My name is Alex and somehow it was decided it would be a good idea for me to hijack Phil’s blog for a cheeky article. Now, for those who do not know me I used to hold the honourable title of Organised Play Manager for Europe. A lot of this work was done behind the scenes. Checking all our OP teams in Europe had what they needed, overseeing the final orders and ensuring enough kits were made to fulfil all the orders, doing B&M checks and many other kind of boring little tasks. But what I was more known for was running the larger OP events in Europe that sit above the National Championship level. These were the Koteis and Grand Koteis for Legend of the Five Rings, the Galactic qualifiers for Star Wars Destiny (yes, more are coming) and of course, the System Opens for Star Wars X-Wing.

While my title has changed, OP still hold a place I my heart and with my new team taking on the day to day responsibilities I have found myself with more weekends free than I used to. It also helps that I have retired from my other hobby, racing sail boats, due to health issues. The result? Time to play in some X-Wing Store Championships. I like to think I can hold my own in most games and I think I can play X-Wing. Time to see if I can.

It was a little bit daunting for me to be going along to store level events. Whilst our humble little community is fairly small in the grand scheme of things, I am kind of known within it. As such, I feel there is an expectancy for me to be competitive, know the rules and have a clear strategy. The truth is I have only ever really flown one list with any real gusto, I know just about enough of the rules to play (I have Vince for the rest) and my strategy is fairly simple … have fun … and try not to be a dick.

So I had a look at the events that were happening within 2 hours drive of my place here in Southampton and I found the following Store Championships on consecutive weekends. IBuyWarGames in Woking, Galleon Games in Bexhill, Dice Saloon in Brighton and WarBoar in Bromley. I almost added a 5th with Dark Sphere but something told me a full weekend with my wife might be important. I guess only time will tell on that one.

Despite what I feel is an OK knowledge of this game, a Store Championships is actually the perfect event for me. I have played a bit, I like the game and I want to take it to the next level. This is precisely what the purpose of a Store Championship is. If I like what I see here then I can take my learnings from the event, get good, and then compete at the next level. This is something I am planning to do. I am now allowed to play all the way up to “Regional” level events with our games (Hyperspace Trials as they will be in future) so maybe you will see me at other events in the future as well.

Anyway, on to the events. Rather than do a full write up for all of the events and completely maxing out the word count I have decided to pick a game from each of Store Championships and focus on that game. Some of these I won, some I lost, but they were ones that I will remember the most fondly and for me that was what this was all about. It is worth saying that I enjoyed all of these events. They were all run super smoothly with a fantastic attitude. All of my opponents were great people and I had an absolute blast. If we played and I did not mention you here then please do not be offended. I enjoyed your game as well! The one list I know is the wonderful combination of Ketsu and Asajj. It’s not anything too complicated. It is based on the list I watched Tom Reed fly at the 2016 World Championships. He made it look so effortless and I thought it looked like something I could manage. Only two ships and they were fast. I made a few tweaks over the time I’ve been playing it and tweaked the finer details, but this is the list I ended up with:

Ketus Onyo Asajj Ventress Push the Limit Push the Limit Glitterstim Glitterstim Dengar Latts Razzi Shadowcaster Gyroscopic Targetting Engine Upgrade

IBuyWarGames:

Phil works in my office and kindly offered to drive, until he realised I am a 30min drive in the opposite direction. So, we set a time and I picked him up instead. The drive there was full of speculation on what 2.0 will be like. It was an interesting conversation for me because there are times when I genuinely cannot remember what we have made public and what we are keeping until later. This meant that a lot of my contribution to this was in the form of “that would be cool” and “who knows” but it was nice to spend some time with a guy who is a genuine lover of the game. I mean it! I honestly don’t think there is a thing he doesn’t know about X-Wing! So the hour drive flew by and we arrive in Woking ready to play.

I decided to write about my round two game for this event. Feeling confident that I do actually know this game having come off of a solid win in round 1 and only losing half health if Asajj I square up against the lovely Joel North and his list of rebel scum. 2 X-wings, 2 A-Wings and a sheathipede. This was a close game. After distracting Joel with Haribo I quickly dispatched one of the two X-wings and flipped another onto a rock. Ketsu doing her usual thing. Then went to work trying to circle round for another engagement. A lot of shooting happened in this game and a lot of dodging. I was pretty proud of my bluff at one point where I used the gyro to spin Asajj’s arc one way and turned the other. It meant no shot from me, but more importantly I got around the side of the little firing arcs and could engage on my terms.

It was close, fun and challenging for both of us (unless Joel was humouring me) and we went all the way to time. I was so distracted that I missed how long we had been playing. Both my ships were on half health, so I needed to make sure 3 of the pesky little rebel ships were star dust. Having taken down two I sent Ketsu off in fast mode to circle round before realising that this was the last round. Ketsu had no shot, Asajj got some damage through, but with 2 of the remaining three ships on 1 health is was a narrow win to Joel and I can see that my inexperience of tournament play in X-Wing had potentially lost me that game. I mean, it was mostly how well Joel flew, 2 lancers against 5 tiny rebels in my head was a dead cert for me, alas it was not. Joel was a true gent and I really enjoyed this game. I went on to finish the tournament 3-3 and well in the top half. The field was insanely competitive with Martyn Chivers, Ben Lee, Jesper Hills, Sim Pone to name a few who were there and have previously won some serious events. I was proud of my result and was ready to take on another event.

Loss 41-50 (I think)

Final standing 3-3

Galleon Games

Another early start, but this time a Sunday and a drive along the beautiful south coast to Bexhill. This was a somewhat last minute addition to my plans, but as Dale Cromwell was going to be away for the Store Champs in Brighton, I wanted to see him at this one. He kindly gifted me a coupe of Beautiful Lancers that I use for all my games with this list now. It was important to me to bring them out at one of his local events.

After seemingly 2,782 days of sunshine it decided to rain on this day. This made for a pleasant temperature in the scout hut and 5 rounds sounded much more relaxed than the 6 the week before.

It is tough to chose which match to write about here, but I really enjoyed my round 4 match against Josh Tensleys X-Wings. Wedge, Wes and Luke. ACTUAL X-WINGS!!! I was looking forward to flying against X-Wings, but was not expecting to see the aces. Getting to roll 0 dice in defence is not fun!

I know the first engagement was going to be important here. I needed to get as much use out of Ketsu and Asajj’s abilities as I could to help me push through some damage. I went for my usual options of lining up down one side and Josh lined up on the other. Shame, I would have liked the joust. When I line up like this I like to have two options.

– 1. Turn in and engage if it looks all clear

– 2. Fly up the side and either fly around the outside looking fo the right engagement or a cheeky K-Turn to try and force the front on engagement.

I went with option 1 as the X-wings flew through the rocks and headed my way. I was really happy with my positioning. In round 1 I had managed to put Asajj on a rock doing a similar thing and that was pretty much the end of things for me. Here I got the little X-Wings right where I wanted them. I almost took out Wes in the first engagement and forced him to flee. When he finally reengaged, he fell to Asajj who was then finished off by Wedge.

So it was left to Ketsu to take on Wedge with 2 hull and Luke with 1 hull and shields coming back. I am so used to having Asajj in the end game, it felt weird having Ketsu there instead. Turns out, she can be a finisher as well! With her engine upgrade she quickly reengaged to take out wedge and then chased Luke into a corner. Luke escaped my clutches but was unable to put any damage on Ketsu who ended the game still with 1 shield. A nice win 60-46. This was my second win of the day but sadly was my last as I finished 2-3 and right down the bottom. This game was so much fun though and Josh was great to play against. It was also awesome to see Luke back on the table.

Win 60-46

Final standing 2-3

Now, for something completely different.

Imperials! With X-Wing second edition just around the corner I have made the decision to start flying Imperial. With 360 arcs gone I wanted to get used to flying with fixed arcs and focus on important positioning. Combine this will with some fun community made promos bouncing around and I went with this familiar list:

Captain Yorr Quickdraw The Inquisitor Emperor Palpatine Expertise Push the Limit Targeting Scrambler Light Weight Frame Autothrusters Special Forces Training TIE V/1 Advanced Optics

Yes, it is the list that won the European Championships with one subtle change that I was convinced to take. Having never flown this list ever I got a 45-minute briefing during a lunchbreak from Phil. Turns out you can learn a fair bit in 45 minutes. I felt like it was going to be a huge challenge for me, but it was going to be fun learning this list.

Dice Saloon

This was being run by Kris Mitchell. Kris is one of my judges from the Open events and I know him really well. He did his best to take the mick out of my X-Wing knowledge and let everyone know that I was the guy in the room to ask for any arc checks. After all, that is what I spend most of my time doing at System Opens. The joke was on him when I constantly needed him to see if Inquisitor was in arc or not. Kris constantly went against me on this though and so maybe he had the last laugh.

Game of choice from this weekend was against Matthew Fisher who had brought along 2 reapers. Palpatine was in with Vermeil and Krenic was in the other. Between them … the Inquisitor. Now, during my 45 minute briefing I had been warned about lists like this as they are really strong against my list. Combine that with a pilot with Matt’s ability and I knew this would be challenging!

For set up I placed Yorr and Quickdraw in the usual formation to allow them to bump if I wanted them to. Matt lined all his ships up against them ready to joust. I liked this and was well up for the joust. So, 3 bank from Yorr, 2 hard form quickdraw and a fast flank from the Inquisitor left me with the result I wanted. Yorr bumped the Scariff base pilot, Vermeil was in range 1 of both the shuttle and the inquisitor and Quickdraw was range 2 and ready to go. I decided to focus on Vermeil and left the ship with 1 hull left and Stunned pilot. Annoyingly there was just enough room for the escape without bumping so Vermeil ran away only to be chased by the Inquisitor and explode into pieces. Could I actually do this? Beat the counter list? Well, it didn’t keep going this well. Quickdraw went down first and we had 2 on 2 for quite a while.

In the last engagement both my shuttle and Inquisitor went down without a shot back. Matt, ever the gent, let me see what would have happened if the Inquisitor had not completely blanked out. Turns out the incredibly unlikely double crit of Major Explosion into Direct hit followed by Direct hit would have happened and it may have also left my shuttle alive. This may have given me the win, but as it was Matt got all 100 points and I left with thirty something. I was still learning this list and ended the event 2-3 much to Kris’s annoyance as my MoV was so bad that I was in with a shout of the wooden spoon before winning my final game.

Result: loss 100-Thirty something.

Tournament result: 2-3 (bottom of the 2-3’s)

Despite my worst finish so far I feel like I learnt a lot at this event. It may be the list that won the FFG European Championships, but I was certainly not the pilot who flew it that day. Far from it. I feel like I made some good decisions, but I also made some terrible ones including forgetting I had Palpatine for an entire game. Onwards and upward to my next and final store championship of my run.

WarBoar Games

This was weekend 4 of 4 with 4 store championships. I am starting to know what it feels like for Phil traveling all the time. I had not played in this many events since I spend my time grinding local events from another game back in the days before I worked in the industry. And I was loving it.

Back to Warboar Games where I had previously played in a 60 man charity event and somehow finished 4th. As impressive as that sounds I was one of the guys who did not get the memo that people were bringing fun lists rather than their competitive lists. Me only having the one list meant I was that guy. I also want to say that during that event I beat Phil 100-0 while he flew the world championship winning list of double IG’s (Phil – having hardly ever flown it before…). So I wasn’t the only guy with a borderline competitive list, but I was the guy who beat the other guy. Phil will regale you with tails of how bad his dice were and how hot mine were. He is right, but that’s not the point. I beat him. Truly destroyed him and he wrote about this in his blog.

Anyway, to the Store Championship and I want to write about my round 4 game against Gary Keenan. We were both 2-1 at this point. It seems I had finally figured out how to fly this list after 6 or 7 games and my only loss was to another Imperial aces list but with some Veteran Instincts making the match up super hard. So I found myself facing down 5 U-Wings. 5 U-WINGS!!! 5 large bases with what felt like supersized firing arcs and a pilot who knew what to do with them. Meanwhile, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew enough to know that I should try and focus on one at a time and see where things went.

Gary knew that the shuttle was key for me and went straight for it. I didn’t help that I decided to use it as a cannon rather than a support ship and went for a 4 dice attack asap with it. The first few engagements went really badly for me. The Shuttle went down and only took 1 U-Wing with it. But at this point things got interesting. It seems the strategy Gary was using as to play bumper boats in the middle of the table and keep all his arcs open in as many directions as possible. Meanwhile I was playing a guessing game to where he would go. I managed to guess 2 out of the 4 right each time which meant I got a lot of shots off.

At this point I think it is fair to point out that for about 5 defence rolls in a row Gary blanked out. This was huge for me as another U-Wing went down and another was on half health. Sadly I also lost Quickdraw due to some brutal focus firing from the U-Wings and it being nearly impossible to get out of all the arcs.

I had 31 points of Inquisitor left and Gary had 50 points of U-wings. One on full health, one with 2 shields and one with no shields. Time for the Inquisitor to put aside Jedi hunting and focus on these pesky rebel ships for the remaining 15 minutes. This was super fun. Knowing when the U-Wings would turn around was really helpful and the half health U-Wing went down next. 40-31 and 7 or 8 minutes left. I went after the ship with 2 shields. The Inquisitor had to get in close though as push the limit was needed and the restricted green manoeuvres meant I had to risk taking close up shots back. I somehow managed to strip the last two shields with one turn left. I had an opportunity to get out of all arcs and maybe even get a final shot off at the weakened U-Wing. Sadly the full stop meant that while I was out of all the arcs I couldn’t finish off the fourth ship. This was one of the closest games of X-Wing I have ever played. It was tense, stressful and absolutely awesome! Had I not pushed that last damage through I would have lost with just a big a smile on my face. As it was I got the win 70-69 and was at 3-1. My MoV was OK from my earlier games so who knows. Maybe I would make top 8?

Gary: this was sooooooo much fun and your attitude to X-Wing is amazing. I remember you saying something like “If people are going to get upset about a small nudge here and there then this is not the game for them.” I am paraphrasing here, but the sentiment is true, and you are absolutely right. Ships will get knocked, there is always wiggle room. What matters is how you control what you can and focus on having fun and playing the game in front of you. Thanks for being an awesome opponent.

So, my best final standing with 3-1 and a chance at top 8 for some acrylic range rulers. Many of you will know that I have access to all the cool swag as part of my job, but I have never won any acrylic before. This was my chance to change this. As the results are read out Jason started with the only unbeaten player in first and then went down the rest of the top four. After naming Jesper Hills in fourth Jason decided to point out that is was close to fifth place. 80 MoV (which isn’t all that close in 4 rounds, but still). He then read out that I had finished in fifth place and just missed the cut. Maybe I should have been more gutted that I was, but honestly just finishing in the top 8 and getting some range rulers was more than enough for me. I played my 6th, 7th,8th and 9th ever game with this list and was just piped from the cut. That is awesome. Also, in all the tournaments I have played where Jesper has also played this was the first time he had beaten me in the overall rankings so I figured it would be a nice thing for him.

And so, that ends my four X-Wing events in four weeks. I had so much fun and it is great to see what it is like being on the tables rather than behind tournament HQ. I want to say a massive thank you to all the TO’s. Ian, Dale, Neil, Kris and Jason. Your events were amazing and thank you for letting me part of them. All of my opponents, thanks for being so kind with me and helping me when I made glaringly obvious mistakes like forgetting to shoot with Asajj, or forgetting which ship had auto thrusters. Thanks to Phil for the company on the drive, the quick “beginners guide” to the Imperial List and for the hi-jacking of his blog. I can’t wait to see you all at an event again soon.

So the answer to the title: You think you can play X-Wing?

You should play X-Wing!

I will be at the UK FFG National Championships so please come and say hi. I hope to get a few games in if I can. It is not my event, so I am there to help if needed (Mike and his team almost certainly won’t need my help) and maybe make up the numbers for RuneWars. So, until next time: Fly straight, roll true and top deck like a pro!

Next Time: UK NATIONALS!

If like Mr Watkins you are looking for tournaments to head to, then head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar and see what’s going on.