Toward the beginning of this current Hyperspace Trial season, Arch Alliance’s Matt Cary won the Murray, Kentucky Hyperspace Trial with an (up to that point) unforeseen take on Rebel Beef that he referred to thereafter as Kentucky Beef. It was simple and efficient, with hardly any upgrades at all, but it had fantastic action efficiency and hit hard. Between the medium base I-1 blocker coordinating, Dutch handing out target locks, and Luke’s force, almost every shot from this list was double modded. Throw Leia crew on top of that, turning everyone into pseudo TIE Defenders every few rounds, and you had a true jousting monster. It took everyone by surprise in Murray, and hasn’t gone away since; but, it has evolved.

Just a few days after the Murray Hyperspace Trial, FFG made some significant changes to the Hyperspace format. The ones that specifically relate to this topic are the additions of both the B-Wing and the rest of the U-Wing pilots. Probably the most significant U-Wing pilot addition for this style of list was Cassian Andor. His ability to remove stress from a friendly ship at range 1-3 nicely solves the biggest conundrum that kept the top B-Wing pilot, Braylen Stramm, from seeing much competitive play: namely, that he didn’t have a mechanic built in to remove the stress token he relied on for re-rolls, other than his limited blue maneuvers. But with Cassian on the scene, he gives the fairly tanky three-attack-dice ship free Boba Fett-esque rerolls without any range restrictions, and a completely open dial the next turn; which is pretty good.

Of course it took a little while before the new additions started making much of a splash in the meta. A couple of weeks later at Adepticon, I was still mostly seeing almost exact copies of Kentucky Beef with maybe a Tactical Officer to flavor the beef. But it wasn’t too long after that when Braylen and Cassian started to make their presence known. Initially it seemed that most people were throwing Crack Shot on almost everyone in the list, but eventually Rebel Beef players started to realize that there was good value to be found in taking advantage of the B-Wing’s, and especially Braylen’s, natural toughness to help keep the rest of the list alive, by putting Selfless on Braylen to soak up crits on his multiple shields.

Which brings me to the most recent Hyperspace Trial I attended, which was at Game Goblins in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was one of the smallest Hyperspace Trials I’ve seen in the continental United States at only 19 people. Of those 19 participants, 7 of them were playing some variation of this list. All of them had Wedge, Braylen, a U-Wing with Leia crew, and another ship to flavor. Some chose Ten Numb in the B-Wing, others a Proton Torpedo-carrying Dutch Vander, etc.

There were two traditional TIE swarms in the field, and one Captain Jonus with four Barrage Rocket TIE Bomber swarm. From what I saw, the times that these Rebel Beef lists (an archetype I’ve heard referred to as “Beef Wedgington” several times now) were paired up against those very efficient Imperial jousting lists, the Rebel Beef came out of the joust very much on top. I imagine the TIE swarms had a very tough time dealing with the damage spread of the lists. Not to mention Leia making the turnaround after the initial joust swing very much in the Rebels favor.

Of those 7 Beef Wedgington lists, 6 made the top 8 cut. The only 2 non-Rebel Beef lists in the cut were fellow Arch Alliance member Clint Hewson’s double Jedi list, and my Boba/Guri list. I was fourth in Swiss, he was fifth. Which, of course, meant that we faced each other in the top 8 round. Prior to my game with Clint and his two Jedi, every game I had played that day was against that same Rebel Beef archetype. And every opponent I played against made the top cut.

Clint and I have played each other in every single Hyperspace Trial we have been to thus far. So we had fun with this one and played a very silly, nonsensical game of X-Wing which saw me going on to the top 4 round. And there I lost to what is probably the strongest variation of Beef Wedgington that I’ve seen so far. This gentleman had Biggs as his “flavor to taste” ship, along with the Selfless Braylen, and he ended up winning the event. Playing against it was very reminiscent of playing against the sarcastically named “Fair Ship Rebel” of First Edition, except that it had more hit points and also Leia crew to boot. It was brutal.

The list is a mess of target priority for me. My win condition against Rebel Beef lists is to ensure that Wedge is dead by the time Boba kicks the bucket, then let Guri clean up whatever is left. But with both Selfless Braylen and Biggs Darklighter in the list, killing Wedge in any sort of reasonable time frame simply won’t happen.

I’m sure that with the points change coming sometime in the next couple of months, FFG will be adjusting the points on a few items in these lists, most notably Leia crew. But until that happens, be prepared to see some Beef Wedgington variants at whatever Hyperspace events you’re going to. It will be worth taking the time to develop a plan for dealing with it.

Many thanks to Chris and the folks at Game Goblin for hosting the event. Their normal T.O. had to back out last minute, but the event proceeded without any major incidents. FFG’s Tome tournament software created a number of delays by, of course, crashing randomly throughout the day. But they pushed on and the tournament came to a successful conclusion. (Definitely look at using TableTop.TO in the future. It isn’t a wreck like Tome is, and all of Arch Alliance’s St. Louis tournaments run on it without a problem.)

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