“Two ship lists aren’t going to be viable in second edition.”

“You shouldn’t put too many points in upgrade cards on any ships.”

“Upgrades are a trap.”

You may have heard some of these statements that have been floating around the X-Wing community on various podcasts and forums over the past couple of months. And they are probably mostly correct. Mostly. But not completely.

I’m heading back to St. Louis after attending the Gold Squadron Classic, the first sizeable second edition tournament. The X-Wing world has been looking forward to this tournament for the first indications of what is “good” in this new, improved version of the game we love. I was planning on giving you a somewhat detailed round by round report of my tournament experience, but those plans have changed. As a truncated report, I won all but one game that I played, which was cool. To top that off, I played my final game of the tournament against Tyler Tippet, Hero of the Empire, of the Scum and Villainy podcast and had a blast. All of my games were against wonderful people and were very enjoyable, but the best part of the tournament actually started with a resounding loss from a name I’ve mentioned a few times in this blog, my friend, Matt Cary.

Matt was also a recent guest writer on this blog. To check that out, click here: The Death of a Bounty Hunter – A Lament

Matt, and another friend, Ryan Auer, made the trip up to Chicago with me. Matt and I had settled on flying the exact same list. Two days before the tournament, he tried out a Boba/Guri list, had a blast with it, and decided that he would take it to the Classic. He had been flying Boba after the official launch of Second Edition, and with previous Thweek experience, decided to fly Guri in place of the tugboat swarm he had been flying alongside the Mandalorian Mercenary. The day we left, we met a few other guys at the Fantasy Shop in St. Charles to get in a last minute game or two for practice. I had played a Boba/Guri list for a while, but was never happy with the Boba builds I came up with so I set it aside for a time. The list he was taking was a combination of the Guri build I had been toying around with on the starfield mat and a Boba build that had elements from Phil GC’s blog, Such an X-Wing Hipster, as a core starting point; then Matt had optimized it from there. When he told me about his list, I decided to abandon what I was planning on taking in favor of this crazy two ship list that had nine upgrade cards between the two ships. On the way up to Chicago, we talked through the list a good bit, and ended up making a small change to the Boba build, but the bones of the list remained the same.

The final list ended up looking like this:

(80) Boba Fett

(3) 0-0-0

(3) Marauder

(4) Han Solo

(2) Debris Gambit

(6) Shield Upgrade

(5) Proton Bombs

Points 103



(62) Guri

(8) Afterburners

(6) Outmaneuver

(8) Advanced Sensors

Points 84



Total points: 187

After we traveled the five hours up to Chicago, we got to the event, turned in our registration, and eagerly awaited our first round pairings. Ryan got called fairly early and we wished him luck as he walked away to his first match. Then Matt and I waited as more and more names got called. As they started getting closer to the end without saying our names, Matt joked to me about how horrible it would be if we got paired together, but as time went on we realized it was becoming extremely likely that we would have to play each other the first round. And when our names finally got called, our fears were realized. We were both assigned to the same table. I don’t think either of us have ever been that miserable setting up for a game in the entirety of our X-Wing careers. We’ve gone to many tournaments and ended up having to play each other, but never before was it first round with a mirror match. We both knew that the game was almost certainly going to be decided on a single die, rolled before the game even got started. I lost that roll for the right to control who was first player, and lost the game shortly thereafter. When I was relating a short version of the game to others back home, the phrase I found myself using was that I got “curb stomped”. It was quick and brutal. He told me afterwards that he had never felt so unsatisfied and annoyed about a win. I certainly hadn’t enjoyed the experience either, but that’s life at times.

Left Firespray and StarViper are Matt’s. Mine are on the right.

As an aside to Dion of Gold Squadron, if you catch wind of this blog, the tournament was wonderful. I think everyone had a good time. But… if next year there was a space on the registration sheet for a squadron name so that first round pairings like this wouldn’t happen, that would be awesome. It would certainly cut down on “feels bad” moments like that one.

Matt’s second round pairing was against Ted W. piloting a four ship Imperial list with Deathrain, Echo, Duchess, and Ved Foslo in a Tie Advanced x1. Second round of combat, Guri outmaneuvered Duchess and made her disappear in a puff of smoke. Deathrain’s ordinance failed to do any meaningful work, and Echo and Ved just weren’t slippery enough. It was a resounding win for Matt, just losing half points on Guri. I played Ted immediately after and won, as well. I felt so bad for the guy having to fly against, and lose to, the exact same list twice in a row.

Since Matt forgot to take a picture, here is a picture of my battle against Ted.

His third round was against a Scum player, Joshua S., who was running Guri, Lando in his beautiful Falcon, L3-37 chilling in the escape pod, and two Z-95 Headhunters. The Falcon’s ability to take advantage of an opponent’s ship being stressed by rolling an extra die played a huge part in this game, as much of the list’s action economy comes from Guri’s linked red calculate and Han Solo gunner’s red focus action in the engagement phase. The Headhunters went down quickly due to Matt’s Guri putting in Outmaneuver shots, but in trade, she got down to half points just as fast. As time wound down, Matt was down on points after having lost half points on Boba as well, and he needed to kill either Guri or Lando to secure the win. In the end, just few minutes before time was called, Matt’s damaged list managed to corner Joshua’s Guri and remove her from the table. The lack of advanced sensors on the opposing Guri had made that outcome inevitable; the only question had been whether or not time would run out before it happened.

Battle it out on of one the ugliest space mats.

Another win checked off for Matt, and we were going into the fourth round. We got paired into a new set of pods based on our first three rounds’ record. I won’t go into great detail about Matt’s next three rounds, as all of them were on stream and can be watched on Gold Squadron Podcast’s YouTube channel as soon as Dion can get them uploaded.

The one thing I want to say about those games has to do with the last game. It was against Sam S., one of the Krayts of the “Krayts on top, on top” variety, and Sam’s list was pretty much a hard counter to Matt’s. Lieutenant Sai in the Lambda shuttle with Admiral Sloane riding shotgun, and four initiative one Tie Strikers. Lots of arcs and and some crazy stress control mechanics = not good. So Matt was in the awkward position of not being able to kill the majority of his opponent’s ships for fear of the instant, crippling stress he would receive in return, plus offensive rerolls against Matt’s ships if they were stressed. Any linked calculate or Han gunner would have to be weighed against the free re-rolls for his opponent. As I was setting up for my final game against Tyler Tippet, he and I were chatting about my list, how it was the same as Matt’s, et cetera, and he mentioned that Matt was going to have an extremely rough time against Sam’s list. The overall feeling was that there wasn’t much of a chance.

Our game ended while Matt’s was still ongoing, and at first it seemed like Tyler’s prediction was correct. Guri was off the board at that point, so Boba was facing off against three Strikers that Matt didn’t want to kill and a half health Sai. It looked really bad. But then the Strikers either weren’t getting damage into Boba or they just couldn’t get a shot, and the shuttle was taking damage slowly… there was a chance. A crowd started to gather around the table, eager to see the outcome of this tense game. And then time was called. The very last round of the game, and they got to the last engagement phase of the tournament. Boba took his shot, used all the scummy tricks he could muster, and put a direct hit into Lieutenant Sai, dealing just enough to remove the Shuttle from the board. One Striker took a final shot trying to get the Firespray to half health, but still Boba refused to take damage. Points were tallied, and the verdict came. Matt had won the game, the tournament, and some sweet, sweet Gold Squadron swag.

Not a bad haul. Good job, Gold Squadron.

So Arch Alliance on top, on top, on top? I don’t know about all the “on top”s, but I do know that one of my Arch Alliance brethren climbed over a Krayt to reach the top of the Gold Squadron Classic. And it all started with a single red die thrown for a fifty percent chance ten hours before. The game we love is one of both skill and extreme variance. Either one abandoning you will end in disaster. But as long as your skill doesn’t fail as the hours drag on, and the variance doesn’t swing too hard against you, amazing things are possible.

Between Matt and I, we played a total of twelve games with this list during the tournament. He went 6-0. I went 5-1, my only loss was to the mirror match against the guy I’ve played against the most, who knows my playstyle and all my tricks: Matt. After losing both Boba and Guri in that first round game, I don’t believe I lost another ship for the rest of the tournament, and Matt only lost one ship through the entire tournament. Overall, not a bad showing for these two Arch Alliance scrubs, both with a two ship list that has far too many upgrade cards to be a good second edition list. The odds may have been against us, but never tell us the odds.

So, X-Wing world, as a friend texted shortly after the win:

If you are in the St. Louis area or coming to visit, reach out to Arch Alliance X-wing on Facebook to find out where we are playing on any given night.