It’s hard to know where to start with this one. Normally I’ve pre-written most of the blog a day or two before the event kicks off, but for this one I just didn’t have time. Most of the evenings during the week building up to the event were spent on Vassal and Skype with England Captain Oli Pocknell prepping for the event and talking about lists.

Six of us went to Croatia to represent England this year.

Oli, running a scum alpha strike list, serial cut maker.

OJ Hemings with the Nymanda list that has taken him to the highest echelons on our game this season. (he has Boba Templates)

Martyn Chivers with his Kylo, QuickDraw, Epsilon Ace list, he won the biggest tournament in history to date with. (he has Boba Templates)

Rob Ramm running triple Wookies, he came fourth at the biggest tournament in history to date with (he has Boba Templates)

Dale Cromwell who managed to make the cut in 4 system opens, then go 5-1 in 3 hyperspace events.

And me. (I have Boba.)

To say I am probably the weakest link in the team on paper is an understatement.

One thing all the teams do in preparation for the event is study the lists that all the other (11) teams are bringing. Then look at which match ups we think are good/bad. England used a 1-6 rating, and on paper I had to admit to having more bad match ups than anyone else on the team. But the beauty of the ETC format is getting the right match-ups through the way the pairing system works. You don’t have to take on all comers, you have to take on the things you get paired into. It turns out that pretty much every team thought my list was their easiest match up on paper too.

With 3 teams from the UK, and a team from Ireland in attendance there were a lot of us who already know each other pretty well. And whilst we all wanted to win, those friendships meant we all wanted the other teams to do well. Just not as well as our own.

The round scoring is calculated simply by “how many wins did each team get this round”the best you can score is 5-1, the worst 1-5. If you win 6-0 it counts as 5-1 but you get a bonus point which counts when separating draws at the end, the second decider is overall team MoV. This year there were 8 rounds of Swiss, then a top 4 cut, where much like any cut it is about getting the win.

The big “bad guys” in the ETC are Poland, they’re the team to beat. (They’re not bad guys, they’re lovely, but there’s always that element of “we don’t want them to win again!”) They won the first event in 2016, beating Wales in the final 3-3, and they won on MoV. They won the second year in 2017, beating England in the final 3-3, and winning on MoV. They get the format better than anyone else. They come up with fantastic lists that fit the pairings system. But the biggest thing they do right is have ridiculously good players, every year.

I’m kinda fuzzy on a fair few details, 10 games and not a lot of sleep make for interesting times. Croatia is HOT and the solitary fan in team England’s hostel room was somewhat inadequate in compensating for the heat. To the point where Dale had to get a hotel room somewhere else because he didn’t sleep at all in the first night there.

Away from the tribulations of cheap accommodation we had 72 X-Wing players all wanting to do their best. If you want to find details of lists, and pairings and all that then the whole event is documented on Tourney Keeper, so head over there to find things.

After out first match up against Croatia we all felt pretty good. I had beaten a list I was expecting to struggle against, my decision making had been spot on and I was pleased with how I was flying. My opponent Davor Filipan’s list scared the hell out of me, with 5 thermals, 2 protons and 2 seismic bombs. Boba got his first one shot kill of the event on AP-5 before turning his Ion cannon on Nym. Guri danced around Crimson Specialist staying out of arc and forcing him to burn thermals from a safe distance. Most importantly England won the round 4-2.

Our second round was against Italy. The Italians are really good at X-Wing. Having been to their system open, and played against them at last years ETC I have no end of time for them as players and people. It’s pretty safe to say they they are every ones favourite team to play because they are just such a lovely bunch of guys. Their team captain Alessandro Marmorini had absolutely wrecked me in the singles event on Friday with his list, and we had both smiled the whole way through the game. I lost to Weekend Warlord, Alessandro Zaramella, flying Yorr Aces. It’s a 50/50 game at best for me, and when I took the initiative I realised I had given the game away. Then it all went wrong anyway and a half point shuttle was the extent of the points I was able to claim. Unfortunately our game finished so fast I was able to watch the rest of the demise of team England as we went on to lose 2-4.

Still, onto the UN in round three and a tough match up flying against Tomas Pawlak with Dengar Ventress. The UN guys are heroes. They come to balance out the teams, so come last minute, organise their team last minute and put together one hell of a team. They were the only team to beat Poland in the swiss. Our game was crazy close, I wanted Dengar dead first then Guri v Ventress is do-able. Unfortunately Tomas got me to trade Boba for Ventress, Dengar is a much less appetizing prospect that Ventress for Guri and whilst she led a merry chase, the jumpmaster was just too good at chasing. We lost this one too, 2-4.

Round 4 was against Scotland and I went up first to pull out my old enemy, RAClo, mainly to keep it away from anyone else. I have never flown as well as I did against Jordan McCann. Boba took his usual battering at the hands of RAC before Guri turned on the style and proceeded to kill the Decimator, then get the shield of Quickdraw and land a damaged engine crit on him. Had I done the sensible thing and run away I would have won this one, but I didn’t, I turned in for the fight and obviously blanked out on my green dice at the key time. Somewhat disbelieving of the result Jordan was incredibly sporting about the whole thing, and somewhat relieved too. My impetuous turning in cost England a 4-2 win, and once again my old enemy had got the better of me, I had to take a few minutes to reset. 3-3 wasn’t the end of the world, but 4-2 would have been so much better.

The last match up of day one was against the Hungarians. Eszter Regos running quad Wookiees… no one wants to see quad Wookiees. Boba died after Eszter was able to pin him in a corner, but took one with him and left two on fire. Guri then took her time, hunting down the two injured ones before disengaging and running the hell away for the last 5 minutes of the game. There is no way that I was risking what happened in the last match up happening again, and my 21 point win contributed to a solid 5-1 for Team England.

We were 5th in swiss at the moment, knowing that we needed to get things right. Ideally we wanted a 4-2, 4-2, 5-1 to make the cut. Saturday night we chilled out, had a Chinese and looked at our first Sunday match-up. France. We hadn’t wanted this match up, top players and top lists was not what we wanted, but that’s pretty much all you get at the ETC. We got the pairings right. Pretty much all of us got match ups we knew we could win.

I ended up playing Corentin Gallet, running no less that 4 Ion Cannons (one a turret) and a mangler M3-A. It’s and interesting match up for Boba, he’s going to die one cut at a time, but can kill most of the ships in the opposing list in one hit if the dice go right. After avoiding the block in the opening engage Boba was able to do his thing again, despite being pinned on a rock for two turns by some excellent blocking he was able to drop 2 and buy Guri enough time to get into position.

One full health Syck, one very much on fire and a heavily limping Y-Wing were what she had in front of her. Killing any one of them would put me points up, so I went for the less evasive Y-Wing. Corentin realised this and his Sycks went into an excellent series of blocks forcing Guri to go the long way around. She got the shot then ran. Not wanting to risk it against either a Flechette or Ion Cannon. As time ran out she hid in the corner and breathed a sigh of relief. Only to find out that she had just contributed to a 6-0 win. Not what we expected as a team, but we were very glad to take it.

Then we got one of the pairings we didn’t want. Poland, who aside from their loss tot he UN in the first round had gone on to beat everyone in Swiss. We were aiming for a 3-3 here, we didn’t get it. I got to play my friend Bartosz Wojcicki, the Italian Open Champion. I beat him in the singles on Friday, but we were both flying different lists. His four T-65 list is the best pure X-Wing list I have seen, and he flew it like a boss. 15 minutes later I got to wander off and watch my team mates battle to a 2-4 loss.

So we had to win the last round to get to the cut. And we got to play Spain. Who were in exactly the same situation. My opponent for the round was Jose Maria Hungaro, and I took this match up because we didn’t want anyone else to have to face it. I didn’t particularly face it but it gave us favourable match ups elsewhere. I got the opening right. Jose went for a block with one of his four Gunboats on Boba which I dodged and then a couple of turns later both my ships were in amongst him. I had a huge stroke of luck when he whiffed his harpoon attack on Boba. then Fearlessness kicked in and the APTs went to town. It was my only 100-0 win of the event, and it counted, and somewhat made up for my 100-0 loss in the previous round.

We went 4-2 which put us third in Swiss, after Poland, Italy, and one before Wales. I had gone 4-4 for swiss, which could so easily have been 5-3 had I not got greedy against Scotland.

Our Semi Final was against Italy, great, they beat us in Swiss. But we got better pairings in this round and I went up against Matteo Bennati, flying N’Dru, Thweek and Ventress. Boba killed N’Dru in a shot (I think this was his 4th of 5th one shot kill of the event, he really likes hitting things hard) and then I was able to get the game to the first Star Viper off of the event, and I would always bet on Guri over Thweek. With Vipers forcing your opponent to respond to you is better than being forced to respond to them, plus taking the evade with intensity gives her that increased durability. A win for me would only matter if the other guys got some wins too, and they did. We flipped the result from swiss, 4-2 to England, meanwhile the Polish had beaten the Welsh, so a re-match of the final from 2017 was on the cards.

Against Poland we knew we had to throw a curve ball. So I went up first. Take away one of their horrid lists and hope it suited the other guys. I was offered Damien Drzystek with Thweek, Dalan (Kimo) and Fenn Rau or Bartosz again… well, I didn’t want the X-Wings again.

Damien and I were chosen by the stream to be the feature match, unfortunately the stream cut out in the key engagement turns, but Boba took on Fenn and Dalan while Guri went to play with Thweek. Through some pretty un-orthodox flying I was able to ion bomb myself, bump, self stress with stimms and put 5 into the Kimo, who I had also ioned. Then proceed to bump again while ioned, get another fearless hit into the Kimo and kill it. Damien sent Thweek to help from the other side of the board but an Ioned Fenn with damaged engines fell pray to Guri before his Viper could land the killer blow on Boba. So it was a Viper off again, and like I said, I always bet on Guri.

With my win done, 100-54. OJ won 100-0 against Maciej Paraszczak in a rematch of their nail biting Swiss match. Rob Ramm pulled a 100-0 win out against their Nymanda player, Andrzej Rodziewicz out of somewhere. We were looking good. Dale had lost to Bartosz 100-51 so the Polish needed 2 100-0s to beat us by 3 MoV, but Martyn had killed one of Tomasz Sobieszek ships, so we couldn’t lose. As we worked out the maths the feeling was amazing. We had won. With Oli still playing I was acting captain so was able to pass the information on to my team mates that it was in the bag, just play for the hell of it. Martyn went on to win, Oli to not, but that meant we had not only beaten the mighty Polish, but flipped the Swiss result and won the final 4-2. The first time it had not been decided on MoV.

Boba Guri had gone into arguably the toughest crucible in X-Wing and gone 6-4, to be honest I would have been happy with a 3-5 looking at the quality of players that I faced. Winning the whole thing was absolutely unreal. I know that I have never flown as well as I did this weekend, aside from my greed against Scotland I don’t think I could have done anything more with what was put in front of me.

The players from the British Isles went out and enjoyed Zagreb for one more night, telling each other tales of the games we’d played, where dice had screwed us, where we got it right, where we got it wrong, where we got lucky. As Sunday became Monday we celebrated the birthdays of Scotland’s Captain Ed Holmes and Wales’s James Dowdall. Looking around the group at a whole bunch of friends, some new, some old it felt something akin to the party at the end of the Return of the Jedi.

Thank you Zagreb, thank you Croatia, thank you to all my opponents and everyone who made the weekend what it was. Thank you Krystztof Piszcz for running it again, and Filippo Bosi for helping him judge the whole thing. But most of all, thank you to my team mates, we couldn’t have done it without each other.

Goddam I love X-Wing.

Next Time: BACK TO STORE CHAMPS!

If you’re looking for some X-Wing to play then head over too the 186th Tournament Calendar.