Life has been a bit busy the last few days, my work is going a little crazy right now and then there are all the X-Wing commitments! Busy life is good, but I am not ungrateful for Bank Holidays! So with Game of Thrones done, an hour and a half spent transferring my old Excel Tournament Tracker to a Google Document and making the formulas work properly I’m finally ready to sit back and reflect on what was a barn storming weekend of X-Wing.

I guess we start in Entoyment in Poole, with Guri Fenn, 42 players and a Hyperspace Trial. So much has happened this weekend in X-Wing, and apologies for those of you wanting lots of “how games went” things, this is not one of those posts. I went 4-1 in swiss and made the top 4, losing to my friend Julian Hood, who went on to win his second HST in a few weeks. Once again, such a fun day of X-Wing with some great people. Jules crashed on my sofa over night before the drive to Milton Keynes on Sunday Morning, we were joined by Conor McNama for the ride and chatted nonsense about X-Wing the whole way up.

Fenn dies, but then Vader gets wrecked too, so it’s ok right?



The UK Team Champs is something special, and I cannot praise the Wardles enough for making it happen. It brings together people in teams for a start. Team X-Wing events have to rank amongst my favourites. You get to spend time with your friends talking about what you’re going to fly, you get to hang out with people who’s company you enjoy even more, you have a shared purpose, a shared goal and a shared experience of the event. Relying on each other, rooting for one another, consoling one another when it goes wrong.

Those of us in X-Wing squadrons get this at tournaments, particularly the big ones, but there is something so joyous about having the microcosm of a team at an event like this.

40 teams from around the UK turned up. It was sad not to see some of those from further Up t’North around, but its a long journey so whilst we were missing a whole bunch of guys, like the Tartans, Hull’s Angels, Just Play, the Harlequins, the Sith Takers, IQ and a fair few others there were still representatives from all over the place. And this is another things that the UKTC is kind of unique on. It brings down barriers between teams, when your team engages with the opposition at the start of the round there is more conversation, more banter, more getting to know them.

On Saturday my game against Ryan Coyle was a crazy fun game. And his bone paint job is super cool.



My team for the event was a bit special for me. Readers of this blog will no doubt know the names Dale Cromwell and Martyn Chivers, as they come up a lot. The reason they do is that they have become two amazing friends over the last couple of years through playing this game. They are also both seriously good X-Wing players.

Martyn took Kylo, QD and Muse, Dale took Vader and Ryad and I took Guri Fenn… In our group chat building up to the event Dale and I were discussing 2 ship aces, but Martyn couldn’t quite bring himself to take the plunge. By the end of the day he agreed that next year, whatever nonsense Dale and I propose he’ll opt in. I suspect the moment when he landed Kylo in a brilliantly built kill box causing Dale to lean over and say “supernatural Kylo wouldn’t be there….” may have tipped him over the edge.

Again, going into the games isn’t going to happen here. I went 4-1, the team went 4-1, only losing to the eventual winners 186th Green Squadron, comprising of Andy Brazier, Harrison Sharp and Ben Lee in the final round. On the way we managed to beat the, seemingly perennial champions, the Weekend Warlords. It’s always a pleasure to play Rasta, Sim and their returning wing-man Tim Marsden. They are all such incredible sports and unbelievable players. The highlight of my day was losing to Simeon, because he called my Guri move so beautifully, and went for the one move would punish me for doing the right move against him. He nailed it and won with his Soontir. It’s a joy to watch X-Wing being played that well even when you’re on the receiving end of it! Rasta had a bad run of dice against Dale, but ever the gracious pilot, he took it on the chin and said well done. Meanwhile, Martyn with virtually the last roll of the dice swung a 14 point loss into a 6 point win.

Why am I mentioning this particularly? It’s not a circle jerk, those guys are my friends but they don’t need me to tell them they’re great players or that those games were all knife edge close. Many of you will also know them, if not in person then by reputation, the former European and current World Champion don’t need me to tell you they’re good at X-Wing.

The reason I bring it up is that their example of being gracious in defeat was amazing. It was the first match up they have lost in, I believe, 3 years and of course they wanted to defend their title. Losing to us meant that wasn’t going to happen and I know if it was me I’d have been down, frustrated, may be even a little pissed off. Perhaps they were, but I didn’t see any of it on their faces, or in their demeanour after the game. I’ve been writing about this the last couple of weeks, about learning to become the kind of opponent I would want to be, and the Warlords demonstrated it immaculately. Some things are more important than winning.

With the System Open done, the UKTC out the way the next big event in the UK is Nationals at the UK Games Expo. Sadly work commitments mean that I won’t be able to take part this year, which you can imagine that I am really sad about, but it is what it is.

I was so proud to go 4-1 at the UKTC, by far the best I’ve ever done at it. But I was more proud to be flying in a team with two such good friends and for us as a team to come so close to that magical 5-0. I was even prouder to see the guys from 186th Green Squadron win it. And I was unbelievably proud to see how well the 186th squadron in general did, with 5 of our teams coming in the top 8. But the most important this is that I left the event grinning because I’d got to hang out with friends from other parts of the country who I don’t get to see as often as I might like. That is after all: why we play.

Next Time: I MAY OR MAY NOT PLAY X-WING

If you’re looking for tournaments then head over the the 186th Tournament Calendar.