I’ve finally just about recovered enough to vaguely recount this past weekend. For anyone who’s been living under a rock, we’ve just had this year’s UK System Open event; a weekend that is always, in my opinion, the highlight of the X-wing calendar. Massive turnout, great swag, lots of games. Perfect for everyone from the most casual of player to the top-tier pilots and everything in between. If you only go to one large event a year, I would always recommend this one over anywhere else.

So, obviously I practiced, trained, and prepared rigorously for the event, right? Far from it. Sadly life has a habit of getting in the way of such things at times, notably family in and out of hospital which put paid to any real preparation this time around. It left me not even knowing what I was going to be playing until the morning of day one itself. A conversation at breakfast with Domino’s connoisseurs (it’s just across the car park! 😉 ) Andre and Squeak helped make up my mind though:

“I can’t decide what to play. I mean, I have my four ship Scum that I know like the back of my hand and it’s pretty good! But I have these new shiny Republic ships I haven’t had much chance to use yet that seem fun and it’s not like I have a chance of winning anyway…?”

“I think you’ve just answered your own question.”

And with that, it was decision made. I figured if I played the list both days then I could just treat Saturday as practice for the Hyperspace event on Sunday. I always play better on Sunday at System Opens anyway…

So obviously what you do at the biggest tournament in the history of the game is take a list where half the ships you’ve not even put on the table before, and the others you’ve played exactly two games with. Solid! Anyway, this was the list:

Anakin Skywalker (Delta-7B, R2 Astromech)

Luminara Unduli (Delta-7B, R2 Astromech)

Gold Squadron Trooper x2

Clocks in at 196 points, so a small bid. Which as it turns out let me outbid opponents by a single point on three occasions across the weekend. Now I should point out this is not the sort of list I would usually play. I’m no aces player, never have been. But after a horrendously bad day at BIG in Bristol a few weeks back I told myself I’d learn to ‘fly properly’ and stop relying on combos and the like. And the Jedi looked like fun – plus if I screw up and get blocked, at least I still have the Force!

Quite a few of my fellow Vagabond Squadron members had made the trip, and some highlight performances included Rich going 4-2 in the main event with 6 Hawks! Lian and Ross making the cut, major kudos. And to Cookie and X-wing’s most famous cheat, Steve, for winning themselves World’s invites through Sunday’s hyperspace event!

Myself, I ended up going 3-3 on Saturday, which was my aim – given I’d not put my list on the table before I was going to be satisfied with an even result. I won’t go into too many game specifics but big shoutouts to all my opponents on day one: Adam Snook, Phil GC, Ed Morland, Elliott Weights, Jakub Siedlecki, and Nick Turner. Some notable moments included: dicing Phil into oblivion despite being outplayed (I’m so overdue an absolute hiding from him, that’s twice now), victory by a single point over Elliott when Anakin survived the final shot of the game on a single hull point, and finishing off with a 3 point loss to Nick as he managed to eliminate Luminara on the final shot of the day when Ryad managed to fit a 3 turn in behind her by literally a millimetre. All top guys, so thank you for the games one and all.

A late-night visit to Five Guys with the rest of the Squadron (so many fries, christ) and then it was off to sleep. Or not. I had a terrible night and started day two feeling rough as. Not ideal, but you know, more X-wing, so yay. As mentioned before, I always play better on day two, and a 3-0 start had me wondering if maybe, just maybe, I could sneak a World’s invite. Sadly my hopes and dreams were dashed by squadron-mate Cookie (damn that Sassy Tim!) but he went on to win the game after and claim his invite so was proper made up for him. I was happy with how I’d performed, the round before I managed to beat Kylo Turley’s Clone swarm that had just come across from the main event and flew my Jedi really, really well so was proper chuffed with that one. Again, big shoutouts to my Hyperspace opponents, Adam Wilkins, Jason Castle (nice to see a friendly face from close to home), and the afore-mentioned Kylo and Cookie.

Lastly, big congrats to the overall winner Jack Mooney for what looked like a fantastically well-played final from what I saw in between overseeing the final round of Hyperspace. You have to play some seriously good X-wing to win one of these huge events, that goes without saying so major props there.

I am still mentally and physically ruined from the weekend, even with having Monday off work. Still, it’s nearly Wednesday which can only mean one thing… MOAR X-WING!!!