Good evening, morning or whenever it is you’re reading this. Been another busy week, and I have no X-Wing to play. Last week I went to a tournament and haven’t written about it yet so it gives me something to talk about. Normally I write these up a lot faster but life has been busy and finding time to sit down and write about stuff has been tricky.

It also means I’ve had significantly longer to process/forget the games in equal measure and has helped me philosophise about the whole event a bit longer. I went up to Crewe, the birth place of the ice cream van, to play in their Hyperspace Trial and hang out with my good friend Seb Brady. For those of you who don’t know Seb he’s quite simply one of the best human beings I’ve ever met, generous, conscientious and incredibly supportive, so staying with him was an absolute joy. He’s become a regular feature in the judging teams at premier events in the UK and he really cares about our community.

Previously my only experience of Crewe had been stealing all of their really good footballers in Championship Manager 95/96…. I didn’t go watch them play football, it’s just a more interesting picture than a Viglen 386….

So, anyway, onto X-Wing. Guri and Fenn in the case, as ever, the 177 points of joy that is my favourite list ever. (177 for now, there is a points change coming up, hopefully it hasn’t earned itself a points increase… but then it might not be legal in Hyperspace Season 2 so who knows what will happen in the coming months.) 54 players, 6 rounds and a top 8 cut. In my quest for finances to go to worlds I’m after dice, anything else is just an added bonus. That means top 16. Ticket sales for the event went really well. When I confirmed with Seb a week before the event that I was heading up there were 28 sold. By the time me and travelling companion Lysha Richards (TO of FFG UK Nats and a good friend of both Seb and I) got there after work on Friday evening there were 54… Suddenly those dice looked a lot harder to come by!

And the day started pretty terribly. When you get to your table and see something you consider a hard counter sitting in front of you there is always that feeling of “today is not gonna be my day”. John Horran had a whole bunch of Arcs and Torrents, which means a load of health and firing arcs for two ships to deal with. Despite a strong opening engagement I just couldn’t push damage through fast enough. The risk/reward decision making process is really hard with that much health and firepower to contend with.

The risk assessment process when flying two ships with a high propensity for going pop as these two is hard, and they don’t like the board getting shut down on them. If I cannot get passed the ships in the way I am going to die, if I cannot get to a place where I can shoot you I am going to lose on final salvo. If I get caught in a compromising situation my ships are going to die. Every turn I need to be looking at where my mobility allows me to get to in order to avoid as much incoming fire as possible, and sometimes running for a turn or two is required.

The difficulty when you’re playing a player with as much experience as John is that when you start running you kind of have to keep running, and that many firing arcs is hard to run from. Guri and Fenn are both much better going towards danger than away from it. I put up a good fight, and dropping 2 and a half arcs gave me 101 MoV, but sadly John came in with 200. Good MoV but not the end of the world, 5 games to go.

And into game 2, against one of my favourite people in X-Wing, Jess Rushworth. Jess has taken to flying Vader, Fel and a couple of bombers. It’s mean, 2 initiative 6 ships is hard work for Guri, even worse when you make a couple of bad mistakes. I try to stick to the rule of “act on instinct” and there was one fatal moment when I disobeyed my own rule. I second guessed what Jess was going to do with her limping Vader, Fenn had a hard 3 dialled in which would have let me roll and tuck in behind the Sith Lord for a 5 dice focused shot. instead I went for the less committed move of a 2 bank, hoping that a roll could get me the kill shot I needed to put the game in my favour.

It didn’t. Instead I did nothing and got shot to crap a couple of turns later. Jess is too good a player not to capitalise on my mistakes and I crashed out of round 2 in a mere 20 minutes or so losing 200-35. When this list goes wrong it goes badly wrong.

So there’s the start of what goes around comes around. 0-2, a couple of tough match ups, a couple of bad choices, and a couple of iffy evade rolls had started the day off badly. As I’ve said before I’m prone to getting a bit frustrated when things are going badly. Fortunately Lysha and Seb were there to kick me up the backside and remind me that as much as winning is good, just having some fun and enjoying the game is a great way to focus and get your head right.

So I wandered off to the bottom tables, and said hello to my T-65 and Y-Wing totting opponent Seth Humphries. Wedge with swarm tactics is another thing that Guri isn’t a fan of. Ion cannons can just go away too… the games pace was leisurely, far from my normal tempo, but Guri and Fenn got the job done. Seth allowed me to isolate Wedge and eliminate him with extreme prejudice, after that it was a question of time in me hunting down his other ships. In a flurry of end game activity both Seth’s Garven and Dutch were eliminated in the final couple of turns and his generic Y-wing got halved in the last turn of the game. Turning a tight win into a solid MoV grab.

A win under the belt, not terrible MoV, a Chicken Burger in my belly and I was ready for round four against Paul Clark. 3 sets of proton torps, Wedge, dutch a couple of other Ys but no turrets meant that this game would be decided on how I got the opening engagement. Forcing Paul to only have a single modded torp shot on Guri was vital, and losing only one shield was one of those “what goes around moments” where she had whiffed against Jess’s Barrage Bombers in game 2 they did me proud here. This should have been a comfortable win, Fenn and a damaged engine/structural damage Guri vs 3 Y-Wings is a done deal. Flying said full health Fenn off the table and leave 2 health Guri against 2 ships is a somewhat different matter. But even without hard turns Guri is still mobile enough to arc dodge 2 ships and as the time came to an end I was sitting ona 200-126 win. I can’t remember the last time I flew a ship off the board… and I was very lucky to get away with it this time.

Round 5 saw me pair into Resistance 5s flown by local player Rob Sutton, using his take on the established list. I’ll tell you what, putting outmanoeuvre on Ello certainly makes him much more of a target. This game was great fun, played at a blistering tempo, Rob was a great opponent, even when Guri did something outrageous and dodged every firing arc he didn’t get frustrated, just enjoyed the cinematic moments of the game. Sure Fenn died cheap as he is prone to doing by the goddess in the Star Viper did her thing and tore the resistance to pieces. 200-126 win and now on 3-2, the cut looked unlikely but dice could be a thing!

You know how I wrote earlier that I hate getting paired into a hard counter. Game 6 was my turn for it to “come around” as Phil “X-Wing Dad” Blackmore and I got paired into the game that would decide which of us would go 4-2 and guarantee dice. I have them, Phil doesn not, due to having a family and responsibilities he hasn’t played as much as I have, but we’re also both competitive players who want to play the game right. Unfortunately for Phil two Silencers and Quickdraw is kind of “meal on a plate” for Guri Fenn. A rapid opening that tore QD apart went onto a couple more turns of my red dice working and Phil’s ships exploding in rapid successions.

You can berate your dice when they fail, you can complain about hard counters, you can bemoan your mistakes… but at the same time when it comes around that your dice go hot for those key spikes, when you pair into a match up you want, and when you get things right you have to acknowledge that too. What goes around comes around.

As my game was the first to finish in round 6 I had the long wait to watch and see if other results would come in and let me into the cut or kick me out of it. Unfortunately the match ups I was keeping an eye on to get me to the top 8 didn’t work out the way I needed them too and I dropped to 12th. Dice but no cut, but I had turned around a bad start to the day and finished with a bit of a flourish, more importantly Phil Blackmore’s MoV put him top of the 3-3s and my buddy got the dice he might have been denied by me. Even without flying Fenn of the table against Paul I would only have finished 10th… so couldn’t beat myself up over that too much.

Darren Grainger went on to bank his second worlds invite in a few weeks by winning the whole things in the most ridiculous final I have ever seen. Han vs an A-Wing should NOT TAKE 95 minutes to resolve! Especially when there was ONLY Han and an A-Wing for 60 of those minutes.

The points change is coming, there is a new wave on the way, Hyperspace season 2 is on the horizon. I don’t think I’m alone in looking forward to seeing the changes come into play, we’ve had a lot of big events lately and there is an element of fatigue creeping in for me with certain things in the competitive environment, so a refresh will be most welcome.

I want to thank the amazing people who have so generously donated to the go fund me set up by Alex Birt to help cover the costs of me going to Worlds later this year, your generosity has astounded me, and I am so grateful to everyone who has supported me. I am genuinely moved by your donations. So thank you all, I hope I do you proud in October.

Crewe isn’t the greatest town I’ve ever visited (despite giving us the Ice Cream van, I will always be grateful to Crewe for that), my performance wasn’t the best I’ve ever enjoyed, but I had a great time playing games against some quality people and a hanging out with good friends. Like all things dice and and life related you take the rough with the smooth, enjoy the good with the bad, cause what goes around really does come around.

It looks like I’ll be joining the boys on the Firestorm Firecast in a couple of weeks time, so expect Guri and Fenn to take on whatever Dom, Phil and Nic have to offer.

Next Time: I PLAY X-WING SOMEWHERE

If you are looking for X-Wing events to play in the head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar.