A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance play in a local tournament, my first time playing the game in months since classes began in September. At the tournament, I got my first first-hand experience against two variations of the Palpatine’s Aces lists that are doing so well on the tournament scene right now. For those that are unaware, these lists follow a basic structure that look something like this.

29 - Omicron Group Pilot w/ Emperor Palpatine



35 - Soontir Fel w/ Push the Limit + Royal Guard TIE + Stealth Device + Autothrusters



34 - Carnor Jax w/ Push the Limit + Royal Guard TIE + Stealth Device + Autothrusters



There are variations, some run Darth Vader, some run Whisper, my first round opponent downgraded Soontir to a Royal Guard and upgraded to Captain Kagi for some extra synergy and flavor with Carnor Jax, but the key component is Palpatine crew on a Lambda with an Interceptor(s) with PTL, Stealth and Autothrusters. The Palpatine lists are so powerful because their damage mitigation per turn is so incredibly high, able to deflect 6-8 damage per turn with minimal defense rolls. If an Interceptor with focus and evade rolls just 1 natural evade per attack from its 4 defense dice, and triggers at autothrusters at least once, than it will be negating 7 damage against 3 attacks, 3/12 from natural evades, 1 for the focus, 1 for the evade, 1 from autothrusters and 1 from the Emperor. Even more is possible with good defensive rolls. And the strongest damage mitigator in the list, Palpey, is on a ship that you would otherwise never want to attack first. The only way someone playing this list can lose, IMO, is either because their opponent’s list is specifically handicapped to beat them (Vader+Gunner on a Decimator, Ten Numb w/ Mangler, Connor Nets etc.) or if they make a huge mistake by crashing one of their aces onto a rock or into the front of a formation. I truly believe that unless you can prevent the Interceptors from taking actions before you shoot at them, you’re not going to hit them barring some absolutely insane dice rolls on both sides, or just plain bad action management (like taking an evade instead of a focus when you have autothrusters active). That doesn’t mean the list is unbeatable, it just means that victory or defeat pretty much lies in the hands of the Palpatine player unless you are willing to spend points on upgrades that are useless against things like Y-Wings and B-Wings.

I learned a lot from both of my games against these lists, which I will share with you. In particular, I learned a great deal from the huge mistakes I made in the first game that resulted in crushing defeat, and I was able to learn from those mistakes and apply those lessons in the final round against the same type of list and obtain victory against very long odds.

Here is what I learned about how to fight this very powerful list.

Play Conservatively

This was difficult for me, as I am the type of player that likes to be proactive in the early turns and set the terms of engagement to benefit me. I believe that the player that can identify the most important objective first and move to claim it decisively will have the advantage in most games. The problem is that as long as the Interceptors have their armor up and are able to react with their actions, any kind of direct attack on them is going to fail. In my first game, I tried to rush the Interceptor that he deployed separately (which was Carnor) and get into range 1 to throw 3 4-dice attacks with no autothrusters. My attack failed to penetrate Carnor’s defenses, and Poe took 5 damage in return, dying next turn.

Basically, you need to bide your time until either your opponent makes a mistake or the opportunity arises to force your opponent to make a mistake. In my second game against this list (4th round), I realized that an aggressive frontal assault was going to get me killed again, and decided to try a slow approach, inching forward, just keeping my distance to my target, Soontir who had been deployed separated from his other 2 ships, so as to keep him on the defensive, to keep him from being able to punish an overly aggressive maneuver with a side-step. He was forced to turn away from me and dance out of range while his other ships were trying to rejoin the fight, but I kept pushing methodically, measured you towards Soontir, waiting for him to make a mistake, making sure that my guns and a blocker was there pointed at him if he ever decided to get clever and turn back into the fight thinking that I might turn away from him to protect my flank.

My reconstruction of the fated turn in the top right corner of the map. Poe moves first, then Carnor, then Han. This opportunity only arose because I was patient and stayed ready.

Finally when the fight had progressed to his deployment corner where Soontir had originally deployed, Carnor became too hasty to join the fight and flew too close to a debris that was near the corner, such that it was right in front of him to his right, and the only way to avoid hitting it was to hard turn to the left away from my ships and towards his own deployment edge. I saw this as my chance, and Poe who was on the other side of said debris on Carnors right pulled a wide sharp turn, placing himself as a second obstacle to Carnor’s left. My opponent predicted this move and banked left instead of hard turning, but this put his template just across the edge of the debris, crippling him and even giving him a Damaged Engine. This also put him right into Han’s arc at range 1 after he did a sharp turn to the left. I then rolled 3 hits and Carnor rolled 0/4 evades, just barely enough to finish off Carnor. If he hadn’t taken that unlucky crit from the debris, or if Han hadn’t been in the right place to have a range 1 in-arc shot, Palpatine would have been able to save him from death there, and I’m not sure if I would have been able to finish him off. Later in the game, Soontir was able to get right onto Poe’s tail, but again made a mistake, not realizing that an Interceptor cannot chase an X-Wing’s 6 o’clock without being forced to overshoot by the X-Wing’s 1-straight. Instead of breaking off the chase, he bumped right into Poe’s rear engines and Han came up right behind and removed Soontir’s stealth device, and then Han and Poe were both able to finish him off after a k-turn.

When I saw what I was up against, I honestly didn’t think I had a chance of defeating this kind of list with mine, and I found out after the match that my opponent had the same opinion of the match-up. It was only by playing extra defensively and giving my opponent enough time to start making mistakes in their attempts to break my defenses and positioning that I was able to win this game. I had some luck to help push it into my favor, but luck only comes to those that put themselves in the position to roll the dice, which against these types of lists must come from patience, steadfastness and uncanny timing.

Get Them to Split Up

Find a way to isolate one of the Interceptors from the rest of the ships first. As long as they are separated, you can attack one of them without having to worry about getting hit by the other one. This is a great tactic in any X-Wing battle, but it’s especially important here, as you need time to establish a good position and let the interceptors dance themselves into a bad one, and the Interceptors operate best when they can simultaneously evade you on one flank while attacking you on the other.

In my 4th round, I used a refused flank deployment maneuver, aka a redeployment, to keep my opponent’s forces split, so that I could have enough time to harrass one of his ships, as well as forcing him to rush with his other ships to get them into the fight, making it easier for him to make a mistake in his haste to unite his forces against me. He deployed the lambda in the top left corner, so I deployed Poe in the bottom left, wanting to keep him far away from the fighting to take advantage of his upgrades. My opponent deployed Carnor next to the Lambda, so I deployed Han across from them, and Soontir came down across from Poe.

Using a Refused Flank maneuver allows me to isolate Soontir from the rest of his squad for several turns, forcing Soontir to play defense and my opponent to make awkward maneuvers and fly through obstacles to reunite his ships. I placed obstacles and Poe such that he could adjust his trajectory towards the middle without hitting the debris if Soontir was to execute a refused flank against me.

The set up greatly benefited my opponent if we just flew straight at each other, so I used that to my advantage. While Carnor and Lambda flew straight at Han and next to their corner asteroid, Han did a hard turn and boost towards the right flank and Soontir, who also rushed forward for the same reason as Carnor. Carnors 2 straight was confident enough to send him in the wrong direction, but cautious enough to make it difficult to adjust and catch up to Han. Meanwhile Poes 1 straight meant I could either commit to the right flank or have enough room to adjust towards it middle of Soontir also went for a refused flank. Because of the difficulty of maneuvering a lambda and interceptor through an asteroid fields effectively, I had about 4 turns to slowly, patiently chase Soontir up the right flank with little interference from the other 2 ships, 4 turns where I was dictating my opponents movements, making them react to me, making them take risky moves to regain control of the fight. If technique fails and you can’t separate the aces, then my next plan would be to force one of the aces to retreat temporarily by threatening it with a feint, which should draw their lambda forward, and get behind the Lambda so it’s not a threat, and keep using feints to scare off the interceptors until they either make a fatal mistake or you can catch them calling your bluff by committing to the second or third attack instead of just feinting (hope that all makes some kind of sense). Those two tips are the most important things I learned from this tournament, but here are a few smaller tips that I learned to support those things.

Deploy Obstacles Strategically at the Edges

Deploy rocks halfway between deployment zones, near the edges. This is where flanking interceptors like to turn in from the edge after speeding towards your deployment zone, and most likely aces players will place their rocks along their own edge, making a nice field on their side of the board that will make it more difficult to adjust to a sudden redeployment. Then put a rock in the corner near their deployment zone that they have not already placed one in.

Most interceptor players will place obstacles near their deployment zone early on, allowing you to keep your side of the board clear and giving you more space to pull big redeployment maneuvers.

Maximize your Damage per Turn

While you’re goal is to keep guns on interceptors at all times to be ready when they screw up, if the choice of targets that turn is between an armored up interceptor and the shuttle, shoot the shuttle. Damage on the shuttle will stick, but damage negated by a token doesn’t and there will be turns where Palpatine becomes an opportune target without having to go out of your way, and you’ll be unhappy with yourself when Palpatine survives with 1-2 HP and flies away to be a nuisance the rest of the game.



Hopefully this helps those of you a bit that are struggling against this list. Keep in mind that these insights come from just 2 games against the list, and my second opponent was less experienced than my first, who was also fresh in the first compared to my 4th round opponent who had never played in a tournament before (but was still quite good and only made the narrowest of errors) but with such drastically different results between the first game and the second after applying these lessons, I can’t help but think I am on to something here. Let me know your thoughts on fighting this list with your Comments and reblogs of course.

And for those of you that really like this blog but can’t stand the wait in between articles while I finish up the school term (only 2 more weeks!) and are looking for more of these kind of generalized strategy articles, I highly recommend checking out Redbeard’s 40k Guide. It’s geared towards 40k, but almost everything in it is strategic thinking that an be applied to X-Wing as well thanks to the few similarities between the games, and this book fundamentally shaped how I approach tactical miniatures wargames. It’s a light read, but it’s packed with strategic insights into how to win wargames like X-Wing.

http://kallend.net/40k/guide/

