Life has a funny way of screwing with plans. I thought I was done with X-Wing for a while, then…

So, prior plans on hold for the immediate future, I instead get to play in another X-Wing event or 2 that I was otherwise going to miss. Jim at Dragon’s Hoard, right after the Han Solo Classic a few months ago, put up a poll asking what the next classic should be themed after, and my suggestion of Poe Dameron was selected. Since the event was extended, I naturally had to play…

Yep, screw Resistance. I packed 3 lists for the event (Republic, Resistance, and Imperial,) and ended up taking my Imperial list. I was somewhat fearful of the 4 Sigma Phantoms list, and all the stuff I had for Resistance would have just melted to that. I also didn’t trust Republic against the CIS Swarms I knew would exist just from the local meta. I wanted Fel on the table to help counter these threats, but his usual wing-man of Rexler Brath meant I couldn’t fit enough else in the list to help absorb damage and provide firing arcs.

Instead, I looked to go a little wider. I have been saying for literal months that I wanted to get Whisper on the table, and what better opportunity than now? Looking to keep with the high initiative, I added a little beef in the form of Maarek Stele, then filled out the points with Mauler Mithel. Everyone gets their single upgrade of choice, and I locked in my list.

The basic goal is to keep Mauler and Maarek together to, using Fel and Whisper to flank as required. I ended up not really holding to that at all, but it was the plan. Each ship can fire 4 dice in Range 1, and each has their key upgrade to enhance their abilities. The only questionable one is Mauler’s Crack Shot, but I figured that with his desire to hit Range 1, he’d have bullseye fairly often.

Even the mat is one of the prizes!

The prize table was even more nuts than last year. All the pilot cards and baggies of tokens were “bounties”. After a win, the winner could just go grab whichever one they wanted. At the end of the event, starting with the lowest ranked player, everyone got to go up and pick one for every game they lost. That meant that everyone walked away with 4 alt art cards or new tokens. The bigger things were raffles, with the Poe bust and Rey Statue for 1st and 2nd place. Finally, the Biggs Darklighter Award made its return, for the last-place player who didn’t drop. 18 players registered, and 18 players arrived, so Jim went with 4 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 4 for the finale.

Of the lists, there were several Rebel lists of varying flavors, but each included Leia. There were 3 or 4 CIS lists, each consisting of several Vultures and either an Infiltrator or a Belbullab. There were several Imperial lists, all but 1 featuring Soontir Fel and Whisper. The one that didn’t was a 3 Onyx Scout Aggressors and 2 Nu Sqadron Star Wings (Unfortunately, he dropped 0-2 after round 2.) Finally, there were 2 flavors of Republic lists: 1 AATTT swarm, and several Anakin/Mace/Something (or nothing) lists. The single Scum list was a Emon/Sol/L3 bomber squad. Conspicuous by their absence were the entire factions of Resistance and First Order: Not a single list from the new era existed.

Game 1: Kyle Smith

After our game last week, Kyle and I built a version of his list that includes Norra Wexley, and swapping Magva for Cassian. Kyle flew something toward the middle of that change, replacing Magva but keeping the dual B-Wings instead of swapping Braylen for Norra. I tried to play this cagily, engaging Wedge before the rest of his squad could come in.

The plan worked for the most part, except that I forgot to Decloak Whisper, so she’s considerably further forward than I would have liked. (This will become a theme throughout the day. Most of my lists don’t have 4 pilot abilities, 4 talents, and 3 ship abilities, and I forgot to trigger most of them at least once.) Wedge went down to 2 hull in exchange for 1 hull on Mauler.

The second round, I imagine Wedge would go slow to finish off Mauler, but instead, he K-turned. I went all-in on Ten Numb this round, and the B-Wing evaporated… to just Mauler and Whisper. Maarek took a shield off Braylen, Wedge missed Fel, and Fell had no shot. This was just the first turn of Cassian proving to be a problem for Whisper, as I bump 3 consecutive times trying to get away from the medium-based nightmare. Mauler doesn’t last long, as Wedge removed him with prejudice, but Kyle’s ships are also taking a pounding.

This round is huge for me, as Fel dodges yet another Wedge shot, Whisper finally kills Braylen, and Maarek takes down Cassian. Its down to just Wedge on 2 hull against 3 nearly full ships. The next round, Wedge obliterates Maarek with a Range 1 kill-shot, but Fel and Whisper put him down for the 200-81 win.

Game 2: Eric Blue

Eric is know locally (and in this blog, from the Han Solo Classic and an earlier practice night,) as an expert with Whisper. Not only was I playing with his preferred toys, but he had a theoretically un-blockable ace with a higher Initiative bid than I had. This was likely going to be tough. I planned to set a wide net and try to chase his ships into a corner, and 4 rounds later, that’s what I did.

Whisper got a lucky shot off and downed the Jedi’s shields, with Mauler taking a single hit in exchange. Whisper peeled off to engage Mace, while Fel and Mauler hard-turned to chase Ani, and Maarek K-Turned to retain his shot. Anakin ditched everyone’s arcs, so Mace suffered the wrath and lost 2 of his shields instead, for another hit on Mauler.

Eric thought he’d be able to boost past that scrap token, but the template just barely didn’t fit, so Anakin dies here without a return shot. Mace comes in to joust, but my entire list turns on him, and I end the game 200-17. The dice, I feel, deserve a special mention here, as I rolled probably 1 blank on 18-24 attack die, and Eric didn’t seem to roll any evades. That said, my trap went well, and Anakin’s 2 evade dice couldn’t protect him from so many shots.

Game 3: Rob Cardwell

Another BB?U Leia list, flown by another player who’s been flying little else since Leia’s points dropped. Luckily, Han has been dropped in favor of doubling Rob’s ships, adding Braylen and a second U-Wing to his list from last week (that I didn’t get to face.) I approached this one in a block formation instead of in a line, intending to just use my superior initiative values to try to erase a ship right away again.

Leia turned away in the opening round, to muck up the engagement lane with the first debris drop. Mauler is out of range, but Fel and Whisper trade shots with Braylen and Maarek takes a shield or two off Leia’s U-Wing. I don’t really have a good place for Maarek to go, so I settle for landing on the scrap there in order to get all arcs focused on a single target.

This round, all my ships fire into the B-Wings, destroying Ten Numb before he can even fire a shot, and taking another shield off Braylen. Mauler suffers as before, but doesn’t go down. He breaks off to engage Leia’s U-Wing as the other one comes in from the corner, and Braylen books it out of the area – but not out of Whisper’s arc. She drops some hut on him as Fel takes his first hit of the night, the Stunned Pilot crit – stating that if he overlaps an obstacle, he takes a damage, which I (stupidly) say will never happen.

Fel started this turn behind where the top U-Wing currently is. As you can see, there’s now an obstacle where he was sitting – he didn’t roll a crit when it landed on him, but he did moving off of it, and that combined with the earlier crit meant Fel was dead. Angered by his loss, the rest of my team unloaded into the newly arriving U-Wing, finishing it off before Braylen could come back into the fight. I do a little more dancing, but time is called before I can take down anything else, but Braylen finishes Mauler after the buzzer. I’m pretty nervous as we start counting points… All of Mauler, all of Soontir, and half of Whisper is 117 for Rob. Half of Braylen, the full Leia U-Wing alive, and the other two ships dead gives me 124. What a narrow win that was!

Game 4: Elijah Derryberry

I certainly seem to see a pattern here… Another Anakin/Mace list, this time with the power of The Senate to back them up. Elijah sets up very differently than Eric, and since his ships don’t have Supernatural, I’m not as worried about setting as wide a net as before. Anakin rushes into engagement range, and he and Whisper trade shots early to my benefit. The second round, Fel rushes in while the other 2 TIEs are off uselessly flanking and chasing Mace, and I get a lovely shot at the Chosen One.

Anakin downs Fel, but the simultaneous fire and Whisper’s follow-up shot take down Skywalker as well, giving me a pretty good points lead. I then spend a couple turns taking shots of opportunity at Elijah’s ships, while he systematically picks apart my squad – Whisper is halved, then Maarek, then Mauler. In the meantime, I’ve taken down Mace’s shields and dropped him to 2 hull, and gotten the ARC pretty low as well.

This round spells the end of the ARC, but Maarek also dies this round. Whisper is forced to dis-engage, so Mace then destroys Mauler and prepares for a final joust. Whisper is down to 2 hull, as is Mace. We end up face to face with full mods on both sides, and I have initiative. Whisper does the damage needed to put Mace down, giving me another close game, 200-165. We rolled the attack afterward, and if Whisper hadn’t killed Mace, Mace WOULD have killed Whisper, so that one came down to a single attack at the end.

I made Top 4, with the highest score in swiss (1144 MOV.) I wasn’t the only un-defeated player, as Elijah had been paired up with me. The other 2 round 3 un-defeated players both made it in, Jeremy Wilson having also gone 4-0 with Fel, Lt. Sai, and 2 other shuttles, one of which had Krennic and Tarkin on it. Travis (3-1, loss to Jeremy Wilson) was flying the dreaded Sear and 6x Vulture swarm and took 4th, and my 3rd round opponent took 3rd at 3-1, also making the cut.

Top 4: Travis Wooldridge

I thought I had a plan, but I really had no good way to engage this list. The Turn 0 placement of rocks and clouds didn’t leave me a good way to approach his corner, and I wasn’t about to just straight joust this list. I ended up taking the opposite corner and approaching through the middle of the field. If I had delayed my engagement 1 more turn, I might have had a better chance.

Of note, this is MY left-hand corner we’re engaging in. Travis’ droids are facing my right-hand corner, and my ships are coming from the middle after having banked from one corner to the other, not going straight. Fel whiffs his shot on the front droid, forcing Mauler to follow up Maarek and secure that kill. As such, Whisper shoots and doesn’t kill a second droid. In exchange, Mauler AND Maarek die.

At this point, both Travis and I have 2 options. Travis can either 2-straight and engage Whisper, or turn and engage Fel. I can either go fast with Fel to escape arcs no matter what, and rapidly engage with Whisper, or I can hold Whisper back and bring Fel down to engage, based on where I think Travis is going to go. I choose to believe Travis is going to gun for Whisper, so I slow-roll her and bring Fel down…

Well, crap. Fel and Whisper down another droid, but Fel evaporates this turn. Whisper fights on for another 2 turns, but she doesn’t manage to kill anything else, and the game ends with 2.5 dead droids and a wiped Imperial squadron, 60-200.

This event brings me to a total W/L of 37-14, for a 72.5% winrate. All told, I’m performing well, but still need to see more consistent results to guarantee a good showing at the System Opens in Seattle and Indianapolis that I should be attending this year.

It’s worth noting that Whisper was the absolute last ship to die in the event for me, and she didn’t go down in any of the first 4 games. She is, in fact, the only ship that didn’t. I wish I had tried her sooner, as she is absolutely insane, and will become a cornerstone of my Imperial Extended lists. In fact, as of right now, Fel with Predator, Whisper with Juke, and Rexler with Juke is EXACTLY 200 points… Hm…

Rob won his Top 4 game against Jeremy, for the record, and went on to lose to Travis in the final. CIS droid swarms are becomming just as prevalent as I feared they would. The fact that a completely Hyperspace legal list took down an extended event simply solidifies the fact that they are here to stay, and has me re-thinking my decision not to buy into the faction. Their 3-dice alpha from 6-7 ships is simply terrifying, and their maneuverability makes up for a lack of a punch to their second round of combat.

As usual for Jim’s events, the top table was filmed all day, and my round 2 and top 4 matches were played there. The videos aren’t up as of the time of posting this article, but I’ll go back and link them in the game titles as usual once they are. I’m positive that this will not be the last “Named Character” Classic that Jim and Dragon’s Hoard put on, pay attention to the Kitsap Star Wars Facebook page to attend the next one. Finally, make sure you let me know what you thought of the list, and if there was anything you would have done differently!

Next time: More Interceptors, maybe!