Bolt action league results

So last night I won my bolt action league! Here is the proof: 

I went 7 wins with 1 draw and 2 losses over the last couple of months. Very pleased with the overall result obviously, but also since I've not really played bolt action prior to this term, exstatic to have a the juggernaughts trophy for a short while. 

You can watch my latest vlog about bolt action here:  

X-wing Nationals - Top 32 Cut and beyond! Darksun Life

So not only did I make the top 32 cut for the UK nationals of X-wing, I went almost as far as i could possibly go! I won't ruin the surprise for you (although, trust me id be shouting myself hoarse if i'd won the whole thing!) but I hope you enjoy the Vlog!

I know the blog side of things has been a little lacking lately, TBH I'm really enjoying vlogging and sharing my hobby in that fashion! Plus I don't think i've picked up my 40k stuff much in the past couple of months. Im planning to start seriously getting into my Bolt Action in September, so expect to see pictures and battle reports from that! I havent forgotten about my hobby season pledges, and in all honesty i think this bad boy gets the biggest, baddest completion stamp that i can find! So here it is:

Until next time,

UK Xwing Nationals Tournament Part 1 - Darksun 27

Here it is! Part 1 in all its Glory :) Which of course, means that there will be a part 2! coming hopefully later this week! Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more vlogging goodness here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9yiSXV2P-tTpPb1b2n30PQ

Blog hits! A June record!

A nice little side note - June was the third most highly visited month I've ever had! At nearly 2,500 hits it was only a few hundred behind the time my army got featured on bell of lost souls in 2012! My most successful month is still the month in which I posted my jumpmaster magnetisation article. 

I honk in part it's due to better self promotion, but also with double trouble there has been a lot of linking from other people's blogs, so thanks for that :) very much appreciated! I'm hopeful that I can keep up this momentum and break 50,000 hits before the end of the year. 

Army Review: Double Trouble

The hobby continues! I'm keen to review the performances of the units within my army on the blog! Partly because I enjoy the reflective process, but I'm always interested to see what others think. Its a bit like chasing the White rabbit - it can be a deep hole to fall down!

 

Librarian on a bike (original model!) 5/5

This guy was pretty badass. In the first game he didn't do a great deal, but then tbh most of my army didn't do a great deal in the first game. Games 2&3 taught me to love the psychic power Terrify, as units left the board in both games. I'll definitely be using that more often. 

He has intrinsic value to the list in that he makes the bikes objective secured. This saves points elsewhere in the list and gives me two very fast super scoring units. Overall I would keep the librarian. 

Boltgun Scouts & Landspeeder Storm 4/5

These guys performed well, needlessly dying in the first game but in the second and third game they really put in a shift. In the second game, they helped play a part in the refused flank tactic that contributed to our successes in that game, before flying away rather swiftly.  

 

In the third game their scout and infiltrate is limited by the deployment, but they could have gone in my partners deployment zone. However! They did well, using their scout move and our first turn to "drive by" a unit of dark Eldar, rapid firing them to their doom. The objective secured landspeeder is a huge boon to the army, I would definitely take these guys again. 

 

2x Grav Gun Bikes (3 man units) 4/5

These guys are really what made my list tick. They are also objective secured thanks to the biker librarian, and have lots of grav. Whilst their shots aren't as reliable as the centurions, I really like these guys. Being able to move 24 inches in one turn is something that again really helped with securing objectives. 

The one issue for me is their size. At 3 models you only need to blink at them and the lose their effectiveness. Perhaps at next year's double trouble I'll try bigger squads, but I don't know if they then loose their points efficiency.  The funny thing is that I could broke the rules a bit by having a command squad on bikes. That would have given me three squads of bikes and been totally legit. 

 

Grav cannon Centurions in a drop pod 2/5

So these guys are badass, and i got called all sorts of things for bringing them. Spending 1/3 of my 750 points (plus the cost of the drop pod) on them is the closest I've ever come to fielding a "Deathstar" in the late 5th early 6th tradition of death stars. I was worried that I would be surrounded by fluffy, deliberately teeth less lists and look out of place, but there were some equally competitive lists, so I didn't feel bad. 

However, in the 3 games I played they didn't feel useful to a 285 point equivalent. They killed a lot less than normal, i'm not sure if that's because they are to far towards being a white elephant at 750 points. I faced a reasonable amount of armies where their grav weapons would have been useful, but they just weren't quite all that. That could be situational, we'll have to see!

Tactical Squad with missile launcher (original models!) 3/5
These guys performed reasonably, mainly just holding an objective and being in the backfield, allowing us to double up on points all the time. They were the only unit to get destroyed in the first game. In part I think that's due to them being 5 marines with a missile launcher (and therefore not a threat) but their presence meant that we always had an objective, in every turn of every game.

For me there was something very encouraging to use these models. They are "me", they're a massive part of where my hobby started. To use them where my hobby is now was a big encouragement! And I've gotta say, I got a real kick out of seeing other people's 1st time models there.

Conclusion
So there you are! my short review of something that happened 2 weeks ago. Overall, I think the army performed well, as you can see from the ratings. Nothing was that big a suprise, the faster units were really what allowed me to do so well. I'd be tempted to trade the grav cents out for maybe 2 units of something. Perhaps a bike command squad and something arriving from reserve. Maybe even wheel out the legion of the damned! Love those guys. 

The big learning point for me was how much i like terrify. I'm going to be using terrify a lot more i think! I've already fielded a librarian conclave once since. I'll be fielding it a lot more in the future! 

Double trouble: 8 weeks and counting!

Double trouble is only 8 weeks away! Have you bought your ticket yet?!  f not, why not? Of course,my  potential excuse for that would be that the last time I played 40 was February, but we can't all use that. And I have bought my ticket. 

I've been musing on what to take, and I'm torn between two armies. The first, as you can no doubt geuss by this photo, is Space Marines. Howling Griffons to be exact. I really fancy some bike based shenanigans, as you could take two full bike squads and a bike command squad before breaking any of the comp rules. 

Taking a HQ on a bike gives you interesting options as you can take bikes as troops. Combined with the combat squads rules it gives you interesting opportunities to have lots of small units. You could couple this with some scouts in a land speeder storm, and maybe even throw in a thunderfire cannon. 

It would also give me an excuse to finish painting this guy, who is one of painting goals for this hobby season. I'm not sure of how competitive the whirlwind is really (it's completely not). When you compare it to the thunderfire cannon, or imperial guard wyvern it doesn't match up favourably. 

My other choice would be humanities true protector in its hour of greatest need. The Imperial Guard. I strongly believe that they function really well at lower points values. After all, for 200 points you could get 40 of them! There is however, something that we need to discuss. 

I may have a bit of an imperial guard sized problem. Which may seem trivial to you, but it really isn't to me. I mean, in a 750 point game, which heavy weapons do you take? If we pan out on the previous photo, we can see that I really do have a conundrum.

All these heavy weapons together would work, right!?!  My main problem with Guard is that they are to squishy, and don't really hit hard. Eldar and thier darker kin are both really squishy, but both hit a lot harder. Guard are much more about being the sum of the parts. Which is why I think they could be good for double trouble. 

One of the reasons they wouldn't be good for double trouble is that it's very objective based. And sure, they can swarm around, or mount up, but my guard army isn't very speedy. Unless I break out the old X-wing vendettas. Which I could, they haven't seen play in a while. But something about the fix bayonets, and "win by having more men than they have bullets" approach really speaks to me. Plus I could take mortars!

Love these guys. They're so cheap and not really that useful. 

Overall I can't decide. I really like the guard idea, but it's more characterful than competitive. I've spent my time in the trenches with fluffy lists in the past and they are fun. But I do like the bike idea. That's one I've not tried yet. So I'll see! I don't have to paint a thing to take the guard I don't think, so that would be nice! Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, Let me finish by asking; Have you bought your ticket yet?!

Tournament Performance Review - X-wing Spring Tourney at Weekend Warlords

Good day to you dear readers (imagine I'm saying that in a very British accent). Following on from my last post I thought I’d review the Jumpmasters. In the previous post I declared that I was taking them for three reasons. They were to see if:

A/. I could fly them

B/. If they were any good

C/. If I liked flying them

 

the real jumpmaster 5000 that everyones raving about

I'm going to review at least at first on those broad categories. So here goes.

A/. If I could fly them

Well, the short answer is I was a lot better at flying them by 6pm on Sunday than I was at 9am! That’s not the reasons solely for my defeats, but I was managing to get more sets of torpedoes of by the end of the day. I think that’s part of what makes a good xwing player a great xwing player, is that you can plan 2-3 turns ahead. So you know where you need to be to do the next thing, based on what you assumption about your oppenant is.

So I think I can fly them ok, but the natural turrets make them quite forgiving. You don't always need arc or your enemy that way. One game I only got off two sets of torps, but the others it was usually at least 3. 

The other measure that I'd use for that is bumping. Making a strong initative bid meant that I could use my intelligence agent to look at an opposing ships dial right before I moved. This was really helpful in allowing more blocks. Having said this, one of the games I lost was lost before the blocking really began. I am considering a fully fledged Bumpmaster, but it does lower my damage output. 

B/. If they were any good

Yes. They are good. I think everybody knows that by now. That I managed to lick half a ghost with two of them is proof enough for me. It's also a reasonably forgiving ship to fly in some respects, with a turret and two evade dice. 

The crux is that you only go green in one direction, so stress isn't good for you. It's one of the reasons I don't like the overclocked agromech, its just got the potential to leave you wide open positionally. The thing that I like is that they can just about do what you want with a standard build, but that if you want anything fancy or different you have to compromise elsewhere. So I had an Intel agent, but I sacrificed my 3rd set of extra munitions for example. 

C/. If I liked flying them

Hmmm. A tough one. There are aspects I really do like. These would include blocking your oppenants ships (probly my face thing in the whole game), causing grievously large amounts of damage, and the dial. The moves that they have available make them really fun to fly. They were reasonably fun to fly, but have a triple list with plasmas is a bit jousty, and I can't decide if I like it or not. In fairness, the main time I didn't like it was when I was flying against jumpmasters. Not because I was bothered by the powerful nature of them, just that it's a bit boring to look at! We all turn up to make pew pew noises and it's nice to see variety. But I am definitely partly to blame for that I suppose!

I'm debating dropping the torpedoes on one to have a ship fully devoted to bumping. My other option my be to trade one out for YV-666, and use that to bump with. However, I don't know if that's as powerful. I think in the end I may well fly them at regionals, if only because I haven't time to practice with anything else! 

Come back next time, when I'll be reviewing my hobby process so far this year, and looking at what I might need to paint for the double trouble 40k tourney. 

Weekend warlords X-wing April Tournament

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! 

Hobby hack: bases for X-wing

I got frustrated very early on in X-wing with the way the bases skid around the board of you breathe on them. I wanted to do something easy to fix this, that was nice and simple, but most importantly - cheap. 

Whilst whiling away a lunch break in wilkinsons (for my international readers it's the sort of place where you can get similar stuff of a decent quality without having to pay outrageous prices for a label. It's not a thrift store or pound shop, it's just pitching somewhere above that) I discovered some small rubber pads that might be quite useful. As you can see from the below picture, they are clear, and small enough that you can have 4 per base. 

I decided to give them a go and have since bought a second set. They are quite good, giving that extra bit of traction and helping stop things knock around when hit by a dice or nudged by a template. What's really good is that the are self sticking, so you can just drop them straight on.  However, my personal tip would be to secure them with superglue. They do tend to fall off otherwise. 

The main potential concern (although it's not come up ever) is the raised profile of the base. As you can see from this picture, it means that the base is slightly off the ground. Now, thankfully we aren't playing a true line of sight game, so I'm clearly not modelling for advantage. However FFG's rules state that you can't change the ships or base in any way. So there is the potential for somebody to call you out on it. 

Having said that, this game is Not a games workshop game and has a totally different community vibe. People are much more relaxed and agreeable than most of the other systems ive played. I suppose I'd just reccomend taking spares with you that don't have the feet on, just in case!

Overall, I'm gonna give this  4 out of 5 stars as a tip. It's massively cheaper than some of the other non slip stuff I've seen and is very simple to do. As noted, the only real problem is the raised height. 

Visiting The Dice Cup Nottingham

Recently my wife and I went to Nottingham for a day out (Yes she is real!) We went round the caves under the shopping centre and then had a few hours to kill before our movie. I suggested we try The Dice Cup Cafe, a board game cafe that id heard about on Facebook. Gav Thorpe is always raving about it and I confess I looked on with no small amount of jealousy. 

I often forget how lucky I am to live so close to the spiritual home of games workshop and warhammer world. Living within an hours drive when many live more than a plane flight away is something I take for granted! Nottingham has a rich heritage in gaming terms, for example warlord games seem to have a big presence there (the caves tour was selling a Robin Hood model of theirs, and I've seen bolt action on sale at the castle). Because of this I was hopeful that the place would be of good quality, and I was not disappointed. 

The basic premise of the place is that you can pay to play games for as long as you like. It's £5 pp, and in busy times they limit you to four hours. So £1.25 pp/ph. I imagine that's more of a weekend thing though. For this cover charge you get free use of as many board games as you can manage to play in that time! 

 

We picked out the following selection, and over the course of about 2.5 hours worked our way thru. Although we couldn't play the friends game because it's minimum 4 people! There is a real mix of games, 

(helpfully provided here!) and they are helpfully organised into catagories, such as light strategy or party games right up to carcassone or transformers risk. The real benefit for us is that it allowed us to play games we've not got, almost to test them out. If we didn't enjoy it, no loss! 

Of the games we played, "zombies" was a hit. This is a shot of Tabz combining a couple of cards (I don't move, she moves 10 spaces) to fly past me and escape on the helicopter. Totally though I had it! In my opinion, the mark of a good game for us is that it holds both our interests, and that we both have fun. Zombies did that, and is potentially something that we might look at getting at some point. 

As I mentioned, the massive benefit was testing games out, and we played sushi go to see what all the fuss was about. Following that, we actually bought it as well! So proof that thier business model works! I'm actually really pumped about it as wel, it's a lot of fun!  I will review it at some point in the near future In detail. We also played best treehouse ever, which is slightly more complicated version of sushi go, using some similar mechanics to build a better treehouse than your oppenants!

So, that's a broad narrative account of what we did, how did I rate the dice cup overall?

1. It's clean, well ventilated and full of natural light. Only a couple of nerd places I know are like that!
2. Friendly staff, helpful and the right amount of welcoming. I've been to nerd places where the shopkeeper shouts across the store to prospective customers, so it was really good to be welcomed properly. 
3. Decent clean toilets. Again, for some reason not always a given. But the ones in this place were good. 
4. Vast selection of boards games. Obvious for a cafe of this nature I'm sure, but there was a lot of choice. And lots of possible styles as well, from cash and guns to games that are gonna take all afternoon. 
5. My wife liked it. At least enough to stay for afternoon! She's not a nerd, but enjoys board games. There are places I've gamed that I wouldn't take her into, but this place was a safe bet. 
6. Nice cafe. A really good combination of the two, with a proper barista machine to make coffee and the possibility of other things such as milkshakes (if they have ice cream in!)
7. Fully wheelchair accessible, not a step in the place that I could see! Ramps galore!
8. No music. It was mid afternoon, and things did liven up by the time we left but there wasn't any background music. I didn't ask about it so it may just have been broken, but i think that would have added to the atmosphere. That was something Tabz brought up actually. 

Probably the thing that deserves most discussion is the cover charge for playing. I don't think it's that unusual to charge for use of tables, although I'm blessed with a local flgs that doesn't charge, and the membership fee for my club is £10 p/a. In that regard, I paid as much for my whole year as I did for one afternoon. However this is an unfair comparison as I go to uni society gaming club (even thou I never went to that uni and I'm nearly 30!) and this was a functioning high street business in the middle of the city. 

I think it's quite normal to charge per attendance at clubs, and I did see that they do discounted rates if you're a member that save you money over the year. When in off peak periods that charge could be for half the day (they open until 11) it's actually quite a reasonable charge I think. I can easily see that if I lived in Nottingham I'd be spending time there regularly. I think the key to getting the most out of it is to plan to spend at least 2-3 hours there. That way the cover charge doesn't seem like that much. If you're just popping in for an hour you won't get your monies worth. 

Overall, I'm very pro this place. It not kept me happy but also was somewhere my wife felt comfortable, something that's very important! I wish there were one in Leicester. If you're in Nottingham and want somewhere to spend a few hours then I'd reccomend popping in. 

Luke goes stripping!

Following on from a friends blog on stripping, I thought I'd offer my thoughts. To be clear, in this context stripping means removing paint from old models. It doesn't means removing clothes from young models. 

I decided to liquidate some old models that are just taking up space to fund other parts of my addiction the models in question were half painted or under coated black. I've actually unsuccessfully tried to sell these sister of battle before, but was unsuccessful. I thought I'd try stripping them down back to the metal before re-selling them. 

I'm using nail polish remover that does contain acetone, as I feel it gets a little more of the paint off. Following a tip from topher, I put them in a sealed jar and left them for about 2 weeks, giving the nail polish remover time to work its magic. 

My top tip would be to leave the jar full of liquid whilst you're cleaning down a model. Whilst holding a mode, take a toothbrush and dip it into the remaining fluid and then brush the paint off the model. Having a wet toothbrush dripping in nail polish remover is great for this sort of stripping. For some reason, it makes a massive difference and the paint comes off way eaiser!

These gals are all finished now, and will be sold in the near future. I think the hour that it's taken me to clean them up will drastically increase their value, they just look loads better. I'm really pleased with how they've turned out. Not bad for only my third or fourth time stripping!

30,000 page views!

Hooray! Sometime over the weekend I broke through the 30,000 page views mark :) which means I'm now officially in the age of crusading across the blog-o-sphere. Soon half my blog will turn away from me and be tempted by the sultry calls of other blogs such as STand wargaming or from the Horus Hersey to infinity and beyond. 

In all seriousness, thank you for reading my mumbling thoughts! In the last month I've had an influx of traffic, and I'm hoping to keep that up. I know my blog has become much more focuses on X-wing at the moment, and I hope you'll beat with me!  I'm hoping over this weekend to get some painting done (hopefully the new ghost or the jumpmaster 5000) so I'll share that when it's done. 

Until then, fly casual!

Sanctuary Games X-wing Store Championship Battle Reports

Dear reader, please accept my humble apologies for the delay in the compilation of this set of battle reports. I have been, and still am struck down with a virus that has made all forms of narcissism such as blogging and vlogging difficult.

Anyways… on the 5^th of March I attended the Sanctuary Games X-wing Store Championships in Sutton in Ashfield. And on this jaunt I had a driving buddy! Shane from Weekend Warlords in Loughborough was along for the ride, with his triple YV-666 list, which drew a lot of admiring looks (plus a sizeable amount of wins) over the course of the day. The Sanctuary “store” is actually a reasonably sized de-commissioned church, lovingly kitted out with a lot of gaming tables (there were 16 games of x-wing going on, and we weren’t using more than a ¼ of the space!), a kitchen to buy coffee and pizza, and some decent toilets. Being a Christian, it is not unusual for me to spend hours in a church praying, but attending a tournament there would require a weirdly different kind of prayers. I would deffo recommend the venue, it’s got a certain sense of grandeur. 

formation flying!

For this second store championships in succession I took my 4 Scum Y-Wings with Twin Laser Turrets (TLTs) and Unhinged Astromechs (all speed 3 moves are green). This is partly because I really like flying the list, but there were a couple of other serious reasons. Firstly, whilst I’m sure wave 8 will shake up the meta I may well take some version of this list to regionals in May so I wanted more practice against different lists. Secondly, with only 1 game night in-between to prepare I would have effectively been flying a new list cold at a tournament.

My first game was against a very friendly chap called Paul who was flying the following:

Commander Alozen (free target locks at range 1)

Lieutentant Colzet (spend a target lock to flip a damage card face up)

PS4 Tie Advanced

(these three all had the title, and the advanced targeting computer which allows you add a crit if you have a target lock)

Omega Leader with Juke and Comm relay for un-blockable shots

I have to confess, I completely underestimated this list. Nothing special I thought. I mean I know Omega Leader is a pain, but even so I thought “this should be a walked in the park”. What a n00b I was. And more importantly, what a disservice I did to my opponent. I deployed in the bottom right, with Paul in the top left. I went straight up the flank, and we engaged ¾ of the way up the star field.  In the first engagement, I think managed to maul one of the Tie Advanced’s, but in return one of the y-wings started to eat crits, and became ps0. I then completely forgot that this meant he’d be moving first, and this poor chap bumped, instead of masterfully dodging out the way. Then Paul burnt him down.

We then had a very close range dogfight in the top right hand corner of the map, where I tried to get cute and double or even triple guess my opponent. This worked about 50% of the time, but trying to block with the y-wings means that they don’t really get shots. I eventually ran for it, with my 2 remaining ships, hotly pursed by Omega Leader and Alozen. I traded Omega Leader for a y-wing, but began triple or quadruple guessing myself in an effort to take the last point of health off Alozen. So much so, that instead of head on jousting with him I turned towards the board edge, and left myself with nothing to do but fly off the edge of the board. This of course, cost me the game.

Result: Loss 74 – 100

they do not have 1 sharp turns.

My second opponent was a chap called Alex, fielding my favourite B-wing Keyan Farlander and Han Solo, both fairly heavily tricked out. This time I went bottom left hand corner, and he went opposite in the top right. I sped up the flank, not wanting to get caught in the side by his heavy firepower, and he swooped in, boosting with both ships. We engaged ¾ of the way up the board, with his targeting computers locking onto the engine glow of my y-wings. The combination of a B-Wing and a Millennium Falcon at short range began to make short work of my fleet. However! They both only have 1 evade dice, so my turrets sliced through the b-wing in just over a turn, leaving me with a very angry Han Solo against 3 y-wings.

this is Alex, wondering why the hell im taking a video of him

I have to confess, I got somewhat lucky here as I correctly guessed so of Alex’s moves and was able to block the Falcon with the y-wing he was trying to kill (if they’re touching they can’t shoot each other). That meant he couldn’t focus his fire down, and I was able to keep chipping away at him. After a few turns of this, Alex tried to break out of my trap, and it nearly left him in a perfect position to even the odds somewhat, but the dice failed him. I wrapped this one up with a win.

Result: Win 100 – 25

following game 1, i couldnt believe this

Game three then. And I end facing the guy that Alex travelled with, called Joseph. He had the other B-wing Pilot (Ten Numb) with a Mangler cannon, Blount with Ion Pulse missiles and Corran Horn with all the normal stuff. This game was a matter of honour for Joseph, who wanted to prove that he had the better b-wing than Alex. I set up in the bottom right, and he chose to joust me. So I immediately ran away, and in his haste to catch me, the angle meant that his ships got drawn into a line and when we did engage in the bottom centre Ten Numb was out of range for the first round of shooting.

This meant that I lit Corran Horn up like the Death Star on a Friday night. However, he’s a tricksy one and came through, with one or two hull left. At least for that turn. I sent him downtown the next turn, but this had allowed Ten Numb to close and prove his worth, whilst Blount had used his auto hitting Ion Missiles to stall a y-wing in the middle of my line astern formation. So I starbursted, flying my y-wings every-which-way in an effort to land his remaining pilots in a kill box. They helpfully obliged and whilst unblockable Critical Hits were very painful, being in the middle of TLT kill box was a deciding factor. I rolled of the winner.

Result: Win 100 – 50 (giving Joseph bragging rights over Alex)

 

thats me! left middle, with Shane next one down

In my 4^th game of Swiss, I played a friendly chap called Richard. (on reflection I noticed that he was the one who gave me parking advice, so thanks!). Richard had two Tie Phantoms - Echo and Whisper and a named Tie Fighter (im really sorry but I cant remember which one!) The most significant thing on the Phantoms was sensor jammer over fire control system. This was actually a bit of pain for me tactically speaking because I was shooting twice with each ship, but only had 1 focus. So I had to think really smart about that.

I tried to position the rocks to make it hard for him to hit me in the flank as I came up the left side of the board, and I think It probably did a bit. Crucially, I bottled trying to block echo’s decloak quite early on, Id forgotten how manoeuvrable phantoms were! Instead of protecting the other 3 wings, I allowed both phantoms into range  1 and they started having a lot of fun. So I sped up, turned back into the board and starbursted. In the process I took the Tie Fighter out, and also got rid of Echo. This left me with 2 y-wings against Whisper. I was winning on modified points, but knew that wouldn’t be good enough to make the cut, not with a loss first round. So I turned around near my board edge and came back for another pass. I decided to bank right, on the assumption that was the unpredictable thing to do. Whisper then decloaked in the same direction and I was gutted, I assumed id blown it. I moved my ships, and then Richard revealed a hard 1 away from my y-wing, meaning he didn’t have a shot! Despair turned to elation, and I was fortunate enough to take Whisper down that turn.

Result: Win 100 – 50

Shane's YV-666 conga line of doom

In the final game of Swiss I faced a double Scum Firespray list, Kath Scarlet and Boba Fett run by Jamie (I think, only name I forgot to write down sorry!). I set up on the left, and he jousted me with Kath, whilst sending Boba to flank me. I remembered my rule of 11 here, and blocked Kath out in the second engagement, meaning she had no actions and she died that turn. Boba was more of a problem, and he chased me around a bit. I starbursted to try and make sure I was always getting 1 shot, and this helped a great deal. In what was to be the last turn, I actually blocked Boba and would have forced him off the board if it wasn’t for inertial dampeners. I was still able to just shoot him with another y-wing, killing him and winning me the game.

Result: Win 100 – 25.

my y-wings hunting down and blocking boba fett

Top 4 Cut

I squeaked into the top 4 in 4^th place, getting another challenge coin (man I love those!) and facing Darren, who had gone 5-0. Happily, Shane also made the top 4 cut. That meant that neither of us was waiting around for the other person, or at least not yet! Darren was playing a list that had a YV-666 (bossk crew, tactician and Gunner), 3x ps1 Binayre Pirates in z-95s,  and a ps2 scum y-wing with a TLT and unhinged astromech. Id noticed Darren from across the tables as he had a very cunning fortress that meant he set up in a corner. I think people had been having trouble because it forced them into a joust, and he could just sit there as long as he wanted. Shane had faced him in the final round of swiss and lost, and shared some wisdom with me.

it was something like this. although not completely like this.

What I decided to was head towards him on that flank, and see if he’d take the bait and come out of his fortress. Either way, I wasn’t going to let myself get blocked up, id just turn into the board regardless of whether he followed me or not. If he didn’t, id circle back around and try again. And then again. Thankfully, he took the bait. I think he knew that I didn’t need to face him conventionally what with my turrets and all. On my first pass, after id turned in just outside range 3 of his fortress, he broke the following turn and came after me.

However, the way he broke from the formation meant that I was able to chew off the ps1 corners of his fleet, bringing the entirety of my firepower to bear against half his fleet on more than one occasion. He was very unlucky to land the yv-666 on a rock (one of the big ones that id brought I think!) on a turn when it was in range one of a nearly dead y-wing, which helped me out, and im not convinced that his yv-666 dodged anything I threw at it, so I definitely had my fair share of luck. It ended up with me taking down his y-wing with 3 of mine, sealing me a place in the final.

Result: Win 100-25

Final

And in the final I faced Shane! Which was good for both of us in a way, as neither of us would be hanging around for the other person. However, I was sure to make several thinly (read not at all) veiled threats about his lift home. He didn’t listen to those, in fact he was way to busy getting completely inside my head for the first 30 minutes of our game, and it nearly ruined me! I had to start ignoring him completely. I felt a bit rude, but I couldn’t handle it at all! It was like the whole of basketball in a 3^rd of the time. As a reminder, Shane had the following:  3x ps2 YV-666, all with ion projectors and feedback arrays. This loadout also gave him a small initiative bid.

 

great film. great film.

As per my standard tactics, I set up some rocks to cover 1 flank, giving me the option to creep up my left if I felt like it. I knew that Shane’s list was designed to try and trap you, slapping ion tokens on you every which way and not allowing you to break away. For some reason, I did nothing to stop this happening. I let him box me into a corner, ioning 3 of my ships over various turns. I eventually broke away with 2 y-wings, leaving the other 2 hulks behind. I had by this point killed 1 and a half of his ships, and wasn’t fancying my chances. I regrouped on my top right and this time skirted the top corner of his ships as they came back around, managing to trade a y-wing for a yv-666.

No you idiot! dont get trapped there!

I was suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic. Pulling around back down my left flank, having him chase me meant that he couldn’t trap me, and I was able to keep chipping away at the final YV-666 until it blew up. And with that, I won my second store championships!

Some, from a situation 2 weeks ago where I’d never won a wargames tourney, I’ve now won 2 x-wing store championships in 2 weeks! Sanctuary Games is a really amazing location, being in an old church gives it a grand, imposing atmosphere. The facilities are great, and the staff really friendly. It does get a bit chilly, so make sure you take a jumper and a coat though! 

Do come back later in the week, as i'm hoping to have vlogged this experience. I've got it all ready, i've just been way to ill to do any post production. 

with a fancy glass trophy

Titan Games Battle Reports: Store Championship

So, this is a write up of last weeks store championships that I attended at Titan Games in Lichfield, with the review of Sanctuary following in the next week. If you'd rather watch the Vlog, go here.

As a reminder, I ran 4 Scum Y-wings with Twin Laser Turrets (TLT) and Unhinged Astromechs. The Twin Laser Turrets shoot twice a turn (at ranges 2-3), but can only cause 1 damage per shot, and the Astromechs make all my 3 speed manoeuvres green. For thems that don’t know, these cards pair really well because it means you can keep your speed up to keep out of range 1 to allow you to shoot twice, and also gives you a whole bunch of different ways to clear stress.

In my first game at Titan, I played Josh, who was fielding 4 tie fighters (two of which were First Order Ties) and Whisper with a whole bag of tricks. I placed my rocks centrally, and deployed on my left. He deployed slightly of centre with the ties and then put whisper on my right. I sped up the board, winning the first engagement and taking a Tie fighter off. At this point, Whisper was avoiding my 4 turrets and coming the long way around. The phantom didn’t get into the fight until quite late on, and by that point I’d chewed up most of the Tie fighters. Whilst I wasn’t very good at dodging Whisper’s de-cloaks, the three remaining Y-wings were too many shots for the Phantom to deal with.

Result: Win 100-25

My second game was against Oliver, who had Soontir Fel, Omega Leader and Vader. They all had lots of tricks and I was a little worried about this match up. I think my lists strengths and weaknesses are magnified against aces. This time I went to the right and swooped up the flank to take Soontir head on as the other two came round the back. Soontir actually dodged a whole round of shooting from me, which was frustrating. However, because rocks, his green manoeuvers were predictable, and I blocked his escape as I knew he needed to clear his stress. That meant that I was able to kill him with primary weapon attacks that turn. Vader followed a couple of turns after, and then Omega Leader shortly after.

Result: Win 100-0

My third game was against Brian. Ah yes. This was, and remains one of the best games of X-wing I’ve ever played. Brian had Kavil in a Y-wing with a TLT, a YV-666 with Boba crew, Gunner, tactician and the Nashta Pup (free z-95), and a Scum TLT y-wing like mine. I got good asteroid placement this game, limiting where he was able to approach me. Brian had initiative, and placed in the top right. I placed in the bottom left and sped up my left flank. I then faked a little at going straight to but actually turned into the board, leaving the YV-666 to face a broadside from all 4 Y-wings. Second round of engagement I burned the YV-666 down, for no loss and was feeling confident. I now only had 2 Y-wings and z-95 to deal with.

We both regrouped, and the re-engaged across the bottom of the map. After the dust had settle, I had 2 Y-wings left against just a z-95. The following turn, my Y-wing with 5 hull left got one shotted by the z-95 and I started to get concerned. I was even more concerned when the z-95 started pursuing my y-wing and dodging most of my shots. I managed to break out from his pursuit, and regrouped. We were both now on one hull. Somehow id traded 7 hit points for 3. I could have played for time, but there was a lot of time and that wasn’t what I wanted to do. We came in for a final joust, he hit me once, I rolled an eyeball and burned my focus. I fired back with the TLT and killed his z-95! I was elated. And drained! Great game, Brian really made me work for it and taught me that you shouldn’t just give up.

Result: Win 100-75

My final game of swiss was against Mike, who had Wes Janson, Biggs and Keyan Farlander (Fire contral system, opporuntist, Heavy laser cannon). Keyan and Wes combined to give a 5 dice target locked and focused attack from Keyan. This meant one of my Y-wings didn’t even get to shoot before it died. That woke me up a bit! However, I got good shots back at Biggs, taking him down to his last hull with the three remaining Y-wings. After Biggs died, I realised that whilst Keyan was scary his 1 agility was no match for my TLTs and took him out. 

Result: Win 100-50

This meant that I was 4-0 and top player after Swiss (they only did four rounds, which I didn't mind, I mean we all have homes to go to!)

I don't know if you can see from this picture, but my MOV was 650. Comfortingly, I didn't just scrape through. But there were a couple of times when I was trying to avoid getting shot to save points. Thats something I've really learnt in the last few months actually. 

So I headed into the top 4 cut, playing a really great guy called Anthony. He had Kath scarlet in a firespray, with a mangler cannon and IG-88A, with HLC, advanced sensors and some other stuff. If the third game of the day was the most exciting, this was the toughest. I did not fly very well at all here. I got a decent rock placement, but just went straight up my right hand side and let him crash into my left flank, getting inside range 1 and everything. After the first engagement, I had two y-wings slightly dinged up vs IG-88A, who was mostly ok. Regenerating shields for fun as he killed me. 

As we swooped around and I tried to get a two vs one engagement, I went for a really dumb block attempt with one of the y-wings. Just read the board and game totally wrong. He just did a super obvious move and killed me. Which left me a half dead Y-wing against a half dead IG. I ran away thru the asteroids, and was left on one hull. I was facing towards the board edge and only had one option, turning into to the left. He was in a reasonable position to turn and catch me in arc, killing me. 

However! This was not what happened. Anthony had to go they an asteroid to get me, which took him down to 1 hull and then he had chosen to sloop with his ship, meaning I wasn't in his arc. But I was able to TLT him, and duly killed him. Winning the game on 1 hull and progressing to the final. 

Result: Win 100-75

Which meant I made the final! I faced Mike from round 4. I got a reasonable deployment of rocks, and set up on the left. Mike set up to joust with me, so I decided that I probably shouldn't joust with him! I broke to the right, and made him follow me thought the rocks. This really benefitted me, because his fleet went from flying next to each other to conga lining through asteroids towards my ships. 

I timed my starburst just right to catch all four TLTs at the correct range, removing Wes and Keyan without loosing a ship. This meant that Biggs was faced with having to deal with all four by himself, and at that point Mike called it. 

Result: Win the store championship!

So I rolled out winner for the whole day, which was a nice suprise. The first time I've ever won a wargames tournament! A really enjoyable day, thank you to all my opponents and to Titan for hosting a great, smoothly run event. Hopefully at some point in the next week I'll do a report on yesterday's store championship as well. Thanks for reading!