Saturday saw 8 of us blast out of the hanger decks and into the cold void of space to do battle in the X-Wing event.
After writing multiple lists for both factions, I finally came to the conclusion that I had no idea what made a competitive tournament list and should probably stop over thinking things. Going with a gut feeling that there would be a lot of the larger ships in play and a desire to try out the Firespray, I came up with the following:
Tempest Squadron Pilot (25)
TIE Advanced (21), Cluster Missiles (4)
Turr Phennir (28)
TIE Interceptor (25), Push the Limit (3)
Krassis Trelix (47)
Firespray-31 (36), Cluster Missiles (4), Heavy Laser Cannon (7)
With Cluster Missiles allowing me to make 2 3-dice attacks on a target in a single turn, the idea was to try and overwhelm any larger ships I came across with sheer weight of fire early and take them out of the game, before mopping up the leftovers.
Turns out all but 7/8 players were packing big ships and 5 of those 7 were running Firesprays. (1 guy was running 2!) The two players with Falcons were running variants on the "Han Shoots First" netlist.
Game 1: Ian Kenderdine
Ian was running a Bounty Hunter, Darth Vader, Night Beast and an Academy Pilot. We spent the first few turns chipping off shields here and there, my missiles being largely ineffective and both of us rolling bonkers defense dice.
Krassis decides he has somewhere better to be.
Then I made my first colossal mistake of the day: I somehow managed to fly my Firespray right off the board. With the loss of so much firepower, the rest of my fleet was quickly surrounded and destroyed.
Turr Phennir is surrounded and destroyed.
Game 1 result: Loss 100-0
Game 2: Regan O'Malley
In addition to running the event, Regan was also flying a "Han Shoots First" list. Basically Han Solo tooled up the wazoo with a couple of Rookie Xwings to mop up what ever Han doesn't kill by himself.
The two forces line up against each other.
My Tie Advanced died early, without getting its missiles off, but the Firesprays missiles stripped the Falcons shields and had Han running for safer ground.
The Firespray strips the Falcons shields as the TA dies a quick and painless death.
Unfortunately, Turr Phennir couldn't stand up to the combined firepower of two Xwings and Krassis found himself surrounded and destroyed
The Xwings finish of Krassis, while Han hides in a corner.
Game 2 result: Loss 100-0
Game 3: John McLeish.
Johns a friend from the Hamilton Warmachine scene and it was good to see him come up for something a little different. His list was: Bounty Hunter, Tie Interceptor, Dark Curse and Backstabber.
This game,, both the Firespray and TA managed to get their missiles off against Johns Bounty Hunter, stripping his shields and reducing his hull to almost nothing. In response, the Bounty Hunter dropped his seismic charge, stripping a shield off both of the Ties, before getting finished off by Krassis.
The Bounty Hunters parting shot.
Turr Phennir and the TA combined to finish off one of the Tie Fighters, while the Firesprays Heavy Laser Cannon accounted for the other
Backstabber meets his end.
Turr Phennir then turned his sights on the less experienced Tie Interceptor as it tried to escape, bringing it down in a perfectly delivered hail of laser fire.
Turr Phennir dispatches his opposite with ease.
Game 3 result: Win 100-0
Game 4: Paul Monk
Gmae four saw me come up against Monkey and his ultra fluffy Obsidian Squadron tie swarm. This list had taken down a Han Shoots First list in round one, so I was a little worried. Paul list was: Howlrunner, Night Beast, Winged Gundark? and 4 Obsidian Squadron pilots.The swarm advanced en-masse, with an un-named pilot getting one-shotted at range by the heavy laser cannon. As the fight degenerated into an unordered free-for-all, Paul had problems avoiding asteroids, which severely hampered his ability to co-ordinate his attacks.
The HLC tears a hole in the advancing wall of Ties
The sheer output of dice from the Cluster Missile spreads were too much, even for Ties to avoid and with return fire hampered by ship collisions the ties quickly dropped one by one.
One almighty cluster-fuck in the middle of the table results in all three ties dying for no losses on my part.
Pauls defence dice, were, to be fair, complete pants and it seemed that everytime I pulled the trigger this game, a Tie Fighter died.
Game 4 result: Win 100-0
So a 2 win 2 loss record for the day, wasn't too bad. Certainly better than I expected going into the day and a metric crapload of fun was had. Which is the main idea anyway. Congrats to Dave Lewy for winning the event and thanks to Regan for running it.
Now I wait and look forward to the Wave 3 releases. Can't wait to get me some of those Tie Bombers.
