On January the twelfth, five other members of Arch Alliance and I walked into Family Time Games for our very first Outryder Cup. It was hosted this time by the fine people of Hanger 19 in Indianapolis, Indiana, and this was the first time that the event was close enough to St. Louis that we were able to get a team together to go. We started putting together our team at the beginning of October of last year, and as soon as the roster was relatively solidified we began working on the lists we wanted to bring.

In the past, the Outryder Cup has featured an Epic Play round, but because Epic Play hasn’t yet been converted to Second Edition, they decided that in order to continue their tradition of having a different format, they would have two rounds of Hyperspace and two rounds of Extended play. They also limit the unique cards that a team can bring in a single round. If a team uses a limited card in a list, no other copies of that card, or any other cards that are different versions of that character are allowed in any other list the team fields that round. For example, if a Scum list has Han Solo gunner, that eliminates the possibility of any other instance of Han appearing in any other list, be that as a pilot or a gunner. The six lists we brought to each round would also have to be divided into three lists we put out for other teams to pair against, and three lists we held back to use to “hunt” the other teams’ lists that they had put down.

Teams are composed of six players, and are allowed to have two alternates, which turned out to be very fortunate for us. The roster we settled on was:

Tim Oursler: team captain and alternate.

Matt Cary: co-captain, Scum in Hyperspace and Extended.

Joe Dumey: First Order in Hyperspace.

Michel Simon: Scum in Hyperspace, Empire in Extended.

Scott Stein: Resistance in Hyperspace, Empire in Extended.

Alex Bell: First Order in Hyperspace, Rebel in Extended.

Clint Hewson: Rebel in Extended, alternate.

Dan Peterson: Resistance in Hyperspace, Scum in Extended.

We set out to build lists that both played to the strengths of the person playing the list, and conformed to the unique restrictions and format of the Outryder Cup. Over the following weeks, after hours of discussing lists, evaluating priorities, finding issues, reevaluating, and tweaking, we finally settled on the lists we wanted to take, and barely got them in before the deadline.

Then, just as we were getting prepared to leave for Indy, we got the news that a huge snow storm was going to be hitting the Midwest. It was predicted to drop (and did drop) over a foot of snow on St. Louis. Those of us who were able to leave early got going as soon as we could. We left shortly after the snow started and the roads were already pretty bad. Fortunately, we were able to get ahead of the storm fairly quickly and it was smooth sailing after that. Unfortunately, not all of us were able to leave early. Joe Dumey and Michael Simon ended up getting stuck in St. Louis because of the biggest snow storm we’ve seen in years. A valiant effort was made Saturday morning to make the normally four and a half hour drive to Indy, but after an hour and a half on the road and barely making any forward progress, it was abandoned. The storm had followed us to Indianapolis and left the roads a complete mess along the way.

Because of the sudden and unexpected shift in our roster for the tournament, we had to sit down the night before the tournament and change around who was playing what list. Tim and Clint, our two erstwhile alts, were now getting shifted to playing all four games. Clint was in a little bit better of a position as he had already been planning on playing the two Extended rounds, but he still was faced with taking a list into a team tournament that he had never played before. And not only was it a list he’d never played, but they were ships he’d never played in a faction he’d never played. Tim had been planning on solely focusing on the responsibilities of being a team captain, and as he had fewer games in so far for Second Edition, he wasn’t going to play at all. Now he was going to be playing all four rounds, switching between two separate lists with two wildly different playstyles, and he felt completely unprepared. Fortunately for us, Tim has a long history of changing up his list the night before any major tournament he goes to, so while he typically doesn’t make changes on quite this scale, it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory for him.

Going into the tournament, we expected to do fairly well. We felt like we brought a pretty solid team, but not having two of the members we had built lists around really dampened our expectations. I played through my first round against Kentucky’s Josh Dunne and had a blast. He was a great opponent and a extremely nice guy. Our game was the first of the St. Louis paired games to finish, so I got the chance to walk around and see how everyone else was doing. And I was surprised to find that all but one of the games were looking really good for us. As time wound down, Arch Alliance took win after win with only one loss. Much to our surprise, we were in the lead at 5-1.

And that’s when we encountered the flaw to winning: you get to pick match-ups last. In previous iterations of the Outryder Cup, pairings were picked in order of your bid. But perhaps seeing the superbids of Second Edition, it was decided that after the first round match-ups would be picked by the team with the least points first and move down the line to the first place team. What that meant for the first place team was that there was only one team they could pair against, and what was typically left over was left over because it was a tough list. This meant that by winning, we were likely set up to play against stronger lists, making staying on top a challenge.

This mechanic allowed for teams lower on the totem pole to get better match ups, and on its own is a decent way to balance the tourney to allow teams to catch up. Beyond this though is a tie-breaker mechanic that was pulled from the Outryder Cup’s namesake, the Ryder Cup: skins. Any match that wasn’t won or lost by 24 points became a skin. Both players from a skin round would carry an extra point to their next round, making their next match worth two points. These skins could stack, too. If you “skinned” a second game, you would carry two points to your next match making it worth three points. And this did happen.

After pairings, my second round was against Jeremy S. out of Chicago. He was very disarming and talked like he wasn’t very good, but the way he flew his five A-Wing squad gave away the truth of the matter. Another excellent game and opponent. By the end of the second round, we had four more wins and were starting to get pretty excited. Pittsburgh had picked up some skins to gain six points that round, which tied us in points, but we had higher MOV.

In the third round we moved from Hyperspace-only lists to Extended lists. Boba/Guri came out to play for one last tournament. My opponent this round was the captain of the Columbus team, Daniel Fiorentini. AP-5, Supernatural Luke, and Wedge, both with Proton Torpedoes. Guri hates Proton Torps, and hates Wedge with Proton Torps even more. The game came down to a two hull Guri vs. a full health Luke with both Proton charges still active. Daniel, it was a great game, the best of my day. Taking four more wins, we ended that round second to Cleveland, who gained seven due to skins, but it still left us two points ahead of Pittsburgh.

Going into the last round of the day, we really discovered how impactful not being able to get pairings early in the process could be. The plan all along was to pair my Boba/Guri as early as possible because of the number of bad match ups that were around. When Matt and Tim came back and told Alex his pairing first, I became a bit concerned. Then they came back and told Clint what his pairing was. Still no pairing for me. At this point I knew this round wasn’t going to go well for me. I finally got my pairing, but just as I was starting to look over my opponent’s list, Matt came back and told me something had gotten screwed up with the pairings and I was now matched against a Drea Swarm flown by Cleveland’s John Waris. The list that was supposed to be the hunter had become the hunted. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.

Incidentally, this was my very first game on stream. I wasn’t particularly happy about that, but Gold Squadron wanted a Cleveland/St. Louis match and my game was the only one of those. I knew going into it that I was going to lose horribly, as I had never won a game against a Drea swarm while playing Boba/Guri, but didn’t want to tell them no. The game went even worse than I thought it would; stream nerves left me making even worse decisions than my typically questionable play. To see me lose embarrassingly badly check out Gold Squadron’s YouTube page.

For the final standings, Indy made an incredible ten point leap in the last round to jump from sixth place up to first. Many congratulations to the Indianapolis team. Everyone at Outryder was happy that finally a team that wasn’t Pittsburgh or Columbus was taking home the trophy.

Because of the skin mechanic and how prolific the skins were, lots of points were floating out there to be claimed, and because of the way the pairing process worked, St. Louis was never in a position to take advantage of the skin points that were available. Without access to skin games to pair against for extra points, we would needed to have lost only five total games across the tournament day to beat Indy’s score. Put another way, we would needed at least one person to go 4-0, while all five other players went 3-1. After the tournament, someone tallied the standings if skins were not a part of Outryder. No offense to Indy, or the guys who put on Outryder, but we like these standings much better:

We all had a good time, and it was a great day of X-Wing. We plan on being back for Outryder Cup IX, but we do hope that some of the kinks will get worked out of the rules system by then. That being said, we do understand that this was the first Outryder of Second Edition, and that there were almost twice as many teams as had ever been there previously. That plays merry hob with the unique system of the Outryder, and we know that the Outryder team is working to get the wrenches out of the works. We love all of you, and look forward to beating you next time.

Thanks again to all of my teammates. You all out did yourselves. A special shout out to our team captain. Tim, you’re an absolute beast, going 3-1 in a tough field with two lists you’d never played before that day. We’ll miss you, buddy. Good luck in Wisconsin.

If you are in the St. Louis area or coming to visit, reach out to Arch Alliance X-Wing on Facebook to find out where we are playing on any given night.

For more Arch Alliance content check out:

Our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Biophysical’s Starfighter Mafia blog.