So this weekend is an Easter Double Header, Saturday a 12 man event at The Game Shop in Aldershot, and Sunday a trip to Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke for a 10 man event. I’m flying Kylo Quickdraw at both events because I really like Kylo, he’s not quite Guri, but he is just amazingly fun to fly. It’s the same list that I flew in Brighton a few weeks ago at their Hyperspace Trial. It’s really a lot of fun.

I’ve found the archetype I enjoying flying the most: Two Fat Aces. It’s everything I love about X-Wing, positional play, elite ships, lots of cool upgrades, high risk, high reward. And I want to get really good at it. This weekends two events gives me 8 games to practice and see what I can learn. Two Fat Aces is one of the least forgiving things to fly, so not making mistakes is imperative, and maintaining focus throughout an event is really key. So this week I’m looking at myself hard to see where I’m making mistakes and what I can do about them.

Aldershot, 12 players, 6 flying the Republic, and 4 two ships lists. Phill Pond giving Ani-Obi a run out. Chris Ward stealing Simeon Dellapina’s Darth Soontir list that I played the most fun game of x-wing ever against last week at the System Open, and Toby Harris running Han and Wedge (plus me making number 4 obviously).

Game 1 was against Scott Nixon running Obiwan, Luminara and a couple of torrents. The First Order picked it apart piece by piece. A proton torp from Kylo removing Obi-Wan in a single shot was a big moment. With Obi-Wan gone my two turned on the other Republic and whilst Scott was able to half Kylo the lone torrent that made it to the end of the the game found it’s position somewhat untenable. 200-59 win.

Game 2 against Toby Harris, with Wedge and Han. Two sixes vs my single six. Quickdraw and Wedge traded and then Kylo began to hunt the Falcon. R2-D2 saved Toby’s game here, with kylo spending mods on defence it was really hard to push damage through and being able to regen every turn for next to no consequence meant that I could’t do enough to kill it. I did get it down to half points before Han inevitably pushed enough damage through. 200-131 loss.

My mistake here was possibly going for Wedge over Han, Kylo is probably pretty good against Wedge, but with regen on Han maybe I should have burned QD pushing damage through on the Falcon. Quickdraw is dicey as anything, and in this game QD decided that helping wasn’t on the agenda… but there is more to come on this particular story, so let’s put that on the back burner.

When flying a 2 ship list it is good to not fly like an idiot against a good player like Craig Bradford. Craig had a super cool Republic list with loads of tricks from the arcs which meant they hit like a freight train. As well as Craig flew, I flew like a nincompoop and just gave him Quickdraw. To make matters worse I had put Kylo in a terrible place and he blew up a couple of turns later. I lost in 20 minutes flat and it was a welcome reminder about just how fragile the Fat Aces archetype is. You get it wrong and you will be punished hard, and this was a really good lesson in over-committing and WHY NOT TO DO IT! 200-16 loss. Those 16 points would come in very important later in the day.

The final game of the day was against Oz Edwards, flying an Inferno Squadron crack swarm. Having learned from my game against Craig I did not over commit in this one, QD rode her luck a bit but as Kylo pulled the trigger on his first proton Torp the SF had already dropped three TIE Fighters. A solitary Howlrunner fell prey to Kylo at the end of the game. With QD halved it was a 200-35 win leaving me 2-2 and fifth for the day, 5 points ahead of Craig. Those half points on that Torrent against him proved quite telling!

Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke is always fun, TO Dan Flewitt maintains the most casual of atmospheres and the banter is always good, so were the Burritos. First up a rematch against Toby Harris from yesterday.

As I mentioned earlier QD was less useful in this game on Saturday. She lost all her shields in one go and then did a bit against Wedge. This game she had other ideas, when trickshot Han put four hits into her at range three I feared the worst, only for three natural evades to lose one shield. Ability triggered: shooting back at Han range three obstructed is never going to do anything right? Oh wait. 3 hits thanks the the Fire Control System, Han blanks, re-rolls into two blanks and a focus… Then outmanoeuvre Wedge rolls a single hit which QD evades, only for QDs actual shot to put 2 more damage into Han.

The following turn QD dies but on the way out put 8 hits into the Falcon and Toby and I put a tick in the “Dice are a thing in X-Wing” column. A limping Wedge vs Kylo feels one-sided, but it only takes one good shot from Wedge to swing it. Unfortunately this game didn’t get the ending it deserved. In a final attempt to land a killer blow on Kylo, Toby went for the talon roll with Captain Antillies and lost his last hull point to a rock. 200-138 win.

Game 2 vs Nick Lawton with Anakin and a couple of Arcs. My win condition is simple, trade Quickdraw for Anakin and let Kylo go Arc hunting. Fortunately for me Nick separated Anakin from the support of the Arcs and the First Order capitalised on it. Without the threat of Anakin getting in Kylo’s flank an arc got burned fast. QD dropped but trading her for Anakin and most of an arc was totally ok. With a full health Kylo to contend with Nick conceded the match up, 200-69 win.

My third game was against Jason Barton running Wedge, 2 Bs and a U-Wing. The various flavours of Rebel Beef are getting very familiar now and is a consistently tough match up. The U-Wing with Leia on it is a stupidly good lynch pin of the list. Which is why Jason and I were very surprised that he flew it off the table in turn three… with Wedge and QD having traded it was Kylo vs 2 B-Wings. As useful as those ships are when Leia is about they don’t have an answer to supernatural Kylo. 200-69 win.

And on to the final game of the weekend, against Martyn Chivers. You know when you associated pilots with people? In my mind Dale Cromwell and Soontir Fel go hand in hand, Simran Pone and Vader are virtually interchangable, Jesper Hills and IGs were inseparable for most of first edition, Seb Brady and generic generic Y-Wing pilots… in my head Marytn Chivers and Kylo Ren go together.

Martyn got the engage right on my Quickdraw. My Kylo was no where to be seen. As my QD exploded he had a half health Kylo and QD with Muse left. So I was up on points, but down on ships. I didn’t feel like it had gone to badly, I still had proton torpedoes and there was no threat of a double tap from Martyn’s Quickdraw. Then I decided to park Kylo on a rock, which could have been entirely avoided hand I not rushed the move and used Supernatural better. Win to Martyn, 200-81 (I think).

5-3 over the weekend, and the issues were definitely not list related. A couple of dicey moments (both for and against) and some poor decisions (both for and against) were what made the wins and loses this weekend. At no point did I feel under-powered with these two ships, and in some match ups I thought the pairing was mine to lose.





I can’t do anything about dice, so there’s no point worrying about that, just take the good and the bad and hope you come out on top. However I can work on my flying, I can fly better. A really poor decision with Quickdraw against Craig, landing on a rock for the first time in ages against Martyn, those are things that I can do something about. Sure I may not have won those games anyway, but bad decisions made my opponents job that much easier.

I’m looking forward to heading to Lille next weekend for their Hyperspace Trial. The first decision is which two ship list am I taking?

Next Time: TO FRANCE!

If you’re looking for X-Wing events then head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar.