This weekend I managed to Top 16 the System Open at Pax: Unplugged. I’d like to say I did it in style: losing the first round by 8 points and then winning 6 in a row to make the top 16. I had a blast, met some cool people, and achieved my goal of winning templates. No more cardboard for me.

The Crew:

Kavil (Y-Wing)

When I started preparing for PAX I wanted no part of the Y-Wing.

“Why the hell would anyone in their right mind play a one agility ship with two shield?,” I asked myself, frustrated after hanging my Kavil for the 100th time while learning to play X-Wing.

Whenever I faced an opposing Kavil in the weeks leading up to the tournament I blew it out of the sky.

One false move and that sucker had no chance. And let’s not act like you’re ever rolling an evade on one agility. I’ve seen it happen twice.

So why did I change my mind? I have absolutely no freakin’ clue.

In all honesty I thought Kavil in the Y-Wing was a strong, efficient ship that was one of the more powerful things scum had going for it. 4 Double modded dice at all ranges? Blue two everything? Sign me up. The more I played with Kavil the stronger it became – often times winning me matches on its own.

While Kavil can dish it out, he sure as hell can’t take it. Flying Kavil was easily the scariest thing of the weekend and it wasn’t close. You should have to get your blood-pressure checked before you’re even allowed to fly the thing. The difference between life and death came down to half a millimeter in my Day 2 Bubble match. If Kavil was in Redline’s target lock range he gets blown out of the sky in the first engage and I wouldn’t be sitting here looking at my sweet new range rulers listening to my 3 year old niece tell me how she is cleaning the ear wax out of her ears, “… because they are sticky.” Yes that actually just happened. Instead I would still by in Philadelphia, drowning my sorrows under their mile-high stacked nachos and a non-zero amount of Yuengling.

MVP of the weekend was for sure taking Expert Handling on Kavil over Trick Shot. While 5 dice proton torpedoes with double mods are hot, keeping your glass cannon Y-wing alive so the hits can keep on coming is straight fire.

Lando Calrissian (Escape Craft)

I’m still quite unsure how the Millennium Falcon’s lost tooth become such a broken ship, but I’m sure not complaining.

I had been running L337 in the weeks leading up to the event, opting for a less expensive Escape craft and decking out my Kavil a bit more. In the hours leading up to the event I swerved to Lando because his re-roll ability is busted. My inexperience showed and I used it more often on offense than defense. Keeping Lando alive is much better than eking out a few points of damage.

Due to the amount of imperial ordinance I faced Lando was always a bad roll away from getting one shot. There were a non-zero amount of times that Lando was taken off the board in one shot by a Redline looking to administer some “proton therapy.” This led me to wince every time Lando was shot at for the remainder of the tournament and taught me the value of sandbagging those re-rolls for defense.

Lando can definitely put out some important damage himself. Having an i4 ship with three double modded dice at range one can pack a punch. More often than not I’m leaving Lando out of the fight, but there are times late in the game he becomes clutch.

Boba Fett (Firespray)

First and foremost if you’re playing a non-Boba Fett Firespray I think you should see a neurologist. Feel free to leave all of your thoughts about Emon in the comments below and I’ll answer them around the same time I answer texts from my drunk ex-girlfriend.

Clearly we’re playing Boba Fett and clearly we’re jamming him right in the middle of the enemy team. Playing Boba Fett reminded me of the time I went bungee jumping in New Zealand. It one of those once-in-a-lifetime, satisfying thrills that you look back on and wonder, “That was fun, but I’m never doing that again.” Except I did it again and again for 8 rounds.

It’s scary to run your most important ship straight into the enemy, but somehow he always makes it out alive. Usually in style. When you shoot the four-dice, range 2, trick shot, ass-blast with-a-Marauder-re-roll and shred a Rexler or a system phase kill a Redline at 3 hull via proximity mine you look like a tactical genius.

At 106 points my Boba Fett was so heavily armed he made Stallone look like he was traveling light in Rambo II. Sinking so many points into Boba Fett meant I was way ahead in the points battle late in the game. A few times Dengar gunner kept opposing ships from even shooting at Boba, which was a huge boon. Proximity Mines were absolutely insane as well. Setting up a range one shot out the back and finishing ships off with the mine was a deadly one-two punch. It should also not be understated their ability to slow opposing ships down when they’re chasing Boba to catch up on points. IG-88D would have kept Boba safe from cloak and choke Whisper, had I seen any, but came in handy against the one Palob I did face. I found myself forever grateful for the shield upgrade I ran, further insulating my against the onslaught of imperial ordinance I faced in this tournament.

Matt Gemme (Submarine)

Disclaimer: I am not actually Kelsey Grammar

You don’t choose the submarine. It chooses you. This weekend I took a rag-tag crew from 0-1 and made something of them. Hell, I made something of myself. The largest tournament I had previously attended had 25 people and was a week before I embarked on my journey to PAX. I think I came out of this weekend with a better grasp of the game and a little more confidence that I could be decent at this game.

Down Periscope: The Submarine Story

After losing my first round by 8 points the idea of talon-rolling my Boba Fett with a nice new set of acrylic templates felt completely out of grasp. I assumed I would be sticking with cardboard for the time being.

Once I remembered that it was my first major event the ocean floor didn’t seem so bad. I relaxed and played just like it was Thursday tournament night back home. Suddenly, the wins kept rolling. Some felt tighter than others, but none ever felt out of grasp.

As day turned to night, not that we would have noticed, the ocean floor suddenly was no longer in sight. It was round 6 and three members of the Hyperloops were playing for day two. Mike Gemme, Andrew Cox and me. Local ringer Derek Sean was as well. I felt a special kinship to these three men. Sure, one was my brother, but the other two were living that submarine life as well. How well could the four of us dodge so that we could all share in triumph after making day 2?

“Pairings are up. It’s you and Cox.”

Not well enough.

I had only met Cox in person Thursday as we were staying in the same house for the weekend. Cox and my brother go back much further and had been helping each other prepare for the event.

Cox was running Boba, two quad jumpers and Captain Jostero. Luckily I was a bit familiar with the list.

When I came onto the scene and started having a lot of success against my brother those same four ships. Mike told Cox and Cox liked it enough to test it himself and bring it to Pax.

While I came up with the list, Andrew has for sure proven it was his baby now (spoiler: he 6-0’d the worlds qualifier on Saturday going 10-2 on the weekend).

I swerved off the list in the week or so leading up to the event out of happenstance. I wanted to run this Boba/Kavil list for fun at a local tournament and ended up winning on tie-breakers. I kept playing it and accrued a respectable 11-3 record leading up to PAX.

While I was feeling comfortable in the match up, Andrew’s a talented player and I certainly had my work cut out for me.

One, if not THE, most important parts of this match up was rock placement. With both of us playing big rocks this could be a disaster for me. While I do have proton torpedo at my disposal, its hard to sink two quads before they can make your life hell. Keeping the rocks close together and off to the side of the map prevents the quads from terrorizing Boba, who clearly wants to be at range one. Kavil get tractor-ed is also a big problem. If Kavil gets put on a rock with no agility I’d probably lose on the spot.

Andrew placed his three rocks towards the middle of the map while I cornered in an L shape. This gave me a pretty wide open area on the right side to fight so I was happy. I think I won rock placement, but I don’t think it was by a huge victory. Andrew clearly had some rocks to try to bait me near, I just had to be steadfast in my approach.

With the weekend being so long in draining most of the finer points of this match were a blur. Andrew set up a juicy flank with his Boba while bumping his remaining three ships for the first turn. My Boba feigned like it was going to take the bait and we traded shots at range three. Me with two calculate tokens and a target lock. Him with two calculate tokens. Green dice, however, always fail and my boba took three shields to his taking 2. Good players get advantages and Andrew stole 6 points from me. This was going to be a scrap.

One long hour later his Boba on 4 Hull and my Kavil on 1-2 hull were facing off for the game. Sure, I still had Lando and his 14 points, but this turn meant everything. His Boba shot first and took Kavil out. From the grave Kavil fired proton torpedoes, having reloaded them on the previous turns. After rolls Boba finds himself at 4 hull taking hit, crit, crit.

“let’s have some fun with crits,” Andrew says after assigning the first face-down damage card. A half dozen people around the table lean in as if this were choreographed.

And there it was. Pure, unadulterated luck.

I never felt so bad losing. I sacked out. I hit the one-outer [editor’s note, there are 7 Direct Hits in a damage deck, and four Fuel Leaks that could’ve landed as the first crit.] and took the better guy out of the tournament. At my first big event nonetheless. The pats on the back felt hollow, I honestly just felt bad for my friend.

I couldn’t feel bad for too long as I was now responsible for carrying the torch for our crew.

In typical Matt Gemme fashion it wasn’t as easy as making day 2. At 17th I was one of four people playing for top 16 on day 2. If I wanted those templates I had to win a bubble match.

I found out I was going to be playing against Redline and 6 Academy Pilots. Three ships on seven: This was going to be fun. I didn’t agonize about this match all night or anything..

The bubble match ended up being a blood bath as well and went to time. Naturally I flew Kavil too close to the sun and was just barely able to keep him outside of Redline’s target lock range. This led to Kavil being able to do enough damage to just about trade points evenly. The big swing in the match came when Boba parked a seat in front of Redline. I chained a range one Marauder shot into a three damage proximity mine and Redline was dead in the system phase. A healthy Boba Fett with Dengar gunner took out a tie fighter and held off the last two to take the match.

I had done it. The templates were mine.

The Top 16 match vs. Ben Keller was anticlimactic. I opted into a bad joust and made questionable maneuver with Kavil to let him get blocked and not fire proton torpedoes, which bounced me from the tournament.

I honestly felt no remorse losing where I did. Ben was the better player and I think had I flown better I still would have had a tremendous uphill battle against his list. Sure, I would have been more upset at the time had I known I was so close to a seat at worlds but I didn’t find that out until hours later.

Shout out to my brother for getting me into this game and kicking my butt at home until I was good enough to string some wins together at events, Cox for going 10-2 on the weekend and getting a seat to worlds, Drawde for being THE BENEFACTOR (I’m buying you a beer or seven next time I see you), all of the New England crew for their love and support this weekend and all of TheHyperloops crew (Loopers) I met this weekend.

Cons of the weekend: One operating sink in the men’s bathroom, insane security lines day two, almost getting rekt by a car that legit hit my sweatshirt, losing two green dice.