What feels like a very long time ago I was inspired to pick up my laptop by the writings of friends like Ian Courtney and Joel North to start my own blog about X-Wing. It was the 23rd of February 2017 that my first post about planning to fly some Firesprays went up, and it’s been a hell of a year. But posting a blog on a Friday evening is a silly time, and I have nothing else to post about this weekend so it’s a slightly pre-anniversary post.

Over 134,000 views in 115 countries has been astonishing. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my waffle at some point, especially if you’re still reading it now. If you’re not reading it now then I guess you’ll never know… I’ve been truly humbled by so many positive comments from so many people over the last year.

A Map of the X-Wing World : If it’s not grey then at least one person in the country has read my blog. The darker the colour the more people have read it. THIS IS CRAZY! (numbers from 2017 only)

The guiding principle of my journey has been to fly things I love and trying to make them as competitive as I can without compromising what I think is great about this game. My golden rule in list writing has been this:



“If I don’t enjoy flying against it, I won’t fly with it.”

So there’s lots of things that have never found their way into my lists. As much as I like to win games I firmly believe how you win or lose is more important than the winning itself, especially in regards to the experience that your opponent has playing against you. (I’m not shy about saying how I feel in regards to Kylo Crew, Sabine Crew, Twin Laser Turrets, Miranda, Nym, Bombs in general. I get why people use them, but for me they simply aren’t an option.)

Thanks, I think…

I have made it to 58 Tournaments in a calendar year. To some people that may seem excessive (and they’re probably right), I even had a few weekends off! Excluding the 6 byes I’ve had that means I have played a somewhat staggering 281 games at tournaments in the last 12 months.

I’ve been lucky enough to play in three countries other than UK, thank you Spain, Norway and Denmark for letting me come visit. In the UK I have visited 15 different venues across the country. (hoping to get to even more in the next 12 months). By far and away the best thing about the journey has been the people I’ve met and the friends I have made, we should all be proud of the community we have built.

When I started I had no idea how much data I would accumulate! The unanticipated side effects of having written a whole bunch of articles, largely about how tournaments have gone, is that I have documented evidence of lists and results. This is probably way more interesting to me than it should be (obviously I’m a bit of a nerd) and like all data it’s how you interpret it that makes the difference.

First things first, what have I flown in the last 12 months:

So… that’s pretty conclusive where my allegiance has been. Safe to say I’m not an Imperial Player.

To get it’s own category a list must have featured at 5 or more tournaments. Plenty have been flown but it’s pretty obvious which ships have been the favourites for the last 12 months.

Over all I have a 54% win ratio for the year, but that doesn’t tell me much, so the next couple of graphs are going to be more interesting in terms of breaking this down.

My most successful list was flying protectorates.

No one group of things flown particularly shines over the others, my performance is pretty consistent whatever I have used. It is worth noting that lists I that qualify for the “flown at 5 or more” category are the ones with the slightly better records, which does imply that practicing with a list does make you better than not practicing a list. I mean, who knew right?

However that number isn’t as significant as I thought it might be. I’m well over 2 years into my X-Wing life at the moment and I would suggest that having played a lot of games with a lot of things that you develop an understanding of the fundamentals of the game (mainly movement) fairly quickly with both large and small base ships, but it takes longer to learn the specifics of any one ship. It’s a tricky one to unpack, while you can learn and improve with ships your basic pilot skill is largely set by you ability to do the simple things, like fly around the rocks and have your guns pointing in the right direction.

This next graph breaks the year down into event brackets of 10. (the final period only being an 8)

The black text is what was predominantly flown, the yellow covers major events in those time periods.

The important thing about data is that it tells us nothing without a bit of analysis. Looking at all of this I have learned a few things that are worth talking about.

In order to guarantee the cut at a regional or above event you generally need to 5-1, that’s a challenging 83% win consistency. There also a few on 4-2 who get through, and they’re on a 67% ratio. Looking at this evidence I am WAY short of the required consistency.

In the last year I have only been at that level for one spell, in the 4th of the 5 periods. I need to look at why am I not delivering the consistency to make the cut. Sure you can have a great result and do it “on the day” but the top players in X-Wing do it all the time, and that’s where I want to be as a pilot, which means swallowing a few hard truths.

I have had 4 tournaments where I have not lost a game, going 4-0 or 5-0, which favourably implies I can play the game. That’s 4 tournament wins, just about 6% of the events I go to I win.

Conversely I had four tournaments where I have gone 0-3 or 0-4, which taken alone implies that I am rubbish at the game. Which means just about 6% of the events I go to have come bottom.

Looking at the criteria I put in last weeks blog for a good tournament:

Good Match Ups – List building is the key to limiting bad match ups Good Dice – Luck, and taking the right actions (modifications) to counter act bad luck Good Flying – Your decision making at each point in the game, outmaneuvering your opponent.

In the order that makes sense to me I’m going to review each of these three things.

Good Dice: Over 281 games dice variance cannot be blamed! There is no way I have that information recorded, but maths says for every 3 green blanks I have rolled, I have rolled 3 evades. I’m not going to argue with probability. I reached the point of not everything being the dices fault long ago. Locks, focuses and evades compensate to some degree for bad dice, and I do believe if you fly well then your dice are going to reward you most of the time.



If you are relying on the dice to save you then you have done something wrong.

Good flying: I know I have improved at this game. Looking at where I have won and lost at tournaments the line is fairly all over the place, but the worst results are a long way behind me, and the variance is a lot less since tournament 34. The line peaks and troughs are higher after this point which does indicate better overall performance. If the graph started at week 35 I would be on a much more respectable, but still inadequate 60% win ratio.

Since the awful result in week 30 and 34 I have had much more consistent performance. (graph shows tournaments vs percentage wins) only dropping below 50% wins in 4 out of the 22 tournaments played during that time.

So of the three categories that leaves me with Good Match Up to investigate. And I think for the last 12 months this is where the weakness has been. I have consciously chosen to run lower powered lists. While other people were flying tier one lists like Parattanni, Triple Jumps, Nymanda, Ghost Fenn, Telgar, Palp Defenders etc I was running Firesprays, Vipers, T70s… and I’ve done ok, but even my most successful list, the Protectorates only has a 57% consistency.

But when you love something as much as I love this game is “ok” enough? It’s a massive question that comes down to why you play the game anyway. I think fundamentally that anyone who pays to go to tournaments wants a few simple things:

Playing a few games Winning a few games The social side of the event

I am competitive, I like winning, there is nothing wrong with this. I go to tournaments because I am competitive. If I wasn’t then I could just play casually with friends and that would satisfy me… I don’t think I know what casual X-Wing looks like. However my desire to win is heavily moderated by my desire to enjoy my games and have my opponent enjoy them as much as possible (while I beat them into the ground obviously…) so I will readily admit that I am less competitive than other people out there.

The balance is finding what you love about the game and keeping than in proportion with the desire to win. Winning is less important to me than enjoying the game.

If you love the experience of flying the Ghost and Fenn that is doing the rounds at the moment then fair play and good luck with it (not that it requires much luck) and keep having fun. But if you’re flying it and enjoying the win more than the experience of playing then have a think about why you’re doing it. Think about your opponent, if your not enjoying the experience and you’re winning, how must they feel to be losing?

My personal feelings on this list are probably fairly easy to guess. I can appreciate the cleverness of the build, it’s simply brilliant, but I don’t have to like it. My biggest concern is that if this, or any one list, dominates the top tables at major events then it is an indication that the game is probably in an unhealthy place.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to the people who are choosing to fly it, but I will pose this question: Is this why you started playing X-Wing?

I do not believe Ghost Fenn vs Ghost Fenn to be a good advert for the game. If that is where top table X-Wing is right now then I’m happy to not be playing top table X-Wing.

We play games for fun, winning is clearly fun, but for me the journey is way more important than the destination.

As has been said by a few people I’ve tended to “play with training weights on” which is part of the reason that I came to the decision to pick up Dash Poe last weekend in Copenhagen. I feel like I have done the leg work, given people running better lists a head start in match ups and now it’s time to start flying something with a bit more bite.

If it has a TLT or Sabine fuelled bombs in it then I won’t touch it, my golden rule still applies… But it is time to be honest and accept that with so much of my time being invested in playing X-Wing, discussing X-Wing and writing about X-Wing, maybe I should try and see if I can be a bit more than just above middling over the next 12 months.

The simple fact of the matter is that taking weaker lists does limit your ability to win games. I’m still going to fly the janky nonsense that I love so much from time to time but maybe there are things out there in the higher tiers of competition that I will enjoy. So I’m going to aim for that 67% win bracket, who knows, maybe even better.

I know that I have loved way more games this year than I have not. The proof of that is that I have kept on playing and kept on writing this blog. Hopefully I have encouraged and enthused others to want to play more and have fun more.

Thank you all again for your comments, the hand shakes, the chats, you have made doing this blog probably the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Next week another year of tournaments, bad memes and pictures of spaceships blowing up starts. I hope you’ll stick with me.



Next Time: Back to Rolling Dice

If you’re looking for tournaments then head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar