So this should probably have been posted before Birmingham/Yavin/UK System Open, but as we all know prequels are much better after the main event…right. Yes I have an issue with sarcasm.

I have been playing x-wing for just over a year now and really enjoying it. As I am the proud father of two angels (I’m being serious!) I don’t have that much time to devote to the flying of small plastic spaceships, so any excuse to talk about or fly is treat.

Since starting again after school holidays I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the Zombie Squadron, a really nice bunch of guys who usually play out of IBUYWARGAMES in Woking. I foolishly/wisely decided to get a ticket for the UK System Open having only previously attended two store tournaments.

The first bit of advice I received was to decided on a list quickly and practice, good advice but not easy – like everyone I have so many spaceships and so little time to fly them.

….and decisions on what to fly are hard

Once I had finished my tantrum I decided that Quickdraw and 3 Alpha Class Nu squadron was the list for me.

The list is:

TIE/SF Fighter: •”Quickdraw” (34)

Lightweight Frame (2)

Special Ops Training (0)

Veteran Instincts (1)

Fire-Control System (2)

3 x Alpha-Class Star Wing: Nu Squadron Pilot (22)

Long-Range Scanners (0)

Harpoon Missiles (4)

Total: 100/100

Initial trials were good and a high win rate (10 wins – 3 losses) secured – it was magical! If you lined up the attack right you could launch a devestating alpha strike, sacrifice a gunboat, split two off to runaway and reload while Quickdraw did Quickdraw things. This is also the downside to the list, the reload and reacquire target lock cycle is slow and painful.

And then the meta shifted (selfishly) big base and engine upgrade became a thing and people got used to the gunboats. Or I started flying badly, probably a combination – but either way after losing 6 games in a row I decided that a change was required.

I had now been flying Quickdraw for a little while so I wanted to keep him. I toyed with the idea of adding Ryad and Inquisitor, but I had the mighty experience of one flight with Inquisitor – so I decided that this was not wise. So instead I went back to Defenders, as one of my pervious lists was two Ion Cannon Tie-D Deltas and Quickdraw, but this time I went for the tankier Tie-X7 and I could squeeze in Colonel Vessery.

The main reason for the defenders is that they can tank a harpoon missile and have a fair change of dodging the Ghosts multiple TLT’s.

Special thanks to Ian Courtney who persuaded me that Swarm Leader was a trap. His previous article describes this better than I can – link here if you are interested. I was having trouble getting it setup consistently and realised that I was also making my tanky ships less tanky when I stripped their hard earned evades early in the game especially as Quickdraw is at PS9.

This means the new list looks like this:

TIE/SF Fighter: •”Quickdraw” (37)

Lightweight Frame (2)

Special Ops Training (0)

Expertise (4)

Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Defender: •Colonel Vessery (35)

TIE/x7 (-2)

Juke (2)

TIE Defender: Delta Squadron Pilot (28)

TIE/x7 (-2)

Total: 100/100

It is a pretty good all comers list, but equally it has no easy match-ups. One of its main weakness is that it does not deal well with stress, Defenders dont have many greens and Expertise gets very sad when stressed – not ideal in this meta with Tactician Wookies and stress ezra but its time to stick to a list.

So the observant among you will have spotted that I failed in the key piece of advice I was given, I decided late and didn’t practice a lot with that list.

Next up the System Open itself… (Click here)