So, this article is late. Extremely late. Like, 21 days late. Between school, work, and some other craziness that may be happening right now, I have been back-burner-ing this post for longer than I would have liked.

On March 7th, I trekked a while south to one of the closest shops to me now, Battlegrounds Gaming in Norwalk, CT. This shop is larger than it appears, and has a friendly staff, as well as a deal with a nearby pizza shop for lunch! This makes the third “Battlegrounds” that I’ve played in, since I started out in Camden Battlegrounds, played at the (unfortunately permanently closed) Battlegrounds Cafe, and now here.

Since this event is Hyperspace, and my favorite list has been ejected with much violence from that format, I had to look somewhere else. With my well-known love for Soontir Fel, I figured I would give the new TIE-BA a shot, and migrate to an ace style of play for this event. Looking at Vonreg, I noticed that he doesn’t take stress to double-reposition, or to double-mod, and I wanted to try to take advantage of that if I could. Primed Thrusters allows him to both boost and barrel roll after a red maneuver, giving him an extreme amount of unpredictability.

With the primary ace figured out, I wanted to add some more traditional FO ships to the list. I have heard that Kylo is a monster, so he is an auto-include when only playing 3 FO ships, but at 76 points he is almost too beefy to add any upgrades to. I wanted something more reliably tanky to round me out, so instead of another “ace”, I went with Backdraft. I gave him his gunner, as well as a Fire Control System to try to increase his consistency. With Kylo still being the most expensive ship in the list, I went with a bit of a bit and called it a day.

20 players gathered that day, with a huge amount of list variety. It was obvious that most players were still figuring out the new Hyperspace meta, and what things would do well, along with what things to avoid, and I was right there with them.

Game 1: Xavier Stepniak



Xavier has a list very unlike what I was used to seeing. Fenn is an old foe, but Snap Shot is a new trick for him to be carrying. Along with that, my opponent was trying to use Krassis’ ability to get more out of Snap Shot. I didn’t really know how to engage this with my all-ace squad. I ended up setting Vonreg up to hassle Fenn while my other ships came in on the rest of Xavier’s squad.

Kylo proved his worth here, shrugging off Fenn’s shot completely. Krassis and Vonreg were too far back, so I unloaded on the Recruit. I didn’t get the kill this round, but the following round Backdraft put it down before it could fire. Krassis went straight down the board edge, which left him without a shot as Kylo opened up on the Firespray. Meanwhile, Fenn turned out to try to catch the Baron, who turned down and got out of the Mandalorian’s sights.

The next round saw all guns on Krassis, who was still moving down the board edge and was again left without a shot. This brought the hunter low, but didn’t take him out, while Fenn started to move down and prepared to re-engage. The following round, Krassis K-turned and Fenn swooped in, but I was ready, with all 3 of my ships turning to meet the Fang and blowing it out of the sky.

With all my ships still flying and Krassis already on hull, it was just another round of swinging back into the fight before the mercenary was dealt with. Vonreg flew away with shields down, but otherwise my squad was undamaged, leaving me a 200-34 win for the first round.

Game 2: Jason Weaver

This looked slightly familiar. Jason had brought an ace list very similar to mine, and we ended up placing our ships down directly apart from their counterparts. I had the 6-point bid on my side, forcing Jason to move first and allowing me to respond to him. The initial engagement saw my Vonreg chase his into the fight, with everyone point at Backdraft right away.

I decided to split my fire a bit, and while Backdraft went into the Sienar directly across from him, the others laid into Vonreg and did a significant amount of damage. Meanwhile, Backdraft lost all of his shields but remained standing. The following round, Jason had his Kylo and Vonreg turn around to get behind mine, but my Kylo turned hard and ended up behind him, and the Sienar failed his bump on Backdraft, who simply moved forward. This round saw the opposing Vonreg go down and the Sienar take a chunk of damage, while Backdraft is brought to 1 hull.

I decide my best chance is to have Backdraft lead the enemy Kylo on a merry chase down the board while my other two deal with the junior Silencer, then using my initiative advantage to corner and eliminate the enemy Ren.

The plan doesn’t exactly work, as Backdraft dies the following round and the Engineer remains on the board, but I’ve split Jason’s forces while mine are still concentrated on one ship, which doesn’t put me exactly where I wanted to be, but close enough. The Engineer races away from the fight, so my aces turn on the enemy Kylo and pour damage onto him, forcing Jason to bring the Sienar back in to help.

The twin Silencers put in a ton of effort, but can’t manage to land damage onto my aces as I put down first the Sienar Engineer, then the opposing Kylo Ren without suffering another half-pointed ship, giving me the 200-51 win in the ace near-mirror.

Game 3: Will Dex



I went into this game with a solid game-plan – Kill Luke Skywalker. It seemed pretty thematic, after all, since I was flying Kylo Ren, and that was his main goal for the first 2/3 of his screen time. Lando was set halfway across the board from Luke, so I raced in with my agile ships while Backdraft turned out to pressure Lando.

This didn’t work half as well as I’d hoped, as I took Luke’s shields but couldn’t land anything else on the Jedi, while Will’s dynamic duo poured damage into my ships. Backdraft, due to his brilliant idea to turn out, was away from the fight for 4 full turns with no shots, with my aces getting torn apart in the meantime. Kylo was gone and Luke’s shields were back before Backdraft got his first shot.

I had turned all of my attention to the action-stacking pancake, and had brought it down below half at this point, so I poured everything I had left into removing it from the table. Vonreg was already shields-down at this point, and Luke had booked it for a board edge to recover his damage, but I figured I had time to finish off Lando before Luke could get back into the fight, and I could probably win the 2v1 against a T-65.

That was before Lando tore off across the table, preserving his last couple of hull as Luke brought the pain back, forcing me to take Vonreg back out of the fight to try to keep him alive. Luke started in on Backdraft, and it was all I could do to roll enough evades to keep him alive, leaving no damage on Luke.

Luke took a Range 3 locked shot on my Baron to blow him out of the sky, leaving just Backdraft with no shields left to finish off Lando and also deal with a full-health Jedi. This obviously wasn’t in the cards, and the might of the First Order was snuffed out by the even stronger might of the Rebellion, resulting in a 51-200 loss for me.

Game 4: Lucas Moncevicius

My game plan against this list was pretty simple – survive the initial engagement, murder as many TIEs as I could before the Rear Admiral made his presence known again, and then run from the Decimator until I can get a good angle on it and finish it off. I set Backdraft out as bait to lure RAC down the board while my aces raced into action against the swarm.

My strategy started out looking like was going to work perfectly, with Will taking the bait, but the following round RAC banked down instead of continuing on straight. I was still out of range then. but it forced my aces to bank out the following turn. Figuring that RAC would chase Kylo and Vonreg, I swung Backdraft in to try to continue picking off TIEs, but Chiraneau continued down and ended up Range 1 and reinforced, staring at my defensively-weakest TIE. Backdraft took a beating and ran, while my aces started to swing around and come in behind the swarm.

With all of my ships now behind the Decimator, it was time to re-visit my original plan. RAC was forced to pull away from the conflict, which gave me several turns of just ace-on-swarm play. Backdraft may have been wounded, but several of the TIEs were bleeding as well, so I started working them down one by one. In the four rounds that RAC had no shots, I managed to down 4 of the 5 TIEs, leaving the last on a single hull and with my aces too split for the Decimator to focus on.

The final TIE died the round RAC returned to the fight, and phase 2 of my plan had been a roaring success. Both of my remaining ships had taken a little damage, but RAC had also taken a scrape as he passed by, leaving me with a pretty significant advantage going into the endgame. It took another 5 rounds, but my half-pointed aces finally brought down their target, winning me the game 200-123 and solidifying a 3-1 record for the event.

My tournament record for second edition climbs again, rising to 72-28, for a 72% winrate. This event also marked my 100th tournament game for 2.0, which was the win against Will in the final round. Now, if only I could get to a major event and do that well…

Since the 7th, I’ve been experimenting more with this list, having run 4 different versions, and have decided that a slightly modified version would suit me better. I never once used Fire Control System on Backdraft, so that was the first revision – Fanatical happens to be the same cost. I tried a different set of upgrades on Vonreg, but didn’t like what they offered over Primed Thrusters. I also didn’t have access to Hotshots and Aces as of this event, but have since picked it up, and Lt. LeHuse happens to be the same cost as Backdraft for a higher initiative and a more immediately impactful ability, so that became the current version of the list.

I’m liking First Order as the ace faction to beat in this meta. They have the most agile aces in the format, and the highest number of ace-style ships. While they lack the support options other ace-heavy factions can bring, hyper-efficient aces on their own have won plenty of events – including the most recent Worlds!

Next time: Who knows?