They’re going for it again! After the fun had last week in Cardiff the A-Wings are definitely getting another go. This weekend it’s my first visit to Excelsior in Bristol, home of many a fine gamer, including one gent I view as an absolute corner stone of the UK community, Mr Richard Greenaway. I almost didn’t make it as a somewhat inconvenient soul drove into my car during the week, but we limped down to the South West to join the other 23 pilots at this sold out store champs.

One minor change to the list is that I have swapped the Cruise Missiles on Tycho for Proton Rockets. Two Reasons for this:

Cruise Missiles are pretty easy to telegraph, especially on a relatively low PS ship.

With Rage as an Elite Pilot talent and Proton Rockets not needing a lock to fire this gives Tycho greater action economy.

I had debated dropping Gemmer for an X-Wing. You can get Wes and Wedge for under 30 points these days, and they are both a bit meaty. However, Gemmer offers me more green dice, more tokens, and Autothrusters, so is much more durable than the T65, even with the lower pilot skill. The lower pilot skill that comes in really useful when it come to blocking the opponent. So thank you Saw’s Renegades but no, we’re going all Battle for Endor A-Wings here.

I did debate dropping the prockets on Gemmer for a while to take a Chardaan refit, which puts the list on 94 points. After playing Ryan Davies Dash Poe last week having 2 A-Wings move after Dash looks really useful. However, that seems a bit like cutting off ones noes to spite ones face… 2 lots of Prockets is not going to scare most things.

Gemmer Jake Tycho Proton Rockets Proton Rockets Proton Rockets Autothrusters Autothrusters Autothrusters A-Wing Test Pilot A-Wing Test Pilot A-Wing Test Pilot Push the Limit Push the Limit Push the Limit 99 points Intensity Rage

I’ve been running through the things that I’m scared of with the A-Wings and it’s not a very long list. As noted last week 4 dice missiles aren’t the hardest thing to deal with. I should be able to dodge TLTs for days. New big bad Jam I should be able to deal with purely as I can take so many tokens. Bombs have always been an issue for A-Wings and I’m not too keen on seeing the Inquisitor about. But the more I look at it the better I think they are. Hoping to run into a few things that give me cause for alarm today because I really enjoy flying this list and want to see if it can cut it over more than one event. Could A-Wings work for me at UK Nationals in August?

Only 4 Rounds and a top 4 cut prescribed for this size of event so it’s a relatively laid back day. The A-wings are likely to go to, or near to time pretty much every game (unless I lose horribly, which is a very real option). But I want a decent shot at the cut, and I think this list can do that, MoV was the big thing holding me back last weekend, so tournament score is really important, can I go 4-0 with A-wings?

My first game was against Richard Smith, running Nathan Eide’s version of 100 point Corran. You know when you have a plan, and it’s a good plan, and then you decide to do something totally different and the plan that was once good get’s discarded in brazen folly? That was me this game. The hitting power in Richard’s list is Corran, I kill him I can dance around the other two ships almost with impunity. Due to his ability to regen and token stack I have to focus fire with my big hitting prockets in order to drop him. Solid plan. Save the prockets until you shoot Corran.

Or…. shoot them into lowhhrick at the first possible opportunity. Sure the Wookiee died pretty horribly, but all of a sudden I had one Procket and no answer to Corran. He just chuckled to himself while killing my ships one at a time. Fortunately for my MoV Jake adamantly refused to die, but having to try to dodge firing arcs all the time and with no proton rockets to threaten he was never killing anything. 65-30 loss wasn’t the plan for the first game.

Game 2 against Matt Cook. Last time we played was at Euros a few weeks ago, and it was a cracking game, the highlight match of my weekend. This game was quality too. Kylo scares A-wings. Due to points Matt opted for Veteran instincts over Push the Limit, but throw in a Reaper and a Krennic’d Sabaac and there’s more than enough in there to give me real problems.

A-Wings love light weight frame, cause it hardly ever triggers, and when it does it’s because 5 dice are coming in. I traded Tycho for both ships from Scariff leaving Jake and Gemmer to hunt down the young Sith. Matt ran, dodged dived and twisted, but this was my turn to have 2 a two on 1 endgame. Needing to kill one of my ships, as time was called Matt went in for the Hail Mary, against the only ship he was able to shoot that turn. A full health Jake with two focuses, an evade and a target lock at range one. Quite the Hail Mary. He could have run and preserved that sizable chunk of MoV but that’s not how he rolls, something that made our game at Euros the brilliance it was. Jake killed Kylo. 100-35 win.

Game 3 against Alex Trenchard flying Kylo and 2 Defenders. Thanks to the cost of his wingmen there was no Advanced Sensors on Kylo, just a collision detector. Something that I was quite happy about. He’s still scary as anything to A-Wings but without all the moving first shenanigans he’s less of a worry. Knowing that I could dodge the defenders for days with the A-Wings it had to be Kylo first, and thanks to Gemmer fronting up to him, it was. The silencer exploded the turn after it killed Tycho, leaving two A-wings and two defenders.

The prockets did for one, but then with only two or three dice attacks against fully tokened up Defenders it’s a very long end game. The only way I could hurt one was to get both A-Wings at range one at the same time and have perfect dice, without risking being shot by that four dice primary in return. With time rapidly approaching the last valiant Defender finally rolled the required two blanks I needed to see for that last bit of damage to creep through. another 100-35 win, and another great game.

Round 4 came round and I was paired against Lian Smith, who was once a colleague many years ago when we worked for Games Workshop. I won narrowly and got the 3-1 I needed to make the cut. Quickdraw is no laughing matter but he can’t take the prockets.

Oh for what might have been. Had the pairings not been wrong and needed to be re-paired the above might have been true. Instead I got paired into one of two lists I had seen in the day that I knew I was highly unlikely to beat. Chris Thursten and I played a couple of weeks ago at Incom Gaming and he beat my Rey-Wings pretty hard. Since then he has improved his list and it’s horrid.

Major Vermeil Rear Admiral Chiraneau Veteran Instincts Determination ISB Slicers Krennic Gunner Rebel Captive Light Weight Frame Operations Specialist Advanced Ailerons Engine Upgrade Ion Bomb

My plan was simple, burn down the Decimator then hopefully have 2 ships left to go after the Reaper. It was a good plan. It did not work, I had to fire a procket without a lock, and of course rolled a measley two hits. The interactions between the prototype, slicers, gunner and operations specialist is pretty nuts. Against ships that need tokens, and don’t have a lot of health is unpleasant to say the least.

I’m fairly sure that Major Vermeil is one of the most broken things we’ve ever been blessed with. Change a blank to hit? Really? It’s some kind of weird world where you remove a crit to strip a shield, ensure you miss, then shoot again with gunner and a blank becomes a hit… I think he is probably the most “meta” shaping ship we’ve seen for a very long time.

Chris has come up with a fantastic list, it’s very clever, original, and utilitizes a Decimator in a much more interesting way than the standard RAClo build. He’s a lovely guy to play, but if I never see his list again then I won’t be too sad about it. (So obviously write about it and other people can pick it up… sometimes I just don’t think things through) It would have gone better if almost every crit I forced him to take on the Deci hadn’t been one that he instantly discarded with determination, even when he pulled a major explosion and it went off, the subsequent crit was blinded pilot, which got discarded. Determination: A point very well spent.

I don’t think it’s an entirely unwinnable game for the A-Wings, but I’d say it’s one of those 70-30 in the Imperial’s favour, as it was I got the Decimator down to three health before Gemmer dropped and I lost the game 100-32.

The dream of making the cut gone. Chris went on to make the top 4 but it was the winner of swiss that rightly went on to win the whole thing. Congratulations Sim, that was a tough field you beat today.

I had a great day visiting Bristol to play for the first time, the atmosphere was great, the store a bit hot (FLGS is “It’s a bit warm in here” shock) but the day was a lot of fun. Meeting some new people, catching up with some old friends and playing some games is always a good day.

Next weekend is Ibuywargames Store Champs, it’s become one of the toughest events on the calendar with a pretty terrifying list of attendees. I have no idea what to run at it, but a few days to have a think. The A-Wings are still putting a smile on my face, but then I’m beginning to hear the call of the Firespray again.

Next Time: (my) SPACESHIPS GO BOOM

If you’re looking for X-Wing events to attend head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar.

If you play Shadespire, I’ve started writing about that one too…