We all know the story. It’s so familiar that we just accept it. Boy meets girl. She’s dynamic and exciting, a little bit crazy. Who doesn’t love crazy? She makes him feel like a unique snowflake, and he falls for her. He falls hard. She’s high maintenance but to him she’s worth the investment. Over time cracks begin to appear and the deep flaws in each of their characters begin to show through. Thus dawns the slow and painful revelation that this might not work. He doesn’t want to let go because what she represents is greater than what she really is.

I am not of course talking about my checkered love life history (although it does fit alarmingly well) I am talking about X-Wing. It’s a well documented story, well documented in this bloggers posts. Almost since Guns for Hire came out I have had a wild and crazy love affair with Guri, but this weekend some thing became inevitably clear. Love (for the time being) does not conquer all.

After a first round bye and three games at Eclectic Games on Saturday something that has been nagging at me came very much to the fore. Against most 3 ships lists Boba and Guri have the potential to absolutely wreck face. Against 5 or more ships they have it in them to be very effective. But against 4 ships they suck.

Allow me to explain. Three ships lists can get caught out, starting health of the respective list vs Boba and Guri isn’t that different and what they lack in that third ship they make up for in their action economy and mobility. The only three ship lists they struggle against are ones that include Super Vader or Wedge (So pretty much every non scum three ship build then…). The most consistently problematic 3 ship list is one one based on Wedge and Luke (generally with Thane) because you can’t quite kill a ship in a turn without everything going in your favour. Then because of the initiatives represented in the rebel list the trade off inevitably goes badly for the two ships. Unless I can kill Wedge very early on there is almost no way to win this one. Give me Fenn, 4-Lom/Palon and Old Teroch any day of the week! It was my game against Sim Pone at the end of the day at Eclectic on Saturday that confirmed this to the level that I had to pay attenition.

5 ships or more is fine for Boba Guri. Generally speaking they can tear chunks out of these lists. A 5 ships list will have compromises in the build, there will be things that can be exploited: poor action economy, low health, worse guns, low initiative. Stuff that Boba can tank and Guri can avoid. 6 and 7 ship lists just continue this trend. Boba really doesn’t care too much about two dice attacks coming his way, and if Guri gets caught in arc of something normally between the two of them you can just kill it, but 4 ships? 4 ships is a problem.

The issue with 4 ships is that you can build a very effective list out of 4 ships. Good health, good damage consistency, good levels of resilience and that fourth firing arc make a mess of two ship builds. Boba can’t tank all those shots, and whilst Guri can give it a damn good go of dodging all those firing arcs doing so generally comes at the cost of not getting to shoot.

When Boba Guri goes badly there is no forgiveness. Guri doesn’t want to run stressed as it shuts down her greatest strength her unpredictability which means unless she is at range one she’s not getting that focus and at best has a calculate. Boba on his own can’t do enough damage to punch through and wreck a ship with more than five health. Even with his re-rolls and a double focus two X-Wings are going to swing the damage race in their favour in one turn of shooting.

At the moment I don’t think Boba and Guri really cut it, I’ve been suspecting it for a while and I get the feeling that no amount of “fly better” is going to overcome the lists high susceptibility to bad match ups and and variance. Which brings me to the painful place of having to take a bit of break from the list I love the most and trying somethings else.

My opponents on Saturday were all great players, Andy Ballingall, Sketch Drayton and Sim Pone. Sketch and Sim annihilated me, the former with a four ships list and Sim with proton torp X-Wings. Both had Dutch doing that all important target lock action to increase the effectiveness of their munitions. Andy had Han and two HWKs and although I won it became disturbingly apparent just how effective that two dice turret can be at shutting Guri down.

I’m SO emotionally invested in the list that it gets to me when things go badly, and that sucks. I play because I enjoy playing X-Wing and I like hanging out with my friends, I don’t want to feel emotionally drained at the end of a game, I want to be enjoying the company of my fellow pilots. As soon as I saw Sketch and Sim’s list I expected to lose to them, because that’s what has happened in the past. Top tip: If you know that certain types of list are going to beat you and those lists are very popular you’re probably going to lose a fair few games….

So chatting on the drive home with Phil Pond of Firestorm Squadron I came up with something a little bit nonsense and a little bit funny to take to ibuywargames on Sunday. Thanks to Phil not only for the pick-me-up chat, but also for the lending of a a few bits and pieces.

So from one two ship list to another…. surely that brings on the same issues? I hear you cry, and it might, but it might not. I’ve said before that the only rebel ship that really appeals to me at the moment is the E-Wing, because it has the most bonkers dial. It’s probably overpirced, Corran definitely isn’t as good, it’s not all that pretty, but it has the most outrageous dial in the game, and I do like outrageous dials. There aren’t many ships that have the full range of 1-5 straight, let alone every other move on the dial being available to them. Plus there is the perk that I get to write about something different for the first time in ages.

What this list offers that Boba Guri doesn’t is:

the threat of consistent damage from range one to three rather than just range one

the potential to mitigate a lot of incoming fire

a high shield to hull ratio to soak up the incoming fire you don’t mitigate

This isn’t the first time that I’ve tried a twin E-Wing list out. Many moons ago, I think before there was even a blog, I played X-Wing mentor Pete Wood in a pub in Epsom with Corran and E’than, it did not go well. It did not go well at all. But there is potential here to do better than that. Much like the Corran Poe list I ran at the ETC in 2017 this list is pretty focussed on one thing, where that was not getting hit my munitions, this wants to hit with munitions.

With the E-Wing you can run 3 pretty bare ships of two fully kitted up ones, as you can see I have gone for the latter option.

Firstly let’s look at how it defends: Three green dice is better than 2, Elusive should make those key rolls in an opening engage less costly. I’m more than likely to have a focus when getting shot, so three greens a re-roll and a focus seem good. If I’m really worried I can take an evade to at least guarantee one shot doesn’t hit.

To support this I’ve gone for a shield upgrade. I deliberated for some time over stealth device instead especially with that re-roll but to prove worth having the stealth device needs trigger twice, which against fully modded proton torps from Wedge isn’t going to happen, so I have settled on the the shield, it means two things, the half points total on my ships in met after 4 damage not three and, and I can take a proton torpedo with terrible dice and not take the that crit, which seems good.

I had looked at outmanoeuvre as the Talent on them both, which lands the list fully on 200 points, but there are enough attacking mods in the list as it is and a lot of ships will be able to just get out of the way when playing against these. Survival seemed better.

So onto attack. Proton Torps are disgusting. They are SO good now. Fully modded you should expect to hit four out of four with a guaranteed crit. I’ve started with the Fire Control System simply because these ships should always be able to have a target lock on something. With the baked in ability and the R3 Astromech they can each lock and re-roll against one two ships at any given point after turn one. The presence of those locks also means that the Proton Torps are a constant threat, no one is going to risk parking anything with less than 9 health in arc of both of them and even a ship with a lot of health is not going to be happy about getting shot. Hopefully the FCS means that spending a lock is a secondary choice as the average roll on 4 red dice with FCS should mean 4 hits.

With lock, focus and proton torps you can pretty much anticipate three hits and a crit most shots, except this list anticipates two crits thanks to Gavin’s ability, meaning that a normal turn could result in 4 hits and 4 crits being punched into your target. Even a heavily shielded ship like the falcon is not going to be able to handle that, the likes of Fenn Rau simply can’t take the risk of it.

I did look at R4 astromechs to get the dial even more amazing but I think the threat of multi locking your opponents prize ship in turn one is too good to turn down, plus with elusive that hard one give you a really good option for getting the token back.

The plan is pretty simple, move, lock, don’t go fast until you need to, keep the firing arcs big and covering each other, and Alpha strike something scary off the board. With 5 rounds of X-Wing at Ibuywargames on Sunday a (very tired) me is going to give all this theory a go and see just how badly it falls on it’s arse. If it works I could have an expensive day ahead cause I’ll need to invest in a second E-Wing model and a rebel conversion kit for the dials! It looks a lot of fun to fly, but my concern once again is will it be good?

Ibuy always attracts some top players, it is also the home of the newly crowned Coruscant Champion, Tom Forstner. If you want to test a list to the extremes, bring it here or visit the Weekend Warlords for one of their Sunday tournaments. You’ll know by the end of the day if it is worth continuing with.19 players a few Bobas,a few Guris, even another Corran, but it was really good to see the event having a very balanced representation of all three factions.

First game of the Day against Phil Rawles, we ran into each other a couple of weeks ago, Phil was a bit surprised that there was no Guri, and no Boba. His list of Thane, Wedge and Norra would have scared me had I been running the scum, and to be fair, anyone not scared of Wedge and Thane probably doesn’t understand what they do. Wedge had to go first, and a double tap from Corran did just that, then Thane went next. The firepower on offer (when it works) from the two E-Wings is a sight to behold. Norra was left to last and slowly hunted down to give me a 200-47 win. A pleasing start to the day.

The second match up was against Dan Minty with Corran and Luke. We obviously loaded our ships with training Proton Torps because between the two of us all 6 of them on the table did a total of 5 damage, his Corran dropped first leaving the hunt for Super Luke to go on, and on, and on and my word that ship is hard to put down when it moves after you! Eventually even Luke ran out places to hide though and the E-Wings got him. 200-50 win.

In true “this game is really intense” style I forgot to take a picture of my third game against fellow 186th Paul Full-On. For those who do not know Paul he is really good at X-Wing, I genuinely think he is one of the best players I know. Paul was a pretty dedicated Nymanda player in 1 taking it to the top four of UK Nationals, and had some concerns about how he might transition to 2.0. It seems he has found a list that suits him, and every time Kavil threw an inordinate amount of red dice from his Ion Turret Paul would just comment “This ship is bust”. I lost this one 200-0, one of those 50/50 choices which I got wrong and Paul got right, but I didn’t feel the match up was unwinnable, the decision to take the focus and not barrel roll with Corran meant Fenn was able to boost to safety rather than take 8 locked dice. I do the other option, I probably go on to win the game.

So into game 4 against Pete Lake of Firestorm Squadron. This was by far the most frustrating game of the day, not because of my opponent, Pete is lovely, just a fantastic guy. By his own admission Pete didn’t fly this one well, distinctly below his normal standards of play. Gavin and Corran had clearly decided that they didn’t want to take advantage of the situation, so as the final dice were rolled and Corran exploded I was sat at the end of a 200-112 point loss that neither of us understood. But hell, that’s X-Wing sometimes. This game demonstrated the weakness of this list: When those protons refuse to work the early damage output you need to balance the equation where you start with less ships isn’t there.

Chris Morrel of Firestorm Squadron waited for me in game five, to find out which of use would finish with a positive and which of us with a negative. He was, fittingly, running Tom Forstner’s Coruscant winning list for the day, Vader, Soontir and Redline. I think Chris must have been feeling sorry for me after my game against Pete because he uncharacteristically put his Redline in front of 2 Proton Torps. These ones worked, Redline took 7 damage and would go on to blow up on his own Proton Bomb the following round. Soontir took a panicked pilot a couple of turns later, which is essentially a death sentence for him leaving Vader to be hounded by the pair. Like father like son, Luke was bad enough to chase down, but Vader was even harder work. Eventually The table got to small and my patient E-Wings, Heroes of the Rebellion both dropped the Dark Lord of the Sith.

The last match up of the day to finish was Ben Barber, who had Guri left, flying against James Ledda with Vader left. It was a pleasure to watch Ben superbly fly an absolutely battered Guri to a 7 point victory. Totally not biased in that match up of course…

I have not given up on Boba and Guri, not a chance, but it’s been pretty intensive with them the last few weeks and I need to get a fresh look at the game. With changes coming via new ships and upgrades there is a good chance I’ll be going back to them in the future but at the moment I need something else to have some flying and trying to do a win with. Maybe these E-Wings could provide a pleasing distraction.

All of which means my game tracker looks like this:

Games Played % Win Rate +/- Last time 38 66 -4

Not a great weekend for the results, dropping 4% is painful, but so many lessons learned, so many great people spent time with and a new list to try again next weekend. It’s really not all about the winning, thankfully.

Next Time: LET’S TRY THEM AGAIN

If you’re looking for X-Wing events then head to the 186th Tournament Calendar. There’s lots coming up so get booking!