On April 9 a bunch of people from around Australia (well, not ALL the way around Australia) got together in the Nation’s capital to truly decide which state reigned superior.

Six teams consisting of six players each from Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and the Australia Capital Territory all got together in a fun format that I will be covering in this blog.

I’m personally from Melbourne, Victoria.

Oh, the ACT guys had two teams so that there was no bye round. I really could have used the sleep, though. Yes, I’m selfish. Yes I know, state rivalry is a thing. Doubling chances really wasn’t going to change anything anyway. Can anyone tell me what zero multiplied by 2 equates to?

I jest… please don’t hurt me. Or do I? VICTORIA ALL THE WAY! V… I… C…

Disclaimer – I really don’t like this beer. There are so many good craft breweries here in Melbourne that you really don’t need to touch the mass produced stuff.

Enough about beer.. damn it I really want a beer right now… I hate myself sometimes..

The background to the Australian Team Championships (ATC) is a bit hazy to me. There are many stories coming out that are slowly painting a picture that my wee lil’ brain is struggling to piece together and whilst the event itself was exciting it seems like it was a nightmare to pull it off. This is a huge reason to appreciate the efforts of the organisers, team captains, tournament officials, store staff, players and any fans who simply helped out just because they’re awesome.

The Lead Up

We as a collective in Victoria, seemingly got the ball rolling a little late. Our team captain, Brendan announced a tournament which closely met the theme of the tournament which I will be covering later. This is certainly not intended to fling criticism of him, Brendan did a fantastic job in a very short time whilst other states were already practicing and figuring out who they were going to take and what they were going to fly. Besides, all my criticism was handled in person.

With very little interest of being in the team and also not feeling worthy when I was offered the chance to be the tournament official for the team trials by the store owner of NLG Ringwood I jumped at the chance of having some contribution to the team. I really enjoy the scene in Melbourne and have met a bunch of fantastic people by playing this game so I felt participating to some degree is my way of showing how much I care and want to see the scene flourish.

I can’t remember when this trials tournament occurred but I remember the day really well. I prepared early and got my head around how to use Cryodex. I wore my NLG Ringwood shirt and I got there early to find everything was set up.

Only 1 participant turned up. David, you’re such a champ. Welcome to the team. You ARE the team!

Not quite, of course. The team kinda needed 6 players.

It was like Christmas morning and my favorite pet had just died when I saw that the team was announced and I was in it with zero consultation in regards to my interest. It was not one of those awesome barbecue Christmas days we usually get here in Australia but some freak day where it’d be raining and your heater’s dead so the only thing you can really do is cut open a Tauntaun and get comfy inside. I suppose a Kangaroo would do in this case.

There was a little controversy online from some local members who raised some valid questions but overall there were very few arguments. There’s always going to be disagreements in cases such as these. It’s completely unavoidable. Considering the lack of backlash either people had disagreeing opinions and didn’t want to share them, were OK with the team or were simply uninterested. Because of the reasons I mentioned earlier I publicly announced that my position was up for grabs for anyone who considered themselves a worthier candidate than myself. There were no takers.

With a few other players dropping out including my main man Luke we had finalised what I would describe as a pretty strong team. In my opinion not strong enough to take the title but we’d do well. How well we’d do was something that I wasn’t ready to settle on until more time passed and more information came to light.

The Fomat & Preparation

With members of varying activity in the team, with different work schedules, time commitments and so on and so forth we did the best we could. Brendan organised a group for discussing what we were going to do and helped us to understand the format.

The format of the ATC seemed to me to be a bit convoluted at first. I couldn’t quite wrap my pea brain around it. Yes my brain is quite tiny! KEBABS.. BEER… 1 forward etc etc. When I got around to it it was quite simple and was crucial to our list building and overall practice.

Each team consists of 6 players. 2 players are going to play rebel, 2 will play imperial and the other 2 will play scum. Me being the scummiest person around who didn’t shower over that entire weekend in our nation’s capital whilst eating cold McDonald’s apple pies (Shane stop whining about that you weakling!) I was obviously going to play Scum. The other and more important restriction was that any unique pilot or upgrade can only be used once over the entire team.

e.g. As Lone Wolf is a unique upgrade, only 1 of us could take it. Of course Shane did. That upgrade seems to just work for him so well. He constantly rerolls evades and it makes me cry whenever I play him.

After working with Brendan with what felt over a week I knew I had to move my list from 2 Slavers and 3 Z-95’s for this. The Jumpmaster fit so well and with some discussion about builds for at least a week we finalised my list, which has been the only list I’ve played for probably the last 3-4 weeks. I’ve shared it before but I’ll share it again –

Once all lists per state were finalised we then forwarded the lists to the organisers and got practicing. I won’t go over that too much but, essentially for David and I, we practiced super hard. I think I had 1 maybe 2 days off in a week and a half before the lead up to the tournament. When you can’t go a single minute in any given waking hour that you are awake without thinking of X-Wing something’s not quite right. Oh well, a small price to pay for (hopefully some degree of) success.

The tournament format itself is, in my experience, nothing I’ve ever seen before. The closest alignment I can think of is the with the whole ban pick system that is in Captain’s Mode in DoTA where you ban out certain heroes and pick others. It’s not at that level but here I go trying to explain it.

If you have 2 teams. The captain for each team will provide the other team an opponent via a face down piece of laminated paper (this tournament was damn high quality in every respect). Let’s call that person the challenger. The receiver will then select 2 opponents as options for the challenger to select their opponent out of those 2. This is repeated until there are two players left per team at which point the match up is essentially randomised between the remaining 4 players.

Has anyone else experienced a format in X-Wing Similar to this? Please tell me about it!

The Canberra Experience

A disastrous beginning to a 7 hour drive to the ATC’s when I managed to plant my foot in some canine leavings in my parent’s front yard without noticing and in the process messing up poor David’s mat was not a good sign. Perhaps I was getting all the bad luck out of the way. I also forgot my headphones so no death metal when I’m starting to feel the nerves get to me. I had to make do. I also smooshed a chocolate candy piece somehow in to the back seat of his car. Really uncool of me to do.

Another full apology David.. I know you already have forgiven me but I still feel like an ass. I’ll eventually make it up to you in my own mind.

We got there on Friday night just after midnight and we all hung out for a little bit. I was super tired but couldn’t sleep. Probably due to nerves, not enough food and too much caffeine. I stayed up until 3:30am playing Hearthstone and getting my mind prepared for strategy. I eventually decided to force myself to sleep. I woke up somewhere between 6:30am and 7 and got prepared for the day as much as I possibly could.

We got to the venue. Three D6 at about 8am if I remember correctly. This was the first time I had ever been to Canberra but I knew the place had a bar (called the Loaded Dice) and all the other guys in the team who had visited before told me about how great the place is and how much fun this was going to be. I was pretty exhausted but I couldn’t hide my excitement.

Settling in to a booth and waiting for breakfast I got my first opportunity to meet people from other states of Australia who also played. My first impressions were great. The NSW team were extremely friendly and welcoming. I instantly got along with Sebastian, Travis and Jaren but also found myself getting along with the rest of them. Vernon mentioned that he read my last blog post and enjoyed it. Thanks for that man it means a lot to me. Shout out to you and your sick paint jobs on your jumpmasters.

A few Queenslanders also popped in and said hello. At first Morgan Reid was the most welcoming of the bunch – he and I have only had a few exchanges on Vassal. The rest of the Queenslanders came around and warmed up to us eventually. State rivalry – I get it!

A few people here and there from the other teams also said hello, but I got to know them better during the tournament.

After settling my nerves with a breakfast that consisted of eggs on toast with mushrooms and some tomato we all went in to the games store to get the show on the road.

Three D6 is a well spaced and well stocked games store. With a large playing area that can hold large events, a diverse set of products available for purchase, couches by a TV, a streaming room and, most importantly, a coffee machine with staff that can make a decent coffee. I was really impressed by all this. Mostly by the quality of the coffee. I’m from Melbourne. What else would you expect?

I honestly don’t understand why they made the tournament entry free for every team in addition to providing a free lunch to all the participants but I am extremely grateful for this. I made up for the lack of spending by buying some Infinity miniatures, army painter paints and a bunch of drinks to keep me going throughout the day.

On to the matches

Round 1

The first team we went up against were the second team for the ACT. My match up was resolved rather quickly because the team put me up as the first challenger. I can’t remember which options I had exactly but I went up against probably the friendliest guy at the place: Damien.

Damien was flying a scum list with VI Boba fett with recon specialist, engine upgrade and inertial dampeners along with two Y Wings with TLT’s. I took initiative off a dice roll and away we went. My nerves hadn’t quite sunk in yet but I was feeling OK but this matchup. Boba can be a tough nut to crack as his rerolls, particularly from the defense side of things, can keep him alive for an astonishingly long time. I had to hit him as fast as possible.

With a pretty standard opening first turn and not expecting Boba to come in to range for shooting I barrel rolled my scout backwards so that I could control the engagement a little better. Well, Boba came at me extremely hard and wanting blood. The scout suffered some damage and all of a sudden I wasn’t feeling confident at all. At this point I had decided that there was no point trying to K turn behind Boba as the rear arc’s going to catch me anyway. I’d have to wait for a later day. Despite all my efforts to escape with the scout, it out went down so fast that I could not even fire a single torpedo off. It was up to the slavers.

With my slavers both bumping in to Boba I managed to get a Y wing down and began circling the damaged slaver away from the fight in order to bring it back in for another pass.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how I ended up coming out on top in this game. The rest of the game is a serious blur. I’m going to blame it on fatigue. Boba died a few turns later thanks to some face up damage cards dealt out via Greedo and some range 2 combat negating his ability as Boba utilised his rear arc to keep the damage coming out.

The Y Wing went down to superior firepower and I managed a win from my first game for the day.

This round the entire team went 4 wins and 2 losses. A better start than I expected. I wasn’t expecting us to keep up this rhythm throughout the day. I’d have to wait and see.

Round 2

Round 2 started out much like round 1. I was put out as the first challenger for Victoria and I was nervous as hell. From what I know about the NSW guys they are extremely strong.

When I had the two lists in front of me for selection I decided to face up against Anthony who was running a Decimator + Soontir list. The decimator was piloted Rear Admiral Chiraneau who was decked out with Predator, Engine Upgrade, Gunner, Darth Vader and Rebel Captive. Soontir was a standard build with Push the Limit, Royal Guard, Stealth Device and Autothrusters. When I saw this I made a mental note to try to boba off Predator as soon as possible.

I remember the start being a little strange. I made it extremely clear that I was going after the decimator. Anthony flew his decimator away from my list by moving horizontally across his board edge. It seemed that he wanted to pull me through the asteroid/debris field and I was more than happy to oblige.

Unfortunately for Anthony as he was trying to protect his decimator he pulled me towards Soontir who found himself at range 2 of both my slavers and only just out of arc of my scout. With no way to escape, Soontir turtled up and hoped for the best. No thanks to Zuckuss (well that’s dependent on perspective), the Zuckuss slaver managed to sneak in 2 points of damage on to Soontir thereby removing the stealth device in the first round of shooting and leaving Soontir with 1 hull point remaining.

Soontir disengaged only to return later once my attention had switched back to my primary target. Managing to land one of slavers on an asteroid in one turn meant that I lost what would have been an amazing range 1 shot but I got greedy. I eventually Boba’d off Predator which reduced RAC’s damage incredibly. Gunner did come in to effect only once or twice for the whole game.

After finishing off RAC it was a matter of utilising my last plasma torpedoes and 180 degree arcs to catch out Soontir and finish him off.

As a team Victoria went 3 wins and 3 losses. I think we were at 4th position overall.

Round 3

In round 3 we went up against Queensland. I can’t remember if I was put out first this time or not but I do remember that there was 1 round where I was not the first challenger from Victoria.

In this round I believe I had the choice against Brobots or a 5 Tala and Tycho with proton rockets list. Neither of these lists were good choices for me. I went with the latter list and settled in to my game against Tom. I wasn’t feeling overly confident about this match up. I was just glad that no one else in the team had to play against this. I decided to try my best and get as much MoV as possible.

Tom was an extremely friendly but I feel he was primarily a rather cautious player. Once I noticed certain things about his play style I began predicting his moves more and more. He made it very obvious that he was going after my scout first who managed to tank a few obstructed range 2 shots before moving across the field of fire. After knocking out a Tala with it’s first set of plasma torpedoes, the scout had brief respite considering that it had Tycho breathing down it’s neck up to that point. Once the scout had moved across the line that the Talas and Slavers had set up it was a simple matter of doing a sloop and getting back in to the fight.

With that many ships shooting at me I didn’t expect my Slavers to last but they did and in the long run my superior hull and fantastic action economy with K4 Security droid saw me pull out ahead. My scout lasted much longer than it should have with my green dice being hot right when I needed them to be.

I managed to get a win here and I acknowledge that there was some luck involved but I felt that I flew really well in this round.

As a team we went 3 wins and 3 losses again. As an individual I was second in Swiss but I had a funny feeling that this wouldn’t last.

Round 4

In this round we were put up against the first ACT team. I was put forward once more and had another hard choice. I think it was brobots and a crack swam. As a team we decide to put me up against the crack swarm. I wasn’t super happy going up against a crack swarm and the person flying it is a well known person in the community.

I set my mind up for a loss but I would try my hardest to get as many points as possible. Flying against Jeff was a great experience. We had a great time and he was super friendly. I set up so that my slavers would approach from 2 different angles. Flying the scout was probably the most interesting though. I set him up and flew right past his swarm whilst taking minimal damage. A red sloop put me behind the entire swarm and put the scout in complete safety for the next few rounds whilst Boba slaver went down but not without trading a TIE or two.

Overall the higher pilot skill of the TIE’s and the consistency of their attacks whittled down my ships. I finished the game at a loss but not a terrible one – managing to destroy all but 2 of his TIE’s and getting 64 MoV.

I wasn’t disappointed by this result at all. I expected to get creamed and managed to get a good score.

As a team we went 4 wins and 2 losses. A great result. I think we went to 3rd after this round

Final Round

In the final round we went up against South Australia. South Australia wasn’t going too well at this point so I should be feeling confident. However, by this stage fatigue was really starting to kick in . I’ve had a lot of coffee, even more water and a few snacks to keep me going but it wasn’t going to last too much longer. I tried my best to focus but I was really missing my iPod and the soothing tunes of Heaven Shall Burn that were nestled within it.

I came up against Andrew who was flying an Opportunist Keyan Farlander with an HLC and FCS (woo! Keyan!), a stress hog and a wild space fringer with tractor beam.

My goal here was to kill Keyan as fast as possible to mitigate the damage output. Andrew successfully forced me to fight against the fringer and the stresshog whilst Keyan moved up the flank. I sent the boba slaver after Keyan to slow down his advance. He barely made it out alive. After killing the stresshog and with the fringer moving in the opposite direction I moved my scout and zuckuss slaver after Keyan to shut him down before he could kill my Boba slaver. With all my ships weakened to some degree I managed to take the game without losing a ship. Boba slaver survived on 1 hull point and zuckuss slaver was in a similar state.

At this point my team finished 3rd overall after taking this round with 4 wins and 2 losses. We were off to the Top 4! I was extremely happy with this result but considering my fatigue I would have been just as happy to go home and sleep. Well, only 2 more games at most. Surely I could last that long before finding my way to a gutter and passing out.

Individual Results

Before the top 4 started awards were given out for best in faction. My round 4 opponent finished best in Imperials, Sebastian finished best in Rebel with a Rebel regen list and Jason finished best in Scum with his 4 TLT with Unhinged Astromech list.

I finished 3rd in Scum and 6th individually. A result that I am extremely pleased with!

All results can be viewed here

Top 4

Top 4 began and I went up against the best in rebel player – Sebastian. With his rebel regen list (Poe, Miranda, Stressbot) I knew that he could quickly bring me down. Particularly if he got behind me. I aimed to take out Poe first then take it from there. As we converged upon each other Poe got rather unlucky with his red dice and went down faster than he probably should have. Miranda’s dice were not so good to her either.

Ultimately my alpha strike got the better of my opponent. Combined with cold attack dice Miranda could not last the distance and eventually got taken down after the stressbot did.

Ultimately it was great to get a game against Sebastian and it was also great to meet him. I feel like I have a new pen pal now and I’m sure he’s going to crush me next time we play. Hopefully that’s sooner rather than later… same goes for all the NSW guys.

3 of my Victorian allies also managed to get their wins in so we proceeded to the finals. This was certainly far beyond my expectations and my fatigue was really getting a hold of me. I had enough coffees that I was getting some weird chest pains as well. I was not looking forward to my last game against Queensland, who won their Top 4 game against the ACT team. I could barely see straight or think straight. I settled for doing the best I could and put my hopes on my friends to bring it home.

For the trophy!

Going in to the final game I went up against Thomas again with his Tycho and Talas. Setting up to be on stream was not what I wanted at all but it is what I got told to do so away I went. I can still remember Thomas coming in with this determined look in his eye and remembering myself thinking from that point that I had definitely lost this. I couldn’t think or see straight and my opponent is super determined to get this game. I also felt like my previous game with him as rather lucky for me to pull off the win and now was his time to settle the score.

After watching him place the asteroids with extreme confidence I could only feel like my neck was on the chopping block. Sometimes you just know you’re going to lose. I tried to rally myself mentally for the punishing that was intended for me but couldn’t. My time was up and I knew it.

My first turn I managed to screw the turn order up of the slavers. I wanted to send one in front of the other to get a nice bump going and to begin approaching my opponent in 2 different directions. Instead I moved them in the opposite order and just had a really weird looking bump set up, which gave me no advantage at all. Moving in to the first engagement Thomas’ dice were amazingly hot and my green dice finally succumbed to doing what rolling 1 green die were supposed to do – roll blanks. Zuckuss slaver went down in the second round of shooting. I evened the score a little that round by killing 2 Talas but I was not feeling this game was even close to being in my court.

Throughout the game there were plenty of people sitting around and enjoying the spectacle that was me getting crushed. I did my best to enjoy the experience. As promised to a few people in Melbourne I was doing my best to pull off the most bogan (essentially an Aussie redneck for those who dont know) accent I could due to the fact that I was in a final and on stream.

Shout out to Travis (or was it Jaren?) that reminded me to flip over the blinded pilot crit that I inevitably received. That crit and I have some sort of weird attraction.

We all had a laugh at my scout consistently rolling 1 hit and a focus (after modification) and at how Thomas’ red dice were hot. It was the most enjoyable loss of my life.

With Tycho biding his time around the outside of the field of combat it was only a matter of time before the sheer amount of attack coming out from the remaining Talas finished me off. I managed to kill another Tala before getting finished off.

Final Result

In the end Queensland won the finals and took home the trophies. A well deserved win that showed that their preparation paid off. I would like to extend a huge congratulations to the team. I had a blast meeting you all and despite what a few people have told me about Morgan Reid he is nothing but a gentleman.

In Conclusion

Three D6 is easily the best store that I’ve visited both as a customer and as a gamer. I envy the ACT people who can visit this store on a daily basis. We have some great stores here but nothing with the facilities and crowd support (and a bar that does pancakes!). The staff are all truly amazing and friendly. I cannot speak highly enough of them. I won’t be heading there for regionals (money & responsibilities) but I cannot wait to visit your fine store again.

On a personal level I feel like I did the best that I possibly could. As a person who has been playing the game for just over a year now I really couldn’t be happier with how I played on the day. The results speak for themselves. Yes, I played horribly in my last game. There is certainly no doubt about that. In the end I did everything I could and pushed myself pretty hard to achieve what I did. I hope that the Victorian viewers feel that I represented Victoria to their expectations.

Here’s also to hoping that we get more events with interesting formats such as this one both locally in Melbourne and nationally.

If anyone has any format ideas that have been successfully implemented please let me know about them!