So, my schedule opened up a little bit, and I managed to squeeze in an X-Wing tournament. I might even be able to fit in a second one within a week or 2. We’ll see. As it is, this event happened to be the day after Wave 3 of 2.0 dropped, and I was dead-set on running some Jedi! (As a side note, there are basically NO images of these ships anywhere online. Seriously, it’s bad. Prepare for repeated images or lots of pictures of pilots.)

The Delta-7 was going to be the centerpiece of my first list, I just had to figure out who, and with what. An interesting idea had flown through my Reddit feed about “The Senate,” Darth Sideous, and his potential with Anakin Skywalker, so that’s where I started. I wanted a second Jedi in the list, and supporting Anakin seemed to be the point I was driving home, so I needed to look no further than his apprentice, Ahsoka. I tried to keep the list light, for bidding purposes, so upgrades were… pretty slim.

Given my experience with arc-dodgers, I feel I probably could have pulled off the bullseye arc often enough to warrant dropping 8 points off of Anakin. On anyone lower than Initiative 5, I would either take 7B or just leave the Configuration slot empty, as it’s unlikely that you’ll get that extra damage against your specific target each round. I went with 7B this time around primarily to give it a test-drive, but also so that I didn’t have to worry about bullseye arcs with a new ship.

There were 9 players at BlueSky on Friday, but we all had new toys, so we went with 4 60-minute rounds, which ended up with a lot more games than usual going to time. We had 2 Rebel players, 1 Imperial, 3 Republic, and 3 CIS players. The Imperial had Fel, Vader, Duchess; one of the Rebels had Han and 2 B-Wings, the other you’ll see later. For the CIS, all 3 players brought Dooku with some toys and some droids, though 1 player had less droids than the others. For the Republic, I was flying the only Jedi, as one player had 2 ARCs and 3 Torrents, and the other had 4 Torrents and 1 ARC.

Game 1: Justin Brown

Justin was the only player with the Belbullab, and he remarked all game (and each subsequent game) that it was a massive mistake. Grevious wants to act like a flanking ace, but doesn’t have the dial to pull it off. As such, all night, the cyborg did MAYBE 7 damage across his 4 games. I didn’t know this going in, and saw it as the most opportune target, given my opponent’s set-up, so I gunned straight for it.

The first round of combat, I threw what I had at Grevious, and Ahsoka shot the DRK droid, missing miserably. I did a couple of damage in exchange for 1 of Anakin’s shields. Grevious fled behind my aces as they turned their attention to a far easier target: the Vulture droid. Meanwhile, my ARC flew down to challenge the Belbullab to see who could be more useless in this match (the ARC lost that particular challenge, by the way.)

I manage to avoid Dooku for most of the game, popping the poor vulture this round. The MVP of my opponent’s list? The DRK-1 droids. Those things are SO annoying, denying probably 6-7 dice modifications off of Skywalker throughout the match through remote Jamming. Anakin will flip to fight Dooku while Ahsoka trades off with the 104th to engage Grevious. To his credit, the cyborg does some fancy flying and dodges the padawan’s arc, forcing yet another switch as Anakin trades her targets.

Due to bad dice and good evades, and the natural toughness of the Bulbasaur Belbullab, Anakin takes another 3 turns to finally down his target. Meanwhile, Ahsoka and the 104th have whittled Dooku down below half, but the buzzer sounds before we can finish the kill. Miraculously, each of my ships was 1 damage away from half points, and I walked out of this game 151-0.

Game 2: Guy Miller

The aforementioned Rebel list. Nothing too fancy, just 3 high-initiative Aces, one with the ability to pre-maneuver reposition. I win the flip for Initiative and promptly sigh in relief, as Anakin will get to choose his engagement. The 2nd round of the game, I proceed to empty the Aethersprite’s action bar, as Anakin does a coordinated Evade from Palpatine, an Ahsoka’d Focus from her ability, a Barrel Roll from his thrusters, and his own action to perform a Boost. He ends up behind enemy lines and ready to do a ton of… oh, wait, he missed. Everyone missed. Both teams lost a single shield. Awesome.

At that point, my goal was to get in with the medium-based ship and muck up the X-Wing’s ability to go slow, letting Anakin get in behind them and (hopefully) cause some damage. Ahsoka, meanwhile, relied on her own double actions to have dice mods after re-positions, and engaged cagey but from the front. I couldn’t make ANYTHING stick, and the ARC went down in turn 4 before anything on Guy’s team had died (Wedge was down to 1 hull though.) However, I was behind most of his list, and all of his ships were stressed.

I picked off Wedge this round, and started laying into Thane. Luke whiffed this turn, and bumped Anakin the next, so Thane started leaking hull pretty quickly, meaning that 2 rounds later it was 2 on 1 in my favor. Between the two Jedi, they made somewhat quick work of the younger Skywalker, though both ended the game below half points. Luke’s eventual demise meant a 200-127 point win for me.

Game 3: Chris Brown

This list could be a lot of trouble for me. If I don’t engage correctly, I had better either knock out a Torrent in the first round of fire, or kiss my ARC (or Ahsoka) goodbye. I sent Anakin up the flank, as Chris set his V-19s in a line and put the ARC inboard of them. The thing that won me the initial engagement was being super cagey with my ARC. Round 1 it was too far away to shoot, round 2 it was bumped with the cluster V-19s and Range 1 of the concussions, and round 3 it was behind them (though stressed.)

This was round 2 above, and Anakin is bearing down on Wolffe while his partners attempt do down a Torrent. It’s another round from this (4th round of combat) before one finally dies, and by then the ARC is heading toward the board edge on 1 hull and ionized from the Disabled Power Regulator crit. I figure that Chris is going to keep chasing down the ARC to finish it off, otherwise I can just swing around the obstacle and be behind his team. As such, I dial in the 1 straight and prepare to fight to the death out of my rear arc. Chris… turns away. Well, that’s that for the 104th, I guess.

In the middle of the action, Wolffe has been brought low, but has been chipping away at D7b shields as he takes damage. I keep being forced to shift my fire away to Torrents, leaving the ARC around for another round, then another round. Finally, I see an opportunity: Ahsoka is on 1 hull, Anakin only has 1 shield remaining before he’s on half, but the ARC has just K-turned. Ahsoka zooms in and lands the block.

This allows me to finish Wolffe without losing Ahsoka, and gets both of my Jedi behind his Torrents the following turn. Stress of the night and frustration with dice leads Chris to T-roll and turn away with the opposite ships as intended, and he concedes, since my ships will have open season for at least 2 rounds. Half-pointing both Jedi causes another 200-126 point win. I realize this only in writing this post, as both this and the previous game were reported as 200-127 points due to bad math.

Game 4: Travis Wooldridge

My second CIS opponent of the night. Both Travis and I are undefeated, so I know his list has legs. The alpha from the 5 or 6 3-dice attacks is terrifying, especially since they also get focus-crit conversion with a calculate token on most of them. I try to engage squirrely, and Travis seems like he’s going to go hard in on the ARC to bring down the easiest target first. I hard turn the 104th out of immediate danger and managed to put Ahsoka right behind Dooku, in perfect position… for his droids to all hard-1 and catch her stressed. Down she goes.

Well, that’s a fantastic start. 104th is hugely out of position, Ahsoka is dead, and I did 2 damage to Dooku and 2 to the lead droid for my trouble. Anakin, if ever there was a time to swoop in and save everyone, now is that time… His droids partially traffic jam themselves as they try to flip around to face the Jedi at their backs. Meanwhile, Dooku dives hard at my ARC, trying to take it down before it makes itself useful again. I start whittling down the number of droids, and manage to keep Anakin out of most of their arcs, but I’m still taking damage and the ARC ends up eating it a few rounds later.

I proceed to put on a clinic on how to avoid 2-3 shots per round, trading 1 for 1 shots and still not kill anything. For 5 rounds. I make a hilarious 2-sloop across a scrap and remove a stress through bullseye sighting, get bumped a couple of times, and manage to kill 1 more droid and half-point another before the curtains close on the game. To my credit, Dooku never once shot at Skywalker or Tano, but neither did he get below half points (or lose more than a shield or 2, if I remember correctly.)

Time runs out with Anakin (somehow!) still alive, but most of Travis’ list is untouched, resulting in a 84-157 loss for me. If I hadn’t mis-judged his intentions so hard in turn 2 (or if he hadn’t called mine so perfectly) I would have had a much better chance, but it still would have been an uphill battle. Those charges really give the Vultures a bite!

As for Coordinate, it seems as strong as ever, but I’m not sure the Republic is suited to use it to it’s highest potential. Their only crew carrier would much rather have dice modifications of it’s own, and their other option for Coordinate (through Battle Meditation) either has dice modifications or it dies. I only coordinaited at the beginning of each game, maybe twice or 3 times each, and never once the fight started. The Jedi are pretty self-sufficient for actions, so I never felt I needed to Coordinate them.

Updated running total for 2.0 tournaments has me at 30-13, for a 69.7% winrate. Due to MOV, I ended up taking 4th, with Chris and Eric (the other CIS player) placing above me. Eric was also flying Dooku and a collection of Vultures, though he had a smattering of different pilots and upgrades on his crew than Travis.

The Separatist swarm list is going to be a major threat in the new meta-game, and I’m not fully sure that the Republic and their Jedi can keep up. I’ll have more thoughts on that topic at a later time. Until then, let me know what you thought about my list, and what you’d do differently!

Next time: (Maybe) Another Hyperspace Event!