Wednesday, February 24, 2016

X-Wing : La boite à Chimères 2016 store championship debrief

Hello guys,

A small tournament debrief to hopefully jump start the blog engine again!

 
The tournament season is once more upon us so when I saw that La boite à Chimères was organizing a tournament I jumped on the occasion. As usual for me I decided on the list I would play in the car on the way in : brobots or Tie swarm?

On the one hand I really wanted to test the new Tie-FO, Omega leader and Zeta leader especially, but on the other hand sleep deprivation would probably make playing a 6 ships list a not very enjoyable experience so I choose to fly the aggressors.



My list:

IG88-B, Heavy Laser Cannon , Fire Control System, Veteran Instinct, Inertial Dampeners, Autothrusters 49

IG88-C, Heavy Laser Cannon, Advance Sensors, Push the limit, Autothrusters 51

Slightly asymmetric, IG88-B with HLC and FCS is a pretty good ace killer if he can get them in his sights while IG88-C with PTL and AS is more of a brawler, capable of staying in a swarm mist and survive with focus/evade.


Game 1 : Giov76
He was playing a Palpatine, HLC, FCS shuttle with 4 blacks with crackshot. Sadly he made a pretty big mistake on the third turn, K-turning his ties in front of the IGs.
100-0

Game 2: Coyotte
He was playing :
Poe, R2D2, autothrusters, VI
Jake, PTL, VI, proton rockets, autothrusters
BTLA4 ywing, R3A2, TLT

Interesting list, with the stressbot to constrain my moves and 2 aces with better PS to kill my aggressors. Thankfully I was able to kill the Y-Wing on turn 4 without taking a shot from it as he underestimated the speed of the aggressors. After that I managed to block Jake and Poe with a couple of unexpected maneuvers with IG88-B (and dampeners). Jake went first, then Poe.

100-25


Game 3 : Basthyen

Basthyen is one of my regular tournament opponents, he beat my Howl swarm in the top 16 of the 2015 Paris regional with a fat han list and has a pretty solid game.

He was playing a standard Palp + 2 aces list:
Omicron, palpatine
Vader, ATC, x1 title, VI,engine
Soontir, PTL, stealth device, AT

He deployed the shuttle on the top left corner of the map and I deployed my 2 aggressors opposite on the bottom right with a fairly dense asteroid field in the middle. He then deployed his 2 aces next to the shuttle to stall its first moves.

I gunned aggressively for the shuttle boosting on the right side of the map, and the first range 3 exchange allowed me to take a shield off Vader while loosing one on IG88-C. I then feinted on turn 4 and hard turned IG88-C left in the middle of the asteroid cluster which allowed me to block Vader and Soontir. Here I probably made a mistake, targetting Vader with IG88-A instead of Soontir (focused HLC shot with gunner FCS versus palp 4 dice evade).I dealt 3 damages which was the best I could hope for with palp in play. With Vader down to one hull, I stalled IG88-C with a one foward forcing another bump for Vader and finished him off with A loosing a couple of shields in exchange on C.

At that point I had 2 options, either go for the sure kill of the shuttle or try to take down Soontir, knowning that the shuttle was dead meat once Soontir gone. In the end I only took down Soontir to 1 hull while  loosing the final shield on IG88-C and a couple on B. Due to random potshots when my IGs had no other targets the shuttle was also at half health and I won 48-25.


Game 4 : Netice

Netice was playing a 6 Tie swarm:
Zeta leader with crackshot
Epsilon Ace
Dark Curse
Backstabber
2 blacks with crackshot

I'm very familiar with this matchup as the brobots pairing is why I decided on the crackshot 7 swarm (5 blacks with crackshot, obsidian and academy) instead of my classic 8 tie swarm. Compared to my list, this one exchanges a body and some firepower for PS which may help it to outmaneuver PS6 agggressors. However my PS8 IG88-B denies his PS 6 bid.

He made a mistake and deployed in a spread out line, not considering that with boost I could be in range 3 on the first turn of part of his line.  That was pretty much the game right there as I destroyed Zeta leader on turn 1 with combined fire and took out 1 tie every turn (starting with those with crackshot), loosing only 3 shields in exchange. I was helped here with some good rolls, but it was an uphill battle for him from turn 1.



Game 5 : Jarran
Jarran was playing the now classic 4 unhinged TLT ywings list. Aggressors are very advantaged in this matchup with autothrusters to modify every defense roll and boost to get into the range 1 donut hole. I destroyed a ywing every 2 turns while the return fire managed to take a hull off IG88-C and all shields off IG88-B.
Win 100-49

Very interesting tournament and my first without loosing any ship! Flying brobots is a completely different tournament experience from flying the swarm, I usually finished my games well in advance, having time to rest and eat between each game. Having durable ships meant that my firepower stayed the same the whole game, when with the swarm it would decrease with attrition.

The list is much more vulnerable to loosing a ship though if your opponent can manage it as it then looses any ability to block and shoot an ace. I don't really like the odds of a single IG against Soontir...

Next tournament in 2 weeks at the Waaagh Tavern.

Time to reload,
Ica

1 comment: