Just over a year ago I made a promise to a couple of people, I promised Tom who runs the Harlequins store in Preston that I’d come visit his store for his 2018 store champs, and I promised his resident X-Wing chatterbox Lewis Witham that I’d come too. Sadly I wasn’t able to make it to the store Champs last year so I made it a priority to get to their Hyperspace Trial this year.

It is the first HST in the UK, so I took Friday of work to make the long (240 mile drive) north to Preston. I know HS has it’s detractors but I love it and this is the first in a series of 6 consecutive HSTs that I’m going to be doing in the six weeks before the UK System Open.

On Friday I was in an absolute quandary though, still undecided about what list to fly. It’s rare for me to have two lists packed in the case. Last weekend when I revisited twin Firesprays I was expecting to have a bit of fun and then jump back on the Trip-70s I was not expecting to go 7-1 over the weekend and discover a really solid (if at times difficult) list to fly. Both lists have plenty to offer, both lists are fun to fly, but they are radically different play experiences.

By Saturday morning I had settled on the Firesprays though, after much internal debate the swing point in their favour is that other people know about T70s, they know the tricks and the things they can do. Boba is common place on tables even with his points cost going up but Emon is a piece that a lot of people are not used to having to deal with which can sway a match up heavily.

The key thing about all the HST events is that the winner gets a spot at Worlds. It’s no secret that I really want to go, not sure where I’ll find the money for it but since the event became invite only my desire to go has increased significantly. Who wouldn’t want to test themselves against the best of the best?

But the Trial kits also hold 16 sets of dice, 8 set of templates…. there is a world of other shiny acrylic out there that makes these kits desirable to play at. I have one set of regional dice from going to a regional in Norway 15 months ago, and I never use them cause my gut says they’re bad dice, X-Wing is definitely not a game where suspicion and superstition are present…

And this is far as I got in my preamble about the event that I normally write before I start writing about the games and things. However this post isn’t going to be full of photo’s of ships exploding with more lens-flares than a JJ Abrahams Star Trek movie, they’ll be back next week. There are other things to talk about today. Before that though a big thank you to my opponents during the day:

George “Rasta” Dellapina

Paul Clark

Jess Rushworth

Josh Wood

Percy MacDonald

I went 2-3 due to the usual mix of a slice of bad luck here and a bad decision there. I was disappointed not to do better than come 23rd out of 37, especially after the form I’ve had in the last few weeks. But on the long drive home working out what I wanted to write about the games weren’t a priority.

I love Hyperspace, I know a great many people who love Hyperspace and think that it is incredibly positive for the game. Conversely I know a lot of people who do not love Hyperspace, even to the extent of finding it putting them off playing X-Wing all together.

Everyone is right.

X-Wing is a hobby, it’s a game. Different people play it for different reasons, different people enjoy it for different reasons. Different people get different things out of it. If I love something it doesn’t follow that everyone else must, just as if I dislike something it doesn’t follow that everyone else should. Opinions are vast, varied and valid. The conversations going on about the pros and cons of the game mode are interesting at times, laborious at others, but taken wrong can be divisive. If someone disagrees with your opinion then have enough respect for them to accept that their experience of it is different to yours and that’s OK.

I spent time with some fantastic people over the weekend, Jess and Lewis put me up for two nights. Late night chats about X-Wing, football and the Horus Heresy kept us from sleeping as much as we probably should. I’ve known them both for a bit now and can honestly say that spending time with them just made me like them more than I already did. Thank you guys so much for hosting me, I will come again, I’m not sure when cause it’s a blooming long drive.

I caught up with friends: it was great to see Rasta and the Warlords again, to spend time with Lee Dalton, to see Tim King and the Element guys there, to have Twiggy and Just Play there and catch up with Phill Blackmore who “just dropped in” from Liverpool to come and chat. To have one of my favourite people Simran Pone of Eagle Squadron travel up from London last minute for the event, and go on to win it was the icing on the cake.

Sim vs Tim was the final match up of the weekend. Sim went on to win with his Vader and mini-Swarm…. he’s currently the official king of UK Hyperspace.

This event was not as busy as it should have been, not as busy as it deserved. There were 37 of us in a room with a capacity for 148. The stipulation for store when they applied for these events was that there be enough table space for at least 64 gamers. In hiring this venue Tom had more than made sure that there was space! However is so few turning up it meant that the event was run at a loss. A whip round by the players at the end of the day covered the shortfall.

Talking to business owners and community leaders over the weekend it was sad to hear that numbers are down. It is making business hard that the community is not thriving with them. X-Wing 2.0 has improved the game, it has also lost us some players and not recruited enough new ones. This makes for some pretty grim writing and some pretty grim reading (as you all should know by now I try to stay positive about everything all the time, except TLTs… thank the maker they’re gone) but this is also something that we as a community need to look at and address. Without players there are less customers, without customers there are less shops, without shops there are less players…. it’s a cycle.

I’m far from saying that X-Wing props up the UK hobby stores, but we have played a significant part in it for some time. With less people investing in the game, buying things at releases, going to events, paying for table hire, attending club nights and buying a drink/chocolate bar etc it does add up to quite a lot in what is a fine margin business. Supporting your local store matters.

Anyone who hasn’t heard the news that my X-Wing home Ibuywargames closed last week won’t appreciate that this has coloured my perspective somewhat in the last 14 days. Hobby stores are precious things, they should be cherished. Tom from Harlequins doesn’t carry a range of board games anymore because he got fed up of people coming to look at them in his store, ask questions about them from his staff, only to go and buy them from Amazon for a few quid cheaper. He’s not the only store in that situation. When wave three hits please think carefully about who you give your money to.

The photo was grainy, the food was what every Nando’s tastes like, and the company was excellent.

But here is why X-WING is great. 7 of us got to the event early and set up the room. 12 of us stayed at the end and helped set it down. The highlight of the weekend for many of us was forming a daisy chain and passing 74 boards up a flight of stairs from the van, it probably should have been the playing games, but People>Toys. The camaraderie and banter was great. Going out for a meal after and chatting about the game was great. The laughter and affection between people from radically different backgrounds bought together by the common love of a game made Saturday night in Nando’s genuinely a special event and made the fast approaching System Open even more appetising.

“ The key thing about all the HST events is that the winner gets a spot at Worlds .” Phil GC getting it wrong, a few paragraphs ago.



“The key thing about all the HST events is that they give you a chance to enjoy spending time with people you don’t usually see, and the winner gets a spot at Worlds” Fixed

I’m not saying that people who don’t love hyperspace should now all go an buy a ticket to go to their local event. It’d be nice but if you don’t want to play it I can see your reasoning and understand where you are coming from. But remember that X-WING is more than a game, there is so much more to it than putting ships on the table and rolling some dice over a few rounds. The experience of the day for me as a gamer was probably only a 5 out of 10, but as part of the X-Wing community it’s hard to find a way not to score it at least a 9. Don’t miss out on the all the good stuff: that Hyperspace ticket could well buy you a lot more than a chance to win a ticket to worlds.

Next Weekend: Back to Exploding Space Ships

If you’re looking to go to a tournament locally then head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar