After the success of the three T-70s last weekend in Aldershot they’re the only list packed into my case for this weekends double header at IbuyWargames and The Dice Saloon. Two five round events in two days should give me a real feel of several thing about the list that are important to consider when you’re thinking of taking a list to bigger events like Hyperspace Trials and Cups.

Firstly and in all seriousness: Can you sustain flying it at a high level for the duration of a tournament? Bearing in mind that to win one of these could mean playing 10+ rounds at the event. If you want to win one of these (which I do cause there’s a worlds invite up for grabs) then you have to be able to fly well enough for a lot of consecutive rounds in quite an intense period of time.

Swarms are super potent in the HS game mode. But the reason that I don’t think you can tech against them is the endurance level it takes to fly 6 or 7 ships for a long period of time. There are players out there I know that can do it (Andrew Pattison, Martyn Chivers, Pete Wood to name 3 off the top of my head) but it is a feat of mental endurance not to get to round 4 and have your brains seeping out of your ears.

Swarm players games will often go to time, there’s a lot of thinking required after the opening engagement as the swarm player has to work out how to block and capitalise on those blocks. It takes a special kind of pilot to do that time and again with a list where one mistake can get one of your ships killed in a shot.

I’m used to playing fast lists. I play quickly anyway and generally get games done in under 50 minutes, which gives me extended breaks between rounds to chill out and chat. Either win fast or lose fast. At loads of events this has helped keep me fresh and focused rather than feeling fatigued later on in the day. It also means I get to chat to people and enjoy the social side of event. Other players, like Ben Lee or Oli Pocknell, have a seemingly unending degree of patience and stamina and it’s not uncommon to see them go to time every round at an event and never lose focus once.

Having flown 2 ships lists for such a long time I want to know if the T-70s are going to keep me in the speedy category or whether I am going to have to adapt my play patterns to accommodate the list. 10 games in a weekend will tell me this.

The next thing I’m looking for from these events is to see if the success was a blip or whether I can deliver wins over a more consistent basis. Whilst being good players two of the guys I played last weekend were in their first tournaments, so they may not have been used to the slightly more intense atmosphere that a competitive environment has to offer. Beating veterans like Joel North and Andrew Pattison did help the confidence, but a greater amount of games against a greater array of players/diversity of lists will give a clearer indication of the strength an weaknesses of the list.

We talk about synergy a fair bit, how things in the game interact with each other, but I guess the fundamental question I need to ask is “How good is my synergy with this list?”.

We’ve all seen other people do well with something and think “huh, I could probably do that.” Only to find when we put it on the table that we just cannot get our heads around how to fly it. You can learn to play a list, but even taking something like Nymanda from 1.0 that a lot of people just picked up and did well with, certain players were better with it than others, they made it do things that other players didn’t.

If Guri was hyperspace legal then I very much doubt I could have put her aside.

I feel most comfortable flying Guri. In my head those bendy barrel rolls feel totally natural and I know exactly where and what I’m doing with her. Other people don’t get it and try as they might it doesn’t work for them. I know Oli Pocknell won’t mind me saying that he wishes he could get Guri because on paper he loves what she does, but when he puts her on the table he struggles… yet he makes cut after cut after cut at big events with loads of other ships.

With 10 games to come the details aren’t all that important but there were some good lessons learned. Saturday at Ibuywargames was a Hyperspace practice event, so all lists had to be HS legal.

Game 1 vs Calum Brown. Despite delivering this exceptional block and applying a bunch of stress with Phasma, Calum lost this game on two grounds. Firstly Nein didn’t take a stress from Phasma because he’s awesome, so was able to K-Turn and come back into the fight. Secondly where he had this 5 dice attack from the Upsilon with a target lock he was only able to land two hits on Poe, but after the initial engagement the mobility of Ello and Nein really shone. A good start against a top opponent 200-36 win.

Game two and fellow 186th Paul Full-On running Boba, Fenn and an Outer-rim Pioneer. Paul was being very true to the Hyperspace format of this event and chose to run his list at what he thinks it’s going to cost after the points change on the 28th of January rather than what it currently costs, and so he chose to move second despite being less points than me. It helped him learn a lot about the list through the course of the day.

Obviously we don’t know what the points are yet, but this approach to an event like this is a is REALLY good practice. I won the game 200-118. Paul readily admitted that he got Boba wrong in the early game, splitting his ships and allowing me to hunt down Fenn with all my ships. When Boba came back in he made a real mess of my ships, but it was too little to late, and Poe finished him off.

“Swarms are super potent in the HS game mode.”

Me. A few paragraphs up.



A massive 200-21 loss to another 186th member Lloyd Boman in game three. Six ships and a world of synergy. I got the rocks right, I got the opening right, then it all went horribly wrong and the TIE Fighters shredded one T-70 at a time. Blocking me to death and then hammering me with Howlrunner modded dice. Lloyd flew like an absolute boss. I don’t think he put a foot wrong, self blocking where necessary and blocking pretty much every move I could have dialed in with the ship he wanted to hammer that turn.

Iden is really good, just going to throw that out there… if she was 25% more expensive (50 points) she would still totally be worth taking, she essentially gives you two Howlrunners. Her ability makes sense as a mechanic as she stops the TIE swarm simply losing their strongest asset (Howlrunner) to a single proton torp, but if she doesn’t get a points increase at the end of the month expect good TIE players to dominate Season 1. The Punisher has kept them at bay so far in 2.0, with that shackle removed be afraid. When it comes to TIEs Imperials > Scum.

Lloyd won the day, 5-0 with an MoV 424 points higher than the runner up (Calum Brown). I asked him how he would feel about taking that list for potentially another 4-5 rounds, he was somewhat sceptical whether he would be able to sustain the level of performance for more games.

Can the T-70s beat it? Yes, but I think it’s a match up heavily in favour of the swarm.

So there goes my 100% record with the T70s. And my reward for losing is a game against one of the UKs top players, Simran Pone. I will freely admit that my head wasn’t in this game, still reeling from the battering and frustration of the previous match up. I flew terribly and Sim took full advantage, beating me into the ground 200-54 in about 25 minutes with Dutch, Luke and Wedge. Sim did express his surprise at how badly I flew it, my decision making was terrible.

This is one of those moments to learn stuff. At a small tournament like this where nothing is at stake going on tilt isn’t really a problem, but it’s something I’ve seen in events before that I dwell on the game before when I should be looking at the game in hand. Losing focus like this at a big event like a System Open or Hyperspace Cup could get you knocked out by a match up you should have a good shot at winning.

One of those things that always amazes me is how sportsmen, especially those in solo sports where there is a short time between points (like golf, tennis or snooker players) are able to put aside the last shot, last point, last game/set/frame and refocus themselves. I’m sure its all down to sports psychologists and some clever mind tricks, I could do with learning some of those. But being aware that there’s an issue there is the only place to start fixing it.

The final game of the day against Malc Fell of Warboar’s TNX Squadron. 2-2 for the day and looking to finish on a positive Nein decided to be a superstar. Quickdraw, Backdraft and Thannison did not enjoy his T-70 dancing around. After 25 minutes and with both TIEs dead Malc conceded when all three of my ships were behind his shuttle giving me a 200-34 win. Nein totally ignoring Phasma’s trigger and a panicked pilot crit meant that he was able to keep guns on target when other ships would have had to disengage.

Fifth for the day with the highest Strength of Schedule and some valuable lessons to learn going forward meant Saturday was a really good day, roll on Sunday’s 26 man event at Brighton’s Dice Saloon. How will my HS list handled five rounds of extended?

My round 1 opponent was James Lunn of Blue Squadron from Portsmouth flying Poe and Han, I really liked his list. His Han had Rey and C3PO which gave his falcon a crazy amount of consistency, Nein dropped fast, but the Falcon dropped soon after leaving my Poe and Ello to hound his Poe to death. It was a close one but I came out with the 200-121 win.

Next up Nick Tregunna of Zombie Squadron with Boba, Old T and a Zealous Recruit. Poe got wrecked but not before he put the first of two structural damages on Boba. With the Firespray gone Nein and Ello’s mobility out did the Fangs and I went on to win 200-71.

The Dice Saloon has moved venue. I used to love their Paninis, but now they have Pizza instead. If you ever drop down for a visit I highly recommend one of their prepped on site Pizzas.

2-0 and feeling good my next opponent was Richard Grice flying BB-8 Poe and 3 A-wings. My issue with BB-8 Poe is that once those valuable charge tokens on the Astromech are gone, once that black one token has gone the cheaper R4 Poe is just better. You have to make the BB-8 charges count and that’s very hard to do. Richard got his opening wrong, I was able to focus down his Poe and then move onto the A2s, who took out Nein and half of Ello but with a largely healthy Poe still running amok Richard’s defiance was finally broken. 200-90 win.

Onto the game of the day, wait no… the game of the weekend, hang on, the best game of 2.0 so far! On table one going for the 4-0 against Omer Ibrahim. Wedge, Thane, two Z-95s and AP5. Ello and Nein decided that the didn’t want to stay on the board very long, my enthusiasm for heroic waned a bit as blank focus came up six times in a row, but that’s fine. Poe vs 5 ships is easy right? He had 2 hull, that’s loads….

I got rid of Wedge first, Thane was busy flying away because Omer felt it was right to K-Turn onto debris and keep flying over it. Poe vs 4… one one health… So let’s kill AP-5 next and get rid of that coordinate. Next up a z95, but I still don’t think it’s going to happen because Thane is coming back in and he’s got 5 health. With three damage cards on me I can’t be shot by Thane, but with one hull I can’t ignore the limping Z-95 and go after the X-wing.





Omer pulls off the most audacious talon roll anyone has ever seen. Judge Kris Mitchell takes a full 3 minutes to work out whether it’s on or off. It’s on. There was literally nothing except the slight fraying of the mat keeping his ship on the table. Poe kills the Z. One on one. One health Poe vs a five health thane with maybe 3 minutes to play.

Poe closes foils and goes for the arc dodge, if it lands I have a 4 dice shot on Thane with nothing coming back, needing 2 damage to get half points and the win.

Only:

The barrel roll I wanted to pull off took me a millimetre off the table, so back I go, failed action and a straight joust against a ship 80% more healthy than mine, which has a lock and focus. I’m losing the game unless Omer rolls 4 blanks into 4 blanks. Sure enough that didn’t happen. a 200-170 loss, but what a game. Both of us were mentally and physically drained at the end of it. Omer was thrilled cause he got the win and went to the top table for the last game. I was thrilled cause I got to really test my flying with Poe and despite not finishing the job of, he still killed 4 ships on his own and took Thane down to half points.

Which led to my last game of the weekend against Sam Peace flying a U-Wing, a B-Wing and Luke. The fact that Sam was 3-1 with a list that includes 2 ships most people consider not that great was a warning that the game would be tough. It was, it felt like it took forever to drop the B and U-wings and then Luke refused to die for the longest time. I lost half of Poe and Ello but Nein stepped up magnificently and eventually the Jedi dropped. 200-65 win. 4-1 for the day, second, the highest MoV and winning some lovely templates that were generously donated by Buy the Same Token.

The result for the weekend was 7-3 over all, but the biggest lessons were the lessons I learned. Qui-Gon’s quote “Your focus determines your reality” felt a very apt title for this post. I learned so much about how I need to approach the game, about the dangers of going on tilt, about how I can fly these ships and what I can’t do with them. Sadly I didn’t learn how to beat a swarm with it.

Yet.

That’s 107 2.0 tournament games done. 73 of them won, 68% win ratio. The T-70s are now played 14, won 11 and with 6 weeks to the first Hyperspace event, hopefully I’ll work out the TIE Swarm conundrum but then!

Next Time: TO THE EAGLES NEST!

If you’re looking for X-Wing events head to the 186th Tournament Calendar.