The intro…
Hello and welcome to this week’s blog!
I’m finally back from 2 weeks away and OF COURSE there’s now TONS To talk about. The question is, where do I begin?
Well obviously it’s the XWA!
If you’re connected to any social media where the XWA posts then you’ll have seen daily teasers for a week on the newly unveiled website running up to a live stream releasing the brand new points!
The teasers have been fantastic and, in my opinion, showcase the very stark difference between an organisation that’s passionate about the game and one that’s doing things as ‘just another part of the job’.
The playlist of all 7 teasers can be found on the Nickel City X-Wing YouTube here. You can also watch back the points release stream where points lead Oli Pocknell answered live questions about the changes.
I won’t go digging into new points just yet because a) it’s VERY recent and somewhat overwhelming b) I’ve got some other things to talk about but trust me, I’ll be looking into what new and shiny things I can put together soon enough.
What I do want to talk about though is just how exhilarating this has been. The build up, the thought, the new points themselves and the transparency and honesty of the live stream talking about the points.
It’s perhaps very easy to say this in light of how little attention AMG gave the game in the two and a half-ish years that they ran it but it now finally feels like X-Wing is being run by people who actually care about the game. People who are in it for the passion and not because they were told to be by their boss.
It’s also quite nice to know that the points were actually coming, have a date set and for that date to be honoured AND also that the most commonly used list building tools are part of the process and were up to date and ready to go immediately.
If this is what the future of X-Wing now looks like, then it’s looking better than it has in a while!
Oh, and of course the website is now live. Two and half months is all that took. I mean who would take longer than like 2 months to make a website for a game, ammirite?
With not only the points but the full history of news and announcements and links to YASB and Launch Bay Next (which are both carrying the new points!) and XWHub which already collates a LOT of X-Wing information. There’s a few placeholders for upcoming sections for rules clarifications and XWA content too. It’s all very exciting!
Anyway you definitely have to check out the XWA Website!!
Lastly, I want to give a HUGE shout out to Dwight Lindsay. Dwight runs the Lock n roll Facebook group but more than that, he’s been working to both produce and pull together and redistribute prizing to enable TO’s to get their hands on great swag to give out to players at tournaments.
We spoke a few weeks ago and I was happy to send him (via the legendary Louis Leong) a bunch of left over GT prizing from the Welsh Open.
In return (though I didn’t demand or even ask for it!) he’s sent me a bunch of stuff to use to run a tournament!
There’s some amazing stuff in the box and while we don’t have a date in place for an event in Newport just yet, Mark Hall and I are working on getting something together in the not too distant future. Keep your eyes peeled for an update on that!
Right, is that all for news? Well, sort of…
XTC Update…
Yes, XTC is now fully under way!
Just a little recap in case you’re not familiar.
- XTC is the X-Wing Team Championship (like the FIFA World Cup of X-Wing)
- I am captain of Team Wales
- There is a group stage to qualify for finals (top 2 from each group qualify)
- Wales are in group D
I guess that at this stage I should tell you who’s in the team!
With the competition increasing from 5 to all 7 factions this year I have tried to keep things as Welsh as possible with a good number of players eligible under the ‘Vinnie Jones’ rule:
We also have a few ringers this year with special mentions to Kevin Conrad (who’s previously represented Ireland), Elliott Clayton and James Humphey (both English).
We’ve been drawn in group D and while I think all of the groups have an element of ‘group of death’, I think that group D is particularly challenging with perennial finalists Germany and France, regrouping powerhouse Poland, ‘basically USA II’ the US Islands, European challengers Hellas (Greece) and little old us.
It’s certainly going to be a challenge!
We are playing against France in round 1 and French captain Aurelien Coudray and I did our pairings last week. The matches will play out over the next week. How exciting!
If you want to follow results you can see how things are going here.
Truth be told it’s going to be VERY difficult to make it to the finals this year but we’ll give it a go and, more importantly, we’ll have fun in the process!
Our campaign got off to a good start though as Rebel player Elliott pulled out an epic last turn win against French captain Aurelien on stream last night! It means that (for a few hours at least) we top the group!
Anyway, more results will come though as the week progresses, check back next week to see how we did!
The non-batrep…!? (JARGON ALERT!!)
Sadly, with summer holidays in full flow and few people away, I wasn’t able to get an actual in person game these last 2 weeks.
What I have been doing, though, is trying to familiarise myself with some of the lists that my fellow Welsh players have put together, just in case I need to step in and play a game.
Now, when I recruited the team I said to everyone (well, almost everyone. Sorry Steve!) that I don’t mind what list they pick. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, I believe that a player will generally do better with a list (or ships) they have a lot of reps and familiarity with rather than something that is strong in the meta (JARGON ALERT!!) that they don’t know so well.
The second reason? I’d much rather people have fun and represent themselves (and their country!) well than win games. Winning is nice, of course but fun is best.
So with that in mind, some of our lists are perhaps not exactly what you might expect.
Of course, the down side of this is that, in my position as a substitute, I have to have some familiarity with ALL of our lists in case I need to step in at the last minute. Now, for some factions, that’s cool. Rebels, Resistance, fine. Empire? Yeah, not too bad. FO and CIS? Well, I don’t own these factions. They would be tricky. Scum and Republic? Well, they’re both factions I own and have played a little but getting to know our lists is going to take a little bit of work.
Now, one of the tools an X-Wing player has at their disposal is Fly Casual. Development has been a bit sporadic over the last few years for various reasons but it’s still a great tool for players to make use of.
I will admit that a while back I got a bit over reliant on using this for testing and ended up adjusting my play to win against the rather predictable AI. That said, in terms of learning how ships fly and working out when certain things trigger it is excellent and in looking at the lists I’m unfamiliar with it’s really been valuable.
While I’d love to share some insights on the games I’ve played with these lists and how they work, I’m not sure my team want me giving away secrets before we’ve played our games! What I will say though is that Resistance Lando is pretty good and that Elecro-proton bombs are SOOO Much fun!
I’m getting to game night this coming week and will re-pack my bag with some sort of XTC list (which is using AMG points) and maaaaybe an XWA points list as well. Come back next week to see what happens!
The conclusion…
It’s a bit tricky to really have any sort of meaningful conclusion this week.
What I can say, though, is that between the XTC and the first release of XWA community points there’s now a lot going on after a summer which has been largely bereft of any sort of genuinely interesting X-Wing updates.
Sure there’s been XWA news but it’s all been ‘putting things in place’ updates and while that’s obviously great, it’s not had any direct impact on the game itself until now.
I’m really looking forward to diving into what’s possible with these new points. At the very least it’s going to be nice to know that ARCs and B-Wings aren’t going to be everywhere and while my initial thoughts are that a lot of it seems very reasonably balanced (how dare they!!) it’s certainly opening possibilities on getting some ships or pilots out of storage that haven’t seen the light of day in a while. And you know what? It’s definitely overdue.
That’s about it for this week. Pop back next week where I (should!) have some games to cover and (definitely) XTC news!
The outro…
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