Warning: The author reserves the right to include numerous lines from one of the greatest power ballads of all time through out the following post. If the song is stuck in your head: You’re Welcome.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for a while. Firstly because my long term wing-man Conor McNama has returned from a 7 month tour of duty and I’m going to spend most of the weekend hanging out with him. Secondly cause him being back means I have a place to stay and take a return trip to a venue I wouldn’t normally visit.

Last week was an induction. I had no idea what I was doing with them, the list was written on a car journey, assembled over night and flown the next day with no practice.

I’ve had some great feedback from people over the last week about the E-Wings, people from as far afield as Canada and the Netherlands taking the list for a spin and having fun with it (fellow blogger Paul Braggins giving them a whirl here). I got to play a few games against sparing partner Martyn Chivers on vassal, all of which have been hugely useful learning experiences. Some wins, some loses but Martyn is now firmly in the camp of not liking E-Wings, which I take as a compliment. In a rematch of the game I talked about mid-week: Han in the scum Falcon did not like going from 9 to -2 health in a turn, strangely Dengar is also not a fan of being torped twice in a turn.

But the table top is what counts and this weekends visits to Big Orbit in Evesham and Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke will no doubt prove valuable experience again. Ultimately this weekend I hoping to come out with a positive win to loss differential, not much more than that. The main point of these games is going to be to learn about the E-Wing: deployment, opening engagements, end game survival. All significant things to take into account when flying a two ship underdog list.

I’m going to be paying special attention to the following things:

Turn 0. For those that don’t know what Turn 0 means it refers to Rock deployment and putting your ships in the right place.

Opening engagement. The objective, as with all opening engages is to do the maximum damage taking the minimum in return.

The End game. Both these ships are worth serious points and are potentially fairly tanky. Normally I am gung-ho and play for the kill, this has definitely cost me before. Players like Oli Pocknell and European Champ Ben Lee are good at not losing their ships in a blaze of glory because they work out the win conditions for their matches way better than I do. They habitually make cuts.

My game one was against veteran Richard Smith, 6 Quad Jumpers and L3… not what I wanted to see. This was a weird one, with so many ships to move turns took a while, and at the end of the game I was frustrated that I needed two turns more to get the points I needed to win. No fault of Richards, he played this exactly right. The Quads stayed back, positioning and re-positioning in their corner, he was after all winning final salvo 14-6! It would be at 5 am on Sunday morning after a bad night sleeps that I would work out how I could have won this game.

The E-Wings have a devastating attack. All those crits from Gaving and the Proton Torps could totally flatten a quad. And there in lies the key, with an opponent not looking to force the engage I obviously had to, but the WHEN I had to do that is the question. The win condition is do more damage than your opponent does. Half points on a quad jumper is 14 points. That is enough to win a game. What I should have done is match Richards patience and not engaged, until the very last turn of the game. Had I kept an eye on the clock I could have waited until we were 10 minutes or so away from time and then zoomed in or a salvo of torps to get the damage through, being pretty safe in the knowledge that the two dice plinking attacks of the Quadjumpers at range 3 would be very unlikely to do the 4 shields required to half point one of my ships.

This was a huge revelation to me, the clock can be your ally as much as it can be your enemy, proper seismic shift in mentality for me. Thank you Richard, you didn’t realise it but you have taught me a huge lesson in the game. I mean, I don’t think I could fly around for 65 minutes before rolling dice, maybe I need to learn. But if I could turn back time, I think I found a way….

Which takes us onto game two against Ben Saunders. Ben was flying 4-Lom, Palob and Guri. I went in hard and fast and poured munition after munition into 4-Lom and he obligingly dropped. BUT I did so at the expense of ignoring Palob and Guri. My Plan had been simple: kill 4-Lom, kill Palob then worry about Guri. My plan was bad BECAUSE…

As I zoomed forward Ben held is 4-Lom back while the Crow came forward. I had the opportunity of putting two locked range one shots into a double focused Palob, but it meant that I could take the 4 back from the crow. So instead I chose to boost past Palob into his less threatening side arc and shoot the range 3 4-Lom with torps. Had I taken those shots on the crow, with locks, fire control systems, the Corran double tap and Gavin turning things into crits, even those 2 focuses would probably have proved pretty useless.

When the solitary hit through an obstacle at range 3 pinged into my one health elusive Gavin and he rolled nothing but focuses with no focus token I was frustrated. But again, in my 5am epiphany I realised the crow should never have had that shot cause it should have been nuked off the table in the opening engagement. Another massive learning curve. My fear of letting 4-Lom dictate the play and bad history with Palob just not dying when he gets hit with everything influenced my decision and made them worse. I’m not too proud to tell you I was wrong…

The end game then became Corran against a limping Palob and Guri (who was moving after him). No way Corran ever gets a shot on the Star Viper there, and with Palob still about to steal focuses and things Corran was relying on naked evade dice the whole time. But again, big lessons in target priority and putting aside miss-placed fears over certain ships.

All of which took me to game three against Mark Stretch, the man who flew all the HWKs all the time in 1.0, flying a Trandoshan Slaver and Scum Falcon. This is the kind of list I know the E-Wings can tear apart, multiple munitions against one agility ships very much puts the writing on the wall quite quickly and as the Falcon burned down the trandoshan braced himself for the inevitable, Corran getting behind him. Mark had the Pup on the YV-666 which leapt out as it’s parent ship exploded. In and endgame of full health Corran vs a 3 health Z-95 the game should have been over, but the plucky headhunter had some guts and took three of the E-Wings 4 shields out before he decided to give up the ghost.

Game four was Brian Clarke with Han, Nym and again that pesky Palob. Han died horribly fast but it took one torp too many to drop the Falcon. Gavin took a lot of damage coming back his way once again leaving Corran facing an uphill struggle against two ships with no big guns left to do the job and again, no focus to modify because of Palob. A superb block by Brian with his Palob put Corran stressed and in trouble, a couple of turns later it was all over and Corran hadn’t been able to recover from the block.

A frustrating 1-3 for the day left me a bit downhearted and it took a while for me to pick my head up in preparation for Sunday. It was good to see Boba Guri win the event, another Boba Guri being flown and the Skull Squadron list I posted a few weeks ago being used and doing well though!

I didn’t want to play the E-Wings again on the Sunday, one day of learning with them was enough valuable lessons I think they’ll be back, but not at the moment. So as I sat watching season 3 of Daredevil on Netflix in the evening I ran through a million and one lists, discounting them all one by one. I almost titled this posts “Such an Frustrated Hipster” because as much as I love the changes to the game in 2.0 I am finding it hard to fly things that I want to fly that are going to give me the consistency I’m looking for. The E-Wings were fun and I enjoyed every game but I don’t think they can reach the stars.

I woke up stupidly early on Sunday morning and thought about things I’ve wanted to try, and Emon came to the fore. Initially I was going to run him with a couple of Fangs but then I kinda wanted to have another go with Boba and the two of them do fit into a list together…

I guess we are turning back time if I’m trying double Sprays again. Let’s see if I can love them like I used to do….

Four rounds at Firestorm and the Sprays did Ok. Emon is a class act, even if his prox mines never did more than the solitary auto damage, but the threat and control he gives on the boards is frankly superb. I guess bombs, much like words, are like weapons, they wound sometimes. I was really good to have two of them on the table again, and I do love flying them, but again the two ship list is more about being lucky than it is being good a lot of the time.

Game one I played Joel North, and despite a strong opening I wasn’t able to put enough damage on his Boba to be up in the damage race, so when is died mine died, and mine was more points. Emon did his best but Palob and 4-Lom were too much for him to handle alone with now bombs.

Onto game 2 against Jason Barton. I love playing Jason, we have an unwritten rule to play fast and aggressively when we get paired up. His three proton totting X-Wings vs my two Sprays was a great game. All three X-Wings teamed up to put Emon on one hull, but I killed Wedge in return. Emon was able to survive long enough to be a threat which meant Boba could drop Luke. The climax of the game saw Thane chasing a damaged Boba just itching to flip a hit over to a crit, fortunately for me when the key exchange happened Boba got the kill shot and Jason blanked out with his return shot which would have likely triggered a somewhat one sided final salvo.

Games three and four I played Dom Flannigan and Nic Harris. Both running exactly the same list, Redline, Vermiel and Whsiper. I lost to Dom and he won the dice roll and whisper moved second, I beat nick because I was able to get whisper out of the way first. I genuinely think that initiative was the biggest deciding factor in these games, evenly matched lists, two very capable opponents just that key I5 point making the difference.

I think this weekend has been it for me running two ship lists until things change in the game. They don’t have enough answers to a lot of questions, nor do they really give enough problems for your opponent to solve. I have something in mind, it still has a Boba in it, and I feel slightly dirty about it, but that’s a story for another time.

This weekend hasn’t been great for the tracker, going 3 and 5 over all isn’t what I was hoping for but probably should have expected. Some big lessons have been learned though, so in that regard it’s been all win.

Games Played % Win Rate +/- from last time 46 61 -5% 😦

Next Time: I’M OFF TO ESSEN SO NO PEW PEW

If you’re looking for X-Wing events to go to then head to the 186th Tournament Calendar.