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So I thought I'd write up a bit about the group championship I played in yesterday. The SJ/PA area is home to a bunch of stores with strong X-wing fanbases and the championship was a big event boasting 32 players, cool custom trophies and alt-art cards.

I fully admit I'm not the best X-wing player, but I landed pretty much in the middle at 18th out of 32. I had 2 wins and 3 losses in the 5 rounds of Swiss with a pretty good MoV even on my losses. I took the following list:

Countess Ryad
-Ruthlessness
-Tie x/7
-twin ion engine mark 2

Backdraft
-veteran instincts
-special forces title
-fire control system
-lightweight frame

Lt. Kestal
-veteran instincts
-twin laser turret
-lightweight frame

Not a hugely complex list, no tricks but it's one I'd flown the past couple weeks and I liked it.

Round 1: triple Wookie gunships (loss)

This was probably my most frustrating loss. It came down to my Kestal with 1 hull point vs his Low'rick (lawh'rick?) with one hull. I fired first and somehow missed both TLT shots. He didn't miss. It was just a straight up dice conclusion. I wasn't familiar with the Wookies; it was honestly my first time playing against them.

Round 2: Rebel Rage (loss)

This was a ridiculous list with an Ezra shuttle, a B-wing and a Nien Nub T-70 all Raging all the time. I can definitely see why the list was built that way since Rage is a huge action economy with the focus and rerolls. I think I could have flown better but again I took down 2 out of 3 of his ships. It came down to my Aggressor vs. his X-wing with R2-D2 and I couldn't blast his shields faster than he could regen them.

Round 3: Imperial alpha strike with 2 Tie/sf and Epsilon shuttle (win)

I knew this was going to be rough going in. The Tie/sf had cruise missiles and the shuttle allowed them to deploy way up the field. Countess Ryad was blown away by 2 missiles but after that his list actually struggled. I took down both his Ties and was just facing an Epsilon shuttle bearing down on my Backdraft. I took a lesson from a previous practice I had with my local store champ and rather than try to flee the shuttle and get blasted I intentionally bumped preventing him from targeting my Tie. The match ended with his lumbering shuttle puling 2 hard turns to try to me in arc and my Aggressor matching the same 2 speed turns to stay out of arc as I sandblasted him with 1-2 damage a round.

Round 4: Generic Scum (loss)

This was another tough one. A generic Jumpmaster, Y-wing and Lancer with some basic upgrades. My opponent had the combination of skill and honestly luck that allowed him to effectively swap which ships were in my range so I couldn't effectively finish off anything. The high shields+hull value of his pieces really just hindered me and I squeaked out of this loss with just half points on the Jumpmaster.

Round 5: Fairship Rebels (win)

This was an odd match, I only started playing last year so I missed the apparently old old days of castling in a corner. So when my opponent proceeded to spend 3 rounds doing just that I was a little unsure. My Ties had great maneuvers and an almost open board so they streaked diagonally across the table and set up for perfect attack runs. When my opponent finally did move he made a slight placement mistake so he bumped 2 of his ships. My Ties were able to fire on a bumped Biggs who had no way to modify his dice and by the end of the next round he was down 2 ships.

Ruthlessness really paid off and I could tell he hadn't expected it. With my list basically intact and his cut in half I almost wanted to ask if he'd concede, but we slugged it out for another few turns before I took out the rest of his ships.

Overall it was a good experience and flying against a bunch of different lists was interesting. Plus I got a lot of cool swag including a set of FFG Focus tokens, an alt-art Countess Ryad and a Tie Defender double sided title card (Tie/D on one side, Tie x/7 on the other).