Hello and welcome.
This week I have two things to tell you about, our final qualifying week for Team Wales and the Exile Squadron Squad Championship that I attended last weekend.
Dylan Jones, our superb Captain and the heart and soul of Welsh X-Wing is doing an amazing job running the Welsh team. This week we are playing Serbia and I get paired into the Serbian captain, Fiki Lauda (Filip Djordjevic) who is running a nasty Empire list.
Well it may be a horrible list but Filip turns out to be utterly charming. I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore, the X-Wing community seems to be made up of lovely people. We have a fantastic chat before the game and I’d be more than happy to spend an evening playing a game with him again.
After getting knocked out of worlds by Jendon defender I have a bad feeling about this match.
I really like the Whisper build, makes Whisper very consistent on attack.
After the last few weeks I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been too cautious with my Arcs. Like the movie, they are there to get the Jedi into position to win the game. So I’m going to be more aggressive.
Whisper will flank me, maybe Ciena as well but Jendon will come at me, fast and hard. I think the Tie would normally be an objective monkey but we are playing ‘Chance’ so he’ll probably be a blocker.
So the plan is push the Arc’s into the middle while Obi and Ani get into position. If I can kill Jendon and the Tie my next target will be Ciena, interceptors have a habit of rolling blanks (oh how true). Whisper is slippery, I don’t expect to catch Whisper unless I’m lucky.
Turn One (I forgot to take a Turn Zero picture) and my Arc’s go up the right as there’s a nice channel into the middle. I placed Obi in the middle to attack the Tie.
I was expecting Whisper to go to my right flank but maybe the Arc’s scared him off. Of course Whisper can go pretty much anywhere it likes.
Ani does his normal hard one barrel roll to keep Jendon and Ciena honest. My main concern is that they will rush Ani while he’s in the corner.
Turn Two. I decide to keep Ani safe and 3 bank barrel roll him. Wolffe co-ordinated Oddball his calculates. Oddball and Obi lock the Tie as I’d won road so Whisper moved after me and I couldn’t lock her.
Rather than chasing Ani, Filip turns Jendon and Ciena in, bugger, this could hurt Obi.
I halve the Tie and now fully expect him to live the whole game but Obi is not halved. I’m ahead 4-2
Turn Three. Now I should have seen the block coming!! It’s a Tie fighter after all! But I didn’t and Wolffe and Oddball bump. Obi wants nothing to do with this and exit’s to the left to regen.
Ani is now coming in but I don’t have a good shot yet. But Wolffe is going to take shot’s from Whisper, Ciena and Jendon.
Jendon does his trick of dropping a shield to attack at range one and with a free lock and a focus lights Wolffe up.
Inspired by Jendon, Ciena and Whisper do the same and Wolffe is on one hull, ouch.
Oddball is up next and I’m certain the range zero attack from the Tie will kill Wolffe so Oddball fires everything into the Tie and manages to kill him.
Wolffe lives! Not only that he gets to attack. He shoots Jendon and Filip’s dice betray him and Jendon is halved!
I’m 19-10 up but Filip deserved better, he got me and his defence failing him feels unjust.
Turn Four. Obi has been getting his shields back thanks to R2. He’s still not in a great place but he can hard one back in next turn.
Filip win’s road so Ani is able to get a perfect calibrated laser range one shot. From memory he got max hits and once again Filip’s dice betray him and Ciena is one shot. I’m feeling really bad now.
I did a three bank with Wolffe and he manages to slip all the enemy arc’s, I’m very pleased with this move.
Whisper and Jendon do their best but I unload everything into Jendon. To rub salt into the wound Wolffe get’s an extra dice for his rear shot into Jendon and kills him.
Filip has lost two ships this turn and I’m up 42-12
Now I’m not sure I would have been as good an opponent as Filip who is still chatting and laughing and having a fun time while I’m winning and feeling really really bad.
The game carries on for a few more turns but Filip can’t leave the middle and give me four points and Wolffe three banks out of the rocks and lives.
Whisper does her best but eventually weight of red dice and two turns of kill box’s kill her and I win 60-21.
Conclusion
Filip is a joy to spend time with. We chatted about him coming to WTC next year and I promised to buy him a beer. I truly hope he can get a team together and come.
I made a huge mistake not seeing the block and I was lucky Wolffe lived.
But, it felt better pushing the Arc’s in so the Jedi could clean up and win the game.
I need to be braver in the upcoming matches. Being cautious has cost me games.
So that’s it, XTC swiss is over and Team Wales made the cut. Fantastic.
With the changes to Boba, IG’s and Adi teams have been allowed a week to re-do their squads before playing in the cut. We face the Denmark which should be awesome.
Exile Squadron Squad Championship
Dylan, Mark and Josh Hall always run an excellent event at the Arena in Newport and this was a fantastic day of X-Wing.
I like to change lists around a lot but as my friend and sparring partner Ben Saunders says, I’m better when I stick to a list.
Well I’ve been flying my double Jedi double Arc list with tweaks for most of the year and I was desperate for a change so I returned to my main faction of the last few years, First Order.
I decided to take a fun list, Grudge and Breach FO Bombers and SL KYLO and Holo. The Bombers had Blaze bombs on them. Why? Well I’ve had them for years and never used them. In fact I’ve never seen anyone use them.
Are they fun? Yes.
Are they good?………No
Breach has torps so the idea was that Holo would chuck Breach a focus and then Breach and Kylo would chuck double modded torps at people.
Great plan, did it work? No, not really.
But I did have great fun and enjoyed flying FO again. I’m still not sure what to take to Cornish Nationals next month. Need some more games with FO (with XTC I’ll still be flying my Arc Jedi list).
Here is the Long Shanks link for lists if your interested. https://www.longshanks.org/event/38522/
Game One v’s Sean Oakley Lost – 48-20 (Chance)
Sean is a fantastic player and went on to win the event. I’ll be perfectly honest. I didn’t know how to engage this list and he out played me and won. He had two guantlets and a Firespray, that’s a lot of beef!
The game was over very quickly but I played on, for a bit of practice but mainly because I enjoy playing Sean.
Game Two V’s Andy Cameron’s son – Won 29-26 (Scramble)
Now Andy’s son is under 16 so there is no picture and I’m not naming him.
What I will say is that it was a fun game and he’s lovely. It’s great to see younger players, my son Alex started at a similar age and the X-Wing community always treated him with respect.
I won against four Fangs and it went to the wire and he could have easily won.
He will be a menace when he fully learns the game.
Game Three V’s Richard Greenaway Lost 52-47 (Knowledge)
Richard has been a friend from the first year of playing X-Wing. He likes to bring fun lists and this was Tractor hell with a smile.
Yes that’s five Spacetugs and a Firespray!!
This was a really fun game and I was ahead the whole game until the final round. I was carefully picking off one tug after another and staying out of tug tractor range until things went wrong in the last round.
Kylo had been hurt but I was in such a strong position I brought him back into the fight and he got halved. But the bigger mistake that cost me the game was with Holo.
Holo got tractored (I’m not sure that’s a word lol) onto a rock and then shot and died. Now he wouldn’t have died if I’d turned him 90 degrees. Now Richard being the lovely opponent he is had caught me a few turns earlier and informed me that I could do the 90 degree turn.
I simply forgot and the game that I was winning was gone.
Richard was behind the whole game but his head didn’t drop and he carried on fighting till the end and got a very well deserved victory.
Game Four V’s Justin Win 53-32 (Satelitte)
I forgot to get a picture of Justin, probably because I was trying to figure out how to engage five Kimogila’s lol.
This was a fun game with me using the speed of the boosting bombers and aces to get around Justin’s list and take them down.
Kimogila’s are scary but they feel like T-65’s, they blow up easily.
I ran around the board grabbing objectives he wasn’t near and picking on one Kimogila at a time.
Conclusion
So I went 2 & 2 which was fine, could have been 3 & 1 if I hadn’t killed Holo in the 3rd game. I came 7th out of 12 which isn’t what I was hoping for but all the game’s were fun and I scratched my FO itch.
The event was very well run and the prize support as usual was off the chart. Thanks Mark, Josh and Dylan.
I’d highly recommend going to Exile’s next event if you get a chance.
I’ve hopefully improved my First Order list, it still has a Bomber in it as I love that ship.
Next Time
Thanks for reading my blog, I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll be reporting back from week one of the XTC cut. So until next time.
Pew Pew and if you see someone without a smile……give them your’s
StevieB
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