So this has been a really hard week, I mean, all the things that I love to complain about in the game are not going to be there come the 13th of September.

Thanks FFG, you’ve made my life really hard.

Further to that, they’ve made the Firespray great. Which means everyone is going to be flying it. It’ll be on tables everywhere all the time and I won’t be such a precious little snowflake anymore. I wanted them to give it some love but not so much that it actually become popular again!

Of course, I’m not being serious.

It looks like they have made every effort to make the game better, more about how you fly less about what you fly. The competitive scene will be wide open to a more eclectic Meta, it will be great to go to events and see a greater variety of lists (but with the Firespray and the Fang in wave one I’m expecting to see those two a lot). Balance is going to be much easier to achieve with the new app (which cannot get here fast enough, we all want to start list building).

Everything that has been mentioned about 2.0 sounds utterly amazing and well thought out, but it does kind of want to make me quit 1.0 and not bother playing until it arrives. It feels like 1.0 was a 6 year long Beta test for the game I have always wanted X-Wing to be.

Here are some links if you haven’t read them:

However travelling hundreds of miles to spend hours my time and most of my salary playing with tiny space ships remains an addiction. This weekend being a bank holiday weekend means that it is a triple header.

There are a lot of events between now and 2.0, we have Euros in June, Nationals in August, also in August the European Team Championships, and whole lot of store championships to get through. The game was in a good place but feeling a little stretched before, it will soon be in a great place. I still want to do kind of well in this version of X-Wing.

Before the 2.0 announcement I had a bit of a crisis of confidence, I was sorely tempted to go back to Rey Low, I flew it for a bit, other people have since made the list better and I do like flying it. I think it’s a superb list. Look at how Tom Forstner did at the UK open with it, or how Bartosz Wojcicki did in Italy. It’s reliable, hard hitting, and tanky. I was genuinely conflicted over the notion of not flying Sprays, Protectorates and Star Vipers!

Well, the announcement of 2.0 settled all that. It’s not that I don’t want to give myself a “better” list and a better chance at winning a bigger percentage of games. It that I just want to fly the things I love more, if I can only have 4 more months of being a snowflake then damn it, I’m going have 4 more months of being a snowflake! (just for the record 2.0 features the following pilots: Fenn, Guri, Boba, Kath… no prizes for guessing what I’m likely to be flying when it lands, I don’t think I’ll be the only one.)

So into the case this weekend go two Firesprays and a Protectorate, which gives me the freedom to run 2 of my favourite lists at any given event.

The Firespray list from last week is one, here’s what that one looks like:

Boba Fett Kath Scarlet Adaptability Expertise Harpoon Missiles Heavy Laser Cannon K4 Security Droid Dengar Extra Munitions Guidance Chips Slave 1 100 points

(I’ve highlighted the cards I don’t think will make it to 2.0 in their current form in blue, and the ones we know won’t be there in red)

And the other list is Boba Fenn, which is more than likely going to be the basis of what I fly when 2.0 hits.

Boba Fett Fenn Rau Veteran Instincts Push the Limit Harpoon Missiles Proton Torpedo Dengar Autothrusters Engine Upgrade Concord Dawn Protector Andrasta Bomblet Generator Gitterstim Ion Cannon 97 points

(Autothrusters is definitely the name of a card in 2.0, but it will be hugely different to what it is now. It is the card that will make Soontir dance.)

That is a lot of changes coming up, a lot of new things to come in and replace them, a lot of time on a new App (get here already!) and a lot of fun list building.

But that’s all in the future, this weekend has three visits to three regular haunts. 13 Games this weekend so this is gonna be a whistle-stop round up! Between 2.0 and staying up every night to watch Worlds this week I really haven’t slept enough.

Saturday is Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke. Where more than one regular will be mourning the upcoming demise of the TLT and the changes to bombs in 2.0. A relatively low key affair, but next week will be their store champs, the first of the year, so people are certainly running things they know can win. I’m going with Boba Kath here, they’ve had a lot of fun in this store before and hope to again. After breakfast with two of the founding fathers of Firestorm Squadron, Nic Harris and Dom Flannigan, and happily chatted about 2.0 while we ate.

3-1 for Saturday and a healthy 75%, not a bad start to the weekend, coming in third behind Nic (4-0) with Nymanda and Dom (Nym, Fenn, Wes) who had 24 points more MoV than me to take second… that’s half a Boba away from second place! But I am now the proud owner of one of those big headed Kanan Pop Figures! (already have Finn from a previous tournament at Firestorm… are the fates trying to tell me something?)

Sunday is the European Team Championship qualifier at Warboar Games in Bromley, it’s a lower turn out than expected, but the event has attracted some real quality players. The chance to represent your country and head out to Croatia this summer to play against some of Europes top players is up for grabs. And I really want to be on that plane. Boba Fenn for this one, keeping things mixed up this weekend!

Unfortunately I had a howler of a day, like many of the UK community I had a somewhat late night on Saturday night (more on that a bit later) and having had late nights every night this week due to Worlds and 2.0 talk I was a touch exhausted, but I learned things:

when I am tired I make mistakes

when I make mistakes I get frustrated with myself

when I get frustrated with myself I don’t enjoy playing

when I don’t enjoy playing I’m probably not fun to play against

It’s a very obvious and very human cycle and all I can do is apologise to my opponents on the day for any salt that over spilled on the day. I was more exhausted by the end of the event than I have been at any of the big 2 day events that I have been to. Frustration at pairing into a hard counter, then pairing into a second hard counter and then just being too tired was horrible.

So I’m sorry to my opponents for the day: Dom Flannigan (went 5.0 with an MoV of 812, well done buddy), Joel North, James Dowdall and Alexander Lis for not being the quality of foe I would like you to have faced, and on another would day have been.

On the plus side, you did all beat me…. I couldn’t even beat the bye…

Sunday Night saw me in bed at 19.50 trying to recover!

After 10 hours of much needed sleep Monday at Ibuywargames in Woking is the finale of the weekend. Ian has put a 2.0 upgrade pack up for the top prize, so that’s turned a “casual event” into something a little less casual! We all want to win that… oh yes. To mix it up a bit I decided after Saturday to go ahead and try Rey and Lowhhrick. 2 days of flying the sprays left me feeling a bit jaded and I just want to try something a bit different, the particular version I’m using is this one:

Rey Lowhhrick Expertise Expertise Finn C3PO Kanan Tactician Engine Upgrade Sloopy Title 99 points

It’s tried, tested, looks like it could suit me and looks fun… well the Falcon does, Low is less fun than the small base ships I usually like to fly, but he does let Rey be fun for longer! (thank you to Dan Flewitt for the loan of the bits and pieces I didn’t pack. Which was basically the entire list)

14 Players and 5 rounds today, and it was hot!

Ibuywargames is the home to Zombie Squadron, they’re a great bunch of guys and a growing team, Tom Forstner who came second at the UK Open is one of their members and head Zombie Ian Courtney provides some genuinely interesting insights with his blog. They are also my old team. One of the things they have is a range ruler custom made by Cog’O’Two with the words Traitor Slayer written on it, it’s painted in 186th colours. Whoever is the latest Zombie to beat me in a tournament is the bearer of this range ruler. I think this is epically cool.

The next game was so intense I didn’t even remember to take a photo! Tim Farmer, also of Zombie Squadron is one of those players that just has a habit of beating me. He was the previous holder of the Traitor Slayer Ruler, and we think that the last 3 tournaments that we have played at he’s beaten me. And today his list of choice is the Nym, Torani, Jostero PS10 Alpha strike list, really not a list I want to see. I took one list at it and thought “Aw nuts… Tim’s getting that Ruler back”.

In a massively tight game, Rey and Nym traded, then the Wookiee got angry and C3PO pulled his weight. It felt like Tim couldn’t not roll two crits and a hit, and Low at range 3 couldn’t not roll one evade, with one from 3PO and the reinforce. The Wookiee scraped a win, finishing off Jostero and Torani on his own. It was a crazy good game and my hands were shaking for most off it! I scraped the win, 100-62 with a new found respect for the Auzituch as a ship rather than as a tool to keep Rey alive.

I finished 4-1, came second to Denny by 6 MoV, won a Scum Update set and salvaged my woeful performance of Saturday a bit. It’s amazing what a good night sleep can do right?

Chatting to Sim Pone, and a couple of others, the general consensus of opinion is I need to persevere a bit with this list, it suits me and makes sense in my head. A bit more table time is needed, but I will be flying it again.

All of which puts the tracker in this state:

Tournament Games Played 93 Win Ratio 62% +/- – 3%

BUT BEFORE I FINISH FOR THE WEEK:

There are a couple of other things that happened in the X-Wing world this weekend (other than that 2.0 thingy), for a start Worlds. I’ve barely slept due to staying up late into the night watching streams from FFGlive, Gold Squadron and Xwingjunkies. Thank you to everyone involved in making those things happen, you all deserve a massive hug from the entire community for the hard work and dedication to growing our game.

I woke up way to early on Saturday morning after not having had nearly enough sleep to find out that in the Gold Squadron “Goldies” awards I had won the Best X-Wing Blog catergory. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to vote for me, I’m so grateful that you enjoy what I do enough to show that support. This community has given me so much, I can’t imagine my life without it now.

But the speechless feeling was made even better by finding out that my X-Wing brother Rasta Maice won the best ship conversion award. Friend Simon Green won best international stream for his hard work on First Earth. Squad mate Jesper Hills won “Best Non Meta Performance of the Year” and the guys from the 186th Podcast (Alex Birt, Mike Dennis and James Dowdall) won best international Podcast. Proud doesn’t cover it.

The UK sent some really talented pilots to Worlds this year, many of whom I am privileged to call friends, and some of them did really well. But more importantly they represented the UK community with an attitude and character that not only credits them, but should make us all feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside.

And now I have to avoid getting too emotional!

And finally a massive, unrestrained huge congratulations to the now uncontested X-Wing 1.0 World Champion Simeon Dellapina. A few weeks ago when I was staying with Rasta and his family Sim was debating how much he even wanted to go to Worlds! Massively proud of you dude, such an unreal achievement. Your flying in the final rounds was at times outrageous. You saw options that I think very few people in the world of X-Wing would see. You showed the class of the #tinyeuropeanmeta in every way. Well done dude. Thank you for making the whole UK community proud.

“It’s the end of the World as we know it. And I feel fine.” REM

At time of publishing there are 128 days to go to 2.0.

Next Week: STORE CHAMPS! (Already???)

If you’re looking for X-Wing tournaments the head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar to see what’s going on.