And so year two of blog writing begins. Last year’s objective was fly what I love and see how well I could do with it. This year’s objective is fly what I love and see how well I can do with it. Last week I looked at my stats for the first year and came to a few conclusions about what I need to do to up my game.

The summary of year one is that I had a 54% win ration in 281 tournament games with lower tier lists. This year I want to improve that to 67%, so am taking slightly more competitive lists. There are things that I just won’t use: Sabine Wren crew, Kylo Ren Crew, Bombs, Miranda, Twin Laser Turrets, because I don’t like how they function in the game.

The reason I’m aiming for 67% overall is that that would put me on 4-2 in a 6 round tournament, for example a regional, and put me in with a chance of making the cut. In an ideal world I’m looking for 83% (5-1) enough to guarantee the cut at a Regional or an Open. A 13% improvement is probably a SMART objective (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time bound – Games Workshop management training kicking in there) as opposed to the 29% increase I would need to get to 5-1.

This leg of my journey started a couple of weeks ago in Copenhagen when I took Dash Poe to the Hyperspace Qualifier, I went 3-3 but flying Dash off the table with 9 health stopped me going 4-2. The list is the same list as European Champion Rasta Maice won the final of Element Games’s Regional a few weeks ago, the Final against Twiggy Williams is well worth a watch.

Dash Rendar Poe Dameron PS9 Lone Wolf Intensity Rey BB-8 Engine Upgrade Autothrusters Outrider Blackone Heavy Laser Cannon Primed Thrusters

I’ve spoken to a fair few people including Rasta for advice on flying Dash. I’ve flown against the YT-2400 plenty but it’s always interesting to get opinions on how different people approach him and it will come as no surprise that there are multiple ways that people make him work for them. The consensus though is to keep range control, fly defensively and let the Heavy Laser Cannon dictate control of the board.

As a player I tend to be fairly aggressive, so Dash isn’t necessarily a pilot that fits my natural play style. This is good, cause I want to learn how to fly differently to my instinctive get to range one and roll as many dice as possible. Many of the best players I know are superb at the defensive side of the game, this doesn’t mean that they play defensively all the time, but that when the match up calls for it they are able to have that tool at their disposal.

Defensive play can be summed up by saying that you try to control the balance of red dice your opponent throws at you with the amount of green dice that you get to roll. Range control, hiding behind obstacles and arc dodging are all defensive tools.

Conversely aggressive play is doing what it takes to maximise your red dice and trying to mitigate your opponents green dice as much as possible. The most overtly aggressive tactic in the game is jousting.

Ships are not exclusively one thing or the other. Rey is probably the consummate jouster, build her one way and she will consistently deliver damage turn after turn, build her another way and you get a remarkably resilient 1 agility ship.

Rey Rey Finn Finn Kanan Jarrus C-3PO Expertise Expertise Engine Upgrade Counter Measures (and Scavenger Crane) Millennium Falcon (HotR) Millennium Falcon

The build on the left gets Rey’s impressive firepower into the right place for when you want to deliver probably the most consistent attack in the game. The one on the left lets you use her ability to mitigate as much damage as possible, If the things shooting you are in your arc you focus to make maximum use of her green dice, if they are not then you take the evade. With Threepio you are always guaranteed one evade result at least, so with the evade token that’s two. This version can pretty consistently tank a harpoon missile if you trigger countermeasures.

In a competitive environment neither option is right or wrong, neither is better than the other, it’s how you use her that counts. Equally taking a more aggressive build does not preclude that she has to be flown that way. The important thing is making the right choices as often as possible in the game. Co-incidentally, if you want something that is really good at killing Ghost Fenn…

Anyway, on to the Poe part of Dash and Poe.

Poe is highly mobile, fairly tanky and rewards good flying. The T70 is a strange ship, it’s not a jouster, not really an arc dodger, not a support ship. I’ve described it before as a hunter, very few ships are as good when they’re behind their opponent, the trick is getting there.

At the the start of this journey I am on 3-3, a 50% win ratio thanks to Copenhagen. Even though that result isn’t technically in this years time period I’m counting it because it was the first time I flew a higher tier list at a tournament.

This weekend has two tournaments for me, sadly the Polish Open is a little out of my budget so soon after my excursion to Copenhagen, so it’s domestic based X-Wing for me. It does mean that some regular big hitters might be overseas but there are still plenty of people to give me a hard time on the tables.

The Games Shop in Aldershot is the venue for Saturday’s event. There is a certain poetry to this because my first tournament when I started writing the blog was there too.

It’s a strong field with a fair few of my ex-squad mates from Zombie Squadron coming along, and they have bought the 186th bounty tokens from last years store champs at Ibuywargames.

But this time I’m not Zombie Squadron.

This time I’m 186th and being hunted.

And I’m the only 186th present.

This was SUCH a hard game. 2 Opportunist, Hot Shot Co-Pilot Contracted Scouts and Palob vs a list that is designed to have focus token economy. Graham has been flying Jumpmasters almost exclusively since they first arrived on the scene and knows what he is doing. He burned through my focus tokens at a scary rate, to a point where it almost wasn’t worth taking them. Got the win though, 100-28, The Heavy Laser Cannon and Lone Wolf did what they needed to do.

HLC IGs are scary things, and this game started heavily in Victor’s favour and I was genuinely worried one of my ships was just going to disappear under their firepower. At the crucial time though they did what all ships that are “good” at defense do and blanked out. Once one IG has gone the other often finds itself in trouble and Poe was able to push home the table supremacy while Dash made himself a nuisance. The Engine Upgrade on the YT-2400 burning fuel up to stay away from the HLC. 100-28 win

This was a hugely cagey game, and we pushed each other almost to time. Omega leader against Dash was the ideal end game for Calum and my worst option, sure enough with a a couple of minutes on the clock Omega got the dice needed to drop the Outrider. Thoroughly enjoyable game, but a loss 100-77.

Had Rey had an Engine upgrade I think this would have gone differently, I was able to drop the wookiee pretty quickly but Dash was almost dead by that point. A full health Poe took on a shieldless Rey and all of a sudden it was a one health Poe and a three health Rey. Poe ducked and wove for what felt like an age, eventually engineering the kill shot. This was a really good learning experience on flying Poe and I managed to edge the 1 hull win. 100-56

Dan Flewitt came second with a ridiculous MOV fueled by the Firestorm Special. 3 100-0 wins saw his pesky B-Wing and Scurrg build continue to do well at tournaments. 4 games and he lost a B-wing…

A year ago I went 2-2 with the Firesprays, 3-1 works out better so I’m pleased with that (even if I did have the lowest SoS for the day). Thanks to Nick Tregunna for running the most casual of casual tournaments!

Sunday is a trip to The Dice Saloon in Brighton. Always a worthwhile, even if it’s just to hang out with Ben Cooper and Kris Mitchell for a few hours. Fortunately there’s the added bonus of playing some X-Wing.

As ever day two write ups tend to be a little shorter plus I’ve written quite a lot this week already so going into match reports isn’t really worth doing. We played 4 rounds, could have been 5 with the amount of players we had but unfortunately time constraints meant that it wasn’t an option. My four opponents for the day were Lewis Crisp (I won 100-28 vs his Rebel Aces – Lewis take focus tokens on your ships for defence!) Dave Montgomery (who you can watch my game with here if you want to starts about 3 minutes in) Ed Wormington (who beat me 100-47 with his Imperials) and Alex Hoppen (with Ghost, Ezra, Miranda, who I beat 100-69). As is so often the case the game I lost is the game to learn from.

I had 3 bad dice rolls (Dash rolling 3 blanks and a hit even with a focus and lone wolf) at a shieldless quickdraw, which cost me the game, and boy is it tempting to blame the dice. But on my 90 minute drive home I had a chance to process the game in my head. Rolling the game back a bit I can see why I lost it, and the answer is in the first engagement.

Here is the opening engagement:

I got this right, Dash blocked Quickdraw. Poe had cover, focus and evade, Dash has double focus from Rey. 2 Shield of Quickdraw and both the Inquisitors shields gone from the HLC. I was happy with this, the next turn looked like this:

Again happy here, Dash has shots on the Inquistor, Poe again has all the tokens and is pretty content with his position. The dice went in my favour and Poe and Dash are well placed for the next turn.

However turn after this I did a stupid which looked like this:

Poe does the K-Turn but the bank in from the shuttle blocked his ability to boost and get the focus. The Inquisitor 4 Ks but Yorr clears the stress so that he can take his actions and get stressed again, then QD does the sloop.

Quick draw takes 2 off Poe with his lock, Poe whiff totally and hits the shuttle once. The Inquitor finished Poe off. Then Dash returns the favour on the Inquisitor.

Rewinding the turn I should have done this:

Poe should have done the roll, bank and bump into the inquisitor, sure, he would have taken 4 from QD, but QD at this point has a lock only, and no shields. Poe with 4 health should survive the attack, then put 4 dice (more than likely) modified into the shuttle, while Dash would still finished off the Inquistor with the HLC maybe taking a damage or two on the way.

The off shoot of this is I would have had a badly injured Poe, but then my opponent would have been in a 2-2 situation instead of a 2-1 situation for at least another turn. Hind sight is a wonderful thing, but it is how we learn from our mistakes. Or Poe could have done the talon roll and boosted away!

I misread the board, what the shuttle was going to do, I anticipated it going straight ahead, on reflection this was wishful thinking rather than realistic thinking. I rushed my decision based on what I wanted my opponent Ed to do! I misread the Inquisitor, my brain blanked on Yorr doing his trick so the free K-Turn was disheartening. Remembering this would have tempered my gung-ho thought process. My bad experiences with Quickdraw made him more of a threat in my mind that he should have been Poe with a focus could probably have taken the 4 dice from him, but not two lots of 3 from both him and the Inquisitor with Palp backing them up. I made a bad choice which meant Poe ended up as vulnerable as he can… no focus, no autothrusters, only 2 green dice against modified attack dice.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, bad dice are the result of bad flying. I got this engagement wrong. Had I not then QD would have been in a world of trouble the following turn. I wouldn’t have been in that horrid place of relying on Dash’s dice. I took too big a risk too early in the game and was punished for it. Regardless of how much damage an HLC should do to Quickdraw I should not have been counting on it.

Hopefully breaking down an engagement in that much detail helps someone out there! I want to get better at this game, so this is the kind of thing I need to understand to improve.

Over all I went 3-1 for the day taking me to a 6-2 tally for the weekend, a solid 75%, very happy with that, would have loved a 5th round though. All of which had a good effect on this:

Total Games Played 14 Overall Win Ration 64% +/- +14%

This little score card is going to be a regular feature this year to track progress, every tournament game played starting from the Copenhagen Open is counted. No point having an objective if I don’t measure how it is going.

I want to give a shout out to MattPattv1 who messaged me on Saturday from Myanmar in Burma. They have a blog going which you can read here if you want to find out what’s going on in a meta just kicking off in a Galaxy Far far away! Now that would be some proper international X-Wing…

And massive congratulations to James Finlayson, who has to be the most consistent performer at the UK regionals this season. EVERY cut at EVERY regional so far. I was rooting for my fellow 186th Pete Wood in the final at Athena Games, but it wasn’t to be his day. James’s run this year has been nothing short of inspirational. If you’re looking for a player who does this 67% thing REALLY well you’ll be hard pushed to find a better example of sportsmanship and competitiveness. Well deserved mate.

Star Wars: Rebels is back, go watch it.

Next Time: Let’s Make it 4 Tournaments in 2 Weeks

If you’e looking for events to attend check out the 186th Tournament Calendar