The intro…
Well hello! And welcome to this week’s blog!
Look, there is one piece of news that I’ve been busting to mention here and so I won’t waste any more time…..
THE WELSH OPEN 2024 WILL BE AN OFFICIAL AMG GRAND TOURNAMENT!
Ironically, after weeks of late blogs, I get last week’s out on time(ish!) and then 8 hours later I get the news!!
So yes, we are now an officially recognised AMG supported tournament! The ‘top level of competitive organised play’ (not my words, a direct quote!)!
Now, what does this actually mean? Well, we’re not exactly sure yet. We know we’ll get official prize support including participation for everyone, top 4 prizes and a trophy for our champion.
We don’t know what these prizes are yet but this weekend’s upcoming GT at the UK Games Expo will hopefully shed some light on that!
Of course, all of this is simply additional to the amazing prizes we are already lining up with tokens and templates and alt art cards of all kinds now on order. Oh, and the small matter of a beautifully painted X-Wing flight helmet by the amazing Ryan Coyle of course!
Your ticket includes a hot lunch on the Saturday as well as free table space on the Friday evening for a bit of warm up play if you want it!
We’ve now also decided that the Sunday side event (for anyone who didn’t make it into cut) will be an Extended, Cross-faction event! Want Rebel Han with Republic Arcs? Or Vader and Vulture droids? Got some super broken combo that’ll steam-roller everything in it’s way? Bring it with you and let’s see what silly things we can do!
So why wait?! GET YOUR TICKET NOW!!!
https://www.thebattlefields.co.uk/events-at-the-battlefields/star-wars-x-wing-welsh-gt-2024-cardiff
Phew! Ok, got that off my chest finally!
In other news the very lovely Sith Takers had me on their podcast this week (primarily to talk about the Welsh Open being a GT!), if you don’t already listen regularly – and you should, it’s a great podcast – then you can find it here.
The batrep… (JARGON ALERT!!)
Ok, so yes, I am FINALLY going to talk about a game that I’ve played with the new list I’m using.
That list, in case you’ve not been following of late, is:
Wedge Antilles (BoE) (5)
It’s A Trap! (BoE) (0)
Predator (0)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (0)
R2-A3 (BoE) (0)
Ship Cost: 5 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 3
Braylen Stramm (BoE) (4)
It’s A Trap! (BoE) (0)
Homing Missiles (0)
Proton Bombs (0)
Delayed Fuses (0)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 4
Gina Moonsong (BoE) (5)
It’s A Trap! (BoE) (0)
Juke (0)
Proton Torpedoes (0)
Ion Bombs (0)
Ship Cost: 5 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 4
Hol Okand (BoY) (3)
Dorsal Turret (0)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (0)
Precise Astromech (BoY) (0)
Ship Cost: 3 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 1 Damage Threshold: 4
Gemmer Sojan (BoE) (3)
It’s A Trap! (BoE) (0)
Precision-Tuned Cannons (BoE) (0)
Chaff Particles (BoE) (0)
Target-Assist Algorithm (BoE) (0)
Ship Cost: 3 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 1 Damage Threshold: 2
Total: 20
The biggest hurdle I’ve been having is the turn 0 setup.
I want the two B-Wings together, obviously, to get the full synergy of their abilities. That’s fine. I’ve thought about, planned, forgotten about, regretted and been mad with myself about their placement rather a lot of times though and it’s mainly down to one thing.
You see, they want to be stressed (to trigger other abilities) and while one (Gina) wants to focus and roll and pick up a lock later, the other (Braylen) wants to lock and roll and get the focus later.
The wrinkle that I keep forgetting during setup is which way round the actions are. Namely, you can focus into a red barrel roll and fail the roll to stay where you are but still be stressed. You can’t, however, lock into a red roll because the link is the other way around, roll into red lock. Meaning that one of them needs to have space to roll while other doesn’t care so much.
Do you think I can remember which way round this is?!?
So yeah, setup for these guys is important.
I’ve also been toying with where Hol sits in this mix as well as how aggressively I play Gemmer and Wedge.
It’s been a journey!
I’m not going to batrep this is the normal way for a couple of reasons. The first is that I didn’t take pics of damage though this game so it’s hard to gauge how much damage was done.
The second is that I’m low on time.
So, let’s start with what I was facing:
Bossk (Z-95 Headhunter) (2)
Contraband Cybernetics (3)
Ship Cost: 2 Loadout: (3/3) Half Points: 1 Damage Threshold: 2
Cad Bane (4)
Marksmanship (1)
Proton Cannons (4)
Babu Frik (5)
Contraband Cybernetics (3)
Xanadu Blood (0)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (13/13) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 3
Joy Rekkoff (4)
Fearless (3)
Ion Missiles (4)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (7/7) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2
Kad Solus (4)
Fearless (3)
Electronic Baffle (2)
Beskar Reinforced Plating (3)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (8/8) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2
Fenn Rau (6)
Fearless (3)
Clan Training (1)
Beskar Reinforced Plating (3)
Mandalorian Optics (3)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (10/12) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 2
Total: 20
Josh has been flying this list a little while and the firepower it can put out is scary. My list is up to the task of beating it but I have lost to it as well. The key is taking pieces off early. Well, I think it is anyway.
We set up and, after my forgetting to take a photo of turn 0, we’re positioned like this in turn 1.
As you might be able to guess we’re playing Scramble and I’ve made somewhat of an error.
My B-Wings are ok, I think. Braylen (the white B-Wing) can go slow and should be able to roll right (since he’s the one who needs to complete a roll into red lock) into Hol’s space once moved. I want Hol to move further than Braylen in order to; a) increase my chance of firing the APT (JARGON ALERT!!) and b) offer him up as a juicier target.
Gina can bank in from here and fail her roll no problem. Wedge can turn in as well.
My mistake was with Gemmer. Not only did Cad just go ahead and joust me despite Wedge’s presence, he’s got the bullseye. Balls.
Also Bossk is home free on the left flank, able to come in with no problem and grab that objective at will.
Cad trades shots and the Proton Cannon gets Gemmer down to 1 health. Not dead though!
Gemmer and Wedge strip Cad’s shields and put 2 hits onto hull. Not a horrible trade. Could have been better but could have been much worse.
Now the scrum begins.
Gemmer goes into evasive mode, looking to get behind Cad to not get shot and claims the objective.
Kad (not Cad) then zooms right in at Braylen and Hol and boosts. Slightly unexpected. Joy comes forward a little more slowly while Bossk gently sweeps in on my left and claims. Cad (not Kad) banks in and claims Gemmer’s objective. Rude.
Hol jumps over Kad, focuses and uses the astromech to get a red lock on Joy.
Braylen goes slower but Kad’s presence means no roll into lock so he focuses into a failed roll and takes an evade. Gina 1 banks in and, despite having the option to fail a roll to the right, rolls left instead to get more space to turn in the next round.
Fenn, slightly unexpectedly, banks in fast and boosts into a red focus. Braylen is looking vulnerable.
Wedge hard turns in, focuses into a boost to get range 1 on Joy (picking up a deplete from the boost) and spends the astromech to get a lock too.
At the start of engagement Gina gets a lock on Joy while Braylen gets a second focus.
Wedge and Gina fire their ordnance and disintegrate Joy before she can fire. Nice.
The down side? I forgot to set Hol’s turret so he now doesn’t have a shot. Also, Braylen shoots into Fenn but does nothing. Booooo!
Josh’s ships didn’t do so bad either though, stripping Braylen’s shields and possibly getting a hit into hull.
The next turn is interesting. It’s bomb time.
Gina and Braylen both drop. Gemmer reclaims the objective (again) while Hol does the same in the middle.
Braylen knows he’s in trouble so tries staying away while Gina needs to keep uot wide to make space for that. Wedge bravely banks in to the middle.
Kad has talon rolled (JARGON ALERT!!) and will be eating bomb while Cad banks in and rolls towards a rock (which bites later!) in order to keep out of Fenn’s way. Bossk keeps on casually cruising in on my left while Fenn then hard turns out towards Gemmer who is tokenless and alone…
With 3 of my ships not having anything to shoot at, it’s a short engagement but crucially Wedge manages to kill Kad (not Cad) at range 2. Somehow Braylen survives shots from Cad and Bossk to live on 2 hull. Fenn, of course, kills Gemmer. Fair.
The issue I have now is that, while I’m still at a numerical advantage in terms of ship count, Josh is outscoring me on objectives.
The next turn follows suit as Fenn, who I fully expected to turn in and slaughter Braylen, simply goes straight and claims the right objective. Bossk has already claimed the middle so now Josh holds all 3. Oh dear.
My response?
Braylen’s Proton bomb plus Cad’s auto damage from teh rock plus a very unfortunate extra damage from the rock sees the end of Cad.
Hol and Wedge wipe out Bossk leaving Josh with only Fenn left on the table.
Feels like a comprehensive win is incoming, right? Want to know the score at this point? It’s 16 – 9 to me with Braylen on 1 hull and me with no objectives.
Fenn does start to come back in while I try to shore up Braylen to survive the incoming shot while I would probably have been better off claiming back the right hand objective while also claiming the middle.
I score 1 objective but Josh has got another 6 points now.
Hol goes fast to keep away from Fenn and claimt he left objective while Wedge turns to maybe get Fenn in arc. I take a silly linked action and evade with Gina to tank a potential shot from Fenn but really I should have just claimed as Gina has only lost a shield or two and could take a big hit from Fenn in order to close out the game.
Fenn can’t kill anything in the final turn while I claim 2 more objectives and take the game.
Final result: 21 – 17 win
The conclusion…
Now that was a weird game.
Having 3 ships left on the table (13 points worth!) meant that if felt like it should have been a bigger win than the 4 point difference it ended up. Fair play to Josh, he played the objective game way better than I did.
Despite having some good (and some bad) results with it I think I’m only just now finally starting to get to grips with it. There’s a LOT of triggers and in all honestly, while the list is good it isn’t infallible and you have to accept that you are going to lose at least 1 B-Wing. The question is, can I trade up for that loss?
There is a version of this list with Keo instead of Hol and while I see the pros and cons of both, I think that Hol more suits my play style.
Well I guess that’s it for now! Remember to get your Welsh Open ticket and I’ll catch you back here next week!
The outro…
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