Good Morning X-wingers!

I am sorry for the three week haitus. I had a baby, it was a surprise to both my wife and me. I gave birth to the food baby on the 22 of October, and it weighed in at 5 pounds. Needless to say I am over it, back to wasting away while playing with my toys.

I am currently packing and panicking for Pax which is due up in less than four weeks. I will be representing the Hyperloops in the System open for X-wing and possibly the Legion tournament as well. I have assigned myself a juking list. Here below is the flavor of the month. The basis of this list is to token up and not being brain tired after seven games. It Runs Rexlar Brath with Juke, Whisper with Juke, & Echo with Juke and a 2 point bid. Its pretty much a straight forward list. Rexlar is your main antagonist and jouster. Echo and Whisper are obviously flankers with incredible ability to appear to be jousting or running in formation and then just absolutely dip out. The purpose of the list is to push through damage by removing focus or forcing the use of the focus while setting up Rexlar to drop crits. All three ships are flexible and mobile. I specifically picked the phantoms because of recent Gunrunner scare back in the Mynock Open. I am practicing to flank and out fly the scum.

Is Juke enough?

Juke is an incredible mechanic. It relies on one modification but provides mechanics to multiple situations. I never forget to say “JUKE!”. Many of us see juke as a gimmick or underrated due to the fact that it is action based. If you are looking for Passive modifications I suggest holding out till the resistance faction comes out. Juke can be your all star hidden “Hot-shot co-pilot 1.0 mechanic” in 2.0. It can be your defensive to offensive jam. That’s right, you can ‘JUKE OUT THE DEFENSE’ in ship. Best offense is a good defense? Two things make Juke extremely strong in this list. High PS, free evade action economy. I decided to switch to this list after seeing the meta shift back over to the token up era of ‘1.0’. The competitive scene over the past month has seen large amounts of Redlines and Whispers that are able to take on multiple actions. These list have easily cut out swarm lists out of the competitive edge. Many swarm lists sprinkle in a Vader, a Luke or Boba and you now have a list with an action economy ace and flimsy blockers trying to out dice. The reason I chose this list over the other 8 list ran this past weekend at the Mynock Open, is because I believe Echo and whisper can out fly Soontir even at a lower PS. Soontir has become more of a knife fighter with his need to always get his target in bullseye. While the Phantoms have made themselves into excellent “strafers” they are still susceptible to being out diced. I have gotten the chance to fly out on my league night and got strafe shots against unsuspecting Soontirs and other interceptor-esque like ships. I have run much success against large base ships and even a few Quadjumpers, however I am expecting a different skill level at the System open. I am betting my hunches I can get away with strafe-guessing against most lackeys before hitting day two. I suggest trying out the list on your league night.

As always, to all major tournaments I bring a back up list. Since I still toot that Robert Fett is the best. I am running him.

My secondary list is a touched up Boba list from weeks prior. This time with a solid five point bid. I have found calculate on boba, goes SO FAR. I wont go into much of it but basically want makes the list Boba Double calculated with an evade from IG-D. This list is action dependent. Many people frown on that. I frown on them because they are so scared of the bump. I say, “fly better”. Boba is still top tier. The highest for doing nothing but getting into range one. Boba’s best archetype is to run him with another ace or with two Quads. I stick to aces because Quads require too much work after round 4 and I don’t know what the red bull surplus is like in Pax.

If I end up in the basement, I will run the following list into the Hanger Bays. Which is a variation of the previous list I posted with Sloan. This time, I have practice the art of Six Tie Fighters and Echo as the Sloan Carrier. The thought behind it, it to keep sloan hidden but within range of the fighters. Once the fighters destroy the higher PS ships, then commit Echo into the battle. Or even if I give up a fighter, Echo and the others can easily take on a double stress ship, then circle back after the blood hits the water. Two Stress is crippling on any ship. Unless you see Cassian in your meta daily, there is very little that can stand up to Sloan except head hunting her out of the skies. Which can be very difficult. This list surprisingly always takes people on league nights when everyone is flying casual which I suspect will be Hanger Bay Events at PAX. I think this list counters the Tractor beams and the torpedoes well. I have not practice tested this enough to say with absolute certainty.

When it comes to tournament list it really comes down to either flying aces or out dicing with swarms. I am personally leaning towards aces and action economy but I love that swarm lists. They are still viable as second tier list that can be extremely fun. Zerging the enemy is back with a vengeance. What defines a viable ship that can be used greatly in a swarm in the new game/meta? I was asked this on my League night. The basic answer I gave is “The Math”. When it has a combined attack and agility value of six or more then that is a ship that in in multiples can out dice in combat. However point cost also come into play when building a hornets nest. You might have noted you cannot field three Defenders any more. So the low PS defender does not make for a good ship in that sense. X-wing is still a math game. Lots of Dice look great on paper. However we all know they are only as good as your luck and your dice mods to back them up. A focus token improves red dice. Normally you have a 50/50 chance of rolling a hit. There are two focus on a red so it improves it by another 50 percent on the 8 sides. Green dice have one less painted evade than the painted hit die. With two focus painted on the agility dice, that greatly improves the odds by over 50 to roll an evade while modded. Ships with lots of dice have need to modify both their attack roll and their defense roll to get full value out of their points. Which means you need ways to gain two mods. This is the trick in the new game. “Token up”. When flying a swarm usually the correct action is always to focus.

Here are couple links to book mark. The first one is an extremely well put together X-wing 2.0 calculator called gates of the storm – it distribute dice rolls and damage very well. It takes some use to navigating but extremely well put together. The second is the FAQ which can help navigate.

ALL generic versions of high rolling ships were usually weak in 1.0. They were consider weak because they consisted of no EPTs or considerably lower Pilot skill level. A big change came in 2.0. Most of the high rollers were given a low cost generic with no EPT and low pilot Intuitive. They were also given one moderately costed high initiative with EPT counterparts. What does this mean? Even though right now it is a initiative war for PI 5 you can field four above average ships with gimmicks. An example is 4 Phantoms with Juke or one juking defender and two juking phantoms.

What am I expecting at PAX? Pretty much Redline or the return of PS6 aces with a shuttle. Redline made a strong appearance at the Curscant invitational, at the Mynocks Open and at the Gold Squad Classic. He even makes a lot of appearances at local game stores. He gets around. He is kind of like the Santa that has time to be at all the malls at the same time. Except for delivering presents, he delivers proton torpedoes fully modded to your face. I am expecting a lot of Bobby Fetts and quite a few Vaders. I do expect a good showing of swarm lists but I don’t expect them to last. While swarms are very challenging on the opponents they are even more taxing on the pilot. I feel like I tend to lose focus, mainly because by game three your brain is being flash fried faster than Chicken at Popeyes. I predict aces getting past obstacles with action economy and pushing the joust, instead of the flying and arc dodging in early 2.0 tourneys. There will be Fenn (scum) and the Baron and I think those will move on to day 2. I also predict a Target lock heavy meta coming from Imperials. Such as Redline and Vader. While Scum will be hosing people down with tractor beams and HWKs. I don’t know what Rebels can bring to the table except X-wing torps and maybe a fat Dash. Rebels seem underwhelming right now.

As an aside: a lot of local game stores aren’t carrying some of the popular ships that many of new players want to play out of the conversion. I would like to point out that Amazon has discounted all of their 1.0 products that they distribute themselves. As of 11/6/18 The defenders are at 12 dollars, Imperial aces which is two interceptors is at 18 dollars and the bomber, Quadjumper and punisher are currently at 12 dollars.

See you at final table,

Drawde

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