Eventually the System Open Blogs Will End

The Build Up

Yes - I even tried Palp Defenders. It was acceptable

The Points Change

The Open

Avengers Assemble!





The Venue

The main hall was spacious, airy and bright - almost the complete opposite of last year, where I spent most of the weekend overheating and struggling to hear things.

The pillar that was hooked up to the streams of the top table was a genius idea, and it was a great experience standing around it with company, discussing the game that was going on.

Great location with an onsite hotel, multiple restaurants, McDonald's, KFC and the biggest ASDA I've ever seen in walking distance of the arena.

My Performance

The System Open - 2-4 for the day. This was my goal for the day, as this was the minimum performance needed to grab one of those nifty spot glosses for X Wing, after being jealous of all the gorgeous cards the Destiny players get to claim. 4 U Wings vs 2 ARCs and a U Wing - A complete slugfest, and ridiculously fun

Hyperspace Qualifier - 3-2. Better than I had hoped - Somehow, everything fell into place and clicked today, including what is probably my best piece of flying ever taking me to a 200-0 win against Separatists where I only lost a single shield on Greer. Knowing how ARCs fly has it's advantages

The Grumbles

I do have a few gripes/comments about the weekend - I wouldn't call them complaints, perhaps "points to consider to make next year even better"

Timings. For an event of this size, it ran extremely smoothly. However, It does feel like some of the gaps were overly long between rounds, and personally I'd be in favour of an earlier start of round one so we can potentially finish earlier than the 10pm we did on day 1. I'm sure the food venues would also appreciate this, after seeing the flood of X Wing players hitting Nandos 1 hour before they closed.

Prize Support Quantity. We all love prizes, and it's a large part of the draw to any X Wing Organised Play event. Prize tickets is a nice idea, and has always worked well for Destiny. However, this event did show up the drawbacks of the system. Everyone wanted those nice little target lock tokens. They were 4 ticket - so with 2 tickets for a win, the earliest you could grab these was after round 2. And after round 2, they had all been grabbed. This then repeated with the desirable frosted cards (looking at you Guri and Quickdraw). We heard whispers that the prize kit brought along to a System Open is the same size no matter how big the event - so the weekend, the largest X Wing event in history, had the same amount of prize wall cards as a smaller event - definitely something to be looked at if its true.

Prize Support Choices. With 7 faction now in the game, there are a number of players who simply do not collect a certain faction. This hit me last year, with the Scum themed prizes, and one of my fellow Wampas this year who does not fly Rebels. The theming is nice, but increasingly could be an issue putting people off attending in the future. I also hope the prize wall gets treated the same as Destiny - with this years spot glosses being available next year too, especially considering the "unconventional" choices of pilots.

The People

Marc Rider of the Worksop Wookiees for the massive pile of alt arts, and a brilliant first game of the weekend reminding me how fast Decimators can be

Splitting the Decis was a brilliant choice that allowed Marc to grab the win





Paul of Ramblings of a Wargamer for being a joy to chat to and helping me focus on the fun, not the winning

Omer for organising the ARC-170 meet at table 104 and his brilliant Jurassic Arc alt arts

The gentleman who's name I never caught who was brave enough to fly a 2 ship jedi list in Hyperspace

Scott for providing the lovely little crit tokens for the Wayland Wampas to hand out over the weekend

David Livens for creating a new version of our alt art from last year

Obligatory Loot Post

Now that the System Open is over, and with our local Hyperspace Trial not till October i'll be trying out all the nice new Clone Wars goodies that I haven't experimented with yet. And there's a few more ships that I need to revisit since the points change, and then repeat it all again post the July points update (I'll probably write about what I want to see soon). I also have a Jack Mooney inspired list to try in the near future.





Dash will fly again.





Sean

In a break from our regularly scheduled programming courtesy of Jamie, the UK System Open has finally provided me with the motivation to actually contribute to the blog I set up almost 2 years ago.I blame poor personal motivation, and getting far too engaged in our store tournaments leading me to forget to take pictures and notes after round one - so thanks Jamie for picking up my slack and getting this thing off the ground!Like many people since the launch of 2.0, I've been struggling to find THE list. The one that's both a joy to fly but can hold its own against any opponent without being obliterated completely. I had some early success (by my definition - fun, and finishing at a 50% win rate) with Whisper/Rexler/Soontir, but I always doubted my own ability to maintain that performance at larger tournaments than our local ones. It was also not legal for Hyperspace format - so not only did I have to find an Extended list, but also Hyperspace too.When Wave 2 dropped, I immediately found my new love in the form of the Resistance RZ-2 A wing. I had ordered a conversion kit and an A wing - picked them up, played a game and immediately bought a 2nd A wing. Fast, nimble and with great pilots, I found an instant connection with L'ulo, who over the coming months would earn himself the nickname "Little God" for his ability to come in at exactly the right point in a game and drop 4 hits onto a target. I was enjoying the Resistance so much, I found a list I liked with the intention of flying it for all 11 games at the System Open.The points change came in, and immediately shook up our local meta - which was overrun with Scum based around Palob and Han Gunner. Immediately the newly 2 point Leia Organa took over Han's place, with the Rebel beef/salad lists now surfacing - I'd not been hit by much other than my earlier imperial list losing it's bid.A monthly tournament at Wayland Games however shook things up for me. 0-4 with the Resistance. I'd analyzed previous losses, and tied them down to being too aggressive - a constant problem for me, as I've always found myself averse the the elusive-run-away-and-hide-and-save-points playstyle. This tournament I'd tried to consciously avoid being aggressive - but I repeatedly found myself being caught out of position, pummelled by a range 1 Fenn Rau or double tapped by a VTG Ion Turret Y Wing with no return shots myself. My confidence was shaken - I dreaded the thought of turning up to the System Open and winning 1 game in 11, and I immediately began the search for a new list.I read as many blogs as I could, watched countless Gold Squadron Podcast livestreams and chatted with my fellow Wayland Wampas for ideas. The start of the Hyperspace Trial season did not help, as the amount of content focused on the Extended format fell off a cliff. Eventually I found what I was looking for as the basis for my new list - Fly What You Love. And What do I love? ARC-170s.And so a day of flying those beautiful rebel chonks was planned - 1 ARC with support, 2 ARCs with a friend and the obligatory U wing with Leia combination (so meta, so unlike me).1 list stood out for me by the end of the day, and I was pleased. I'd taken an ARC to last year's System Open in Birmingham - a fat Norra Wexley alongside Lowhrick and Fenn Rau - relying on Norra's ability to unload 5 hits into a target at range 1 while Low soaked up the damage which had been reduced by Fenn.So I settled on the below list:2 Fat ARCS with the same build - double target locks, double focus and double shots, with the options to take evade tokens and grab rerolls from Saw once the damage starts to be applied. Lumbering around the board this was not an exercise in elegant flying - it was a brutal, glorious, trainwreck most of the time, and I loved it. A few more practice games where I repeatedly found myself wanting a white coordinate lead me to pulling Leia off of Saw and adding in Tactical Officer - no more meta for me.I was happy, except for Hyperspace.Gold Squadron Podcast came to my rescue. While watching their streams of various Hyperspace Trials I inevitably found myself drawn to the matches with Resistance as a faction, and missed flying my A wings. I considered my options here - Poe and 3 A wings, an A wing swarm, or Resistance 5s. I went for the 5s - It was close to what I'd flown before, making strong use of Nien, and had 2 A wings. But, as always, I can't help but take a list and modify it to my preferences (whether it's a good idea or not is another matter) and swapped out the I5 Tallie for the I4 Greer - with her wonderful ability to rotate her turret for free without taking a stress really opening up her dial, despite losing the 1 point of initiative.I'm not going to go into detail here - blow-by-blow battle reports are not quite my thing. Plus, I fell back into my normal self and managed a grand total of 6 photos across the weekend. Instead I'll just talk about a few things that cropped into my head over the weekend.As almost everyone who writes about our wonderful hobby notes, it's always the people that make an X Wing tournament what it is, so here's a few shout outs