October 10th! Has it really been that long? My greater than 4 months of radio silence are finally over. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since I’ve posted anything here, but realistically, I haven’t been doing much in the world of X-Wing to post about. I’ve been too busy to keep up with the Building Blocks series as well, with my cross-country move, acclimating to a new job, and trying to build up the local scene.

Regardless, the passing months since my last tournament brought a new points document and a drastically different Hyperspace format, one that eliminated my long-time primary list from the scene. I got a 7 point discount, but had to move the list exclusively to Extended events, which isn’t that big of a deal in the long run. Sure, I had to rethink Hyperspace, but I was even better off in Extended than I was before.

Since both bombers went down in cost by 2 points, and all 3 Academy pilots went down 1, my 198 point list dropped all the way to 191. I consider that large of a bid to be redundant with a bunch of lowbies and a single I6, so I started looking for something simple that could provide some sort of benefit to the list. I eventually settled on a Targeting Computer for Soontir. It only takes 3 points to add it to the list, so I could still play at 192 if I drop Predator, but having multiple ways to acquire re-rolls could prove to be beneficial, so I locked it in at 194 points with both upgrades.



Since I was travelling around the country again, I made another stop in at my hometown’s game store, 513 Gaming. This was my second visit there, but my first bringing my A-list and in a tournament setting. The store had 19 players, which was apparently a record of sorts there, but I was thrilled to be facing many players that I never have before. We settled in for 4 rounds of intense (but fun) combat.

Game 1: Andy Tompkins

I was initially eager to engage Andy’s list, as I figured I could burn down one of his ships easily and then turn what should be 3-5 remaining ships on the other. Knowing Boba is the tougher nut to crack, I went in on him as hard as I could – which played directly into his hands.

Fett landed right where he wanted, and Andy put a hurting on my lead bomber in exchange for 6 damage on Fett – not even half points with the shield upgrade. I believe I was up, but considering none of my ships did more than 1 damage on their shots in, I was actually in bigger trouble than I imagined. I made things even worse for myself when I forgot how Proximity Mines changed in second edition; I planned my turn around Fett going in and using his action to drop it, when he actually dropped it before he moved in the system phase! This caused my orange TIE to catch 2 damage cards and limp away for several rounds.

Boba ran away instead, turning out and forcing me to switch targets to the Tooth, which ominously advanced into my list. One of my TIEs ate Boba’s other mine and exploded on impact, while the scum poured fire into my list.

An unfortunate situation landed Fel in range 1 of a focused Moralo when all I had was a focus token and no ability to get out of the way. Green dice did what they do, and Moralo’s perfect roll went unanswered and dropped my chances in this game significantly. I still had several ships of my swarm left, and Fett was down to only a couple of health, while Moralo was already down to half points as well.

My swarm continued to harry the scum hunters, but their impressively modified ships proved to be a bit much for the might of the Empire. Soon, it was down to just a single Bomber against both of my opponents ships.

Not one to let me down, my bomber managed to sneak a Range 1 shot in against a stressed Boba, and removed the Firespray from the board. This actually caused a rules pull, since Moralo was completely ionized after several turns of suffering from his Disabled Power Regulator. He had no choice but to flee, which gave me a turn to re-set and lock onto the Hound’s Tooth. When he returned to the board, however, he saw to the end of my forces with a single hull remaining, giving Andy the game and me a 151-200 loss.

Game 2: Adam Steele

Another Scum list, and my Imperial forces were out for revenge. Fel managed to snake completely around my opponent’s list as our forces engaged in the center of the board. Surprisingly in the below image, only the blue TIE is base-to-base with Nom – the Skull and the orange TIE both completed their maneuvers!

Even though I had the engagement I wanted, I failed to kill my target (the M3-A) while my opponent removed 2(!) TIEs from the board. With Adam having taken such a strong early lead, and my positioning wrecked by the battering ram of a JumpMaster, I was suddenly on the back foot.

I finally killed the Scyk, and then turned my attention to Bossk, who ate 3/4 of his health from Fel in a single blow and then died to a Range 1 bomber shot the following turn. In exchange, I lost a bomber and took damage elsewhere – still behind.

With my last bomber and TIE on a single hull each, I realized that I needed to turn my attention to killing easier things – like the half-dead JumpMaster that was in the center of the board and limping awkwardly away. I broke Soontir off and used my other ships to distract the other scum fighters while I spent 3 turns laying into Nom, wearing him down to a single hull.

I lost the bomber, and Jostero started turning to come back in on Fel. My TIE was doing its job and distracting the Fang. The game was going to come down to Soontir soloing the enemy list – something entirely possible, since Jostero was on 2 hull, the Fang had taken a damage, and Nom was a single hull from death. Naturally, I take that opportunity to throw the game away.

While a 2-straight would have been perfect, a 2-bank instead means Fel bumps Nom. Fel halves the Skull but doesn’t secure the kill, but the Fang has no such problem and blows my squint out of the sky. Luckily, Nom had to shoot first, and as such, didn’t have arc to get the revenge kill as he died to the 1-hull TIE fighter. However, with my lone ship remaining against the 2 scum ships, I knew my time was short, and a mere 2 rounds later it was all over, a 153-200 point loss.

Game 3: Matt Kelly

This was one of 3 or 4 lists that had E-Wings in them at this event. Between that and and the resurgence of scum lists, I knew that I had missed some sort of meta shift with my 4 month exile. Matt split his X-Wings from his more evasive ships, so I poured everything I had into taking one of them out before Wedge could make his presence known to Soontir.

While Wedge laid into my bombers, I blew Arvel out of the sky and took a shield off the E-Wing while keeping Fel safe by bumping. My wounded bomber turns in to block Wedge while the other one moves up to cover against the E-Wing, and everything else turns down to catch a (hopefully) action-less Wedge. This works perfectly, and Wedge takes a ton of damage but limps away from my trap.

For my trouble, Thane and the Rogue kill my 2 of my TIEs, which I will happily take as a trade for Arvel and forcing Wedge out. Fel starts chasing the nearly-dead Wedge around the board while my other ships break off to keep Fel’s back clean, and I finally catch Wedge dead-to-rights by slipping through the rebel screen.

Wedge died that turn, and Thane the turn after, leaving just a shield-less E-Wing against one of each Imperial fighter – a match that the Rogue was never going to win. A solid engagement plan and cooperative dice gave me the 200-97 win.

Game 4: Javier Baez

I knew the potential power of the double-tapping B-Wings, and decided that whichever one was out in front would be priority target number 1. That happened to be Ten Numb. I rushed up the board as usual, taking advantage of the fact that Braylen was somewhat out of position, and Jake was clear across the board from the fight.

Miraculously, Ten Numb died during this initial exchange after having dealt 2 damage to my lead TIE. The rest of the Rebellion failed to kill it, and the following round went very similarly to the first. I dealt a ton of damage to Braylen, and all of the Rebels fire failed to kill anything.

Braylen catches a bad bump and dies the following round, and my group starts to look like a bowl of multi-colored pasta as part of it whips around, part of it flies out to turn back, and Fel cuts through the middle like a scalpel.

The turn after Braylen dies, Jake gets caught in a bump and goes down, leaving just Dutch against my entire remaining list. Dutch throws a mighty haymaker into one of my bombers to put it below half-points, but it’s too little, too late, and the Y-Wing hero goes down in a blaze of glory, granting me the 200-29 point win.

I ended up barely scraping into 8th place with 978 total MOV. Not the greatest start to my new version of the Circus, going 2-2 in their opening event after the original version ended its run at an astounding 30/8. I debated re-starting my tournament tracker, since I’d been out for so long and the landscape has changed so much, but I figured it’d be a purer track to see how I was trending by watching the percentages rise and fall. As such, I’m sitting at 69-27, with a 71.9% rate, which is still pretty stellar.

I’d like to get an article in discussing the changes to the hyperspace format, but I’m currently backlogged 2 events (beside this one) that require write-ups: a casual Traveling Circus, and my first 2020 Hyperspace tournament report. Hopefully I’ll get the time to catch up and get out the other articles I want to do as well.

Next time: The Circus travels to Florida!