Quick X-Wing Preface

I managed to make day two of both X-Wing and Destiny this weekend, finishing fourth on Day1A for X-Wing and the top Separatist Player earning some sweet swag, and fifth on Day1A for Destiny winning 12 extra prize tickets.. I was the only person to make day 2 for both games, and as far as I know, nobody managed to accomplish the feat last year – regardless of whether or not it has ever happened before I’m pretty proud of this accomplishment. Even though I didn’t finish as high as I would’ve liked to in either event, the fact that I made both cuts is a really nice alternative prize that I can be proud of. It was mentioned on the ABG podcast and I’ve gotten a lot of congratulations for it, so I thought it would be worth mentioning here for posterity.

Several months outside of worlds many of us realized that we either wanted to be on the best DM deck or the best Flee the Scene deck. About two months out I was decidedly on the DM side of things. Delving a fist seemed really great, No Good To Me Dead was completely insane, and the control DM offered was just off the charts; Villain rainbow seemed like the way to go.

But, then things started falling apart. Five Dice Chopper was absolutely obliterating the rainbow matchups, and I spent a few weeks making Chopper feel exactly where I wanted it, even if it didn’t feel like the best Flee deck. It wasn’t long before we started testing the Fateful Companions version vs. the Five Dice, and the FC version was just repeatedly blowing out the 5D version in the mirror. From there we realized we could actually be the best flee deck; we sacrificed a few points in the rainbow villain match by going FC instead of 5D, as it was difficult to protect R2-D2 against all of those dice, but by sacrificing all supports and focusing on specific damage counts-per-round we felt like we could even up the matchup. This, on the whole worked out, as I went 1-0 vs. Rainbow villains beating Steve Cassel and his top 8 Aphra. Reflex went 1-1 against ABG’s Aphra, losing to Drew but besting Cody in swiss, and then lost to Kroozin in the cut. Biggy was able to beat the matchup in pods but it ultimately knocked him out of top 32 – All in all fairly even against a very tough matchup is all we can ask for, but we honestly didn’t think we’d see a ton of Aphra in swiss, and we were mainly correct – mirrors on the other hand, were going to be important.

Our mirror gameplan was on point as evidenced by my going 4-1 in mirrors (one of which being my bo3 Han Droids matchup in top 64) and Biggy going 5-1 (!!!!) in mirrors over the course of the weekend. I even put myself in a pretty good position to pull way ahead in my mirror with eventual Champion Andrew Rothermel, but his late-round 1 Field Medic and random shield side on Threepio off a re-roll put his R2 just out of reach of my action cheat round two, and I was never able to close.

We tested a lot of things to try and perfect the list, and looking back I do wish we had two Grappling Arms over two Rocket Boosters, though it’s hard to know how much that would’ve skewed games. Rocket Booster is absolutely clutch late game, but can still be very serviceable in the early game with its shield sides. The focus and disrupt were so relevant every time I had the grappling arm that I just found myself wishing I could get one in every opening hand. The final decision for me was whether or not to cut an Off The Sensors for a Near Miss. I’d been a strong proponent of OTS since originally putting the deck together, but I wanted something that was going to be able to remove Fist dice. I was out-voted, and in the end Off the Sensors won me several games throughout the weekend, so it was nice to have my team keep me on the straight and narrow and not get bogged down by one potential enemy card when I only saw one villain deck all weekend.

In the end I think the entire team is really happy with the final list. Every card put in serious work on the weekend. Enfys Nest’s Electroripper is probably the one that got the most reactions, but Rothermel had it in his list too. The 3X side is huge when trying to find a big kill with threepio, and the special side allows for some nice greed kills. Electro Sword was definitely the tech card of the deck, though some people saw Shnu run it in his Chopper the previous week at the RI Regional via our stream. BIg credit to Serdapi and HonestlySarcastc for developing the Electro Sword tech, it was paramount vs. Reylo and Palpatine, and it should’ve won me the game to propel me into the top 16, but I couldn’t find a damage side on it nor a focus side on threepio to ensure the final kill on Rey.

The Tournament Rounds

I certainly didn’t have the typical swiss track, but after seeing the data it wasn’t *too* far off. My prediction for the event was Reylo twice, Droids twice, Rainbow villain twice, Palp once, and a random aggro deck once. I ended up facing droids, specifically the FC Chopper mirror, four times, but traded that for only having to face Rainbow villain once in the form of Aphra, which is pretty great for me.

My day started off with a very tough mirror where my opponent claimed very early round one to keep me off my Rex’s Blaster trigger and probably kill my R2 at the top of the round. Luckily for me he didn’t, but I drew one of my five action cheats and took his R2 out. It wasn’t clear sailing from there but I did work to stay ahead on damage and tempo and got the win.

Round two was one of my toughest matchups of the day in Reylo vs. Marc from Canada. That one was streamed on dice of failure, and was extremely close. At the top of round two or three I had to make a tough decision about how to finish off Kylo before he killed my R2 – I used either Rex’s Blaster or an action cheat to flip two dice to 2x, and resolve one for three with threepio, putting his Kylo to 8, three away from death. I needed him to do anything other than heal or shield, and preferably not drop a redeploy. His dice were on Blank, Blank, Kylo Special so he probably thought he was safe from Easy Pickings. He decided to Rey’s Power Action into another special and finish off R2, but I had Off The Sensors to resolve my 2x as a 3x and kill him without a redeploy. From there I was able to clean up Rey, but if he does anything to prevent that kill I’m likely cooked.

Round three I killed a palp at the beginning of rounds two or three and made short work of my best matchup. I then faced eventual champion Andrew Rothermel in a mirror. I was able to enact the game plan to set up a round two R2 kill, but Rothermel had a field medic and rolled a shield on Threepio to put his R2 at 6HP, meaning when I drew my action cheat I had to roll a two to set up the kill – I didn’t, and he Ewok ambushed me back killing my R2 – I never killed a single character as he was able to pull away with shields and healing.

From there I faced two more mirrors, the Aphra matchup, and Maul – they were all fairly uneventful as I was able to either action cheat big damage by making the most of my tight play + Flee the Scene or rolling hot with Chopper to set up huge action cheat damage strings with R2D2.

My final round opponent, Gerrit Backes, was also on Chopper FC and graciously traded me his German language plot! Big ups to him and congratulations on his top cut!

Here’s a link to the top 64 bracket.

In the top 64 I faced Han Droids, which you can watch on stream at Destiny Council as well as on the Entourage Gaming RedZone stream with commentary. I was told the commentators said that I only won because of dice, but I thought I played at least okay. I definitely made some mistakes and this match was the first indication that my mental faculties were not all with me on this Sunday.

In the top 32 I can’t help but think I pissed the match away. I know I made some small mistakes, but I’m too bummed out o go back and look at the film to see how bad they really were. We were up against the clock and I was playing very fast to not go to time, and I think that led to me making some stupid mistakes. In game two I had better than a 50% roll to win the game, his Rey was on 9 damage and three shields, and I just needed to roll one of my three damage sides on my Electro Sword OR a focus on my Threepio, but I blanked out and I came up short of getting a kill game three, and that was that.

I’m very confident in my preparation and the preparation of my team, our deck, and our gameplans, but one thing I didn’t foresee was the potential mental exhaustion of playing four days in a row, helping with streams and commentary, bad nights of sleep, and four days straight of awful dietary choices. Any of these things may have contributed to my mistakes on Sunday, but I’m not sure which may or may not have caused any of these issues. I, of course, have only myself to “blame” and take nothing away from the accomplishments of my opponents, I just feel I could’ve done better, and right now I’m not sure I know where I went wrong. I hope I figure it out.

Aftermath

Worlds was great, and for all intents and purposes I should be very happy, but I’m not. I went into the event thinking that as long as I made top 64 and got the mat I was going to be happy. I’ve never missed the top cut of a major event, and that’s a great accomplishment, but until this past weekend I’d never missed the top 8 of a major event. Now, I realize that this is a good problem to have, or a “first world problem,” but after the amount of time I spent preparing for worlds I feel like making the top 32 was not representative of my preparation and execution.

In the end, the thing I didn’t prepare for was to have to play all four days of the event. Doing well at X-Wing was both a blessing and a curse, as I got to win some excellent X-Wing prizes (the X-Wing prizes make the Destiny prizes look even worse than they already are), but I was exhausted and pained all day Friday for Day 1A of Destiny, and while I only played one game of X-Wing on Day 2, losing in the top 64, I never felt like I had a chance to rest before Day 2. Late nights every night and the Private Loops Dinner Saturday night meant my body and mind were beat to shit on Sunday. To play fast and loose on the biggest stage means that I wasn’t prepared well enough to deal with the demands of such an action-packed weekend. Last year I had two full days and three nights to rest in between Day 1A and Day 2; I think that paid dividends in the 2018 cut. No matter how I break it down, I wasn’t sharp enough to perform well in the top cut at Destiny in 2019 and I won’t forgive myself for it any time soon.

Introspection is the most important aspect in an attempt to grow, and I’m happy to have identified what I need to work on for 2020, especially if I’m going to continue to play multiple games at the same time. I’m thankful for the amazing community, and it was great meeting and talking to so many amazing Destiny players last week. I also want to congratulate my nemesis, Andrew Rothermel for his big win; he was my only swiss loss, and I’ve said it on several occasions but he is one of the best, and previously unsung, players in Destiny. He’ll be a great world champion.

Special thanks to Sam Cimino and Matt Taylor, who helped to bring me and buy me these sweet Ahsoka’s lightsabers from Galaxy’s Edge. I used some prize tickets on the mat so that it would make an awesome coffee table adornment!

I also used my Destiny prize tickets to complete my Ewok Shrine, getting spot glosses of Arena of Death, Four Ewok Warriors, a Hoth Trooper, and Armored Reinforcement, as well as a Foil Chief Chirpa. I even signed up for my first and only POD to get my last four tickets, thanks to RunningOnion for coming and getting me when he saw I was scrounging for tickets Sunday evening!

All in all it was great playing with and meeting everybody in the community! My favorite part of the weekend was the Loops Dinner, we had a blast and it made me wish I wasn’t so damned busy and so damned tired and so damned driven that I would actually go out and enjoy myself. Hopefully next time!

Thanks for reading,

BobbySapphire