A few days ago I parted company (probably temporarily) with ships that have been seemingly perpetual companions for the last few months and began playing around with something new. It’s a weird and slightly liberating feeling to be playing with a list that I’ve not spent months with. In many ways takes a pressure of my shoulders when prepping for events. However, I have to do some learning about how it works.

My ideology on ships, as noted by a fair few people is that I like upgrades. I like a lot of upgrades. It’s not always the most efficient way of doing things but I feel that upgrades give a ship character. In my head I’m telling stories while I play games, having characters makes that more dynamic as an experience for me. Sadly a faceless Jakku Gunrunner or TIE pilot isn’t my thing. I love that death or glory narrative of an ace or two taking on the world.

I have an inkling in the back of my mind that the E-Wings could be rather good together. The five games I played last weekend, whilst not filling me with confidence, definitely put me in the glass is half full category. The more I look at it the more I like it. So the next few tournaments are going to be very much practice for me to get the best out of these things and to find out just how good they are.

You can’t practice rolling dice, but you can practice getting your movement right. I am not used to flying in any kind of formation. The last time I did it in any form was Boba and Kath and they went out to pasture a long time ago. Flying two large based ships with a limited dial is somewhat different to flying two small ships with a crazy dial. With Boba and Kath they wanted to work together to focus down one target on the initial engagement, after that they would basically fly independent of each other and wreak as much havoc as possible.

The E-Wings WANT to be working together, that bonus crit from Gavin is too good not to try exploit as often as you can. Obviously I know the theory of formation flying, but when you are looking to deliver an Alpha strike to cripple your enemy it’s about more than that. It’s understanding how the formation interacts with the rocks, how to move it so that it covers the approach your opponent is looking to come down. Corran’s ability is largely opportunistic (especially as there are a fair few I6s and I5s with bigger bids than me about), but I want to learn to exploit Gavin’s. Formation flying is one way of doing this, co-ordinated flying is another.

The difference between formation and co-ordinated is that when formation flying your ships stay together and you basically dial in the same/similar moves. The classic formation is the Howlrunner swarm. It’s necessary that all ships stay in range X of something to trigger effect Y. However effects like Gavin’s don’t require range, they require a shared target, you need to co-ordinate your ships to get the bonus but you don’t need to be right next to each other, that’s just the easy way of doing it. It means you can fly a bit looser, I think this is why the Drea swarm is strong, your ships don’t all need to be at range one for it to happen. I gives a bit more freedom about how you fly.

With two ships that have the potential to do such significant damage target priority is arguably of even higher priority than normal. The ability to take two locks each at the start of the game is great, it let’s you threaten multiple ships with a horror show of hits and crits, but it also means you are making your targets clear from the off, and your opponent can respond in kind. Do you take on the soft targets and try and balance the ship count fast or do you go for the scary thing that you don’t want to see in the end game?

To make these decisions you have to learn about other peoples ships and ways that different people fly them. “Know your enemy” is not just a Rage Against the Machine track.

How to Know You Enemy:

Fly them. Fly everything until you understand how the ships work

Fly against them. But not always the same person! Play style makes a difference to how list work.

Increasing your vocabulary of the game is so important. I remember when I first started every ship I flew against was a learning experience, the first time I saw a sloop was playing a hunger games thingy at Ibuywargames and my brain couldn’t quite compute what the Star Viper had done. It’s not just knowing what move they can do, it’s knowing how they want to fly. Does this ship want to be at range one? What triggers when and where? Does that ship engage at range then look to get into your flanks? How has any given ship been built to be effective?

An example is trickshot Dash who wants to stay away from you and make his big gun count. He wants things in the way and to just overwhelm your defence dice a bit at a time. At range one he is less of a threat. It’s all very well knowing what moves Dash can do but the question is how are they going to be used? Crack that and you can work out how to shut him down.

A second example is a ship who is very popular at the moment: 4-Lom. A standard 4-Lom build will be 0-0-0, debris gambit, Mist Hunter and advanced sensors. He want to be getting close to you at range one, he wants to do this while stressed. Everything about him should deter you rushing towards him as it just makes him better. He also only has one agility and 9 health disappears alarmingly fast when focused fire hits him.

You can write lists for days, get them critiqued by the finest minds in the game, watch videos, read blogs (especially read blogs all us bloggers highly endorse that) and get your head full of wonderful ideas… that’s all well and good but:

NOTHING BEATS TABLE TIME

There are a lot of thing that go into making a great X-Wing player, and I’ve tried to break them down into a few key points. This isn’t an encyclopedia, it’s just a few key skills and ideas on how to improve them.

Don’t be a dick: If people don’t enjoy playing you cause you have a sucky attitude then getting practice games in is going to prove hard work. If you think you may be being a dick: Stop. List Writing: Match-ups are a huge factor in X-Wing, having a list that has answers to a lot of questions is GOOD. Hopefully I’ve shown in the last 18 months that you don’t need to run top tier lists to have fun and do fairly well, sure I could have done better if I’d run sickeningly good stuff but that’s not my aim as a player. Also remember, rocks choice and deployment is part of your list. Spacial Awareness: What does a 3 bank look like on any given base size? Does a barrel roll fit in that gap? The best way to improve on this is to put out a mat, throw a bunch of rocks on it and then just fly around them. Do it with every base size on the same layout, see what could fit where. Then mix up the rocks and do it again. Range Control: Closely related to Spacial Awareness and you can practice this too. Place 6 ships randomly on the board rather than asteroids. Start at the board edge. Roll a dice to pick ship at random. Then roll a dice, on a 1 or 2 try to get to range one, 3 to 4 range 2, 5-6 range 3. (it won’t always be possible) Have a mix of base size on the ships you are flying at and use a mix of base sizes on the ship you are flying with. Make it more interesting by putting rocks in the way and having a points system to see how succesful you have been… Range control is one of the most important things you can learn in the game. The Rule of 11 is an excellent place to start, but no one who wants to win just straight jousts. Risk Management: Also known as understand dice. You don’t need to be a maths wizard. As I have oft lamented over, sometimes the dice decide to screw you. Understanding the most basic maths that 1 in every 2 dice you roll should probably be a hit, or roughly 1 in 3 should be an evade is the corner stone of Risk Management in X-Wing. If you have a focus those numbers change to 3 in 4 for hits and 5 in 8 for evades, focus tokens are really good. This should help you work out whether you are in a good or a bad spot. Anticipation: In a randomly paired tournament you are never going to know every opponent well enough to know how they fly, so you need to know about what they are flying. What tricks can their ships pull? Of course you can ask your opponent at any point to look at their dial but play enough and you’ll soon learn these things anyway. If you don’t know what their ships can do then, well, you’re screwed. Take time to look at their lists and work out what triggers and when.

Finally the golden rule I have learned in X-Wing, which I cannot emphasise enough is “DON’T GET GREEDY”. The amount of games I have lost, and seen lost, because someone spends a focus token in attack when they should have saved it for defense is astonishing. (ok, maybe italics, bold, caps and underlined in red might be enough emphasis) Unless you’re banking a kill or have a surplus of tokens, then don’t spend them! You might not end up needing them, but if you do you’re going to feel it.

Earlier this week I played a Vassal game with Martyn Chivers (running Dengar, Han and an Outer Rim smuggler), Oli Pocknell watching on. We were all on skype and talking about the game as it played out. It’s a great learning tool for those of us who don’t live a few minutes from a FLGS with an active X-Wing group. After a devastating opening where I killed his Dengar in three shots Marytn was on the back foot but was able to recover and Gavin dropped to one hull in return.

As the game was drawing to a close Corran had a lock on Martyn’s Han and a range 2 obstructed shot. Han was down to 6 hull at this point and his hotshot gunner had stripped Corran’s focus. I rolled a single crit, focus and blank, and elected to spend the lock. THIS WAS A WRONG DECISION. The re-roll realistically should only result in one more hit, which against an obstructed Han Solo in a falcon isn’t the best odds. But I got greedy and wanted to push that crit through. I actually rolled that focus and blank into a focus and blank then Martyn rolled two evades anyway.

The real reason that this was a wrong decision was that the next turn Han only really had one option and Corran would have been waiting there with a double tap and lock. Martyn had the choice of boost, still get shot and not rotate his arc or rotate his arc and take the shot. He went for the shot which was fair enough, his escape pod had already coordinated the double calculate (via IG-D).

This left me with a range one double tap opportunity on a 6 health one agility ship. My first shot I rolled crit, blank, blank and focus… wouldn’t that be a great time to have a target lock? WAAAAAY better than a range 2 obstructed shot, right? Han evaded my paltry efforts safe in the knowledge that the double tap was going to be highly unlikely to do the required 6 damage. To compensate for it’s previous vile dice roll Vassal came up trumps and gave me 4 hits all of which landed, but it was not enough. I would go on to lose the game from this point as Han got away and began to shoot me with more than I could handle. That was my moment, that was my kill shot, I engineered the position by flying well but getting greedy the previous turn I made my chance of the win significantly less likely.

There’s lots I want to work on with this list, lots of questions I need to ask and answer before I can decide if it has the consistency to be competitive. I’ve played around with other build ideas but I think this one is the one I will focus on for the time being. There’s a lot of lesson to learn in the future and regardless of whether I think this list has potential only time on the table and results will show if my gut instinct is correct or not.

This weekend I’ve got two tournaments, one at Big Orbit Games in Evesham and on at Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke. Hopefully I’ll play a few of you there and you can all help me learn some lessons about flying E-Wings (or build a list designed specifically to wreck them if you’re that way inclined).

Next time: ALL ^THIS^ THEORY GETS TESTED

If you’re looking for Tournaments to go to then head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar.