Given the current state of the world, everyone is staying inside, tending to (or being forced to) avoid large gatherings, and generally staying safe at home. This is obviously bad for the X-Wing competitive scene, and as such, many community leaders have started playing games online, using the Vassal Engine or TableTop Simulator. Two such groups are the Fly Better podcast and the Gold Squadron Podcast, who are putting on the Jank Tank Open.

This is a tournament that’s being jointly hosted by the above podcasts. Players will receive 2 lists that have been randomly generated by the Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0 randomizer function. They will choose one squad, and may remove a single upgrade, and/or add another single upgrade, keeping the point cost at 200 or below. Initiative bids do not matter – Initiative will be randomly assigned at the start of each game without regard to squad costs. Games are also not timed; instead, each game will last for 12 game rounds, with the most points destroyed at the end being declared the winner.

Each pairing will be posted on the TableTop.TO page for the event, and players will have about a week to complete each match. Players are playing for a little bit of swag, but the real deal here is the incredible monetary donation that will go to the charity of the winner’s choice. There are over 450 participants currently signed up, so this looks to be MASSIVE!

Players were allowed to choose one faction that one of their squads would be guaranteed to be from, and the other faction was also chosen at random. Given the smaller pool of ships available, I thought about picking the First Order or the Republic as my faction, but decided to rely on my familiarity with most Imperial ships and chose the Empire. The slim possibility of flying Soontir in this event is what really drove me toward the choice, but there was another reason – the randomizer tends to spit out 3-5 ship lists, and I would love to take a Decimator against that sort of deal.

I should have picked First Order…

Option 1



Well, I got part of what I wanted – I got a Decimator. Rather than any of the good pilots, however, I get the Initiative 2 Patrol Leader. He’s decked out most of the way like I would want, with Death Troopers and Dauntless, but is carrying 26 points of garbage along with him. Some of it (the torpedoes, the charges, maybe even the gunner,) might come in handy, but the Discharge Vanes could not have landed on a worse ship for this list.

Accompanying them is a Bomber – I have LOTS of experience with these! – and an Alpha-class Star Wing. I have maybe put that ship on the table 3 times since it came out in First Edition, so I had a bit of a learning curve. Naturally, the gunboat has the wrong configuration for its given upgrades, the worst possible missile choice, and to top it all off, the bomber is covered in junk. Needless to say, this squad was ROUGH.

I ran it through a couple of games of Fly Casual against the AI, and got thoroughly stomped each time. Looking at the list, I saw a massive lack of damage output. Dropping the Agile Gunner from the bomber was the obvious choice, as it was the only upgrade that stood absolutely no chance of being useful, and it left me with 10 points to play with. Since the gunboat had the wrong configuration for missiles and torpedoes, I looked at the available cannons and saw… absolutely nothing that looked like it would help. I played around in Fly Casual a bit more and ended up deciding on Autoblasters.

Option 1 Modified



This failed me again and again, and though the Nu Squadron tried all he could, he couldn’t make up the damage defect that the rest of the squad displayed. I couldn’t see another upgrade to swap around that would help at all, so I decided to drop my chosen faction and look closer at my other potential option.

Option 2



Well, this isn’t much better. I have nearly no experience with 3/4 of this list, having only really flown the ARC for any substantial amount of games. My only outing with the N1 went horribly, and now I might have to fly 2 of them. Odd Ball is always a bad sight to see, but at least he isn’t the best ship in this squad like he is in some others.

Dinee is built pretty well here, all things considered. Ignoring the fact that she is only Initiative 3, she has the droid she wants to modify her maneuver so that she can activate her ability and serve as an ace. Plasma Torpedoes are pretty good for opening up on heavily shielded targets, and Crack Shot might be useful to put a damage through where otherwise I would fail to. The Advanced Sensors deny her the free evade granted by her ship ability, but if I’m doing a red maneuver or know that I’m going to bump, they allow her to still have a focus token.

Anakin is an unknown force to me, but I’ve seen him pop up in some successful squad lists – usually toting a torpedo and Passive Sensors. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give him both, since he started with neither and I could only add a single upgrade to the list. Initiative 4 is somewhat respectable in a format where nobody can pick their ships, and his ability has the potential to be great given the circumstances.

With Jag being my only default 3-dice gun, I figured that modifying his attack would probably be the way to victory, so the Angled Deflectors came off nearly immediately. I wanted to give Anakin a little more punch, but for the points, the best I could add were Plasma Torpedoes, so that’s what I went with.

Option 2 Modified



Still not great, but at least it had more than a single ship that could reliably hit against 2 evade dice. I went into Fly Casual with it, and lost again and again. I played a bunch of games with this list, then decided to try again with the modified Imperial list, and played a bunch of games there too. Each time, after a couple of games, I would decide that the list I was playing was garbage (it was) and the other list would be way better (it wouldn’t.) I played 25-30 games like this, bouncing back and forth between the lists, looking for something even close to a win against the (arguably inept) Fly Casual AI.

I started analyzing what each squad brought to the table, and discovered that Jag died nearly immediately against any sort of onslaught. Part of what made the Nu Sq. Pilot so good was that the enemy was focused in on the Decimator, which took so long to kill that the gunboat had time to wear down some of the enemy list. Jag wasn’t doing the damage that I wanted him to do, but also wasn’t distracting the enemy list long enough for the N1s to do their part (I had basically written off Odd Ball at this point.) So, I played around with the upgrades a little bit more.

Option 2 Modified (Again)



Putting the Angled Deflectors back on Jag gave me the Reinforce action, which stood a pretty good chance at saving more than the single shield’s worth of damage that it cost to install. To pay for it, I removed the Advanced Sensors from Dinee, since they weren’t having the pay-off that a 10 point upgrade needs to have for me. With the extra points, I upgraded Anakin’s torpedo to the much stronger Proton Torpedoes.

With the Skilled Bombardier cheering them on, this modification allowed me to finally beat the Fly Casual AI, and then (5 games later) beat it again. With my outstanding 2 win record against the simple AI, I submitted my squad list and seal my fate for the upcoming event.

Oh, did I mention that this is a single elimination bracket? Yep… I’m hosed. But at least it will be a blast!

Next Time: Online Gaming at its Finest!