Hello readers! If you aren't too bored of reading about X-wing, you could read about how I got on in the spring tournament at Weekend Warlords. Hopefully, you can read and understand this bat-rep, even with only a little knowledge of the game :) I've tried to keep it quite narrative. If you are bored of X-wing, the head over to this post for details of how you could win a free Space Marine Demi Company from a fellow blogger!
Anyways, if you've stuck around I was heading into this tournament thinking about what to take for regional season. Jumpmaster 5000s are the new hotness and I suppose I wanted to see if:
A/. I can fly them.
B/. They're any good.
C/. If I like flying them.
For my readers who don't know what a Jumpmaster is, one of its pilots (Manaroo) rescued Boba Fett from the Sarlec Pitt. In game terms for X-wing a certain combo of cards allows you to fly three of these things and they all have torpedoes that have like a +90% of getting four hits when you shoot. That you can field three of these things mean you could potentially cause 12 damage in one turn, if your oppenant doesn't dodge anything.
So I flew the following a triple Jumpmaster list, running 1 with Boba Fett (crew) and 1 with Intel agent. Boba Fett is great because he can cause your oppenant to discard an upgrade card (even the Emperor or Darth Vader!), although it's only 1 use. Intel agent is super great because every turn you can look at opposing ships movement dial before you do yours, meaning that you could in theory get in thier way.
My first match was against mr YV-666 himself, Shane Hibbard. Shane was running a Jumpmaster with two YV-666s, one with Boba Fett crew and one with Zuckuss crew. His Jumpmaster was relatively similar to mine, but with the addition of a recon specialist. It was a somewhat of a grudge match, with our last game being the final of previous store championship we'd both attended. The photo above is a shot of how I made a mess of the first engagement, and flew straight into the guns of all three of his ships. Had I engaged a turn earlier I think I could have maybe taken a ship off before it got to shoot, but as it was I lost one (the right hand one) straight away. I did shoot down his right hand YV-666 a turn later but this left me massively out gunned.
I flew around for a bit, but could dodge enough of the attacks. The 180 degree arc on a YV-666 is really hard to dodge! I lost my second Jumpmaster and then tried to engage his Jumpmaster with my one remaining ship as the YV-666 arced round to get back in the fight. It worked for a bit, but eventually he cornered me and killed me. I lost, getting half points for one YV-666 and full for the other one.
Result: Loss 48-100
My second game was against Dan. He was flying an elite tie swarm, with the following pilots:
Youngster with expose
Zeta leader with wired
Howlrunner
Omega ace with push the limit
Epsilon leader
Basically, and somewhat hilariously, youngster allows the other ties to expose themselves all the time. This combos well omega ace, as you can end up with 4 Crits. So that meant that youngster and his non safeguarding appropriate upgrade was my primary target!
The game went well, although I made a total screw up of the first engagement, misreading he game completely and barrel rolling my central ship into the path of the oncoming swarm whilst the others simply slow rolled. I did save that situation thou, and managed to take youngster out straight away. This stopped the rest of the ties exposing themselves to my pilots constantly.
Over the next couple of turns, I did a really good job of blocking the ties, indeed 3rd round of engagement I got his 3 remaining tie fighters to all bump, meaning they had no action and less shots. Over the next few turns I whittled his forces down in a swirling mid table dogfight, launching torpedoes and bumping as best I could. I rolled out winner of this one and decided to eat a cookie to celebrate.
Result: Win 100-65
My third game I played against jumpmasters! Nothing less than I deserve running them myself, I'm sure you agree. James had 3 Jumpmasters, all with torpedoes and astromechs, and he was at 100 points which gave me initative. I set up on the left hand side, and James set up opposite to joust me.
The intial engagement worked well for me, I blocked 2/3 of his ships with a long 3 speed and barrel roll. I felt pretty good about that. However, next turn my Boba Fett Jumpmaster was targeted by all 3 opposing jumpmasters and went down to 2 direct hits. From being on full hull to dead in one turn! That was painful.
This eventually left me with 1 vs 2 (mines on the left) and playing catch up. I had a set of torps that I never got to fire. In the end, I managed to bump my way to staying alive, only taking shots from one at a time. With my bump master alive on 1 health, I did get some MOV, but I lost the game to go 1-2 after 3 rounds.
Result: Loss 49-83
Game four saw me play another triple Jumpmaster list! I once again had initative against Adam's wolf pack. Very similar to James list, this time I tried going to my right, and trying a slightly different approach.
I weirdly barrel rolled my boba who was in the centre in front of a rock on the corner of the board, whilst my other two were slow rolling in the bottom right. I then turned in hard with Boba and barrel rolled to get in the way and made all his ships rash into each other. This allowed me free reign cutting in from the side and got a good crtical hit, reducing a rival jumpmaster to Ps0.
This put me ahead in the shooting race, which is always really important in the knife fight. Whilst my white and green Jumpmaster with Boba Fett went down I was able to keep ahead in the arms race and ended up with a victory.
Result: Win 100-51
I went into my final game 2-2. Could I claw out a victory for a 3-2 finish to the day? I was playing Matt, who had Tycho with rage and proton rockets, the PS3 Ghost (with dash, lando a dorsal turret and some other bits) and zeb in the attack shuttle. That allows the ghost to fire twice as the shuttle crew man the guns on the main ship. And Tycho is a beast anyway.
I slow rolled for a couple of turns, seeing the lay of he land from my left hand corner fortress. The ghost had started opposite me, and i thought about chasing it down, but I knew it could outrun me. Tycho crept into the mid right of the star map, with both of us sizing each other up. I then broke out of the corner and went for a Hail Mary block on Tycho. It didn't work!
However, I couldn't complain as he was still in a position to receive fire from all three jumpmasters (2 turrets, 1 torpedo). I was very fortunate with the red and green dice rolls, and Tycho went down straight away. By this time, the Ghost had k-turned and was heading into the centre of the board. The next turn (second round of engagement) I got a decent block on the ghost, denying the action and took 8HP off. Plasma torpedoes really love 0ag ships with lots of shields. At this point Matt conceded, and it was all over very conceded
Result: Win 100-0
My final win did wonders for my MOV, and meant that I finished 6th! I got some nice swag, including some ion tokens [Edit, thanks John!] and a nice alternative art card for veteran instincts.
As ever, an absolute blast at weekend warlords! Ash and the team are always great, and I love seeing the guys that play there. They make me feel really welcome, and they have a real community. What a game store should be like. Just that they remember my name means a lot :)
I mentioned at the start that I was looking at 3 key factors. I will be reviewing my thoughts on this later this week, so tune in weds/thurs for that! Thanks for reading!
6th!?!? Back to the Y-Wing list then :)
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