Part of my new job is travelling around the country to certain spots at random times throughout the year. Because of this, I found myself in Cape Canaveral, Florida a couple of weeks ago, and made my way a bit further south to Melbourne on my first night in town. Is it just me, or is Monday night X-Wing night in nearly every game store in the US? I’ve played in 4 states (Georgia, Ohio, Washington, and Connecticut) now where the main night for casual X-Wing was Monday…

Get Your Fun On is possibly the physically largest game store I’ve ever been in. It certainly is in the top 3 (competing with Epic Loot in Ohio and Third Eye Games in Maryland.) They had the above table front and center in their game room, and it is an incredibly impressive display of Miskatonic Mythology for a Cthulhu-based RPG or game. They have a comic book room larger than some stores that I’ve been in, and their play area is the same size.

Since I was travelling, I had only my tournament kit on me, which left me with 3 lists available. Considering my recent attempt at a new version of the Circus, I figured I would keep using that, to get a better feel for it. The last time out with this list, I got a little bit of usage from Targeting Computer, but still found myself trying to line up Predator more often than not. It helps that I still gain the Fel focus from the bullseye, but I wanted to try to lean a little heavier on the Lock action this time around. As a reminder, my new Circus:



Game 1: Josh Newell

Continuing the trend of seeing new things, I squared off first against Josh, who was flying Lando and a pair of Knaves. The initial engagement heavily favored me, as after 3 or 4 rounds of positioning, Lando was out of range but both E-Wings were able to be shot by nearly all of my forces (a single Academy was left out of the action on my side.)

Josh put a hurt on one of my bombers in exchange for all but 1 hull from the lead E-Wing. We moved in, with Lando and my final TIE joining the action, and a massive bump-scrum erupted in the center, caused by the E-Wings bumping my aggressive TIEs. This results in the death of the first E-Wing and the near-death of the second, while my wounded bomber 5-K’d out of everyone’s range except Lando.

Misjudging where Fel lands has become a bit of a tradition, and this time is no different – the space drift got the better of me and Soontir died to an amazing shot by Lando. In exchange, my wounded bomber finished off the remaining Knave, leaving just Lando left against the might of my Imperial swarm.

My formation falls apart a bit as I fail to anticipate Lando moving slowly, but I still keep enough ships on target to start wearing down the Falcon’s shields. Calrissian kills off the limping bomber after clearing a traffic jam at the very edge of the board.

My formation splits up to better chase down Lando, and he begins throwing shots into the closest TIE fighter, which breaks off after taking a single damage due to bad positioning. The following round, Lando 1-shots my lead TIE, but it’s too little, too late as the smuggler falls for a 200-104 victory.

Game 2: Chris Kuenneke

If I thought I knew what I was looking at with Josh’s list, I had NO IDEA what I was in for here. Chris brought Emon Azzameen, Constable Zuvio, and a Crymorah Goon. Based on my experience with Fett less than 2 days prior to this, I wanted the Firespray to go down first, and Chris seemed like he was going to oblige by setting Emon up directly across from my block.

A strange engagement forces me to dodge a bomb on turn 2, which leaves me unready for Emon to just charge straight through my line. My TIEs had broken off and gone where Fel appears to be wanting to go, while Fel turned hard toward my bombers to dodge a suspected bomb, and the bombers turned hard just to stay out of the way and ended up having beautiful shots on the Firespray.

None of that mattered, as I managed to only drop Emon’s shields and had put half my list off his trail. My TIEs started going in on the nearby Y-Wing while the more expensive ships committed to killing Emon before Zuvio could make his presence known. Through a combination of bombs and turret attacks, the Y-Wing kills one of my TIEs before he goes down.

Meanwhile, Emon is proving difficult to finish off, so my bombers break off and team up with the now target-less TIEs to work on the tugboat. Soontir, for his part, sticks on Emon, dodging shots and using his new Lock action to moderate success.

Despite being my initial target, Emon dies in the final round to the Baron. Zuvio proves his effectiveness by helping to murder one of my bombers, and the other had been worn down pretty far as well, but after planting one of my TIEs on a rock, my wounded bomber had the killshot and finally eliminated the Constable. This gave me the 200-97 win, which felt a lot harder than the score indicated.

Game 3: Will Dex

Speaking of things I’ve never seen! This Will brought a strange Resistance 5 ship list to bear, featuring Zizi Tlo, Greer Sonnel, Zari Bangrel, Kazuda Xiono, and a Colossus Station Mechanic. If I had written about this game the night I played it, I still would have scrubbed details off, and here I am trying to do it over 2 weeks later.

I knew my Academy TIEs were the right ones to target Kaz, but didn’t really figure that they would NEVER have shots on him that mattered. I tried to approach in a position that would control the center, with FEl leaping ahead to get potshots on the junior Fireball early on. What I didn’t expect was for Will to completely ignore engaging me right away with the A-Wings, bringing them down to near my my board edge before swinging back up into the center.

I tried to fortress up in the center of the board, struggling to keep all of my ships pointing at Will’s ships, while he buzzed around me like a swarm of angry hornets. Neither of us was doing much damage to the other, and neither of us could keep a coherent target in sights for longer than a single round.

The A-Wings finally came in from one direction, and the Fireballs from the other, and basically split my swarm in half. The A’s then buggered out the same way they came in, and the Fireballs tried to follow them out, so I started breaking TIEs off to get in their way and let my harder hitters lay some shots on target.

I did a pretty great job of rotating my ships in and out of arcs, and I had worried both Fireballs down to below half health by the time Will started pulling out of the middle engagement for the third time. Luckily for us, we had set a typical tournament timer at the start of the game, and it rang while we were setting dials after this round. After finishing it out, we had completed my first EVER game where nothing had died after a full timer. I had scored half points on Kaz, Greer, and the Mechanic for a total of 78 points, and lost only half points on a single TIE, for the 78-11 victory.

Targeting Computer proved itself that night, but so did Predator. I used the Lock action whenever Fel had a confirmed target AND wouldn’t get shot, but if I had to reposition and I was lining up the bullseye anyway, having the free re-roll was still worth 2 points when my lock was already elsewhere. For now, it’s worth the extra points to leave both on Fel until something better comes along. Considering I’m 5-2 with the new version of the list, I still have some learning to do with it.

It may not look impressive from the outside, but Get Your Fun On is definitely a great spot. If you’re ever in Melbourne and need anything game or comic related, this should be your first place to check. I can’t wait to go back sometime later this year!

I also wanted to throw out a thank you to fellow bloggers The Midwest Scrub Club, for putting my humble little blog on their community resources page. I always enjoy their posts, and their recent Store Championship article serves to showcase the same sort of stuff that I like to fly – Near meta, but never quite on meta lists that do well at tournaments. Check them out!

Next time: A new Baron arrives!