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Me and the guys are thinking about sponsoring a tournament at our FLGS and we want to keep it as casual as possible. To that end the goal is to get at least 8 players as many as 24, have no more than $20 bucks go to first place, $10 to 2nd and 3rd, $5 to 4th, all to be paid out in store credit or pre-selected items. Prize structure would be modified for higher attendance than 8 aiming at some prize pay out for the top half however we can. Fellowship prize for "Coolest Player" and "Coolest List" to be organizer selected and the prize valued at like $5, awarded to lower half only. (I don't like double winning) So comments on that part would be appreciated.

Next and most importantly the event we have mulled over and decided on (almost definitively) is what were calling "Patrol": 60 point list, No large/huge ships, All FFG tourney rules apply, including restriction on unreleased product. We are currently thinking this since we have some players who don't have huge collections, and might not want to do a full tourney. For this part I would really appreciate all you awesome guys submitting a list to the thread of what you would play at this tournament so we could get an idea of what to expect on the field as TO's. Remember we're trying to make it noob friendly as it were, but we want to know if there is going to be some power house in the 60 point list range that might create an un-fun experience. So I AM asking you to TRY and break this format of ours. Then we'll know how to adjust the point restrictions or if we need to at all.

I'm assuming however that as balanced as the game is and the ban on large ships, we shouldn't find anything we haven't anticipated in our play test events. But we can never have enough play test data so here we are! Keep calm, and use the Force.

60 points is also the first leg of the Escalation format, so that's something to build towards for future events. I would definitely reconsider axing large ships, as they add a lot of variety to builds. As scary as a Fat Han or Chewie can be, in low points they can easily get overwhelmed.

The nastiest thing I can think of for 60 is Howlrunner w/ PTL and 3 Obsidian Squadrons, or just 5 Academies/Bandits.

Future escalation events had come up. Honestly that was the format we ended stealing the point cost from after experimenting with others for a while. And it worked well with the ships we wanted to highlight.

Giving the large ships the boot was a long hard decision but currently we believe it's the right move for the experience we want to provide at this particular event. We really wanted it to be a dogfight of fighters only as it was a 'Patrol' scenario so that nixed shuttle and freighter. We thought of allowing firesprays but that felt a bit off for consistency sake so we lumped em together. The final nail that sealed the coffin was far more sneaky. Some of the players at the store we wanted to get in the event don't have access to falcons right now as our store is sold out! As for list variety? I'll bring it back up with the crew. But I don't quite understand how single ship lists do that. Could you explain more so that your comment gets full consideration?

Well, more ships means more potential builds and more variety. X-Wing is a really well balanced game, so nothing dominates to the point of necessitating a ban.

Think back to A New Hope. When the Falcon escapes the Death Star it is pursued by 4 TIEs. That's basically a 60 point game and about as "patrolly" as it gets.

Ultimately it's your call, but that's my recommendation.

We just playtested the tourney again monday night. The setup was four of us each run a 60pt, everyone already knowing I had a 60pt Han+C-3PO+Luke Skywalker+Millennium Falcon+Predator list. The field was Howlrunner baby swarm, Midrange baby swarm with Bomber, Garven/Jan, Han. As expeted, Han absolutely, utterly, unashamedly, molested all three lists. And they were being flown as competently as could be expected while the Han list is almost mistake proof, didn't stop me from making quite a few though . The worst Han ever got was shields down and a damaged sensor array but every game his shields did drop and in one other game he got a face down. After seeing it in action we set up one more game with the same list versus what we hoped would be a perfect counter and the best player we had: Bobafett+Slave One+Rebel Captive+Heavy Lasers+Ion pulse Missiles+Proton Torpedoes+Push the limit+Munitions Failsafe. Same result. Han won with 7 life remaining. We declared the C-3PO card on YT-1300 with Falcon Title broken in the format after an hour long post discussion. We thought of just banning it in a WOTC style attempt to level the field. But the consensus stood at banning the large ship group for this event as to single out A card was poor form, with a sidenote to do a large ship only 60 point tourney in the future to create an event series, since the Han vs Fett game in theory had a chance. And there was one turn where it could have all tumbled down. I am beginning to wonder if we aren't just falling for the group think of the situation and not being honest with ourselves that y'know, were three years of releases into this game. Maybe the balance did get out of whack? ALL games eventually suffer power creep in one form or another. Is this it I wonder?

Well, Fett is definitely not a hard counter to Falcons. 3PO Falcons work by shutting down one individual attack a round, like a single HLC. What kills Falcons is numbers. 5 TIE Fighters or Zs should tear them apart in a few rounds.

3PO is annoying, but he is more of an anti-haymaker upgrade and doesn't offer much to slow down consistent damage from multiple sources.

And yet strangely the Fett list was the closest to killing it for the first half of the game. Dual Shuttles HLC might have been intersting but they likely would lose on maneuverability.

We'll try the five ship list next then. My hypothesis is that with out the Howlrunner it wont fair much better. Zwarm should do it I suspect. Either way, if allowed it creates a rock/paper/scissors event, IMO :/ and eliminating that is the objective here.

I'll try to remember to BatRep this one. I only snapped one pic of the test tourney because their were three ties and a bomber that had taken nine crits on them before the game ended.

If you're going to ban large ships then you also need to ban TIE phantoms (or at least the named ones with advanced cloaks). 360* turrets are the only real counter to a high-PS phantom, take away turrets and a good phantom pilot is going to dominate this tournament.

Also, the counter to C-3P0 is Wedge and/or outmaneuver. If you don't roll any defense dice because you have zero agility you can't use C-3P0, leaving only a single evade token for defense.

Wedge does his share and outmaneuver isn't bad either, but the Falcon sets up a free chase and then keeps moving to range three away with even moderately skilled flying and, ta-da, gets a dice for 3PO triggers. This tactic effectively countered the counter in the first test run of the tourney once Han blasted out the wingman which as I recall was Biggs with R2-D6/Outmanever. The phantom may indeed be a problem. I'll add it to the list of test cases but so far there have actually been quite a few HWK and Y-wings in test lists so I don't really know what will happen there. They will basically have a Phantom and maybe a mid level tie so that could be awkward. Odd as that sounds. It could definitely be a problem so we'll put that one up, I don't think anyone's thought of that yet and that could be real ugly.

But let's say I don't do a large ship banning for this event, so Falcons are back in, Everyone brings a Falcon or if I do, everyone brings a Phantom...Hmm I feel like I'm setting up a rock paper scissors flow chart. :/