After an impromptu mid week look at something totally different it’s back to Boba/Fenn and a very tough field for a Sunday tournament at ibuywargames. The 186th are out in some force and there’s a wealth of other talented pilots come to play. 24 players and we’ve got 4 rounds with a top four cut to look forward to.

The usual good natured get together at a well known fast food franchise for a few of us pilots. Always a pleasure to catch up and talk about something not X-Wing… for 15 seconds before the conversation inevitably sways to stories of bad dice, interesting lists and the tournaments we’re looking forward to. I can never say enough how much the community of our game makes it the great place it is. We start playing because we love Star Wars, we keep playing because of the friends we make.

Just a week to go to the biggest X-Wing tournament in history, the (second) biggest Fantasy Flight Games tournament in history, and we’re all looking to get one last tournament in before the drive to Birmingham next weekend. The UK Open is going to be monstrous and I want to be prepared, conveniently there are plenty of players here with experience at the highest level. Pete Wood has made the top 8 at Yavin before. Ben Lee has been in the top 8 at worlds, and at least half a dozen have made it to a regional cut this season.

Events like this are really good practice and Ibuy’s owner, Ian Simpkins, has build an X-Wing community to be proud of. His tournaments are always top tier events. If you want some quality practice against some quality players then you can do a lot worse than head to one. This is where I learned to play X-Wing and I love coming back.

I’m flying Boba and Fenn again, they’re going to the Open with me and I want to get the practice in. Of course I want to do well at this event but I’d rather play a bunch of really tough games, lose and learn, than win the event.

Boba Fett Fenn Rau Andrasta Concord Dawn Protector Dengar Push the Limit Bomblet Generator Autothrusters Ion Cannon Proton Torpedoes Glitterstim Veteran Instincts Engine Upgrade Harpoon Missiles

I don’t really head out to play practice games anymore. I go to tournaments and every tournament is simply practice for the next. Last weekends regional was practice for this seasonal event, this event is practice for the open, the open will be practice for the Sheffield regional the week after… If I can go 3-1 today then I’ll be pleased. If I can make the cut here, looking at the competition, then I will be utterly thrilled. (Last week highlighted that MoV could well be an issue for the list, so if I don’t go undefeated in swiss my chance of making the cut is low.)

As it’s fairly late on a Sunday evening and I’ve just had a fairly torrid drive home through a ton of snow and icy roads I’m only going to look at a couple of key talking points from a couple of games rather than trying to cover the whole thing, but lesson were learned today that are worth looking at.

With the strength of the field it is not surprise that there are a few nerves thrown in with the banter as the pairings for round one are announced. And I pull the list everyone wants to play against Ghost Fenn… can you hear my unbridled excitement? Tim Farmer of Zombie Squadron made it so much better by saying “But I’m going to stop flying it after this event”… thanks Tim.

It started really well, in the opening engagement I took no damage, ioned his stressed Fenn and the following turn removed the PS 11 blighter from the table with. Absolutely no complaints there.

I pursued the ghost with both ships, and one key mistake was made. The plan was sound, turn Fenn and Boba in behind the ghost, take locks and unload a salvo of munitions into the big ugly. Even with the evade the chance of the ghost taking 6 or seven damage would have been enough to put it one shot away from being dead… heres how the board looked: But I misjudged the hard 2 from Fenn, and the one forward I dialed in for Boba was going to bump. My plan had been to take a lock and focus with Fenn, but that had to change. Instead I boosted and took a focus, which left space for the firespray to tuck in behind him. However it wasn’t the right choice with Fenn. Fenn was on one health and range two of the ghost with a focus inside the rear arc, just about the worst place he could be. I should have just accepted that he was going to die anyway and taken the lock to unload the proton torps into the ghost. Go out in a blaze of glory rather than his inevitable whimper.

The outcome of all this was that the ghost survived on rather more health than it should have, then Tim popped the shuttle out of the back and used it to block Boba brilliantly while the firespray slowly bled to death , and I went on to lose the game.

My error wasn’t in misjudging the hard 2 with Fenn, although that did make like complicated. The error was in taking the focus not the lock. The objective of the turn was to be prepared to trade Fenn for as much damage on the Ghost as possible, which meant the torps were the better option. I’ll admit I was so frustrated at the misplacement of Fenn that I went a tiny bit on tilt and made a big mistake. I’m not saying getting that right would have won the game for me, Tim is a very good pilot and still would have had 2 ships vs my one, but the ghost would have been one or two damage off dying rather than the six or seven that it could have been, and with the right crit you never know what can happen.

So that was game one, game two was against Norra & Rey flown by David Lintott, I traded Rey for Boba, a fair trade, that’s 62 points to me and 59 to him. I then proceeded to make an even sillier mistake than I had the previous game. I asked him how much his Norra cost, as let’s be honest, Regen Norra is a pain to kill. David said 38, I said 38 for Fenn… totally forgetting that I have a three point bid, in effect making Fenn worth 41 points. So there I was thinking that I had to kill Norra rather than avoid her… which push the limit Fenn can do for fun. So I turned in and went for broke… only for the dice to go horribly. But it wasn’t their fault it was mine for not reading the board state properly. Don’t get me wrong, I would still have tried to kill the ARC-170, but on my terms not needing to take risks.

My remaining two games were a win and a loss, so very much not the 3-1 I was hoping for, rather a 1-3… the worst I have done since I started the 67% challenge. One bad tournament in 8 isn’t too bad though, but these little errors need to get taken out of my game if I want to improve.

The winner of the day was Sim Pone, another quality showing from a pilot who just keeps getting better. Today he was flying the Polish Aces list (Quickdraw, the Inquisitor and Yorr) and won 6 games out of 6. He’s also on the journey of flying a list that you love and trying to perform increasingly consistently, and he’s doing a great job. I got asked at the end of the day if I’m still taking this to the open. The answer is of course. A couple of mistakes make for a better pilot, and if I’m going to make these mistakes I’d rather make them at a smaller event like this than at the Open. Not to say I won’t make mistakes at the Open, but I’m better prepared from my failures than I would have been from cruising to victory every game.

Today’s results leave the win ratio looking like this:

Tournament Games 34 Overall Win Ratio 68% +/- -5%

Next Week: OFF TO MANDALORE!

If you’re looking to go to a tournament or two head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar and see what you can get to.