did 2 to HR, and HR died to running into an asteroid the following turn. The BH wrecked Wedge, bringing him down to 1 life left. So I had 5 life in my army to the BH's 9. Not good!

At this point, things got a bit fuzzy in my memory of the turn-by-turns. Wedge disengaged behind an asteroid to try to come at the BH from another angle and get in the blind spot. The A-Wing tried to stick near Wedge to benefit from Swarm Tactics. There was one turn in which I thought my A-Wing would end up in the blind spot, but that 2-turn moved the BH a much smaller distance than I expected, and we both had range 1 attacks. My A-Wing lost his shields in that exchange. I should have moved one farther there.

The A-Wing ended up stuck behind the BH later on, and his string of good dodge rolls ended. After that, it was Wedge at 1 life versus the BH. We ended up in a jousting position, with asteroids on either side, so I charged him, hoping for a Blinded Pilot. It was highly unlikely, and didn't happen. He finished off Wedge, and had, I think, 3 life left on the BH?

So a little bit better luck on my part, or tightening up my tactics the few times I was a bit off, and I think I could have pulled it off. Doug was a pleasure to play against, as were all my other opponents. I'll write something about my full experience later on when I get home. I have to pack up now or else my wife will kill me.

Paul

Excellent write up Paul, more detail than I think I have seen before, at least more than I would write! :-)

It was good meeting you Doug (Hothie), maybe next time we could get a game in!

Can't wait for the report!

@zathras23: you've never lost Luke? That's impressive.

Well, to be honest, I've only played the list 3 times so far but have done well with it. In the three games I've lost Biggs all three times and Wedge just once but have managed to not lose Luke at all. In fact Luke hasn't had even taken 1 point of hull damage in the three games so far thanks to the extra shield and R2's recharge ability. Also I've managed to keep Biggs alive long enough so that Wedge and Luke can kill about half of the enemy force in each game.

Can't wait for the report!

@zathras23: you've never lost Luke? That's impressive.

Well, to be honest, I've only played the list 3 times so far but have done well with it. In the three games I've lost Biggs all three times and Wedge just once but have managed to not lose Luke at all. In fact Luke hasn't had even taken 1 point of hull damage in the three games so far thanks to the extra shield and R2's recharge ability. Also I've managed to keep Biggs alive long enough so that Wedge and Luke can kill about half of the enemy force in each game.

Well, that's the thing about this game -- there are so many squads to try that it's hard to convince myself to play the same one again and again . I don't blame you at all for only flying it three times. The squad I've flown the most has had minor tweaks to it throughout, but I'm sitting at 8 wins 4 losses. And with Wave 3 I probably won't ever play that squad again.

Just watched the Day 4 video, and I wanted to say congrats to Jake for flying an outstanding tournament. He was at the May 4th event and ran triple bounty hunters, and I believe he was in the top 8 there as well.

This tournament had an incredible number of amazing players, and it was easily the highest-caliber X-wing tournament to date. There was a wide variety of builds, although to me it seemed like there were a lot of TIE swarms flying about. I was expecting to face triple bounty hunter squads, but there was only 1 person out of 84 who ran them. Honestly, I would have loved to have just watched many of these players fly throughout the day. Lyle (sozin) is poetry in motion with his swarm maneuvers, and the rest of the Chicago gang keep each other sharp for the big competitions. Yeah, you know that Piqsid guy that you've been learning how to maneuver from? He's part of that group, too, as well as Dominic, who made the top 16, and Matthew, who would have been in the top 16 if he didn't have a draw earlier in the day. Such an amazing group that all plays against each other. Their session reports are definitely worth learning from.

But that was just 4 guys out of 84 people there. It was great to meet and put faces to screen names to many of the best players in this game who were there, and to see friends from tourneys past as well. And Jetsetter, i would love to play a game with you sometime. This really is one of the best gaming communities that I have ever seen, and thank you all for being great and fun people.

So, the game reports.

First off, I ran my 98 point Additional Damage variant:

Howlrunner with Squad leader
Bounty Hunter with Assault Missiles
Bounty Hunter with Gunner and Seismic Charges

My first match was against Luke. He ran:
Chewie with Veteran Instincts, MF title, Gunner, and Nien Nunb
Biggs with R2F2
Rookie Pilot with r2 Astromech

This game was truly up to the dice, as I think i rolled 1 blank while attacking all game long, and I turned that into a hit with a Howl reroll. And his defense dice were well below average, so this one was over long before it should have been. And on top of that, the Assault Missile splashed Chewie and the Seismic hit chewie as well. the one good thing that happened to him was that he gave Howl the Injured Pilot crit, which turned her into a PS8 Tie fighter. She died soon afterwards, so it didn't matter much, but she was all that I lost that game. 1-0

My second match was against Andrew running a TIE swarm built for killing Bounty Hunters:

Howl with Push the Limit
Saber Squadron Pilot with Push the Limit X2
Black Squadron Pilot with Draw Their Fire X2

This was an epic match, and it may have been one of the most tense, exciting matches I have played in a very long time. The Assault Missile hit for 4 damage, killing a BSP and splashing 3 others. He put an unexpected block on Howlrunner with his BSP, and my seismic ended up killing her because of it. We went back and forth all game long, but it came down to his Saber with Damaged Cockpit vs my Bounty Hunter, each with 1 hull left. I shot, he spent both his focus and evade tokens on the shot to cancel it out, my gunner kicked in and rolled 2 hits and a blank. I rerolled the blank with a target lock and got a blank. He rolled 4 dice and got 2 blanks, an eye, and an evade, so he was dead. My bounty Hunter had 1 hull left, and I was facing the corner of the board. I had one shot left after that one in case I didn't win that round, but I pulled it out. 2-0

My third match was against Chuck, who also ran a TIE swarm
Howlrunner with Shield Upgrade
Alpha Squadron Pilot X3
Academy Pilot X2

The Assault Missile hit for 3 splash damage, and my Seismic took one of his AP's out. I managed to whittle his ties down, and he took out Howlrunner. This one went to time, and in the last round I killed off his Howlrunner and one of his Alphas, so he only had 1 AP left with my 2 BH's, so I got a full win out of it. 3-0

Fourth round was against Tom, who ran:

Chewbacca with Push the Limit
Wedge
Biggs

This game had some epic maneuvering and some epic fail maneuvering. I did manage to drop my seismic right where all 3 of his ships were going to be, and I made sure to keep wedge in the blast radius by blocking him with Howlrunner. I did a 1 turn and barrel roll with howlrunner, leaving her in a spot where she was out of the blast radius, but when wedge collided with her he was in it, and it worked perfectly. Then a few rounds later I was thinking hard about where I was going to put howlrunner and just slapped down a 2 turn for one of my BH's, thinking he would clear an asteroid. But I should have taken a closer look at his positioning, because he needed to do a 3 turn, so i ended up landing on a rock. This one my one big mistake all day long, and it was simply due to carelessness. but Tom helped me out by landing Chewie on a different rock that same turn. So that was one round of not firing at his chewie with my BH, and the game ended with his Chewie having 2 hull left, so that turn was the difference in the game, and I blew it. But, like I said, his Chewie had 2 hull left at the end of the game, so i lost. 3-1

Round 5 was against Lou, who ran a similar list as Tom:

Chewbacca with veteran instincts
Biggs
Wedge with Swarm Tactics

I was able to take Biggs out fairly early on in this one, and I managed to get Wedge out not too long afterwards. This one came down to his Chewie with no shields vs my full Bounty Hunter. His 1 agility vs my 2 agility was a big diffference, as I was able to whittle him down and win with my BH having I think 3 hull left. 4-1

Then we started the round of 16, where I faced paul. Paul had an excellent write-up, so I don't know that there is much more I can say. After his garven was out and it was down to his Wedge with 1 hull left and his Awing vs my Bounty Hunter, I took a long route around the board to set up a joust with Wedge, and it worked. his Awing wanted to play first, though, so I took it out before finishing off Wedge.

In the Quarterfinals I played against James, who ran:

Wedge with Shield Upgrade and veteran Instincts
Luke with Draw their fire, R2D2, and Shield Upgrade
Biggs with Shield Upgrade

I managed to hit Biggs with the Assault Missile, but Luke took the crit and the splash. He put a hurt on my Gunner BH. then next round I dropped the seismic and hit all 3 of his ships when they k-turned. So Luke was unshielded and stressed at this point. I then parked howlrunner in a spot where she blocked Wedge and had a range 1 shot on biggs, and she finished him off before he could fire. This was where I made 2 big mistakes. i should have flipped and jousted with him at that point with my full-health BH because the rebels was hurting, but instead I flew him in a circle to turn him around. i also focused on Wedge when i should have been focusing on getting Luke off of the board. Well, I did end up taking Wedge out, but his R2 healed Luke back up to full shields, and it was only a mattter of time before he took me out. So I lost in the quarterfinals, and james ended up in the final match against jake.

It was an exhauting day, and my left knee still hurts from standing all day long, but it was worth it meeting and getting to know so many great people in this game. Hope to see you all again next year!

Great write up as always man from Hoth. That build of James really blew me away when I read it. VI on Wedge! 12 Points in Sheild Upgrades!!?! Unbelievable. Amazing that the finals came down to X-wings vs. Ties! Not a big ship on the board.

Just watched the Day 4 video, and I wanted to say congrats to Jake for flying an outstanding tournament.

Got a link to that video?

Just watched the Day 4 video, and I wanted to say congrats to Jake for flying an outstanding tournament.

Got a link to that video?

+1

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4309

looks like the winner was a type of swarm.