The gunboat is coming! The gunboat is coming! More importantly the “re-balancing” of Advanced Slam has been confirmed, Guns for Hire is now only 4 days away and illicit tokens in the Q4 kits surely this mythical FAQ can’t be far away now.

There’s an interesting debate on the gunboat and it’s interaction with the newly worded advanced Slam. A lot of people are saying they have hammered the K-Wing as it now won’t be able to Slam and Bomb, yet this ship can slam and shoot missiles…. That’s FINE, Missiles have range limitations and more importantly only work in firing arc.

Having Miranda bop over you head and hit you with bombs that you can’t do anything about compared to a firing arc you can avoid isn’t unbalanced, it’s fine.

If it wasn’t for the presence of Nym then arc dodgers could well return. As I’m a fan of ships that can take autothrusters this pleases me…

One of the big rumours of things that are going to change in that Attanni Mindlink may well be a very different animal in the future. I’ll be the first to admit that it is among the most potent Elite Pilot Talents in the game, and here is the inevitable but:

Mindlink’s success was based predominantly on the potency of Fenn Rau with a stack of focus tokens. The emergence of Nym has all but deleted Fenn from the top tables in tournament play and mindlink only really finds a consistent home on triple Contracted Scouts. I think changes will happen to it, and I think they should, my preference would be something range based (or just change the Contracted Scout…) If they change it I won’t cry about it. It’s been a blast having it.

With this in mind I put my thinking cap on for two events this weekend. I had great fun with the A-Wings last week, but they’d have been more satisfying had they been able to actually hurt things once their crackshots had burned. If Mindlink is to have a last hurrah I want to have a play with it because it’s so much fun. And came up with this:

Inaldra’s Protectors (99)

Inaldra Concord Dawn Veteran Concord Dawn Veteran Concord Dawn Veteran Attanni Mindlink Attanni Mindlink Attanni Mindlink Attanni Mindlink Heavy Scyk Concord Dawn Protector Concord Dawn Protector Concord Dawn Protector Pulsed Ray Shield Autothrusters Autothrusters Autothrusters Tractor Beam

It’s a very simple list, and a lot of fun. Inaldra acts as the focus battery, the protectorates take target locks, the tractor beam shoots first and then shooting happens. I took it down to my new local store, Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke on Wednesday night for a couple of practice games and it made me smile. So I figured before Guns for Hire drops and I get horribly distracted by Star Vipers and things totting Harpoon Missiles I’d give it a bash.

The weekends first tournament was a Q3+Q4 kit at Warboar in Bromley, one of my favourite shops to visit, and 18 other people did the same.

I lucked out in round one, pairing against Alex from Meeple Squadron who was flying four TIE Aggressors with TLTs. It’s a list that Protectorates are always going to enjoy playing thanks to the PS advantage, autothrusters and significant damage output, and the lack of Crits landing in return. Alex did his best but it was a fight he was always going to struggle with.

I paid for that luck in the next two games, first against Tom and then Jonny both from the 186th. I really had to pick hard at my game plan to find out what I did wrong to take the absolute hammerings I recieved. Both guys were kind enough to concede that their reds were outlandishly hot, but it’s frustrating to review a game and find no glaring issues, I’d me much happier if I’d done something stupid to deserve it. Six three die attacks with a focus at a Lambda shuttle and doing no damage is somewhat soul destroying!

The final game of the day was against Matt flying Nym and Miranda, on paper not exactly a great match up for me. Matt and I played at the Woking Store Champs a few months back and he butchered my Firesprays. Two ships that can give low Pilot Skill shieldless ships a really hard time with their abundance of bombs. But what they really don’t like is tractor beams. Inaldra shone in this game, moving the high PS bombers around and letting the protectorates hammer free hits into them. Both ships had TLTs so again the threat of Crits was minimal, and double focus, three evade dice with Autothrusters are pretty resistant TLTs. Agility one ships REALLY don’t like tractor beams.

I finished 10th for the day, which considering the terrors of games two and three I was pleased with. Callum Brown won the day going 4-0 with OPQ, a list he has only lost once with (in it’s current format over about 20 games), which was in the top 8 at UK Nationals… his Miranda does fine without advanced slamming… just saying.

Sunday was a trip to the Dice Saloon in Brighton, a venue that always sells out and always provides some stiff competition. Kris Mitchell, the resident TO recently came top 8 at Nordics, which was a great performance especially as he went 6-0 in the swiss.

The event had 30 players so ran to 5 rounds, personally I love 5 round tournaments. The day started badly though, on Saturday I had 2 horrificly bad dice games against Quickdraw and Vessery with their respective plus one, and the first game on Sunday was much the same. It was bad. Starting a day off with a 100-0 loss is never great.

It was a great event with a hugely mixed Meta and some really strong performances. I ended up going 3-2 for the day and finishing 10th, which considering the start was pretty good. I have to give a big shout out to Greg for his flying of Hera. On paper we both thought that it was going heavily in my favour but after some excellent flying and range management the Ghost got the damage through and he won a savagely hard fought game.

The atmosphere was great and there were some brilliant games to watch once mine were finished, one of my favourite things about X-Wing is the “watching your friends play while whispering behind your hand to another friend about what he should or shouldn’t do in the next turn…” And enjoying Joel North’s residence on table one as he took game after game to time and scraping the win by 5 points here or 7 points there led to some great banter!

I enjoyed everyone of the 9 games I played this weekend (even the ones where the dice left me dumbfounded), and all in all I’m happy with the 5-4 scoreline. I love this list, which does make it a little sad that I’m going to retire it after just two events. With Harpoons coming on Thurdsay I suspect formation flying is going to take a bit of a hammering. Then with Mindlink potentially changing it’s time to play with some other things. Star Vipers are going to be hitting the table very soon and I am really looking forward to taking them to their maiden tournament in Shoreham next weekend.

In other Star Wars related news Rebels Season 4 has kicked off and it has started rather well. If you’ve not watched Rebels I highly recommend putting some time aside and giving it a go. So much of the lore of X-Wing that we are currently enjoy comes from the show. Kanan, Hera, Zeb, Sabine, Chopper, Ezra, Fenn Rau, Protectorates, Ketsu, The Inquisitor, TIE Advanced Prototypes….

And finally, I have handed in my notice to my good friends at Zombie Squadron and have hung up the red shirt. I had a great couple of years flying with them and will forever be grateful to how they have helped develop my love of the game, I was a tough decision but I don’t get to Ibuywargames (the home of the Zombies) as much as I used to and it just feels time to move on.

NEXT TIME: STAR VIPERS MKII FINALLY GET A RUN OUT!

If your looking for local tournaments head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar and see what you can get to.