This weekend, I played in the largest 2.0 event to date in the Kitsap area, the Han Solo Classic, put on by the Dragons Hoard in Silverdale and organized by Jim Kelly. Registration was limited to 16 players due to space concerns, and we started the day with 12. Jim, as usual, went all out with prizes; with a bag after bag of acrylic token, to custom-made wooden dice trays, a custom Firespray-31 set of maneuver templates, and a hand-painted YT-1300 on the line, there was plenty to play for! It’s a little hard to make out, but the Firespray image is the custom maneuver templates. The top 4 all got green “Han Solo Classic” range ruler sets, the re-painted Falcon is on the left, and the damage decks and trays were up for raffle. The plaque is for the coveted “Biggs Darklighter Award,” the player who remained in the tournament despite losing the hardest, coming in last without dropping. The 3 plastic bags were all filled to the brim with 3rd party acrylic tokens of all kinds.

I decided that, with the lack of practice time before the event, I’d go with the last 2.0 list I’d played: Soontir Fel, Deathrain, and an Onyx Squadron Ace. I purposefully left off the skilled bombardier this time in favor of a 2 point bid, which wasn’t very useful but was better than handing my opponents another 2 points on a Punisher-shaped platter. The field was pretty varied, with Scum the least represented by far, and Rebels and Imperials roughly equal. Whisper, Wedge, Luke, the Punisher, the Decimator, and the Y-wings ran the day, spread through all but a couple lists. With 12 players, Jim set us up for 4 rounds, and started off the prize distribution by setting up bounties (small prizes like a bag of tokens to go to the winner of each game) on every table. We all found our first round opponents and started the day.

Game 1: Evan Paul

After last week’s Battlegrounds event, I knew far too well the impressive power of high-initiative Proton Torpedoes. This list was going to shoot 2 of them fully modified at Initiative 9, as well as a Homing Missile to open up, and had a Init 2 Y-wing to close out the round. It was, frankly, terrifying. To make matters, worse, my 198 bid lost to his 198 bid in the die roll, so he got to make Fel move before Wedge. I knew I was in trouble from the first word. My only hope was to get some good damage in with Deathrain’s bombs before he went down. The approach went pretty much according to plan, I set up the Init 4 guys to joust the list while Fel came in as a flanker. What I didn’t account for was my own in-experience with bombs. As the first engagement happened, Evan had kept his entire list JUST out of range 1 of my chosen scrap, and my junior pilots blundered right into it. I dealt the first 2 damage of the game to myself with the seismic charge, then the Homing Missile dealt a single damage (my choice) to the Defender, Wedge and Dutch nearly dropped Deathrain. Fel fired back on Dutch to the tune of a single shield, Deathrain and the Onyx managed to deal 3 damage total to Wedge, and the other Y-wing launched its first torpedo. At the end of the round, both the scrap token and the Punisher were gone.

The Onyx did a great job of swinging in and ducking every shot, but Fel wasn’t quite so lucky. A barrel-boost combo got him past everyone but Wedge’s arc, who took a Lock on the squint and set up to take a pounding from the Defender in exchange. Fel whiffed, then Wedge unloaded on Fel, rolling the perfect hit-hit-hit-crit before the torpedo’s modification, and Fel managed a single evade. Down went my Ace, before he really made an impact. The Onyx, enraged, returned the favor on Wedge, but it was now a 1-shield Defender against the world, and the world still had torpedoes!

Even against the tall odds, the Onyx put in decent work, and had both Y’s sweating before finally getting torpedoed out of the sky. Unfortunately, I hadn’t managed to get either of them to half points, so the final score ended up being 64-200 in Evan’s favor. I knew going in it would be rough, but I didn’t think the game would be over in a mere 6 rounds! The between-round raffle netted me an awesome custom Futurama damage deck, and since Evan had no use for the bounty from our table (mini-american sleeves and a mini deckbox,) he kindly gave them to me, and I immediately sleeved the damage deck and used it for the rest of the event.Starting off the day 0-1 had me a little disappointed as well, but not one to get discouraged, I moved on to round 2!

Game 2: Ty Broady

Ty’s list underbid the crap out of mine, beating my bid by 10 points and ensuring his Fel knew where mine would be. However, when he set his squint in his far left corner, between Feroph and the board edge, I had a pretty good idea of where he would be. The first round had my Onyx barrel-roll out of both bullseye arcs, so that even in a straight joust, Ty’s bullseye abilities wouldn’t go off. Meanwhile, my Fel SCREAMED in from the right, having been set far out to try to anticipate his.

The opening round of combat on round 2 saw Feroph on a rock, and the Lambda ate my first successful bomb of the day. Sai also managed to eat 5 or 6 damage that round from Deathrain and Soontir, while the Onyx put a range 1 attack into the Reaper that took its shields while simultaneously dodging Fel’s range 1 attack. Deathrain, meanwhile, takes a pounding from the two other larger ships.

The Proton Bomb ‘Rain left behind put a crit on all 3 of my opponents ships, unfortunately only taking Fel’s shield. Despite his bombing acumen, Deathrain whiffed his attack, so while Fel dropped Sai to 1-2 hull remaining, the Onyx was unable to finish the job and instead lobbed 1 more hit onto Feroph at range. His Fel, meanwhile, puts a single damage card onto mine.

A launched Proton Bomb deals another crit into the Lambda, which flips Direct Damage and takes her down, and puts a Damaged Engine onto Feroph. My Fel misses against his, while his puts the finishing 2 damage onto mine and takes him off the board. The Onyx again avenges my Interceptor, taking down Feroph in a fit of rage and clearing the way for my two Initiative 4 pilots to go after Fel.

The Onyx does the signature Defender move as Fel comes back in from a sloop, lining up the perfect shot to eliminate the final ship. However, my Fel was dead, and both Onyx and Deathrain had taken a pounding, resulting in half points on each ship. I managed to take the game 200-126, but if I hadn’t boosted ‘Rain on the final turn, it probably would have been significantly closer. Still, the TIE Defender continues to impress me, its power managing to make up for the Punishers relative weakness. The game (and some sweet shield tokens that I promptly put into use) was mine, putting me 1-1 heading into round 3.

Game 3: Eric Blue

I fought Eric using a similar list at one of my practice nights, and I had learned enough from that to know to target the Decimator first, and worry about Whisper when I could. I knew Fel could track her due to her lower Initiative, I just had to be smart about the engagement. Meanwhile, my other two ships should be able to whittle down Chiraneau before Whisper got involved.

I set up in my now-standard joust+flank configuration, planning to launch a seismic into the mess to get an easy couple of hits in. Eric, naturally, saw through that, and ran the Decimator through the firing line early while Whisper stuck toward the back. That was just fine with me too, as it split up Eric’s fire while mine was still somewhat concentrated. The first couple of rounds see Chirpy whiff through rocks while I take down his shields and Fel does nothing to Whisper.

The following round was something of a minor game changer, with Whisper ending up range 1, face to face against the Onyx, and Fel coming in behind her. Vader takes a shield off the the Defender (rather than give up an amazing shot) and Whisper takes 2 shields from Fel (after spending her first evade.) She then puts a bunch of damage on Deathrain to earn her evade back, but has to spend it against the Defender to avoid a killing blow. Chiraneau, meanwhile, didn’t put anything through onto the Defender.

If the previous round was game changing, then this round absolutely gave me the game. Deathrain launched a Proton Bomb, which Chirpy had the kindness to land upon. Meanwhile, Whisper misjudged my Punishers move and bumps, while Fel closes into range 1 and the Defender 4-Ks. The Proton Bomb, who I have to claim as the MVP of this game, flips its single crit into the shieldless Decimator: Hull Breach. Vader puts another damage on Deathrain before Fel blows her out of the sky. Deathrain uses his final Proton Torpedo and puts hit-hit-hit-crit onto Chiraneau, which ends up giving him 7 or 8 additional damage cards when the crit chains finally settle. There was at least 1 direct hit and 1 fuel leak in there, as well as some other silly stuff like Blinded Pilot (which was TERRIBLE for his build!)

With Whisper gone and Chirpy crippled, there wasn’t much left for my team to worry about. Chiraneau obviously flipped his breach the following round, but Fel and the Onyx were in a prime position to flip and give chase, and my wounded Punisher managed to limp away with 1 or 2 hull remaining. In his final shot, Chirpy dropped Fel to 1 hull remaining, but the following round Fel finished him off, giving me the game (and some cool reinforce tokens) 200-58.

Game 4: Greg Paul

This list is eerily similar to the previous, but used Oicunn instead of Chirpy, and added in an Initiative 1 Academy Pilot as a blocker. The second round, the Decimator charged past the rock I had placed my Seismic Charge on, forcing Deathrain to slam into him as my other ships dodge where I thought he might have tried to go. Deathrain is left shotless and is dropped to only a couple of hull remaining while Fel and Onyx take down Oicunn’s shields.

Hoping for a repeat performance from the dropped Proton Bomb and expecting I knew where Whisper was going, I dropped a proton and swung hard right with Deathrain, hoping to force a bump and deny Whisper a good shot to finish off the Punisher. The Onyx K-turned and boosted in to get a shot at the Phantom, and Fel also swung in to avoid a potentially force-bumped Decimator. Unfortunately, I misjudged a lot of things with Fel’s movement, and ended up barrel-rolling him to BARELY within range of the bomb, while it missed everyone else.

Damaged Engine was only the start to Soontir’s bad day, as Whisper took her shot and Fel whiffed defensively for the second time of the day, going to in a ball of misery. The Onyx scratched one of Whispers shields off, and Deathrain managed to survive the fire of the Academy and Decimator. In order to try to catch Whisper with something, Deathrain pooped out his second Proton Bomb and Locked the Phantom before K-turning, while Whisper ran up the board (dodging the bomb) and cloaked, and the Academy came in for a killshot (also dodging the bomb.) Onyx, meanwhile, having nowhere to go to keep after the Phantom, tore off after Oicunn instead, boosting out of the bomb and into a decent shot.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be. Whisper dodged all but a single hit from the torpedo shot, the Academy put another hull on ‘Rain, bringing him to a final standoff the next round on 1 hull against a range 1 Whisper, who clearly won that fight. Meanwhile, the Onyx put up a ragged chase on Oicunn, keeping behind him and bringing him down to 6 hull remaining before the slow speed of the Decimator finally forced a bump. 2 more rounds of bumping later, the Onyx was on half health, and Whisper and the Academy had come into fighting range, and the game ended, 51-200 in Gregs favor.

At the end of the event, Jim spread all the un-claimed Bounties out on a table and went from lowest-rank to highest, giving everyone 1 pick for every game they lost (so if nobody gave their away, everyone got 4 things.) I picked up more reinforce tokens and some more charge tokens, and overall I came in 6th place, right in the middle of the pack. For all tournament games, my record moves to 10-5. The winning list was Chris’ list from earlier last week, which went uncontested at this event. He also won a tournament at Discordia Games in Bremerton the night before with it, so it appears to be the local list-to-fear. I am a little delayed in writing this, and skipped Monday night, due to a bit of a stomach bug yesterday, but I’ll be back later in the week!

Next time: More building blocks!