A positive start was made last week in the quest for a 67% win ratio. Mistakes were made and lessons were learned but it was a good weekend of games.

The South West Regional hosted by Kirton Games is only a week away so this weekends games are going to be invaluable preparation for that. I have two Regionals and two Opens left this year to try and make the cut in, something I have never done at an event bigger than a store champs.

Warboar in Bromley is where I shall be spending my Saturday (again). A 4 round event where I’m aiming to go 3-1 at least to keep my consistency from last weekends efforts.

Last time I was here was for the London Regional, which went less well than I had hoped, and it is where I finally made the decision to jump into slightly more competitive list builds than I had previously been flying: Poe Dash.



After an snowy Thursday evening playing on Vassal with two of my closest X-Wing buddies, Martyn Chivers and Oli Pocknell a decision was made.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve become a fan of Dash Poe and enjoy flying it, a lot, but… I have a list that I just have to try, especially in light of the awesome prizes that are on offer at the Opens. Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time will not be surprised by what the list contains.

It’s a list I wrote ages ago but have never taken to a tournament. It had some run outs against Nic Harris in the pre-TragSim days against his (top 32 at Nationals) Nymanda list, an evening of gaming he probably wants to forget. And its played a few games against Imperial Aces and had a good pop at Ghost Fenn.

Many, many hours of love have been poured into the ships involved. As Lewis (almost) correctly predicted it only took a little while for me to revert to what is on the surface quite janky. Not quite as janky as his suggestion though.

Taking the headlines this weekend is a 59 point Boba Fett. And he is glorious!

Boba Fett Fenn Rau Andrasta Concord Dawn Protector Veteran Instincts Push the Limit Engine Upgrade Autothrusters Harpoon Missiles Proton Torpedoes Dengar Bomblet Generator Ion Cannon Glitterstim

Weighing in at 97 points it has a healthy initiative bid to make use of the Pilot Skill 9 and 10. More importantly it has two ships that reward my favourite thing in playing X-Wing: aggressive play.

There are two Banthas in the room that need addressing: firstly that Bomblet Generator. I really don’t like bombs BUT equally I really don’t like the Firespray’s blind spot. If the threat of a bomblet keeps the likes of Kylo Ren out of the exposed flank of the spray then it’s worth taking. In the competitive environment as it stands this is purely a defensive concession. Many bombing lists put such a heavy emphasis on the bombs that they could almost give up actually rolling dice at all. Boba just isn’t that efficient as a bomber and I don’t think a solitary bomblet token is going to ruin my opponents play experience. Rather it becomes a somewhat predictable element of the list that any decent player should be able to overcome.

The second Bantha is the Ion Cannon. Control is generally not my way, I like rolling red dice to put damage on things. However I am sensible enough to know that the mechanic of “when you reveal your dial” is very prevalent at the moment and stopping ships like Miranda and Nym (even to a degree Poe) from doing their thing for a turn can totally change a game. Another ship who really doesn’t like being Ioned is Rebel Fenn Rau… it can really stop him catching up to that Ghost. On the plus side though, in the stories Slave 1 did have an Ion Cannon on it so I am flying something vaguely fluffy. (even if I am having to fly Andrasta to get the bomblet…)

Oli, Martyn and I did a run down of lists that we’re expecting to see in the next few weeks (until the T-65 becomes king of every table) and looked at how this would do in comparison to Dash Poe. The balance came up favourable to the Scum over the Rebels, especially with my instinctive play style, so we decided it could be worth giving it a proper run out.

And if it all goes wrong Dash and Poe aren’t exactly far away. I’m going to give it this weekends tournaments to see if it can measure up. If it does well then the next few weeks could have a decidedly more Mandalorian look to them. Which I would kinda love.

Poor Ian, one of the things Whisper really didn’t want to see in game one was a PS10 Boba and Fenn Rau with a better initiative bid than her. My sledgehammer ships did their thing and poured damage onto his ships. Whisper ran but against a PS10 Boba with an engine upgrade a 3ft by 3ft area of table feels very small. It was a good opening for me and bad one for Ian, and the Scum walked away with a 100-win.

In round two of an 18 man tournament one pairs up, one pairs down. I got paired down, and when the name out the hat being paired up was Jesper I did sigh quite heavily. He’s one of the best X-Wing players I know and this list recently won him the Copenhagen Hyperspace Qualifier. The Firespray and Fenn again turned on their damage output and Jespers green dice didn’t help him. After the first IG dropped it was only a matter time before the second did. A 100-0 win was definitely not what I was expecting from this game, but I wasn’t going to say no to it.

This is a list I really wanted to play against. Last week I talked about Rey being the consummate jouter, and I have such a healthy respect for her. I was keen to see how Boba could do against her. The opening engagement in the picture above showed just how good Boba’s ability is with glitterstim firing, and he shrugged off the range one shots from Rey and Lowhhrick (the Ezra Maul version) taking only 2 shields. I got a bit lucky because Rey didn’t do her usual trick of 5 auto hits and as a result I won the opening trade off and was able to capitalise on the advantage. Fenn positioned himself to come in for the traffic jam that was inevitable the following turn.

Boba did end up taking a pounding but the wookiee and the Falcon both took a bigger one. 100-29 win and I knew that I would at least make my 3-1 objective for the day.

This was the game of the day. It’s always fun to play Alex. His knowledge of the game is second to none and he flew the latter part of this match up so well. I flattened the Palp Shuttle early on, Boba and Fenn at range one of a 1 Agility ship will do that. Damage wracked up on both of my ships and his two aces. The Inquisitor took a bomblet, one of two that I dropped all day, and Fenn and Quickdraw tore absolute chunks out of one another.

Had I remembered to pop glitterstim on Boba then the Spray would probably have survived another turn or two, enough to get the fight down to at least Fenn vs the Inquistor. But I FORGOT… and promptly rolled a load of focuses.

I really wanted to bitch about dice, but had I taken the Stimms then Boba would have survived so sadly no bitching, just bad playing. Not Stimming meant that the Tie SF was able to finish off the Firespray.

There were a couple of other options I could have done, hindsight is a joy… I could also have taken an evade and taken the stimms… the only thing the boost did in the circumstance was get me out of the inquisitors arc. I made the wrong call at the wrong time and got punished for it.

Alex then performed a master class in blocking with the Inquisitor while Quickdraw angled in for a kill shot on Fenn. 100-32 loss. The game could of gone either way though so the loss really wasn’t disheartening, at no point did I feel that the match up was unwinnable, next time Boba will load up on stimms and NOT die…

I finished 4th out of 18 for the day which considering the quality of the field I was very happy with.

Sunday finds a new place to visit! As I said a couple of weeks ago I am really looking forward to visiting some new venues this year and the Comics, Games and Coffee Emporium in Chichester (CGC) is the first I am going to. It a limited capacity of 4 tables, so there can only be 8 players, but that’s still three rounds of fun to be had. Aiming at 2-1 here. Its a really cool little shop full of comics and board games. I had to fight the urge to spend all the money I don’t have on Star Wars graphic novels.

My first game was against Kirsty Bishop running Expertise Han and Jan, it’s kind of like Rey but Higher PS and re-rolls more dice! We traded Boba and Han which left Fenn against the Moldy Crow, which is a somewhat one sided fight, all it took was that range one fully modified shot from Fenn and the game was over, with a 100-59 win to me.

Game two was against Elliot Weights flying the joy that is Kylo, Soontir and Wampa. Its the first time that Fenn has had to move before things because normally my three point bid is sufficient. This was a truly nail-biting game which concluded with Boba dropping Kylo in what would have been the last turn. I got the win 100-67 but it was on a knife edge for what felt like well over half the game. All three of Elliots games went to time (or there abouts) and by the end of three games he did look a touch fatigued.

My last game was against a thing of beauty, 3 T65s, it gave me warm fuzzy feelings. Sam Pollard had built the list very much with jousting in mind, which had won him his last two games. But if anything in the game wants to joust it’s Boba and Fenn.

Wes took a stress to trigger R3-A2 and double stress a glitterstimmed Boba, which resulted in Boba returning the shot with his Ion Cannon. Between Dengar and Glitterstim Wes ended up getting Ioned while stressed, which is never where he wants to be. Boba jumped over his head remaining double stressed. Then the usefulness of Dengar crew and Boba’s ability kicked in as I simply re-rolled all 4 whiffed dice into the required god-roll to drop him. The following turn another T-65 dropped and Sam offered his hand conceeding. 100-0 win taking me beyond my target of 2-1 for the day.

My weekend overall was 6-1, a pleasing 86% win ratio. If only I had popped those Glitterstims against Alex at Warboar on Saturday!

All of which means the % tracker now looks like this.

Tournament Games Played 21 Overall Win Ratio 71% +/- +7%

Have I found a list that can deliver that 67% win ratio I am aiming for? I think so.

Have I found a list that lets me (continue to) be a bit of a snowflake? Oh Yes.

Have I found a list that I absolutely love flying? Very much so!

Have I found a list that can get me to the cut of a Regional or Open? We’ll find out.

Next Time: THE SOUTH WEST REGIONAL

If you’re looking for tournaments head over to the 186th Tournament Tracker