After the road trip to France last weekend and the hanging out and eating steak this weekend saw somewhat less glamorous venues visited! Saturday at Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke and Sunday a trip down to Chichester for an event at Comics Games and Coffee.

Obviously we’ve had some new toys appear in the last few days and I’ve flown against a couple of them this weekend so I’ll dive into the last wave of X-Wing 1.0 to have a little look at it as we go.

As is the way with new releases there is a certain level of jank flying going on, and I promised last week that I’d fly imperials this week. True to my word I did, and I actually had quite a lot of fun with it. Saturday saw me and 9 other souls arrive at Firestorm Cards and have some fun. Out of the 10 of us there, six were 186th, an unexpectedly large amount, plus regulars in the area, Pete from Firestorm Squadron, Calum Brown, Ian Kafka and James “Two Steaks” Finlayson.

My list for the four rounds was as follows:

Kylo Ren Omega Leader Cutlass Squadron First Order Vanguard A Score to Settle Trajectory Simulator Autothursters Advanced Optics Bomblet Push the Limit Unguided Rockets Threat Tracker Light Weight Frame Fire Control System

I know this Kylo is not as good as the Advanced Sensors version, but we all know what that does and how he works, I wanted to try something different. Omega Leader is obvious, cheap and effective and the Punisher, well, I’ve never flown one in a tournament, fellow blogger Charles Berkhold loves them and I thought “why not give it a go”?

I didn’t take photos of the rest of the games, I forgot, I am sorry, “Two Steaks” was my game 3. James didn’t get the jank memo that no one officially sent around, and when I line up against his 100 Point Miranda I expected a beating to say the least. The game finished 100-23 to him, I was able to kill his Fenn, but it was one of those games that was far closer than the score line dictated. When Kylo dropped to a 3 hull Miranda at the end, with a one hull Lowhhrick limping away I was really pleased with how it went. We both agreed that had I been using “standard” Kylo I could have gone on to win this one, which was a satisfying conclusion to the match up. The Punisher was a “bit” blessed with it’s green dice, threat tracker was less useful but the game was thoroughly enjoyable as it always is when playing James.

Game four was against Ian Kafka flying a variant of the list that I played a couple of weeks ago when James was flying it. The Scurrg dropped for Palob with Dengar, Ion Cannon and the Moldy Crow. An improvement on the list. The Punisher got wrecked by Ion, totally taken out of the game. The key moment was when Kylo put 3 hits and a crit into a one hull Sunny Bounder only for Sunny to roll 3 natural focuses and therefore add a fourth so taking no damage. Had the Scyk died then Kylo was in a position to take down the Moldy Crow and Unkar one at a time with relative ease before having an end game against a PS3 Mist Hunter, unfortunately though having to take one more turn to kill Sunny cost me dear as Ian was able to get his other ships into position. Kylo dropped the M3-A, dropped the Quadjumper but the rest was too much to ask.

I finished 2-2 for the day, which I was pretty pleased with, had I taken “good” Kylo then I think 3-1 or 4-0 were not unachievable, I certainly enjoyed flying the list, it has a bit of everything in it and whilst it’s never going to win anything big I’d be very tempted to put it on the table again before the Punisher can’t play with the First Order anymore. Well played Mr Berkhold, I think your pet ship has won me over.

Sunday was a smaller event, only 8 of us so three rounds down in Chichester at Comics Games and Coffee. I’ve been here once before and bought Boba and Fenn with me. This time I was using Rey and Low, so less janky than I had been on the Saturday, but holy hell I learned something about wave 14.

My first game was against Jay, running a Krennic fueled Vader, Lone Wolf Ryad and a Reaper. There were some crazy dice. Rey taking 2 double damages and a hit from Vader was a little bit hard to swallow, especially when the next roll out of hand was two more hits and a crit and boom she went. Let’s be realistic, Lowhhrick vs those three is only ever going to end up one way! But Krennic… what is that about? No dice wasted… losing shields to blanks is a little painful. At Euros Alex Davy said they deliberately made him a little bust, after all, he’ll only be around in this version for a few months. But dear lord he is horrific to fly against. A 100-0 loss to start a 3 round event is always a bit of a downer, especially when losing meant I got paired into my “favourite” list of all time…

Gary is a lovely man, who usually plays rebels. Today though he bought RAClo and Quickdraw. I’m pretty sure that there is no harder match up for Rey Low that RAC with QD by his side. Fortunately and by his own admission it’s not a list he has practiced with. Anyone who has ever played me will know that I am pretty gung-ho, so spending three turns castled in a corner until the Decimator had committed to going one way or another around the board felt decidedly uncomfortable for me, but proved the right thing to do.

I was able to engineer an opening engagement where RAC was dragged into the debris field with both Rey and more importantly Lowhhrick at range 2. Then I got the dice Rey needed to not get a blinded pilot. Then I got the natural crit with Lowhhrick which meant that RAC, who was in the middle of a debris field with two rebel ships parked in front of him and moving first would take auto damage if he bumped or landed on an obstacle. The next turn he bumped and landed on debris then the Wookiee put two more crits into him at range one, including the rightly reviled damaged sensor array.

I got the engagement I needed, then got the luck to back it up, the dice and cards landed in my favour. Had the blinded pilot landed on Rey I would have lost that game, that’s just how it is. With Rey pretty healthy and a full health Lowhhrick to take on Quickdraw the rest of the game was a short run thing. With Low behind her the First Order Menace was shut down by the tactician and reinforce did it’s job against the rear arc shots. I won what I have previously considered to be an impossible match up, but everything had to be EXACTLY right to do it. 100-31 win.

I’m not sure wave 14 is going to bring anything particularly “meta defining” to the game, but it does bring some fun. Martyn had a game against Alex Birt, 5 U-Wings vs 5 Rookie X-wings. It was thing of beauty, the X-Wings won thanks to being PS2, but that was a cool game and I for one am really excited to see that that list is viable. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. So many ships played this weekend needed firing arcs, the only TLT I saw all weekend was on Miranda, here’s hoping the last 3 months of 1.0 are jank fuelled and not dominated by the same lists we have come to expect.

The 186th Podcast this week features a guest appearance by Travis Johnson of the Carolina Krayts and raised some interesting points which I entirely agree with. There is nothing wrong with having super-powerful lists in the game, it’s a thing now, and in the “promised land” of 2.0 it will happen again. BUT and it’s a big but, the lists that dominate now aren’t fun to play against. Unless you have the rock to their scissors or the paper to their rock (or the luck of Loki himself) you’re going to get beaten. Playing against Ghost Fenn isn’t fun, it’s a chore. Decision points make the game interesting, interesting games make for fun games for both players, win or lose. Hopefully the next 3 months will be full of meaningful decisions when playing X-Wing!

Next Time: STORE CHAMPS #3!

If you’re looking for tournaments to go play at head to the 186th Tournament Calendar.

80 Days Until 2.0!