The intro…
Hello there and welcome to this week’s blog!
It’s nice to be back after a 2 week break and I’ve got a few things to talk about! Let’s get started with some events!
First up is the Newport Squad Championship!
This is being held on Saturday the 24th of May at newly opened The Arena in Newport. We will have one of the beautifully crafted (yes, I’m biased) XWA Squad Champ kits with cards, acrylic, metal components and a System Open round 1 bye to be given out!
Tickets are £12.50 and you can get one by commenting on the ticket post at the Facebook event page. If you can’t access that then just message me directly and we can work it out!
We’ve played casual games in the new venue a few times now and the tables are a great height, lighting is good, parking is free and there’s a Greggs around the corner. There might also be a burger van that opens Saturdays but I’m yet to test that out!
We’d love to see you there so if you can make it, come on and get your ticket!
That round 1 bye that you might be able to get hold of if you win the event? Well, you could use that at the Welsh Open in July!
On the 19th and 20th we are holding the FIRST EVER X-Wing Alliance System Open event at Firestorm Games in Cardiff. We will have a full System Open kit (with lots of participation prizes, acrylic and metal components!) as well as some other special prizes such as Welsh Open alt arts and, courtesy of AMG, 4 sets of Worlds 2025 dice!
This is the third Welsh Open and each time has been an amazing weekend of fun, hanging out with friends and rolling dice. Tickets are £37.50 (which includes lunch on both days!) and are available at The Battlefields website now!
Right, I think that’s about it for that, time to move on to…
Patreon Update…
Yes, having had 2 weeks off during Patreon month means I’ve got things to tell you about!
I’ve already talked about the crit tokens and 5 straight templates that I’ve got ready to send out. Well this week my newest batch of alt art cards arrived!
Having realised that (possibly due to my own faction biases!) my alt arts have been rather Rebel heavy, I’ve shifted focus a little bit with a BB8- Resistance Transport Pod and Captain Nym in the Scurrg.
I’m still waiting on one more thing that will be for the Legend tier supporters AND on something else for the giveaway but I’m hoping for news on those really soon! I’ll put out a post on Patreon when I have more on those!
If you’d like to get your hands on any of these goodies or if you’d just like to support the blog in general then you can head over to my Patreon page and sign up! None of the tiers are all that expensive but there’s a range to choose from with some the price of a cup of coffee and the most expensive roughly the price of 2 fancy cups of coffee! There’s also the option to join as a free supporter if you’d like like to dip your toes in or see what’s going on! Join up by the 30th of April (that’s TOMORROW!) to be included in this quarter’s giveaways.
Ok, that’s enough self promotion for today, let’s get to some X-Wing shall we?
The main bit…?
Ok, you might have noticed that I didn’t call this bit ‘the batreps‘ (JARGON ALERT!!). There’s a reason for that.
Over the last few weeks of playing it has, for the most part, just been myself, Josh Hall and Steve Boulton playing each other. Our venue situation has been difficult (we played more than one week in Josh’s house) and getting time when people are available together has also been a challenge.
At the same time, the new XWA cards came out and so, having flown pretty much the same Rebel list for almost 6 months or so (with roughly average, break even results), I decided to do a little bit of experimentation. The results have been, uh, somewhat mixed.
List 1:
Han Solo (AaD) – Customized YT-1300 Light Freighter (6)
Chewbacca (AaD) (0)
L3-37 (AaD) (0)
Tobias Beckett (AaD) (0)
Lando’s Millennium Falcon (AaD) (0)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 6
Dengar (AaD) – JumpMaster 5000 (6)
R2-G8 (AaD) (0)
Synchronized Handling (AaD) (0)
Starboard Thrusters (AaD) (0)
Punishing One (0)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 4
Fenn Rau (AaD) – Fang Fighter (6)
Fearless (0)
Adaptable Power Systems (AaD) (0)
Beskar Reinforced Plating (0)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 2
Mining Guild Surveyor – Modified TIE/ln Fighter (2)
Ship Cost: 2 Loadout: (0/0) Half Points: 1 Damage Threshold: 1
Total: 20
Look, not a lot of thought went into this list, I’ll grant you that. It’s 4 cards (3 SLs and one upgradeless TIE) and I got a bit ahead of myself and had no real plan or strategy of how to use them.
Game 1 – Steve Boulton, First Order
It became evident quite early that I had ZERO idea of what I was doing and that my turn 0 had pushed me into poor options
It didn’t help, of course that I left the TIE dangling a little too close and it got 1-shotted at range
Some poor positioning choices meant that, despite now having three i6 ships, I wasn’t able to fully maximise my damage output. No obstructed shots for Han, no double taps for Dengar, no range 1 shots for Fenn.
I managed to take down Malarus but wasn’t pushing damage on anything else and when I took a crit to Dengar (my only box carrier) while Steve had carried 2 or 3 boxes every turn, there was no coming back from it.
Result: 7 – 15 loss
Game 2 – Josh Hall, Scum
You know how really good players learn from their mistakes? Well, I failed that test badly here.
Again, turn 0 locked me into a partial joust and Josh’s fast ships sailed in and wiped out Dengar in one round of fire. Ouch.
In response all I’d managed was 1 damage onto Old T and halving Talonbane.
I manage to pull it back slightly as I chip damage into Old T and Fenn and bring Talonbane down to 1 hull. Nothing has died though and Josh is now outscoring me on objectives quite significantly.
I pull some of new Fenn’s shenanigans to finish off his Fenn but all I’m doing is treading water.
My Fenn managed to get range to finish off Talonbane but is now horribly out of position while Josh uses Cad and the TIE to block Han, preventing him from being able to claim the objective.
My TIE then exploded and the game is over.
Result: 13 – 21 loss
List 2:
Han Solo (AaD) – Customized YT-1300 Light Freighter (6)
Chewbacca (AaD) (0)
L3-37 (AaD) (0)
Tobias Beckett (AaD) (0)
Lando’s Millennium Falcon (AaD) (0)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 6
Fenn Rau (AaD) – Fang Fighter (6)
Fearless (0)
Adaptable Power Systems (AaD) (0)
Beskar Reinforced Plating (0)
Ship Cost: 6 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 3 Damage Threshold: 2
The Mandalorian (AaD) – Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter (4)
Outmaneuver (0)
The Child (AaD) (0)
Kineso-Switch (AaD) (0)
Calibrated Laser Targeting (0)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2
Cad Bane (AaD) – Rogue-class Starfighter (4)
Flechette Cannons (AaD) (0)
Todo 360 (AaD) (0)
Xanadu Blood (AaD) (0)
Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (0) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 3
Total: 20
Dropping Dengar and the MG TIE means I can fit Cad Bane and The Mandalorian to give them a try.
Game 1 – Steve Boulton, First Order
Now, I hadn’t intended on jousting here but sometimes it’s a little bit unavoidable. Well, ok, slightly less avoidable than other times.
I never intended on pushing Han into the trio of rocks here but, tragically, a poor choice of 2 bank instead of 1 bank meant that…
Thankfully (kind of?!) Steve had 3 arcs on Mando and so ignored Han. It failed to pay off as Mando took ZERO damage from the 3 shots and stripped Kylo’s shields. Nice.
As I leveraged my position to score objective points, Steve started chasing down Han as he was the easiest 6 points to score.
Bringing Kylo around, he fired a Proton Torp at Han which came up with 3 paint. Before he could spend the lock I triggered L3-37 and made him reroll the 4 dice and he got:
Unable to reroll again, Han dodged that bullet. Mando, now range 1 with Bullseye and a lock on Kylo brought him down to 1 hull. Not a great turn for Steve, that.
I failed to kill Kylo and so we end the game with no ships having died! Been a LONG Time since that happened!
Result: 9 – 5 win
Game 2 – Steve Boulton, Scum
This time Steve switches to Scum, running the same Fenn and Mando but has Ketsu and Talonbane instead of my Han and Cad. I have to say, I hate playing against tractor shenanigans. I don’t think I’ve beaten it yet.
After some initial jockeying for position, Steve thinks his Mando’s SLAM has bullseye on Han but Han boosts out of it and into range 1. Both are stressed so it’s 4 dice from Han with rerolls into Mando who isnt’ in anyone’s front arc. both shields and a hull are stripped and I get half points on the N-1.
Unfortunately that’s about as good as it gets for me this game as this time I land Han on a rock not once but TWICE!
The tractor nonsense from Ketsu along with big hits from Fenn and Talonbane mean that my ships start to disintegrate and while I take out the Khiraxz, I fall short of half Ketsu and Han gets halved at the end to get Steve to 20 points.
Result: 11 – 20 loss
The conclusion…
Look, there’s FAR better players and analysts than me who can give you much better, in depth opinions of why each ship is good/bad/indifferent. That’s not what I’m here for.
What I can tell you is how each of these felt to me, in my hands and with my play style.
Mining Guild Surveyor
There’s nothing to say here. It’s a 2 point filler that exists only to make up 2 points and try to stay out of the way of trouble and score objectives.
Dengar
He’s probably my least favourite so far, not because he’s bad but because the dial is so alien to me. The upgrades are good (although remembering the triggers will take work) but in a list with 3 pointers, he was teh clear and obvious target. My idiocy prevented him reaching full potential but as I said, that’s on me, not the card design.
Han Solo
I’m feeling a little bit mixed about this ship. Clearly my putting him on rocks 3 times in 2 games didn’t help my cause. I misjudged bank turns and made turn 0 mistakes and that’s all on me. On the plus side, the upgrades feel very natural and aren’t difficult triggers to catch. In a way you want him to be stressed for the additional die however the best way to do that is to rotate linked to focus and I never game myself the opportunity to do it. Boosting is fine but unless the ship you’re shooting at is then stressed, you’ve got no mods so adding the die feels a bit pointless. If I can get better with judging distances again then he’s definitely worth continuing with.
Cad
I only had 2 games with Cad and both were against lists with higher initiative. It’s weird because he feels like he’s your cheap objective monkey but he’s 4 points with a (mostly) meaningful gun. Never really got targeted by anyone so does feel like he was worth the points in the list. I still need to get used to the dial though…
The Mandalorian
Look, 2 games with a ship doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things but I really like this. He can roll up and blast something in his bullseye (as Kylo can attest to). Equally he can dive in, tag an objective and then quickly get out again. I didn’t manage to trigger Outmaneuver even once but I balanced it out by tanking so many shots from ships at range 1-2.
Fenn
I’ve played a lot of Rebel Fenn recently but MAN this one is so much better! Even though he’s 1 point more than the ‘build your own’ Fenn I think it’s worth it. The extra Hull and built in Beskar are good enough on their own but Fearless and the new Adaptable Power System mean that getting back into the fight having cruised through it is really easy. Still dies if you get the range wrong but that extra health feels SO much safer. Weird.
I’m still settling on what my favourites could be. I also want to try out Bossk in the YV-666 and Bo-Katan in the Gauntlet, both look to be good fun.
So, that’s it for this week, please remember to check out the Newport event and the Welsh Open and take a look at my Patreon page if you fancy it!
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.
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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
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You are all amazing humans!