The intro…
Well hello and welcome to this week’s blog!
It’s technically not that long since my last post but there were certain things that I didn’t put in that post simply because the timeline was a bit messed up.
So let me kick this off by saying a HUGE congratulations to Chris Burnett for winning the Cornish Nationals event this past weekend!
Chris wasn’t the only Welsh XTC player to make the top cut with Mark Packer-Hughes also making it and a very special shout out to the legendary Steve Boulton who made it all the way to the final, only to be thwarted by a Concussion missile not flipping a Direct hit!
Well done to everyone who made the event – including Matt Vicary who posted this to Facebook after the Swiss rounds on Saturday:
If you’re interested in knowing lists and rankings (and at this point in the meta, I’m sure both are of very great interest!) then check out the Longshanks for the event here:
https://xwing.longshanks.org/event/23525
Right, that’s enough of that, let’s get on to the main bit shall we?
The main bit…
So, 50 points X-Wing is here and last week I talked about not really knowing quite what to do for a list.
I’m involved in an online team tournament, the start of which had been delayed for new points and for which each player would be faction locked but not list locked.
Having mooted several lists last week, the one with Ezra in the Gauntlet had only really been considered because of this message in ym team’s Discord chat:
So, with limited (VERY limited) time to theorycraft out a list, I decided to give this a go:
Ezra Bridger – Gauntlet Fighter (16)
Leia Organa (7)
Swivel Wing (0)
Nightbrother (0)
K-2SO (8)
Ship Cost: 16 Loadout: (15/15) Half Points: 8 Damage Threshold: 5
Gina Moonsong – A/SF-01 B-wing (11)
Fire-Control System (2)
Synced Laser Cannons (8)
Stabilized S-Foils (0)
Ship Cost: 11 Loadout: (10/10) Half Points: 5 Damage Threshold: 4
Ten Numb – A/SF-01 B-wing (11)
Elusive (4)
Fire-Control System (2)
Jamming Beam (1)
Stabilized S-Foils (0)
Ship Cost: 11 Loadout: (7/8) Half Points: 5 Damage Threshold: 4
Braylen Stramm – A/SF-01 B-wing (12)
Marksmanship (2)
Fire-Control System (2)
Ion Cannon (6)
Stabilized S-Foils (0)
Ship Cost: 12 Loadout: (10/10) Half Points: 6 Damage Threshold: 4
Total: 50
Being the diligent person that I am, I hurriedly (and badly. Maybe not all that diligent I guess…) repacked my case and headed down to The Arena on Wednesday to play a game against Josh Hall.
I won’t go blow by blow on this but suffice to say I learned some lessons.
Going in to the game I had not much of a plan. Ezra wants to K-2SO someone (usually Gina) a calculate. The stress from that is then cleared and the B-Wings move and do what they need to activate the double taps (i.e. take a lock). You have to spend said lock to get the second shot but Ten Number can mitigate that by spending stress like a focus, Braylen by having rerolls when stressed and Gina by having the K-2SO calculate.
Josh had adapted his 20 point list and (like most people) had lost a ship in the process. Still, he was sporting some interesting pieces
Fenn Rau (AaD) – Fang Fighter (15)
Fearless (0)
Adaptable Power Systems (AaD) (0)
Beskar Reinforced Plating (0)
Ship Cost: 15 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 7 Damage Threshold: 2
Old Teroch – Fang Fighter (12)
Fearless (3)
Electronic Baffle (2)
Mandalorian Optics (3)
Ship Cost: 12 Loadout: (8/8) Half Points: 6 Damage Threshold: 2
The Mandalorian (AaD) – Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter (11)
Outmaneuver (0)
The Child (AaD) (0)
Kineso-Switch (AaD) (0)
Calibrated Laser Targeting (0)
Ship Cost: 11 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 5 Damage Threshold: 2
Talonbane Cobra – Kihraxz Fighter (12)
Fearless (3)
Ion Missiles (3)
Overtuned Modulators (3)
Contraband Cybernetics (4)
Ship Cost: 12 Loadout: (13/13) Half Points: 6 Damage Threshold: 3
Total: 50
High initiative, high damage output, highly modded, highly dangerous.
It became clear quite early that my turn 0 wasn’t good enough as Josh sped at my Gauntlet.
Ten and Braylen got themselves a bit tanged up and did some friendly bumping which certainly didn’t help my cause but then somehow Ezra survived the initial onslaught and decided to try cruising right over the top of the melee.
This was about as good as it got though as my lumbering B-Wings continually failed to activate double taps or get reliable mods and got hammered by Fangs.
I was 10 points up after taking out Mando and halving Old T and Talonbane but soon enough the damage started to swing the other way and I failed to score a single point in the last 3 turns as my ships bled and died and were unable to do any damage or get back to the middle for objective scoring.
Braylen lived on a single hull point and, well, I had a LOT of damage cards out
Suffice to say, I lost this game.
Ah well. I had learned things. Where my ships should be (and where they shouldn’t), how best to deploy and where I do (and don’t) want rocks to be.
My online game was scheduled in for Saturday morning and was against the quite incredible Mike Upton, a previous XTC player for Wales and member of alt art card designers Vector Squadron.
He had brought a Scum list that, quite frankly felt like it overpowered my list when I first read it.
Drea Renthal – BTL-A4 Y-wing (10)
Expert Handling (2)
Ion Cannon Turret (6)
Ship Cost: 10 Loadout: (8/10) Half Points: 5 Damage Threshold: 4
Lok Revenant – Scurrg H-6 Bomber (12)
Dorsal Turret (3)
Veteran Turret Gunner (6)
Tactical Scrambler (2)
Ship Cost: 12 Loadout: (11/11) Half Points: 6 Damage Threshold: 5
Lok Revenant – Scurrg H-6 Bomber (12)
Dorsal Turret (3)
Veteran Turret Gunner (6)
Tactical Scrambler (2)
Ship Cost: 12 Loadout: (11/11) Half Points: 6 Damage Threshold: 5
Cartel Executioner – M12-L Kimogila Fighter (10)
R5-P8 (4)
Hotshot Tail Blaster (1)
Ship Cost: 10 Loadout: (5/6) Half Points: 5 Damage Threshold: 4
Cartel Spacer – M3-A Interceptor (6)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0/0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 2
Total: 50
Double taps and rerolls and a while extra ship.
Then again, it’s ALL low initiative and, kind of like my list, low-ish agility.
This was set to be a slug-fest.
Sadly I’ve got no pictures of this game at all (I was on my laptop and TTS’s ‘screenshot’ button is the same as the ‘airplane mode’ button but you have to press the Fn key. It was NOT worth the risk) but here roughly how it played out.
I kept my ships broadly together this time with the advantage of knowing where most of Mike’s ships would be. Ezra banked in from the left (ignoring the Cartel Spacer who dared the joust) while the B-Wings trundled up the middle.
Initially we traded ships with Braylen going down first in exchange for a Scurrg. It was a reasonable trade but being that I had 1 ship less already I felt it was worse for me.
Damage was traded at quite a rate in the first 2 or 3 proper engagements but then the bumps started and nobody moved. Unmodded shots were rife but now my Ten Numb was fine with red focuses from bumps (two focuses!) and Gina was just passing off her stress to the already mega stressed Ezra who simply didn’t care about them.
With time almost up Mike felt the game slipping from him and, by his own admission, got a little tilted and made some odd decisions.
I ran three hull Ezra into Drea’s face and dodged both the Kimogila AND the remaining Scurrg. Ten and Gina then went full psycho-death mode and initiative killed those two ships to basically steal the game at the end.
The conclusion…
This new 50 point game is going to need a little time to settle in. Two games with this list have shown me, well, very little really. It might be good, it might not be.
Given how much the overall power level in the game has changed it’s VERY difficult to tell. So for now the focus is just fun! As more games happen some lists will rise to the top and it’ll be interesting to try and gauge where the value is and how best to combine pieces into lists that are good.
That’s about it from me for this week. It’d be interesting to know what you’re flying, what you like, what surprises you that fits and what you’re sad that doesn’t!
Until next week people!
The outro…
Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you’d like to support me in continuing my X-Wing blogging adventure there are a few ways you can do that.
You can follow my social media accounts for updates
If you’re looking to buy some gaming ‘stuff’ and don’t have a local gaming store, you can use my affiliate link for Firestorm games. They’re great!
If you would like to directly support the blog then please consider becoming a Patron! I would be forever grateful!
A MASSIVE thank you to my wonderful Patrons for their ongoing support for the blog and enabling me to give away shiny things!
Exile Rookies:
Ben Kennedy, Opi-Wan Kenobi
Exile Veterans:
Mark Beor, Daniel Barringer, Michael Bird, Jason Desmarais, Darin Schwarze, Alex Peters-Bean, Mark Packer-Hughes, Eric Gordon
Exile Commanders:
David Bryan, Richard Goulart
Exile Legends:
Rebecca Westwood, Admiral_Ackbar47, Phill Blackmore, Chris Fear, Jamie Howard, Sean Oakley , Steve Boulton, Kyle Chalpan, Slawomir Stojanowski
You are all amazing humans!