Sunday, August 19, 2018

X-Wing 1.0... I'm Free!


I’m Free!

A little bit dramatic I suppose, but down to the last few X-Wing 1.0 events.  And I actually won a Store Championship…  So, in theory I have a bye for a Regional or the like should I go next year.  But that is a ways off…  LONG day, Swiss then the cut.  Played a new guy first…  Not “new”, just new to the area.  He had the FO Upsilon Shuttle, The Inquisitor and (edit, I remembered) Maj Vermiel...  I set up in a fairly standard spread formation, Fel and the Palp Reaper to one side and Ryad in her Defender to the other side.  Ryad was set to joust, but I had no intention of doing that.  Fel burned in and flanked.  He caught the Inquisitor for a Range 3 shot while the Inq had not token stacked.  As it was the only shot for the turn I used Palp to call for a Crit.  I had a Focus, so when the expected 1 hit, 1 Focus and 1 blank came up I could change it to 2 hits and a crit.  Then when he blanked out on Defense and the Crit was a Direct Hit, the game was pretty much decided.  He had Hux on the Upsilon for some tricks, but with my 2 Aces backed by Palp, it was a very quick 100-0 for me.  Game 2 brought me against Allan and his 3 YT-1300’s…  2 of the cheapest ones (PS 1, 6 Hull and 4 Shields, 2 Attack) and one of the Resistance ones (PS 3, 8 Hull and 5 Shields, 3 Attack).  He rushed at me, caught Fel at Range 1 to use his bug zapper on 2 of his ships (Feedback Array, does one Damage to a ship at Range 1, but you get an Ion and a Damage)…  Neat trick, and had he caught me with 3 of them or ever gotten close to Fel again might have worked.  But once again Ryad was a rock star.  Fell died, but he did a LOT of damage before he died.  And he strung them out for the Defender to just pile in Damage…  And with Palp, there were a LOT of Crits.  So second win for me, but certainly not a clean sweep at 100-30.  Third game was the final for the Swiss…  Marty was running a Rebel 4 Ship list with Jes Pava, Ezra (Standard “Stressra”), Lowrick (Rey crew) and CPT Rex.  Solid build and pretty much a hard counter for the Imperial Ace build I was running.  LONG game.  And the first one I’ve ever had come down to a “Final Salvo”.  I suppose that is a spoiler J … But, every ship was on fire by the end and of course nothing died.  I dodged a LOT there, and Palp was key to my survival with the “I declare a Dice Result”, usually being an Evade to keep a ship alive.  So, his 10 Dice Salvo to my 9…  I lost, but that was the best “loss” from a MoV point of view keeping me in second place. 

So, on to the cut…  I played Patrick who I last played over in Bloomington on the live stream.  He was running a pair of Skurrgs with Nym and Sol Sixa kitted out as Heavy Bombers with Harpoons, TLTs, Cluster Mines (and one had the mapper to place 2 sets of Clusters out after setup.  Made for a VERY tight field.  Another long game, but TLTs do not like seeing big token stacks.  Also, frankly got lucky with the Harpoons, he only fired one, and Fel cleanly dodged it…  Well, he HAD help from Palp and the token stack, but…  Wore him down and finished it off near time…  On to the rematch with Marty.  So, the curse of the Swiss is real.  I learned what I needed to do in our first game and since it involved selling out everything to kill Ezra, I hung Fel out as bait.  He died, but not before piling in a bit of Damage on Ezra and leaving him in position to be shot by the other 2 ships in my Squadron.  The Emperor himself wound up getting the kill as Marty’s dice finally cooled off and mine got REALLY hot.  From there it was the PS 5 Countess just dancing around and piling in damage aided by Palp declaring a Crit here and there.  THOSE were what got me the game.  Lowrick got hit with 2 of the Crits preventing any actions other than on Damage cards and a Weapons Failure.  Since I engaged so quickly, his Rey had no Focus banked up and -1 Attack and no mods means that the TIE Defender simply ignores your attacks while hers are killing things.  Palp’s Reaper eventually died as well leaving Jes and Lowrick, but Low was on fire and so the next turn I killed the Wookies.  After that, it was just a T-70 vs a higher PS TIE Defender with a Pilot Ability making her the ultimate Jouster.  Took a few turns, but the game was already decided with the Defender being more expensive.  He HAD to try for the kill, and I was happy to joust with the token stack and shields remaining on the ship.  Oh, and Lone Wolf providing dice re-rolls for me…

So, won an really nice Mat, the Regional Bye, the other color Range Rulers, cards including the “1st place” Cavern Angel I can use for another few weeks…  Neat J  And now I am free to play my Fett/whatever for the next 2 events to bring my v 1.0 X-Wing journey to an end.  Preordered the conversion kits (yes, all of them) for the first wave and will be getting the larger Damage Deck with the new Core Set.  Sadly, I have no real interest in Wave 2 with the First Order and Resistance just not being all that interesting to me.  On the other hand, Gen Con brought us the announcement that the prequel Factions would be joining X-Wing AND Legion so the Galactic Republic will definitely be on my list.  Jedi fighters and Jedi leading Clone Troopers?  Um, yes.

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