A brief Tourney report from First Foundings’- 24 person “All wings report in” X-wing tournament.

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But first…..Never have I seen such an array of free snacks at a tournament before- I think within about 5 minutes of arriving I’d already exceeded the safe limit for doughnuts and cookies in a day.

…. anyway after a while they forced us to play X-wing, so here we go:

My list:

Zuckuss G1A: V.I, Title- tractor beam, 4-lom crew, FCS, inertial dampners.

Contracted Scout, Plasma Torps, Deadeye, Extra munitions, OverClocked R4, Guidance chips.

Contracted Scout, ProtonTorps, Bobba Fett crew, Deadeye, Extra munitions, OverClocked R4, Guidance chips.

100pts.

Game 1

Andy- Imperials: Inquisitor, Colonel Vessary, Juno eclipse.

First game and I looked on in horror as Andy managed to create a nightmare asteroid field for me to try and negotiate. One of the best Turn Zero’s I’ve played against.

I in turn spread out along my board edge with Zuckuss sitting in between the Scouts. Turn 1 was a case of me going slow and barrel rolling for position hoping to line up on one of the ships. I managed to drag Juno down early but lost a scout in return.

Game winning moment we agreed on afterwards was when Andy correctly guessed my 2 hard turn right with Zuckuss and rolled Vessary into a position that would mean I’d over shoot and get killed from line astern, after a moment of inner swearing I look down and noticed the Inertial dampner and pulled the handbrake allowing Zuckuss to kill Vessary off before he could shoot. Rest of the game was spent trying to catch the slippery eel of an inquisitor as it shot off like a rocket and refused to be pinned down. Eventually Andy turned in for a kill shot and got blasted in return.

Result: WIN

Highly thematic enjoyable game with a lot of nail biting on both sides as we weaved in and out of the asteroid field bluffing and second guessing each other.

Game 2

Tom – Scum: Fenn Rau, Ketsu, Binary pirate with slicers.

We ended up jousting down the right board edge, my plan was to kill off Ketsu ASAP and then hope Fenn Rau was a glass cannon- news flash, he isn’t.

So Fenn Rau… as we clashed down the bored edge I hard turned into Rau with Zuckuss and shot him with 5 dice target locked and focused.. he then rolled more green dice then I’ve seen since my 40K days and survived with evades to spare… in return he gave Zuckuss the finger and suddenly I was on the back foot and loosing ground. The Z95 repeatedly hammered me with it’s black market slicers which accounted for a total of 5 damage during the game.

It was an incredibly tight game and just when I thought I was about to get hammered I managed to bump Ketsu off and Rau’s luck (bucket of dice) finally ran out.

What we ended up with was a Z95 and a Scout both with no munitions and only 1 hull left jousting for the win. After several passes I managed to second guess Tom and judged correctly that he was opting for a K turn rather than a 2 bank with focus. I slow rolled forwards and then barrel rolled left and back hoping that this would leave the Z95 facing the wrong way just ahead and to the left of me…. it did… dice got rolled and the plucky Z95 who had been busy with his black slicer tool all game was vaporised.

Result:WIN

As close as a game can get. I seriously doubt that I’d get the same outcome again if we had a rematch.

Game 3

Vid- Imperials: Colonel Vassary, Countess Ryad, Delta Squadron all with X7 title.

Vid set up on the top right of the mat and I set opposite with Zuckuss and Scout with the other centre table.

My plan was to joust with Zuckuss and his scout buddy whilst the other slow rolled from mid table and started to chew on the defenders from the flank when they did the inevitable white K turns.

A classic example of not taking care of the small things led to a turn 1 headache as I stupidly set my mid table scout against my board edge meaning that when I did a hard 1 right I couldn’t barrel roll backwards towards my board edge… Vid did not miss a beat and destroyed me like a wreaking ball through a daisy field. To make it worse I tried to save my bacon by using the tractor beam on Zuckuss to pull a defender out of arc rather than trying to kill it…misjudged the angle and ended up getting shot by it. after that he winced me with the inevitable white K turns and I simply couldn’t get back into position to focus my fire…not a good game.

Result: LOSS

Thankfully Vid is a gentleman and didn’t rub my nose in it and afterwards we had a chat about some tactics that would have been more beneficial.

Game 4

Jesper – Scum: Fenn Rau, Manaroo, Palob. (Loss)

My plan was thus- 1) Kill Palob. 2) kill off Manaroo 3) based on how survivable Rau had proven to be in game 2 leave him till last.

I again split my formation and put a scout on both flanks and offset Zuckuss right of centre. With an avenue through the asteroid field set up for both Zuckuss and the right hand scout should they need to go left of field in a hurry.

Jesper ploughed straight ahead and by Turn two I had bought Zuckuss and the right hand scout across the centre of the board setting up what I hoped would be a kill box on Palob, the left hand scout was forced to target lock as Palob was range 2 but the rest focused hoping for a range 3 shot. Surprisingly I managed to survive the initial onslaught from Rau and friends by tanking a lot of stress on the Left hand scout to keep the focus tokens available for defence and then promptly blew Palob off the map and knocked Rau down to one hull (Manaroo wasn’t in range)… hmmm wasn’t expecting that… with eyebrows raised on both sides of the table now what? Well Manaroo had been deftly positioned to block a white 2 sloop and this meant that I had to overshoot and regroup my squad but in doing so lost a scout. I spent the rest of the game getting lured into killing an indestructible Fenn Rau and failing… remember that plan I made? Yup should have stuck to it.

Result: LOSS

Jesper flew very well and was always just out of reach for a final kill shot. Several painful and frustrating turns later I was toast and could only sit back and applaud some expert angle judgement and forward planning from my opponent…. next time Gadget next time…..

Game 5

Ian (Cpt JB)- Rebels: Biggs, Poe, 2 Tala Squadron missile 95’s

Having play tested against each other the previous week I knew what I was up against, I was also really really frustrated from the last game where I’d been totally out flow…

A bit like the scene from the Waterboy where Bobby Bouchie looses his temper and flattens 2 blockers and the quarterback I raged towards Cpt JB’s formation like a man possessed and met it still on his side of the board…

Cpt JB opted to go for the Alpha strike against the left hand scout and I again used the Overclocked droid to keep the focus token available whilst only loosing a shield each shot. With my internal voice now screaming H2O! I then hammered Biggs with Zuckuss and a scout and finally got to use Bobba on the proton torps to flip R4D6 out the window thus neutralising Biggs damage tanking ability, with that gone he got vaporised next shot by the other scout.

In the subsequent fur ball fight, Poe got trousered followed by one of the Z95’s. I then had to chase the remaining Z96 round for a few turns as it refused to die.

Result: WIN

Bragging rights achieved…. although he beat me on the friendly we played afterwards (I let him… honest).

Conclusions

All in all I was happy with the day finishing 8th overall.

Congrats to Alex Birt of the 186th who won the event.

There’s a few learning points to take away like focus firing on the defenders (basics I know). I think I also under estimated the value of using one of the Scouts as a blocker after the initial attack run.

Fenn Rea is also a “thing”. Focused up with a ton of green dice and a guaranteed Evade- total pain in the arse to kill off at range 1… sounds easy to control the range but a good player as Tom demonstrated won’t give you that option. Black market slicers were also a pain as I’m usually tanking stress going into the movement phase.

I was seriously considering dropping Bobba and the Proton Torps for a plasma and then using the 2 points on something else. But against Palp shuttle and Biggs with R4D6 I think it’s an auto include so will leave it on for the moment. Looking forward to my next run out with the list.

A great Tournament in a good sized venue, thanks to Pete and the chaps at First Founding.

(plus the doughnuts… did I mention there were doughnuts?)