This one has taken me longer than I thought to get to the internet, but I’ve been fairly busy since the event with getting my house ready to move out of and preparing to depart my current position. This realistically should have been up Tuesday, and I apologize for the delay.

Last Friday, Dragons Hoard in Silverdale held the most recent of the large, character-themed events, the Count Dooku Classic. A full 16 people signed up, and all of them stayed to the end, making this the largest and most successful of Kitsap Star Wars’ events thus far. As usual, the prize table was huge, layered deep with bounties (after each win, you could grab 1 card, dial cover, or baggie of tokens) and the eventual trophies for first and last place. There was also a bucket of raffle prizes like lunchboxes, dice trays, action-figure-package style cards, and other assorted goodies. At the end, starting with the last place (the coveted Biggs Darklighter Award winner) and moving up the ranks, players were invited to claim a bounty for each loss, so everyone ended up taking 4 things off the table.

Every faction except 1 was represented, with 4 Imperial, 2 Rebel, 4 Scum, 2 Resistance, 3 Republic, and 1 Separatist player. I brought something…. familiar.

Of the other lists that I remember, for the Imperials there was a classic 6-TIE swarm, my list, a Whisper with 2 shuttles, and a classic Palp Aces list. One of the Rebel lists had Jake and 2 E-Wings, and the other had Lando and 2 ace X-Wings. Scum included a G1A/YV-666/Shadowcaster list, a 4x Starviper list, a Boba/Guri list, and a Shadowcaster/Starviper list. Both resistance lists were variations of Transports, Pods, and Poe. The Republic players brought Obi-Wan/3x 104th, Ric and 2 Jedi Aces (Obi and Mace?) and a Ric/Kenobi/2x 104th list. Finally, the lone Separatist player was my round 1 opponent…

Game 1: Michael Blossom

404 was a little frightening to me, so I decided he needed to be deleted first. After I placed in a corner, Mike set up Maul and 404 across from my corner, but put Grevious off on his own. I countered by placing Fel to joust Grevious, and we exchanged a shot on turn 1. I did nothing, but Grevious rolled a single hit, which Fel characteristically blanked out on all 4 evade dice for. Luckily, I had taken the Evade token, but it was a sign of what was to come for the day.

This round, 404 put a 6 dice, dual-modified APT into my dark TIE, which ended up doing a single damage after evade dice were rolled. I put a lot of hurt into 404, but nothing ended up dying, and I was able to create quite the traffic jam for next round to prevent Maul from going where he wanted. In the ensuing chaos, I traded damage on almost everyone for the dead 404, but nothing on my team wanted to die until the first TIE fell the round after.

Fel and Grevious had been doing a pretty good job of having their own little chase on the outskirts of the main battle, but Mike decided enough was enough, and the cyborg general plowed straight into my swarm and started taking names. I lost a bomber this round, and both TIEs 2 rounds after that, while dealing only a single damage to Grevious and nearly killing Maul. My gameplan here was get rid of Maul and get to a Fel/Grevious endgame, where I should be able to outmaneuver the Belbullab for the win.

4 rounds later I had exceeded that goal, since I still had a bomber limping along with my Interceptor against just Grevious, so things were looking pretty good. Unfortunately for me, Fel decided that damaging Grevious wasn’t in the game plan for the day, and turned into a limp noodle for the remainder of the game. I also made 2 major piloting errors.

Using my superior agility, I had twice engineered a situation where Fel and Grevious were facing one another, with only the general stressed, and with the plan to K-Turn past him and be behind him the turn after. Both times, I pulled it off, and then decided against the flip the following round. Both times, this resulted in Fel getting blocked instead of shooting unopposed. After Grevious landed a half-point shot on Soontir without me breaking both shields, time was called and I took the loss 134-171.

Game 2: Eric Blue

Eric has appeared on the blog a few times in the past, usually flying Whisper with some variation of Imperial beef backing her up. Today’s variant had her about as impossible to hit as I’ve ever seen her, but it had been quite some time since Eric had played at all, let alone competitively. That resulted in a mis-judged move from the Phantom landing her in a pretty terrible spot at the beginning of combat.

Despite everything in my list having a decent or better shot on her, and despite her losing her action to the cloud, Whisper still limped out of this with 2 hull remaining, and had put a crit into the lead bomber for my trouble. If she had gotten her action, I probably never would have damaged her at all! I did manage to make her spend her evade token that she got for pinging my bomber, so she couldn’t start the next round cloaked. I knew I had to do something about the Coordinate from the shuttles, and had just the thing…

The damaged bomber roared ahead and got the block on both shuttles, trapping Whisper where she was while the rest of my list either set up a killzone on where she could go, or pulled past to start whittling down Palpatine’s shuttle (in back.) I took off over half of the shuttle this round, and Whisper also took another hull, bringing her down to 1 hit remaining. For her part, Whisper put 2 hits into Fel, one of which was a Console Fire.

Fel bumped into Whisper, and since he couldn’t take his attention off the sticks to put out the fire, he died when it consumed his cockpit at the start of the engagement phase. The Academy TIE #9, after seeing his mentor explode, returned the favor against the Phantom, while the remainder of my list dusted Kagi and took all of Sai’s shields. The Lt lasted another 4 rounds and killed the wounded bomber, but couldn’t hang on with the rest of the swarm circling in, granting me the 200-92 win.

Game 3: Benny Tsai

Benny was taking a bit of advice from our last encounter, having dropped the named pilots and upgrading the Torrent to a 3rd ARC. This is remarkably similar to my own version of the Kenobi Beef, trading my R4 Astromech and Spare Parts Canister for Benny’s preferred regen droid. I set up in my traditional manner, hoping to trap most of his list against his starting corner by tearing across the board as quickly as I could.

Fel and Kenobi are barely out of range of one-another, but several shots are exchanged further down the board. I honestly can’t remember where all the damage went, since this game was somewhat brutal on both sides to start out. The following round, Kenobi managed to land on the rock near him, but used his fine-tuned thrusters to roll off. Fel had achieved his prime position behind the Jedi, and just about EVERYTHING else bumped. I do specifically remember that at the end of this turn, there were no shields remaining anywhere on the board, but also no damage cards on the Republic ships. On my end, I’m down one unlucky Academy Pilot and almost down a bomber.

I use Fel and the unhurt bomber to cover in case Kenobi darts off down the board, while the rest of my list remains engaged with the top ARC or posing in case the Jedi turns in again. Kenobi loses his new shield to Fel and gets finished by the Barrage Rockets fired by the bomber, while more shots are exchanged between the nearly-dead ARC and my TIEs. Both bombers K-Turn, and both TIEs do tricky close-in maneuvers to look for block opportunities that slip past them while the lower ARCs swing up to chase the nearly dead bomber. I lose another TIE in that round while putting even more damage into these monstrously tough clone ships.

This round, I FINALLY kill another ARC, and manage to keep everything alive for both of the following rounds, where I kill another ARC. The round after that, the final ARC finally goes down, and I take the game 200-83. This match was mentally brutal, as I spent most of it trying my hardest to avoid bumping these things, as any lost shots from my ships would result in more turns taken to finally end them.

Game 4: Chris “Not Chico” Brown

Between myself, Chris, and Travis Wooldridge, I’m not sure who flew the original Palp Aces 1.0 variants more. The 3 of us combined must have well over 500 games with the archetype, and have each won many local events and came close in much larger events with them. I haven’t been able to make Vader work in 2.0, and Travis has basically abandoned the Empire for his new mechanical friends, but Chris has bounced back and forth into and out of the list since Second Edition dropped. I thought I knew how he was going to fly it, so imagine my surprise when he decided instead to joust me…

I quickly realized that he was going all-in on my bombers, which are the real powerhouse behind my list. I was all over the place, but managed to put 2 damage on Fel in exchange for 3 on the front bomber. Vader, naturally, evades everything that is thrown at him. The following round, everyone but my Fel, the orange TIE, the rear bomber, and the shuttle K-turn, which puts Vader in prime bomber-murdering distance from my wounded bomber. He dusts it while Fel brings the other one to half-hull, and in exchange I put another damage on his Fel and drop his shuttle to half points.

My Fel lines up a perfect Range 1 Bulls-Eye shot on his, who whiffs against the gray TIE before exploding. Meanwhile, Vader nukes the other bomber. I’m now down both bombers, but everything else is full-health, while Vader is still full but the shuttle is limping on 2-3 hull remaining. Chris Baffles with it to clear stress, helping it to turn around in the bottom corner of the board, but also helping the gray TIE kill it, while the rest of my list attempts to engage Vader.

I end up with a 4-1 game against the Dark Lord, and begin working to sorround him and give Chris nowhere safe to go. However, the same turn that the gray TIE finally finishes the shuttle, Vader lets loose. He trades a single shield for a full-health TIE, murdering orange in a fit of rage. The next turn, he bumps the dark TIE and trades a single damage with Fel, losing his second shield in exchange for starting the downward spiral on my Baron.

My dark TIE comes down to keep an arc on Vader while my gray TIE comes up, and while they sandwich him, Vader takes no damage and nukes his 2nd full-health TIE off the board. The following round, he flips around and blows the 3rd full-health TIE off the table. Down to just a wounded Fel against a wounded Vader, we move in and trade a face-to-face shot, leaving BOTH aces on a single hull point. The next (and final) round, both aces flip again, and Vader does Fel in for the 149-200 loss and ending the event with a 2-2 record.

All right, I REALLY need to figure out Vader. This dude got every single kill against my list, and shrugged off almost everything I threw at him. He one-shot all 3 TIEs, did 3 damage in a single shot to both bombers, and was able to out-ace my Fel. It felt like I was flying Phoenix Squadron in the opening scene of Season 2 of Rebels! I’m gonna have to take some time and learn how to fly him properly, I just need to find a list that I like. I might steal Chris’ list and tweak it for my own purposes, maybe trading the baffles for Hate…

Unfortunately for me, this event ended my winning streak with my Flying Circus, with which I am now 8-2. It’s still a really good record for a single list, and I feel like I was really close on both losses to pulling out a win instead, whereas both of my wins were pretty convincing. I believe this is my competitive list for the time being, but it’s time to put it down in favor of something else for my last couple of events in Washington.

As far as my 2.0 tournament record goes, I’m now 47-18 with a 72.3% winrate. I am still mentally berating myself for my missed flip-arounds against Mike, and regretting not going all-in on Vader instead of Fel. This list works best by either trading Fel for whatever’s going to kill the swarm, or by trading the swarm for whatever is going to kill Fel. I should have ignored the shuttle after it flew down the board and brought everything to bear on Vader, probably before even killing Chris’ Fel. Oh well, live and learn.

If anyone’s interested, Rob Cardwell won the event. The traditionally Rebel-faithful player brought the TIE Swarm, and went 6-0 with Howlrunner, Iden, Del, Gideon, Wampa, and an Academy Pilot. All 6 rounds had a table recorded, and you can find un-narrated footage on Kitsap Star War’s YouTube channel.

In keeping with my last update, I want to try to strike up a thoughtful conversation at the end of each article. My goal with this is to get the community talking. Considering the winner, and the results from the most recent major event (GenCon,) can a TIE Swarm compete at a major event? Why or why not? For those who used to fly them, why have you drifted away (or do you still fly the classic Swarm?) Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on the original X-Wing Shark!

Next time: I try out some new stuff!