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AKA "Rho vets eat your ships". Screw the meta, I haven't played any practice games with any of the good lists so my casual list it is:

Rho vet (32):
*XG-1 title
*linked battery
*LRS
*HLC
*crack shot

Rho vet (32):
*XG-1 title
*linked battery
*LRS
*HLC
*crack shot

Quickdraw (36):
*title
*FCS
*advanced optics
*VI
*LWF

Three ships with arcs, no turrets, no regen, just a whole pile of red dice. I'd been enjoying the level of firepower in casual games, but what I didn't realize is that this is actually a viable competitive list. You have to get arc, but if you get arc those high-end competitive ships die just as fast as the lower-tier stuff. Roll 8 hits, crack two evades, remove that ship from the table. And the threat of Quickdraw is very real. The double tap can also eat stuff, and multiple times I had opponents decline to shoot at all with a ship because the retaliation shot was going to hurt too badly. Good enough to win worlds? Probably not. But sure as hell good enough to compete. Game by game, as best I can remember on the order:

Round 1: Ghost/Fenn. Great, a top meta list I know I have no hope against. I've played this game, I know how it's going to go, Fenn shuts everything down and then the TLT wipes the gunboats off the table. Except it turns out my struggles probably had more to do with playing against a really good competitive player at my local store (who was also at worlds) than list weakness. Gunboats in the corner, Quickdraw split off a bit, and he takes the bait. Fenn banks in to lock down Quickdraw, and the gunboats now have fully modified HLC shots with crack shot against Fenn. GTFO Fenn. Quickdraw pays the price, but next turn the gunboats turn in to pursue and are free to fire without penalty. Half HP on the Ghost in a single turn IIRC. But from here my opponent gets super lucky/good. Every 50/50 call on which maneuver he's going to take (and how I have to match it to get a shot) goes in his favor, and he starts piling up TLT damage. It ends with one damaged gunboat lined up for a kill shot on a 3 HP Ghost, shooting with a PS advantage and full dice mods. Except I'm a millimeter or two out of arc, and the TLT finishes off my last ship. Close loss, oh well.

Round 2: Rey/Jake. Hi Rey. I'm Rho Vet, nice to meet you. Here's 8 damage. Rey has a big gun, I have a bigger one. Rey is predictable enough to get shots on her, and HLCs hurt. This is where Quickdraw pays off huge, twice he had to decline to fire at all with both ships because I had him down to 1 HP on each. The gunboats die dealing their damage, but they give Quickdraw a winning endgame. One long pursuit later (so many range 3 shots against focus + evade + autothrusters) and Quickdraw finishes off the pesky a-wing. And thank god I decided to go for the MoV instead of letting Jake run away (Quickdraw costs more points) until time ran out because I forgot he had a 4-point bid and I would actually have lost the game if I hadn't finished him off!

Round 3: Miranda/Nym. My only bad loss of the day. Playing around proton bombs with trajectory simulator ruins my approach, and I'm playing a list where getting a good opening turn is key to victory. I never manage to get focused fire on him, while his TLT starts counting down my HP. Miranda ends at (IIRC) 1 HP but I don't manage to get a single ship kill. 100-0, and I'm not sure if this is an unwinnable game or just one I wasn't prepared for.

Round 4: Fenn/Low/Corran. Ok, margin for error is gone. 1-2, and I need 4-2 to make the day 2 cut. Corran, you're my boyfriend most of the time, but you're going down. And that's exactly what happens. HLC alpha eats the escorts in a turn or two, leaving me with a healthy gunboat and untouched Quickdraw against Corran. Corran gets tagged by the HLC and has to go into full turtle mode, making him super predictable and only delaying the inevitable. Eventually he tries the gamble of a 3-turn to break away while carrying stress, and it does not work. Range 1 against Quickdraw with focus + TL, and the gunboat lined up for a range 1 primary attack if necessary. The gunboat is not necessary.

Round 5: I'm completely blanking on this game. I know I played six games, but I can't even remember what my last opponent was. Assume this probably involved HLCs doing HLC things, because Rho vets eat your ships.

Round 6: Inquisitor/Ryad/Palpshuttle. Playing against The Zach Matthews. No pressure, we're both 3-2 and need to win this game to keep playing. And just to make sure it's a no-pressure game the X-Wing Junkies streaming guys ask if they can put the Krayt vs. Krayt match on their stream. Ok. Let's do this. Ryad and the shuttle joust, Inquisitor tries to flank. Ryad finds out what HLCs do, going down to 2 HP in the opening turn, in exchange for minimal gunboat damage. Turn 2 Ryad can overshoot the gunboats no matter what I do, so I turn in on the Inquisitor. Lead gunboat gets the block, Quickdraw takes his shields, and the HLC from the trailing gunboat finishes the job. From there it's a bit of maneuvering before Quickdraw takes the range-1 revenge shot on Ryad and an HLC finishes the job. 100-0! DAY 2! THE ZACH MATTHEWS IS FREE OF 1.0!

DAY 2. WTF AM I DOING ON DAY 2. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

Round 7: Kylo/Quickdraw/Wampa. This is going to be an uphill battle. He has a huge bid, negating my ace, and Kylo is a point fortress that can run away all day once he gets the MoV advantage. But miraculously the opening exchange goes my way. Wampa dies, Quickdraw loses all shields from a HLC shot, and my Quickdraw is unhurt. Evil Quickdraw dies, leaving me with a damaged gunboat and Quickdraw against Kylo. Quickdraw runs him down while the gunboat hides in the corner to preserve MoV. One down, two to go!

Round 8: Low/Poe/Stress Ezra. Hell yes, three ships with arcs against my HLCs. He has to joust, and by now you probably know what that means. Ezra takes HLCs and dies, next turn I get the dream shot of range 1 into a bumped and tokenless Lowkxkzzkz, then take exactly one shield to trigger the retaliation shot. Meanwhile Poe eats a HLC shot and loses his shields, locking him into regen mode. And miraculously both of my gunboats are still alive, when I was so sure at least one would be dead that I didn't even have any maneuver planned for it. What can I say, X-Wing is a dice game sometimes. Quickdraw outmaneuvers Poe's greens, Poe goes down. HOW AM I IN THIS POSITION.

Round 9: Kanan/Fenn. Win and in. OMFG. I probably don't have the MoV to make the top 16 cut with a win, but top 32 is guaranteed and I'm probably just outside the cut. Unfortunately the Ghost in this list is Kanan, taking away my PS advantage once Fenn goes down. My opponent flies his Ghost perfectly, staying at TLT range of the gunboat he wants to shoot while landing just a hair out of range of the second gunboat. Multiple times he pulls this off, just flawless maneuvering. Fenn gets blown away as expected, trading for Quickdraw, but I just keep landing that hair short. It finally comes down to a 2 HP gunboat against a 3 HP Ghost. I have to take a TLT shot and dodge one shot, then return fire with the HLC for a very likely kill. Sadly the dice don't go my way, and that's the end of the miracle run.

End result: 6-3, and 44th place. Did not see that coming, at all. To be top 50 at worlds, and one flawless game by my opponent from probably the top 20, after I went into the tournament just hoping that I'd win at least two games (and worrying that this was an excessively optimistic goal and I was setting myself up for disappointment!) and not completely embarrass myself at the bottom of the standings. And to do it with a list that completely ignores the meta. I'm still in a bit of disbelief here.

Nicely done mate, I actually watched your streamed game live and couldn't believe that Zach tried to joust you, what was he thinking? Nuking Inky so early was handy (also some real nice flying getting the double block there).

Got to say though you guys at Krayts are messy buggers! Tokens/cards/templates strewn everywhere...

Does the American circuit have any more tournaments before the release of 2.0?

 ingtaer wrote:
Nicely done mate, I actually watched your streamed game live and couldn't believe that Zach tried to joust you, what was he thinking?

SOON I WILL BE FREE OF 1.0.

I'm not saying he threw the game or anything, but I think on some level he just wanted to get it over with and took the most basic strategy. Ryad (and defenders in general) is mostly a jousting ship, with great jousting math but a limited dial and only a PS 5 barrel roll for repositioning. I think the goal there was to trade Ryad for damage, leaving an endgame where the Inquisitor can clean up for the win. And TBH I suspect he didn't fully appreciate just how quickly those gunboats can remove ships from the table. Multiple opponents took the joust with them and had to immediately pull ships off the table.

(And did you know it was me at the time?)

Nuking Inky so early was handy (also some real nice flying getting the double block there).

Thanks. I saw based on the alignment that even my slowest maneuver with the gunboats was going to put them too far forward and give them no shots on Ryad (unless he did something really stupid), Ryad was going to go fast and bump while the Inquisitor tried to flank. I had to turn in on the Inquisitor and hope to get some damage through there. I wish I could say I had the block on him lined up deliberately, but TBH I think that was a bit of luck. The Inquisitor only overlapped the lead gunboat by a very small margin. But a tokenless 4 HP ship against two strong attacks is certainly an appealing target...

Does the American circuit have any more tournaments before the release of 2.0?

Looks like GenCon (North American championship) and NOVA (US nationals) are going to be shortly before 2.0 hits. I'm signed up for NOVA since it's pretty close, so I suspect the gunboats are going to be getting another shot at glory.

Honest flying and the only trick being red dice, many red dice, good going chap

You're got me eyeing up a second gunboat to try the list. Many red dice is my favourite strategy.

Congrats man. I'd love to try my tourney list out against that.

Good to know Dakka was represented.

I'll have to hunt for that game on Youtube...

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Good to know Dakka was represented.

I'll have to hunt for that game on Youtube...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/259349022

You're no longer anonymous. You have a name, you bird of doom you!

This has to be one of the most hilariously jank lists I have seen... and I love it!

"I didn't realize it was a bad idea to joust the gunboats."

- My US nationals top 64 opponent.

And that right there sums up NOVA. Top 16, 5-1 in the Swiss (with damn good MoV in those wins, enough to be 8th overall despite a 100-0 loss) and two wins in the elimination round. I won't bother with a long tournament report this time, because it's the end of 1.0 and none of the meta commentary will be of any value in two weeks. But the short notes:

1) HLC gunboats feast on low-PS jousting lists. I played five different rebel jousting lists, and the only loss was a close game (100-0, but all of his ships down to 1-2 HP) against someone who ended up making top 8. It's a ton of firepower that can quickly remove ships from the table, and unlike the ordnance lists the HLCs can keep shooting every turn. Get a good opening engagement where you can focus on 1-2 ships while the others are out of range (your much smaller footprint helps a lot) and you can get 2-3 turns of burning through ships and PS killing them as they approach. Multiple times I effectively won the game on the initial pass.

2) Knowing your list is important. Yeah, favorable matchups helped, but I made top 16 in a bomb/turret dumpster fire of late-era 1.0 with a list that has three primary-arc ships (two of them only PS 4) as its entire offense. Why? Because it's the list I've been playing for months, and I know it very well. I know things like when to deliberately bump your own ships to stall out of range, when you can afford to continue a joust with a damaged gunboat and when you need to SLAM away to deny a kill, when it's worth going for a primary shot instead of SLAMing away to set up an HLC shot later, etc. Every list is going to have those decisions and making them correctly requires experience. If you're picking a list for a tournament you're almost certainly going to do better with a familiar list, as long as it's at least second-tier competitive in raw power, than trying to make a last-second swap to the theoretical "best list".

3) There is a delicate balance between being unpredictable and being powerful. Did I bring an unconventional list? Yes. Did I win games because people didn't really understand just how fast HLC gunboats can remove their ships, and how jousting them is almost always a suicide move? Yes. There is certainly room for taking a list people don't expect and exploiting that information advantage. But notice that, while the list is not the meta standard, it doesn't contain any bad choices. HLCs are good. Crack shot is good. Action economy via linked battery is good. It takes conventional powerful upgrade options and mixes them in a less-popular way, but they're still powerful choices. And I can give an argument for all of them based entirely on list optimization, not resorting to things like "play for fun" or "netlists suck". You don't see Fel's Wrath "because it's fun" or using a different EPT "because everyone uses crack shot". Most options are just garbage, don't try to out-clever yourself so much that you end up taking a list that is "innovative" but also just plain bad.

4) Big tournaments are fun. JFC, top 16 after hoping I could at least win a game (TL;DR: short on sleep, flying to NOVA turned into a mess of weather delays and a sunrise arrival when the thunderstorms I was trying to sneak around cut off my route and left me in Norfolk), against some of the best players in the world. Meeting those players. Playing in side events in any downtime. Finding myself on the top table on a major podcast doing the official stream for the event, and winning that match decisively. And I'm not the only one. My first elimination bracket opponent was thrilled just to be there, finally making day 2 of a big event, and thoroughly enjoyed the game even as I wiped him off the table. If you get a chance to play in something like NOVA take it.

5) My top 16 opponent (the 64 seed, who probably cheated his way to beat the 1 seed and get there at all) who shall not be named by order of moderator was a complete TFG and should live in shame. A tournament report isn't complete without mentioning the shameful way in which it all ended. My top 16 opponent exploited ambiguous statements (I thought he was referring to his dice results when I said "yes", not his damage total) and called it a missed opportunity to use crack shot. Despite me explaining that I misunderstood what he had said, the point where any reasonable person would have said "oh, I see, do your thing", he insisted to the judge that I wasn't able to use crack shot and won his case. This, despite his own missed opportunities. I didn't catch it at the time, but my friend watching the game pointed out afterwards that he was constantly doing things like naming his first ship to shoot and then saying "wait, take a focus off Rey". Apparently the missed opportunity rule only applies when you've been completely out-played and desperately need to find a way to get out of the situation. So instead of Dash being dead and Miranda being perfectly kill boxed for a likely win on the following turn Dash gets away with 1 HP and PS kills a gunboat next turn before I can finish off Miranda. And then he had the audacity to say "good game" and try to shake my hand afterwards. Enjoy your win,, I hope it was worth it.

In short: tournaments are awesome, one person (who you can probably find, should you wish to avoid him) was not. Play gunboats, play them everywhere you can, but if you're ever paired against him you should probably just concede the 100-0 forfeit and save yourself the misery of dealing with him.

That's awful that you had to deal with TFG, I always enjoy X-wing because even at tournaments people are generally pretty chill. Even at PAX Unplugged last year all my opponents were great.

As an Empire player this has inspired me to finish the touch-ups on my two gunboats and get them on the table.

Do you think Gunboats will transition well into 2.0 ?

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Do you think Gunboats will transition well into 2.0 ?

I think so. They didn't make use of any of the things that got nerfed, and the biggest upgrade they've lost (linked battery) is replaced with FCS. Losing the wide arc on HLCs sucks, but now ordnance gets multiple shots so you don't have to immediately break away to reload. And crack shot is gone of course, but crack shot is gone for everyone so it's not much of a relative power loss. On the other hand gunboats keep a HP-based defense and don't get the shields-to-hull nerf a lot of high-HP ships suffered, gain ordnance that doesn't require spending a lock to fire (and FCS to keep a re-roll), gain the ability to SLAM and fire ion cannons, keep some level of action economy with advanced SLAM and FCS, keep the best repositioning action in a game where boost + BR combos have been nerfed, and do all of this with an efficient price tag. Gunboat setups are going to change, and I think the HLC rho vets are dead, but gunboats will continue on. Right now I'm looking at Vynder with torps as one of my imperial aces. It's an interesting combination of early alpha strike value and significant ability as a closer once it comes down to 1v1 and the target lock can be committed to a single ship.