I’m pretty far behind. Well over a week. Life’s been pretty crazy recently, and although I’ve managed to make time to play in 2 events in the last 2 weeks, I haven’t had time to actually write about them. Considering this event is actually from LAST YEAR (December 29th, but still…,) the details are somewhat fuzzy. As such, I’m going to talk a little less about each game and more about the new factions and ships that I encountered.

The event was to be held at Blue Sky, my first Hyperspace event. I still didn’t have any Resistance stuff, which is my chosen Hyperspace faction primarily due to their Aces. Regardless, I was going to play, so I grabbed my TIE Swarm (default fall-back list, right?) and threw my T-70 models in the box just in case. When I got down to the store, they had Resistance and FO conversion kits, FO TIEs, and RZ-A2s in stock, so I bought my A-Wings and the conversion kit, and promptly started assembling my list.

I didn’t want to START with Poe. He carried me to a great many successful games in 1.0, and now promised to (with the help of a single astromech) fly like Soontir Fel does now, but I wanted to start off with something simpler. As it turns out, you can fit all 4 T-70 and RZ-A2 Initiative 5 pilots in a single list with room for upgrades, so that’s what I did. I wanted to test out Heroic on both platforms, so that was an obvious inclusion. For the X-Wings, I added only the S-Foils, as I had a feeling that they would go down easier than the A’s despite being more costly. As for the A-Wings, I wanted to improve their damage potential, so Crack Shot was a quick toss on.

Advanced Optics was a card I very, very seldom used in 1.0, but with only 2 attack die and Heroic taking away the possibility of blanking out, Advanced Optics can greatly improve my chances of getting 2 hits on target if I’m focused. Now the only way I only get 1 hit is if I roll 2 blanks, re-roll with Heroic, and re-roll into 2 more blanks. Even then, Optics lets me get a hit in. With those tossed onto both A’s, the list was settled at 198 points. Not much of a bid, especially considering that I’m flying all Initiative 5, but it’s my first list with the faction, so I’m… experimenting.

Rather than go into immense detail about each game, since the memories are so far gone, I instead am going to point out the key moment or 2 that swung the game in 1 direction or the other. My next post will be about a far more recent event, and will be back to business as usual.

Game 1: Jeff Raiford

Jeff, as I’ve mentioned at least a couple of times on the blog, flies Fenn Rau exceptionally well. He has ever since the ship was first released back in First Edition. He wields the Mandalorian as a scalpel and uses it to dissect whatever list he comes up against. Here he took Fenn with a modified TIE swarm, taking all 4 unique pilots and giving those that can carry it Crack Shot. The opening round was spent by me remembering that the TIEs can just fly right through rocks, and forgetting to account for them doing just that for the initial engagement while Fenn flew up and around to get a perfect flank. Little damage was exchanged, but Fenn was behind me, and I was facing a combination of enemy ships and rocks for my movements over the next couple of turns.

The above is turn 3, where Fenn is tucked nicely behind Ello (in black) and the swarm is all pointed nicely at my ships. This round started the massive swing in Jeff’s favor, because while I managed to kill the Foreman and put some damage one 1 or 2 of the other TIEs, Jeff obliterated Ello and took away Nein’s shields. This put me down a much larger part of my squad than Jeff was, and I never really recovered. My A-Wings did what they could with their rear arcs and neat abilities, but Fenn just would not take a damage in the early game when I could get eyes on him, and the TIEs similarly refused to go down.

This round pretty much ended the game for me. Nien had swung around and gotten rid of his stress, lining up a killshot on one of his TIEs, but between the damage he had already suffered and Fenn rolling nothing but hits, the X-Wing went down before he could finish off his target. The rest of the game is spent with my A-Wings trying to be clever, Fenn coming down after L’ulo (who is the one facing away in the above image,) and the TIEs all coming around to chase Tallie. L’ulo goes down 3 rounds after the above image, and Tallie dies to Fenn’s re-engage the next round.

I had managed to half-point everything on Jeff’s list, and killed Proach, which still let me scrape a 200-101 loss.

Game 2: Travis Wooldridge

Travis was one of the powerhouses of Imperial Aces for quite some time in our region, making top 4 at no less than 3 regional events toward the end of 1.0. Unfortunately, he had taken a work trip to Alaska over the start of Second Edition, and I had the honor of being his second game played in the new version of the rules. He told me multiple times how rusty he was, and his opening somewhat showed that to be true. The first turn of combat, Kylo was pretty far away and only had shots at L’ulo through a rock at Range 3. Meanwhile, my X-Wings stripped Quickdraw’s shields and my A-Wings did absolutely nothing to Midnight.

This turn is the second round of combat (turn 4 of the game.) Travis had figured I’d go all in on Kylo, and had forgotten just how slow X-Wings can move, which put Quickdraw in an extremely compromising position. Meanwhile, Kylo bumped into L’ulo, who had tore off to do exactly that, while Tallie came up to try to force a bump on Midnight. Omega Leader dodged the block, but also didn’t have a way to obtain a shot. Quickdraw went down, and Kylo lost a shield to Tallie’s shot. With Midnight out of position, Quickdraw dead, and Kylo about to have a bad day, I was pretty far ahead after this turn.

This is actually the very next turn. Kylo, rather than try to bug out, just went all in on my Xs, and since the As have a rear-facing turret, it meant he took shots from everyone and went down before Tallie even had to go. For her part, she took Midnight’s shield, leading to the TIEs final turn 2 rounds later after all my squad had turn around for the re-engage. Final tally was 200-50 in my favor, as both Nien and L’ulo had taken enough damage to be on half health.

Game 3: Kyle Meidel

Kyle was flying a pretty intimidating TIE swarm with Quickdraw decked to the nines. The addition of Shield Upgrade is actually pretty brilliant, as it’s not as expensive as it would be on most TIEs, and may allow him to use his ability another time if he’s lucky. As we discovered in this game, Quickdraw doesn’t seem to do as much if you never shoot him… he just also never dies.

This is the opening round of combat, on turn 3. Kyle had somewhat (by his own admission) botched the approach, and left all 4 of my ships with nearly unanswered shots on his. He had Quickdraw and one Ace on target, as the other 2 Aces had turned on bad vectors, and Longshot was actually on a rock. The dies don’t play well, and I don’t get much actual gain from this turn, but the positioning that I had was extremely important. Interestingly, because of the initial engagement and subsequent turns, all of our targeting priority on both sides was screwed, and we ended up not killing anything for several rounds.

On this turn, Ello finally goes down, but takes Longshot with him. Most of Kyle’s TIEs are on half by now, but QD and one of the Aces is untouched. Similarly, I had taken half points on Nien, putting us pretty close in score. I wouldn’t acknolwedge until later just how close we already were.

This is the very next turn, and swung the game toward my favor, as I would only lose a few hull on Nien, but Kyle would lose 2 Omega Aces, with his only surviving one facing away from my ships. Kyle puts it on a rock intentionally on the following turn to keep Quickdraw from engaging too quickly, causing him to bump instead. This plants Nien in range 1 of QD, and he dies for it.

We go a couple more rounds toward the end of the game, and end up with a bit of a stand-off, where if Quickdraw hits one of my ships for a single point of damage, he gets half points and solidifies the game in Kyle’s favor (but only has a range 3 rear-arc shot to do it,) but I need to land 1 more damage on the surviving Ace to swing the game back into a victory for me. The dice play along, and I land the hit that puts the final Ace on half points, ending the game 114-113 to me. One of the closest I’ve had, but games against Kyle are always tense.

I’m pretty sure Resistance Command would not have been happy with my results, but I am. I managed to stay 2-1 despite a crushing first round loss. My overall tournament record for 2.0 is now 14-7, still sitting flat at a 2-1 average, or 66.6%. As PhilGC has said many times, that is enough to make a cut at small events, but I want to improve that average before the System Open arrives in Seattle.

As for the new factions, having play against First Order a few times now and going undefeated against them (though that last one was REALLY close,) I’m pretty sure I chose the correct faction to drop from 1.0. Resistance is pretty impressive to me, and the new Mining Guild TIEs are stupidly good.

I think the stand-out star of the wave is going to be the RZ-A2. The unique pilots are all awesome, the ship chassis is better than the older RZ-A1, and the faction they are in supports their role more than the Rebels can support A-Wings. There will DEFINITELY be more A-Wings in my future lists!

As always, let me know what you think. The next tournament report should be back to normal, provided I get an opportunity this week to sit down and write it. It’s a pretty interesting one, with a format that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere that I can find…

Next time: A Quickbuild Tournament?!?!