X-Wing : Top 4 at the Jakku Open tournament debrief day 2 swiss

On August 25 2015, the Imperial Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. It's purpose was to teach the lost art of space combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world.

They Succeeded.

Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School.

The flyers call it : 

The Crackshot Academy 

This is my debrief of the second day swiss.

X-Wing : Top 4 at the Jakku Open tournament debrief day 1

This week-end saw the Jakku Open in Cusset. 110 players battled in the icy rain for the privilege to compete in a very elite 8 players tournament organised by FFG next summer. This is the tale of my top 4 finish with the Crackshot Academy.

X-Wing French National Championship Part 1 : SWARM HELL!

In the few next days I will try to do a battle report for each of my games in the French National.
This is the Part 1 : SWARM HELL! with my first game.

First game was against Red51 and his 8 academies Tie-Swarm.

First shooting turn shot

Swarm Hell exists, and I've seen it! 16 Ties on the table, 32 attack dices against 64 defense dices:
1 damage!

After that first shooting turn, it became a tense game of maneuvering, with him trying to block me and me trying to get actions. In the end the PS advantage won me the game, as my obsidians could reduce his firepower while any of my academies destroyed still got to shoot.

The game was a bit slower than my usual games with only 5 turns as my opponent was not used to facing a swarm.

Modified win : 4 Academies destroyed to 2 Academies and an Obsidian.

Time to reload!
Ica

Showcase : Tie/Ln Jet Squadron repaint

Several fighters have broken off from the main group. Come with me! 

You may remember my first Tie repaint : http://rule37-ica.blogspot.fr/2014/03/blog-hiatus-over-x-wing-miniatures-tie.html

With the French National X-Wing Championship coming I decided to finish repainting my 2 flights of Tie Fighters to give them more presence on the board. The fighters are all painted in standard Tie/Ln black, with 4 white stripes : the markings of Jet squadron.

Jet squadron first and second flights

Close-up of second flight

Close-up of first flight

All fighters are on a ball magnet for banking

Close up of second flight banking

Close up of Jet squadron markings

Now I'm wondering if some battle damage would look good...

Time to reload!
Ica

Battle Report : The Tie Swarm versus Echo

Today a quick battle report for my first encounter with the terrible Echo.

I played my usual Tie swarm, an 8 Ties variant, with 4 Academies and 4 Obsidians.
Across the table was :

Echo, veteran instincts, recon officer, advanced cloacking device, fire control system 40
Holwrunner, predator 21
3 Academies 36
97 pts for the PS bid.

Bothanspy decided to take the initiative.

I deployed the asteroids mostly close together in my opponent half of the table to disrupt the holwrunner formation and reduce the decloacking options of Echo.

He deployed his mini swarm in the middle of the board, probably to switch from one side of the table to the other depending on my deployment. I had clear movement lanes so did the same, to see where Echo would go. He deployed Echo on my left, close to the board edge.

First turn:

He went to my right to pass the thicket of asteroids and echo advanced to cloak.
All my ships went as fast as possible toward echo.

Turn 2:

I wanted to maximise my firepower in case Bothanspy made a mistake and advance echo in front of the swarm so I kept going toward Echo (plus is miniswarm was also headed to my right flank).

He decided to change course with echo with a 2 bank to the left then a 4 forward to  switch sides, while the mini-swarm reoriented toward mine.

There I stopped taking picture as the fight was joined. Suffice to say echo flanked me (you can see his moves in green in the turn 5 picture), while I blocked and concentrated fire on holwrunner, then the other ties.

He took down 2 ties, while I destroyed Howl and an academy. 4 dices is nothing to sneeze at, but even with focus against 3 agility you will usually need at least 2 shots. Due to his unique moves he was unable to concentrate fire as much as I did.

At the end of turn 4, I had 6 ties left, with 2 down to one hull and 1 down to 2. He was down to echo, 1 academy on 1 hull and 1 academy on 2.

Turn 5 (before shooting):

I moved my ties to cover echo  most obvious approaches and still keep a couple of guns on his 1 hull academy. He decided to close the range with a 4 forward, but had to go through an asteroid.

Firing first Echo destroyed a damaged fighter while I destroyed the 1 hull fighter and took one shield off echo (asteroid means no focus!!).

Turn 6 (before shooting):

Echo is good at range but not so good in a furball, as he has to move quite a lot to decloak. I jammed as much fighters around him as I could while keeping 3 fighters on his remaining 2 hull tie.

He did manage to decloak but lost his action to a bump and could only target an undamaged tie. With no action, even with 5 dices, he only dealt One damage.
Returning fire, I stripped another shield of him and took another hull off the academy.

Sadly we had to end the game there due to time, with a modified win for me: 45 to 38.

I would probably have stayed in the lead for 1 or 2 more turns as I would probably have killed his academy and he has to destroy 2 of my ties to go retake the lead, but after that, I don't see how I could have killed him (bare poor flying on my opponent part or luck of the dice). With 4 damaged ties it would have been pretty difficult. 4 agi is just hard to take down with 2 attack ships, and that's if you even manage to have him in your sights.

Time to reload!
Ica

Blog hiatus over: X-Wing miniatures Tie Fighter repaint!

Long time no see! After a pretty big hiatus in my blogging I have decided to restart the blog with this Tie fighter repaint:

The game is great and the miniatures are really detailed, a real pleasure to paint.

The model was first  stripped to bare plastic with break fluid, then undercoated with black primer.

Base color is airbrushed  space wolve grey with a zenithal white highlight.

All grey parts where then washed with ivory black (oil paint) diluted with white gas after after a coat of gloss varnish.

After the wash dried I then used a cotton qtip dipped in white gas to remove the excess then resealed the model with matt varnish. All solar panels where then covered in chaos black.

Finally I highlighted the edges with a mix of space wolve grey/white and painted small dots for the laser cannons and the ion engines.

Hope you like it!
Next up on the painting desk should be either a B-Wing or an X-Wing.

Time to reload,
Ica