X-Wing tournament report: the Tie swarm against wave 5!

After wave 5 came out, I let my trusty swarm on the shelf in favor of the new hotness :  Decimators and YTs. I've only been playing for about a year now and almost only played the Tie swarm from my first tournament in March 2014 to Worlds, so playing the big pancakes was a pretty nice change in gameplay. 

I've tried Fat Han+3 bandits, Kenkirk+Echo, and finally Oicunn + Whisper with pretty loopsided kill ratios. However I read Hothie Evolving the shark series saturday morning and that inspired me to take out the swarm for the Waaagh Tavern monthly tournament.

Can the Tie swarm still play with the big boys?
Find out after the break!

X-Wing World Championship 2014 debrief : part 3

Game 3 :  Robert Thomas 2Bs and 2Ys

Robert was playing a control list, with :

Dutch, ion turret, R7

Gold squadron with ion turret and R5

Blue squadron with FCS

Blue squadron

Traduction en Français

Like MrFroggies list, this list was heavy in hitpoints but low on agility. With mostly PS2, they would not arc dodge me so the swarm should do fine.

Robert deployed facing the center and I deployed to meet him in the middle.

I was expecting him to turn between the top leftmost asteroids, because otherwise I would get free shots on his flank but he temporised one turn too many. It left Jet 6 in a bad position (no place to bank because of the asteroid just in front), but gave me a couple of free shots.

He finally turned and my obsidians flanked him while the academies took position to block him on the next turn.

The lead B-Wing was taken down to 2 hulls in the exchange while I lost a hull or two due to the range.

I finished the B-Wings first and after that it was just mopping up as the Ys don't have the necessary firepower to take down Ties.

In the end I lost 2 ( maybe 3)  Ties before finishing him.

Game 4 :  Jeff and his YT+HWK

Jeff played :
Chewie, concussion missile, R2D2, C3P0, predator, millenium falcon title, hull upgrade
Jan Ors, recon spec, moldy crow, blaster turret, stealth device, squad leader.

On paper it is a very favorable matchup for me but I totally misplayed the first engagement.
Jeff build can really lay down the hurt with his first opening shot of 5 dice concussion missile with predator reroll and focus. but after that its just a falcon with 4 attack dice if Jan Ors is alive.

He played his 2 ships in a queue, with Chewie moving then Jan Ors moving to occupy the space that Chewie jsut left to prevent me from blocking her.

Turn 3 I moved to block Chewie, guessed his move right ( a 2 hard ) then totally forgot to barrel roll my Tie... This meant that Chewie and Jan got actions and that my swarm only target was Jan. With Stealth Device on and her recon spec tokens, it took my whole firepower to remove 1 shield!

I took her down in the next turn, loosing a couple of Ties, then came the boring chase of Chewie with my remaining Ties. He managed to whittle them down to 4 before being destroyed.

Jeff played beautifully in the face of a bad matchup.

4-1! Just one game to go!

Game 6 : Kinetic Operator and his 3 Phantoms list

Aaron played:
Echo, veteran instincts, rebel captive, advanced cloacking device, sensor jammer
2 Sigma squadrons, stygium particule accelerator, intelligence agent, enhanced scopes.

Falcons to the left of them,
Falcons to the right of them,
Phantoms! in front of them,
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Aaron is well known in the X-Wing community for his skills with Echo and his unconventional builds. He did not disappoint for worlds! That list is nasty in the right hands and he flew it perfectly.

As I told you in the part 2, the only ship I really feared was Echo. He is so unpredictable that he is impossible to block with the swarm and can take it on by himself. Well, it's going to be an uphill battle but let's do my best!

Aaron deployed his ships in front of mine:

And advanced straight forward to cloak:

His sigmas move before me due to enhanced scopes but fire before me (he got initiative), so I'm pretty sure his plan his to gun it forward (so with decloak a 7 forward), do as much damage with the sigmas as he can and finish me with Echo. So I devised a pretty devious plan : I'm going to advance as much as possible with the left Ties and turn left with the right ties to deny shots to his right sigma.

I think my tiredness was starting to show (the game was at 3AM Paris time), because even then I made a mistake with the 2 front left Ties : I moved 4 or 5 forward to allow Jet 2 and 3 to get actions. What I should have down was either bank left, or (more risky) K-turn. This took them out of the game for a couple of turns. But my plan worked! right sigma has no target!

Disaster! The dice are not with me and the 2 phantoms with targets proceed to one shot a Fighter each, while my return fire does nothing. One shot odds in this configuration are around 30% dropping to less than 10% for both so its definitely possible. I should have evaded as its the best defense against 5 attack dices.

After that severe blow, the jetlag got the better of me and I played really poorly. Landing on a rock and bumping my own ships. (Look at Jet 2 and Jet 4...)

I think in the whole game I managed to strip 2 shields of his sigmas!

I finished day 1 with a 4-2 record and a 31th place. Not really glorious, with 2 disastrous games but not that bad all considered. The level of play was incredible and I learned a lot!
My list was good considering the rest of the meta, maybe a bit hard to play when tired, but at the time it was the only list I was really confident in.

I did make the supplemental list for day 2, so stay tuned for more swarmy goodness!

Time to reload,
Ica

X-Wing World Championship 2014 debrief : part 2

It's day one at FFG X-Wing World Championship and I've come here to eat bananas and kick ass ... and I'm all out of bananas. Cause it's illegal to import bananas to the US and well, they don't joke with those things at Dulles Airport Customs. So let's kick some ass!

Article en Français

I've decided to go to worlds with my trusty 4 academies, 4 obsidian swarm for 2 reasons:
1) After some testing, the only builds I really fear are Echo builds and I'm not expecting to see many at Worlds. I've done okay against Whisper builds (50-50 odds), as I'm usually able to block them with my numbers so the hardest matches will probably be mirror matches.
2) For such an event and with the jetlag involved you should go with the build you've practiced the most. Never change your list at the last minute!

Due to my national win I got a bye in the first round so I got to roam around, and watch a few games.

Game 2 : MrFroggies

And we're up! Game 2 is against none other than MrFroggies! A big name for the first game, I need to hit the field running. He is running 3 Blues with tactician and a gold with ion turret and R3A2.

This is a great control list and MrFroggies is going to carry it to the top 32. But if I play correctly I should be okay as with only 1 defense dice B-Wings ans Y-Wings are easy targets for Tie fighters.

I put my rocks in the corners and MrFroggies clumps his in the middle of the board to disrupt my formation. I deploy my Ties in 2 groups to flank his formation if he goes in the middle.

He goes left to use the rock formation and I reform my Ties to attack!

He told me later that he was hoping that the rocks would disrupt me more, but after my moves he only has 1 choice left. turn right and channel himself in the rocks where I would be able to block him using the academies.

The lead B-Wing is destroyed and I only loose 1 Tie in the exchange with another ioned. This actually helped as it allowed that Tie to do a 1 forward!

Next turn I know that he's not going to be able to evade my swarm with all 3 ships so I let the lead B go and concentrate on the stragglers.

Going for the firepower I take down another B.

The Y tries to escape but also buys it and I finish the last B shortly after that.
MrFroggies was a great opponent and I'm really happy to have met him.

1 win, 3 left!

Game 3 : Dustin and his Tie swarm.

Dustin was playing a pretty good list with
OGP+ enhanced scopes
Holwrunner
5 academies

So PS0 blocking and some nice firepower.

Alright I totally misplayed that game. The asteroid field was great for me, forcing Dustin to go through it while giving me lots of room to maneuver. But I took the bait and went for the shuttle instead of going for the swarm. I thought I could get a few shots in on the shuttle when my range 3 shots are not really effective on Ties, then turn right for the brawl.

That plan was not bad, I just needed to weather a round of long range shooting, hopefully doing some damage in return and swing my swarm right. However what happened is that Dustin 5 academies took down 2 of mine (hit and direct hit twice!), while I only stripped 3 shields from the shuttle.

- Freeze frame. A moment of choice.

- The swarm is defensive. I have a chance to get back in the game right here. Better turn right and face the swarm than push a bad position.

With a heavy feeling of doom, I picked up my dials and planned my next move.Things were bad, but if I could defeat the ties, even a lonely academy could probably defeat the shuttle in the endgame.
There I had 2 choices with the left obsidians and I really picked the worse one, as it spread my firepower. Jet 4 K-turned behind the shuttle, while Jet 3 tried to cross the asteroid and got blocked on it. What I should have done was take a hard 1 right with 3 and 4, bank Jet 2 behind and hard 2 Jet 1.

Instead what happened is that even with some luck on my side I lost another 2 ties, taking 2 of his in return. My swarm cannot withstand firepower of this magnitude!

After that I just played really poorly while Dustin mopped me up. I landed on an asteroid at least once, and just generally failed to do anything right.

2-1 with 3 games left, I need to pull my shit together for the last 3 games, solid play may still carry the day!

Time to reload,
Ica

Battle report : Fat Chewie VS double Defenders

I'm terribly sorry about all this. After all, he's only a Wookiee!

Having been on the wrong side of the Fat Chewie stick much to often I decided to try it for once against one of my regular opponents Lanyssa. 

You can read his debrief in French on his blog : http://escadronsabre.over-blog.com/2014/08/name-code-2dhlc.html with more pictures from his side of the table.

His list was the classic : how can I fit 2 HLC with Jonus for rerolls?

Jonus, 2 flechette torpedoes

Defender Delta, HLC

Defender Delta, HLC

I was playing:

Chewie, C3P0, Millenium Falcon title, Gunner 51

Biggs 25

2 Bandit squadron Z95 24

I really like the combination of fat Chewie +Biggs, because Chewie is really tough to get in the end game, and Biggs helps him to get there (see Paul Heaver list at the US National). The 2 Z95 are there as fillers being reasonably tough for their points.

Deployment looked like this:

He deployed in triangle formation, to benefit from Jonus reroll. I deployed in 2 groups, with Biggs ready to slide toward Chewie and behind the middle asteroid.

There I made my first mistake, moving Chewie 3 forward in the 1st turn, while the rest advanced only 2. Of course Lanyssa closed as fast as possible with a 5 forward.

Turn 1 picture shamelessly taken from Lanyssa blog:

The 3 forward allowed both Defenders to fire on Chewie, taking a combined 7 hits, while I only took one shield of the defender on my left. I remember thinking clearly : he can move 5 forward, so you have to move strictly less than 3 to stay out of range, not sure why I put a 3 instead of a 2 forward. 

Oh well, mistakes happen.

 

I also made a mistake for Chewie shot on a range 3 defender. I took focus as an action, as I would be rolling 3 evade dices and 3 or 6 attack dices. I rolled hit, eye, eye with Chewie first shot.

Now in this position would you use Chewie focus or not, knowing that you have gunner?

I'm looking forward to your reasoning in the comments.

I did not. He promptly rolled 4 blanks and took a shield and I did not roll a single eye in defense (odds of rolling at least an eye with 3 dices are only 37/64) .

Next turn he banked 2 toward Chewie, while the 2 Z flew 4 forward, Biggs hid behind the asteroid and Chewie advanced 1.

Sadly I misjudged the distance a little bit, and one of my Z could not fire on the left Defender. The rest of my ships did 4 damages, dropping it to 1 hull. In response his 2 defenders reduced Biggs to 1 hull (asteroid power!) and Jonus added another 2 damages to Chewie with a flechette (Chewie is now down to 4 hull).

Close up shot of the action (love the Defender at this angle):

No picture of turn 3, it was basicly a huge pile up of ships, with biggs banking one left, the 2 Z turning 2 left, Chewie doing a one forward. The damaged Defender bomber 5 forward to escape the action, while is wingman turned hard right 1. Jonus bumped into Chewie.

Fire was inconsequential : Chewie failed to finish the damaged defender, and Biggs survived the actionless shots of Jonus and the defender.

Turn 4, he K-Turned the damaged Delta to return to the fight, and bumped with the other one. Jonus took the place of Chewie who flew through the 2 asteroids in front of him. The 2 Z bumped to get firearcs on Jonus.

Jonus died to the combined firepower of my ships while dealing an additional damage to Chewie, and the defender killed Biggs.

Turn 5, Chewie turned right to evade the returning defender, while the Z turn to face it.

The front Z destroyed the damaged defender and lost 2 shields to the other Delta.

Turn 6 and 7 : Chewie maneuvers to get back into the fight, while the 2 Z dogfight with the defender:

Turn 8 : Lanyssa made a mistake and K-Turned behind the lead Z, putting it at range of Chewie and my 3 ships.

The combined fire took it down before it could fire.

The game was much closer than it should have been I think, mainly due to my first mistake with Chewie. Biggs really helped there to put me back in the game. If I had taken another 2 Zs, Chewie would have died on turn 2, and the game would have been much different.

I also think that Lanyssa list would be better with PS 3 defenders, or maybe one PS3 and swarm tactics on Jonus to get a PS advantage against filler ships.

Looking forward to see your choices for using tokens on a first gunner shot in the comment (with a small explanation if possible).

Time to reload,
Ica

X-Wing French National Championship Top 4 : Defeating the 2013 Champion

 "I got your promise. Not a scratch."

"Would you get going, you pirate?"

After Chewie and Han, time for the last pilot of the Millenium Falcon to show up : Lando Calrissian!

My opponent was none other than Jabba, the 2013 French Champion. He was playing his usual double falcon list:

Lando - 44
Gunner 5
Expert Handling 2

Nien Nub 1

Chewbacca - 42

Gunner 5
Veteran Instincts 1

He deployed his asteroids fairly spread out on my side, while I deployed mine closer together on his side to prevent the falcons from forming up in the middle.

As usual, I deployed my ties in 2 groups on either side of the central asteroid. He deployed side by side close to my right edge (on the side of the obsidians).

Turn 1, I advanced the academies 5 to pass the asteroid, while the obsidians did a 3 forward. He advanced both falcons, and barrel rolled Lando behind Chewie.

Turn 2, my academies turned to right (3) and my obsidians banked to face the advancing falcons.
He kept hugging the edge.

Turn 2 picture before shooting.

Facing Lando+Chewie, I decided to focus fire on Lando as he is more vulnerable to crits and thus easier to destroy. This would be the fastest way to reduce his firepower.

In the 2 following turns, Lando + Chewie destroyed  Jet 2 and the combined fire of the 7  ties dealt 10 damages to Lando.

Turn 5 before maneuvers (you can notice tha Jet1 the lone Tie at the bottom of the previous picture has moved to block Lando):

At this point Lando was pretty much a gonner, so about all  Ties turned to face Chewie and the probable position of Lando.

He destroyed Jet4, loosing Lando in return.

Turn 6 before maneuvers:

I have 6 Ties, to Chewie with almost full health (with no title and no C3P0). Unless I fly really badly, I cannot loose here.

A tail chase is a long chase as they say, and following some curious decisions on my part, it took me about 6 or 7 turns  to finish him off.

I did at least 2 big mistakes that I remember which dragged the game to the 75 minutes mark.
First in one turn, I moved my Ties in the wrong order, turning a perfect kill box using self bumping into a really bad position. Next I decided to round the corner left asteroid with Jet 8 instead of going through. This left him out of position for the rest of the game (you can see it alone at the bottom of the screen on the previous picture).

Due to my bad flying, this game was tense to the end, but once more the list matchup carried the day, Tie Swarm FTW!

Time to reload,
Ica

X-Wing French National Championship Top 8 : The second shortest offensive of all times!

Top 8 :  Francesco Lamas

Francesco was playing a list that I wanted to play : Falcon + Z95:

Chewbacca - 42
Engine Upgrade - 4
Luke Skywalker - 7
C-3P0 - 3
Predator - 3
Millenium Falcon- 1

Tala Z95 - 13
Tala Z95 - 13
Tala Z95 - 13

Chewbacca is a bit more equipped than I'd like, limiting his escort to 3 Z95 instead of 4, but he does have a pilot skill advantage over my swarm.

Asteroids are deployed in a V pattern with one alone on my right flank. I deploy my 2 groups of Ties centrally, He answers by deploying on my left flank, Chewie on the edge and the Tala closer to the center.

First turn, I start by turning both groups toward my left flank to face him. He advances slowly:

Turn 2, the Obsidians turn to face the falcon menace with a hard (1 or 2) while the Academies bank toward him. His Talas bank toward my academies shadowed by Chewie. And then I used my Jedi mind tricks:

Me :  boost?
Francesco Lamas : Yes.

Chewie boosts in front of the Academies to try to escape the firing arc of the Obsidians but fails miserably and lands with no action in front of the firing squad.

Chewie and the Talas (at range 3) fail to destroy Jet 7 and the counter fire is terrible: 21 Attack dice later, Chewie is no more (Average damage is 12.8 with 5 Ties at range 1 and 3 at range 2).

We stop the game here.

Big mistake by Francesco which costs him the game, turning a difficult matchup into an impossible one.

Time to reload,

Ica

X-Wing French National Championship Top 16 : How to train your Phantom

Final Cut Top 16:

Given the recent release of Wave 4, I was expecting 2 list archetypes in the Top 16 :
 - the new hotness: Phantom + mini-swarm
 - the botoxed old timer : YT-1300 + support
plus a smattering of Tie-swarms and double YTs.

I didn't want to play a Falcon (too vulnerable to swarms) or a Phantom (too hard to play perfectly and struggles against Falcons). But I knew that I would need firepower to kill falcons and a way too shut down phantom agility.

Right till the morning of the National, I was still hesitating between 2 swarm lists, either the 8 Tie swarm or a 7 Z-Swarm with 4 missiles. Both have the resilient firepower to kill falcons and the number of bodies necessary to hamper phantom movements. I wanted to play the Z-Swarm as it's really powerful on paper but a few practice games (one on the eve of the tournament) left me wondering whether the Zs list would be as forgiving as the Tie swarm.

Z-Swarm or Tie-Swarm? My dilemma cosplayed at the tournament

It all came down to a dice roll during breakfast, hit the Ties, miss the Zs. I was happy when I rolled a hit, plus my Ties were all repainted, so the Tie swarm it was.

I finished second of the qualifications, so I faced the 15th Mulot with :
Whisper, VI, rebel captive, ACD
Carnor Jax
Howlrunner
Black squadron

The organisers decided to keep the final cut on 1 hour game time for the top 16 and top 8, moving to 75 minutes for top 4 and 90 minutes for the final.

My plan was basically to destroy his support ships which die like 3 tie fighters, then  either deny or destroy Whisper.

He deployed his asteroids in a well spaced line on my side while I placed mine in a triangle closer to the center to hamper Holwrunner formation and to reduce Whisper options.

I deployed my academies in front of the left corridor and the Obsidians to the right. He deployed Holw + Carnor+ Black in front of my academies and Whisper to their right:

On the first turn, I moved 3 forward with the academies and 4 forward with the Obsidians, to globally turn my formation toward Whisper while recentering the Howl group. He advanced 4 and took a shot with Carnor on the lead Obsidian.

Turn 2, I split my formation to decrease Carnor impact but made a small miscalculation. I moved the front academies 4 forward (should have moved 5 to block the black), while the back only moved 2. The lead obsidians moved 3 bank to block and one moved 2 forward. He advanced 2 with hol group, bumping with carnor, Howl and focusing with the Black. Whisper decloacked 2 right and turned toward the fight:

Open FIRE! Due to no actions for Howl and Carnor, he only dealt 1 or 2 damages to Jet 6 and a damage and a crit to Jet 5 the 2 front Academies.
In return the combined fire power of the 8 ties destroyed Carnor.

At that point I started my deny or destroy strategy: 3 academies moved to either block Whisper decloack or his subsequent move, while the rest positioned to finish Howl. Leaving the black for later :

 As planned Whisper decloaked in front of Jet 7 and bumped. The black K-turned behind and Howl bumped into Jet 3. With no actions, I think he only did a damage or 2 but on undamaged Ties (Jet 6 K-turned behind Howl and Whisper wiffed his no action attack roll against Jet 5, this also meant no free token which would prove important for the return fire). In return Jet 4 and 3 stripped 2 shields from Whisper, stressing Jet 3, but the other 4 Ties failed to finish Howlrunner.

Turn 4: At that point my material advantage was so important that I spread my ties everywhere facing likely positions for his ships but more importantly preparing for next turn decloak while denying actions to howl and the black:

After his moves I had 6 Ties facing Holrunner and 3 facing Whisper. He took down 2 ties but I finished Howl and destroyed the black with a lucky shot from Jet 1 and Jet 6. Jet 3 with a range 1 focused shot also did a damage to Whisper.

A that point we had about five minute left to play so I kept denying his decloak moves with my horde of Ties. Some of those moves where K-turns, plus rebel captive, here is what you get:

Probably the record number of stress tokens for a side in a top 16 national game : 7 stress tokens with 6 ships!

Victory is mine with 2 ships to spare! As planned I destroyed his support ships, and denied his phantom decloaks or moves which really reduced his firepower. I was helped in that by the 1 hour time limit, but with 6 ships to his one, I'm pretty confident that I would have won in a last man standing match. I think Mulot made 2 mistakes: 

1) joust with the swarm, as I have a firepower advantage at close range even with Carnor. A less aggressive approach might have reduced my numbers more  before I could finish his support ships, helping for the end game.

2) get Whisper close to the swarm. A blocked phantom is a dead phantom and I have enough bodies to block him. A more ranged game might also have played in his favor.

Top 8 here I come!

Time to reload,

Ica

X-Wing French National Championship Part 6 : Now, I am the Master!

Part 6 and last game before the final cut:

In the last round there were 4 of us with no losses and I got to face the man who introduced me to X-Wing, my Master Sepyx.

I've been waiting for you, Sepyx. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.

He played  a classic HSF list in a counter-phantom bid:
Han, gunner, Veteran Instincts
2 Blue, FCS

In this matchup I have basicly 2 choices:
1) go for the support ships first
2) go for Han first

He had initiative and place his asteroids near the center of the board, while I placed mine on the corners.

I deployed my academies in the middle of the board and he answered with the blues on the right side. I then placed my obsidians on my right flank. He placed Han on my left flank, ready to get behind me.

He started by moving his Bs toward Han, while I went full 5 forward then turned toward Han.

This is the board after the first shooting turn (lost a Tie in exchange for 5 shields on the lead B):

Due to his positioning, I decided to go for the Bs first, reducing his firepower before turning on Han.

I lost 2 ties while destroying the Bs, then attacked Han, retiring damaged Ties to spread the damage. I took him down to hull then did a crit while loosing a third Tie.

We were almost at the time limit, so instead of trying to finish him I unexpectedly broke off the engagement to preserve my lead and the game finished with a modified win for me.

Last turn picture:

In a timed environment this matchup is actually a danger for me as if he can manage to get a point lead he can try to break off the engagement with the falcon and just try to win on time. I actually lost to a similar list in the final of my first tournament because my opponent one-shot 2 ties early on and the game ended with 3 full Ties on my side going after Chewie on 3 hull.

In a non timed environment though, the 1 agility of both the Falcon and the Bs is no match for the swarm firepower.

Time to reload,
Ica