Back to France, after the fantastic System Open earlier this year when tickets came up for this one there was no hesitation. I’m joined by some great friends for the trip, Alex Birt, Ben Lee, Paul Full-On and Cormac Higgins from the 186th and Conor McNama (life long mate). It’s a real celebration for me because not only is it my first X-Wing Nats of 2.0 but it is also my 40th Birthday on the Friday of the weekend so what could be a better way of celebrating that milestone than that? I mean spending the weekend with good friends, playing the game I love the most with the ships I love the most and eating steak.

Oh yes the steak. Cormac and I are the only two survivors of the UK crew from the System Open. We joked during the week that we would probably have come to Paris for the weekend just to visit the steak restaurant again, but justifying that as the main event is a little trickier than a great bonus for the trip. We went there three nights in a row, ate the same thing three nights in a row. Cormac and I were worried we had over emphasised how glorious the food was and the others would be disappointed. They were not.

It almost didn’t happen at all though, when packing on Wednesday night my passport was not where it should have been… frantic searching anywhere and everywhere proved fruitless and as time was running out to find it I gave up hope and resigned myself to celebrating my birthday alone with Warhammer Total War (why did they not call it Total Warhammer?) only to find it the passport at the very last minute. It was a somewhat traumatic day.

But anyway, away from the revelry of friends, food and travel there is actually some X-Wing going on too. After my success at Nerfherder a couple of weeks ago I have to fly Boba Guri again. Making the top 8 out of 132 was pretty immense and if I can match that my swiss score again then the top 32 in France is totally a possibility. The prize on the table here though is a worlds ticket for the top two players, needless to say, I would very much like to be making that trip in 2019.

With 160 tickets sold out of a possible 170 French Nats was not a small event, there were some really good players around and while the six of us knew that we could have a chance of doing pretty well you just never know. The format was a hybrid of the system open “must go 2-1 to keep playing after 3 rounds” and a standard top 32 cut. Bizarre because a lot of players on 4-2 would be eligible to make the cut in a field this size, so going 2-1 down shouldn’t have prohibited people from playing, but it is what it is.

Walking into the event I was met by a joyful chap named Francois Couret, who kindly gave me a Boba system open one bank and one forward, wishing me luck with Boba Guri for the weekend. Talk about a warm welcome!

As I sit down to write this article a couple of days after the event (travel and exhaustion stopped that happening sooner) it’s all a bit of a blur what happened, but I shall endevour to recollect as best I can.

My opening game was against Guillame Bertaux and I was relieved to see 5 rebel ships on the other side of the table, all fixed arcs, all lower initiative than me. In my head there has long been three things that you need in a tournament to do well:

You need to fly well. You need a few lucky dice swings here and there You need to get the right match ups

This game for me was a great place to start with all three. Boba and Guri were able to bait and switch in the engages, taking it in turns to put damage into Guillames rebels, Boba one shotting his Arvel in the opening engagement was the beginning of the end and it wasn’t long until the game was over. Starting the event with a 200-0 win was a relief, you never know when that MoV is going to help.

My second game was not such a good draw of ships. Many of you will no doubt remember a certain list called Four Ship Rebels. If you don’t imagine hitting your opponent 8 times in a turn and doing one damage to the ship you’ve been shooting. Franz Ernest has quite ingeniously modded the archetype to a 2.0 format. Biggs, Kyle with Jan Crew, Zeb in an attack shuttle and Lowhhrick is a beast to kill with two ships, and I basically didn’t. With all of his ships hurting but only one of them dead Franz won this one, I just couldn’t split his formation up enough, he won 200-93, I just couldn’t break him down.

So that puts the pressure on right? I mean, travelled a long way, want to play X-Wing. Have to win game three to keep playing… no worries right? My next opponent Ander Lopez Perea from Spain was already on 2 wins… great, paired up and having to win, that’s exactly where I wanted to be.

Ander was running one of the current flavours of the month, Whisper, Redline and Deathrain. I think this one is probably 60-40 in favour of Boba Guri, I move second, have incredible repositioning and ships that can move fast enough to stop the proton torps hammering home. I’ve had a lot of practice against this list too, so felt good going into it. Sure enough it went according to plan, 200-45 about 30 minutes later and I had made stage 2 of the event, topping the 2-1 pool.

With everything to play for it came to round 4, Armand Muro, who had represented team France at the European Team Championships, with L3-37, Boba, 4-Lom (or was it Palob, it’s a blur) and a Quad (it might have been two you know, I can’t remember!) what I remember of this game was how excruciatingly close it was, by far the hardest win of the event. I scrapped it 200-140 with Boba running from a Quad trying to keep at range three to preserve my remaining 2 hull points.

Game five saw me pair into a friend. Last time we were here Mourjan Senglat had looked after the UK crew, coming to dinner with us, hanging out and just being such a wonderful host. With both of us on 3-1 it was horrible knowing that who ever won would make potentially qualifying for the cut that little bit harder. Boba, 2 Quads and Palob is a great list at the moment. It’s really solid and creates a lot of problems for most lists. I look at it as a 55-45 in my favour, only because Guri can get out of the enemy Boba’s firing arcs. He got half of each my ships but that still left me with a 200-93 win, and the minumum 4 wins to look at making the cut were in the bag.

The final game of the day was against Yves-Marie Vincent. Two punishers again, this time with Darth Vader. I simply haven’t had the table time to learn how to handle Vader yet, and my two ships certainly cannot handle that level of consistency of crits raining in on them. I got his Redline, but that was it. The one shot I got on Vader that could have done something was met by natural evades. I was so on the back foot at that point of the game that I would have taken that bit of luck with glee, unfortunately he went on to hammer me 200-56 and I would have to wait on tenterhooks to see if my MoV was still strong enough to carry me through to the cut. Knowing I was losing his one the right thing to do would have been to hammer Deathrain as hard as possible in the hopes of getting a few extra points of MoV. Tournament plan vs match play is something I am learning about a lot at the moment.

I was joined in the wait by Paul and Alex. Cormac was already on 5-1 and safe, and unfortunately Ben and Conor went out at the first cut. When the postings went up with the top 32 we all breathed a sigh of relief, I was 28th, Alex 29th and Paul was 31st! 4 out of 6 of us had made the cut! JUST, but we were there. Off for a steak to celebrate, and get a good night sleep.

My cut opponent is a bit of a legend, Francois Couret is a top player. Let me explain. I have been to over 50 tournaments this year, I’ve done ok. Francois has been to three. Got knocked out at the top 16 stage in a regional, losing to Steve Cossec. He came second at the French Open and went to Coruscant. This was his 4th tournament of the year and he came 5th in Swiss. That’s a ridiculous record. He is aslo the man who generously gave me some Boba templates at the start of the day

He was running Whisper, Redline and Deathrain. A list that you’ll no doubt recall I was quite glad to see. The oppening turn was cagey, then Francois began to show just why he has such an incredible record as a player. Boba was blocked to death in 4 turns through brilliant flying by the Frenchman, I was on the ropes and I knew it. I had to try and get rid of a ship before Boba died. I did not.

Then she stepped up, my favourite ship with a point to prove, and Francois saw it coming. First she tore whisper to pieces, then she got Deathrain, the problem though was that Redline reloaded a torp while she did. Cue 30 minutes of advanced sensors inspired nonsense as both ships danced away from each other, Guri getting the upperhand in the damage race and points.

Three minutes to go and it was mine to lose, but then Francois made it his to win. In his own words he had to do something extreme to get Guri, and I just didn’t see it coming. He pulled a boost K-Turn into the corner of the board, about the only move available to him that I couldn’t do anything about. Even with the plethora of pre-positions available to me Guri couldn’t get out of the arc. The only moves I could have done to counter it were so irrational that I would have been mad to dial them in. The three crits from the torp followed by the 4 focuses from my evade dice didn’t matter at that point. Had I rolled perfect evades I would have gone on to win the game, but there was not denying that move won him the game and more importantly proved that he deserved to win the game.

Francois I hope we get to play again, that was one of the best experiences X-Wing has ever provided me with. Francois would go on to win the French National Championship. Not bad for only his 4th tournament of 2018 huh?

Unfortunately for “Team UK” Cormac and Alex also dropped in that round. Paul would go on to make it to the top 8. While the others went on to play Keyforge and have some beers I joined Ben in the side event. 100 players all wanting to go 5-0 with the prize on offer being a bye at a Hyperspace trial at stake. After being disappointed with his day one showing the European Champ was not in the mood for taking prisoners and was flying Whisper, Redline and Deathrain like an absolute champ.

Having won some shiny focus and evade tokens for hitting the top 32 I threw debris gambit on Guri just to have an excuse to use both of them. So up to a tiny 13 point bid…

Having been in the cut I had a first round bye in the side event, so 4 wins in a row would be “all I needed” for the prize. After a long Saturday and the unbelievable top 32 two match you can probably understand I wasn’t feeling at my freshest or most focused!

My first opponent was Romain Gutter, who was running the list Dan Slb was running when he knocked me out of Nerfherder a couple of weeks ago. Right. That’s just what I wanted to see. Fortunately I have looked at that game a lot, you can read my thoughts on it in great depth in the last post, and I have thought about the match up a lot. It went as well as I could have hoped, I lost Boba, but the end game of 4-lom vs Guri should only ever go one way, and I was able to get the 200-90 win. It was Romain’s only loss in the side event, he would finish 10th out of the 100 players.

Next up Hirou Frederic. This man is amazing, we met at the French Open in the Hyperspace and he was running Ghost Fenn. Neither of us could go undefeated and I was ready to concede the game because I just couldn’t face flying against that nonsense again. So he said “no problem” and pulled out Rey Low instead, and went on to utterly destroy me with it. Here he was flying something much more light hearted and fun, but a player of his calibre with Hera in a Ghost, Sabine in the Attack shuttle, AP-5 and Zeb in a Tie Fighter is still a serious amount of guns. We both expected me to win this one though, and it didn’t take long my two ships to drop his. I lost half of Boba, so a 200-45 win, but so much fun and laughter made the game really special.

Suddenly 3-0 and thinking, maybe I should get a bit more serious here… I could go 5-0. Ben was powering through, and between rounds we kept hoping that we wouldn’t play each other. I love playing him, but I didn’t come all the way to Paris to play a squad mate and have one of us miss out on the 5-0 because of the other.

Into round 4, and it wasn’t Ben! Phew. That was a relief. Instead it was Steve Cossec. A man with more regional templates than me (2 sets) more regional dice than me (2 sets) and more ships than me. 5 more. And he had come 23rd on day. Better than playing Ben? Errrrr…..

Two ship build vs a Drea Swarm with 3 Quadjumpers, 2 Z-95s, L3-37 and the eponymous Y-Wing. This is not a good match up for me. But I worked out I could win it from the deployment. Everything about his set up gave me the feeling that he was going to go after Boba, so Boba took a detour. It bought Guri time to drop a Quadjumper then both my ships were in among his and the damage cards began to cascade. I got the list to critical mass, basically when I know I have it in my favour (down to four ships) and we knew where this was going.

The highlight of this game was one of the highlights of the weekend. Steve, with just L3 left picked up his dice for an un-modded range one shot on Boba. Steve shouted “THREE CRITS!”, rattled his dice hard, looked at them and said “THREE CRITS!” then rolled them again with a final “THREE CRITS!” and rolled 3 Crits! It was almost disappointing when Boba rolled two evades and lost a shield. It felt like the comedy, enthusiasm and luck deserved better than that. Steve was suffering from Swarm Fatigue, and freely admitted that his brain was a bit melted having now been flying a swarm for 9 games.

4-0 (with a bye). One away from a 5-0 (with a bye) and my opponent puts down Wedge, Thane, Biggs and a Red Squadron veteran, with two copies of Selfless in the list. Gaelle Germaine in her first big tournament had gone 4-0 with a damage mitigation list that throws a huge amount of red dice. Boba was going to die, and die fast, it was just a question of what he could do before he did. My game plan was simple. Wedge for Boba and Guri could have a chance. Did not trade Wedge for Boba, in fact I did not trade Boba for anyone. I put a fair bit of damage out, when I say that what I mean is that I took two shields of Wedge, two of Thane and two of Biggs. Not a great trade. Four firing arcs, 4 three dice guns. One ship moving after me, and one Guri to take on some of the Rebellions finest.

I can’t really recall a time I have flown Guri so precisely, she did for Biggs, then got rid of Wedge, then got rid of Thane before turning on the Red Squadron, all without losing a shield. I don’t know if I could ever repeat that performance, but it made me love Guri more than I ever have before. Gaelle flew really well, and had I made a single wrong move with Guri it would likely have been game over very quickly. My advantage came from having flown against T-65s a lot, and she had not flown against Guri before. It’s one thing to understand what Guri can do in theory, but it’s entirely different to face it for the first time on the table. Gaelle came 6th, top of the 4-1s which by anyone’s standard is a fantastic achievement at their first big event.

So, 5-0, not only that but I had dodge Ben all day, who had also gone 5-0. Of the hundred players in the side event Ben came second and I came third. We were both quite happy about that. Steak to celebrate? Yeah why not.

Two major events in two weeks, 130+ at Nerfherder, 160+ at French Nationals. I managed to make the cut at both. Losing to the winner of the event at both, with a list that a few weeks ago I had all but given up on. I mean, that feels really good.

I thought about the 67%, and how months ago I had set myself the challenge of trying to consistently maintain that standard, to improve as a player, to consider my play more, reflect and ultimately “fly better”. 67% at Nerf and French Nats got me to the cut, the next challenge is getting to the cut and going 100%.

Swiss % Cut % 63 33

It’s meant that I’ve had to revamp my tracker. 67% is about putting yourself in the place to have a chance of making cuts, it’s a swiss target, so I’ve added columns to my extensive spreadsheet to track cut performances. 67% minimum to get there. 100% when you’re there, it can’t be THAT hard can it? Oh wait, everyone else is basically aiming for that too…

With the Resistance and First order due to land in a few days time things are going to change in the game a lot, but we’ll talk about Poe, Kylo and co more when they get here. Until then next Sunday it’s a trip to Warboar for an Extended event, let’s see how that one goes.

Next Time: A FINAL BENDY ROLL?

If you’re looking for tournaments to play in head to the 186th Tournament Calendar.