X-Wing World Championship 2014 debrief : part 1

Where to start?

That week in the US was simply my best tournament experience ever. Thanks to my win at the French X-Wing national championship, Edge flew me to Minneapolis where I got to sample the great hospitality of FFG for the X-Wing world championship.

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This is what I saw on landing in St Paul airport:

Those Midwest guys really have their minds in the right place!

As they say, in the US everything is bigger and shinier and the FFG game center is absolutely an exemple of that:

The game center entrance

Welcoming area with its own restaurant, look at that gorgeous painting on the wall!

The store in itself

The first gaming area

Over the course of 5 days I got to play 19 games of X-Wing, most of those against top level X-Wing players, ate more food than is probably healthy, made lots of friends and got to discuss and put a face on many of the big X-Wing internet names.

Here is a picture of one of my best games of the week-end:

Keith the British champion, Nick the German champion and me (taking the picture) are playing furball with Max, Jonathan and Alex "I'm all out of bubblegum" Davy on Sunday. We'd start a game and randomly add more players whose only fault was to stand to close to the table, then just start a new game when only one ship was left flying.

Public service announcement:
For my French and Belgian readers, I'd like to draw your attention to the OPEN tournaments:
as described by Aerion (in French), the OPEN tournaments are a way to bridge the end of the 2014 season and the beginning of the 2015 one.

2 dates have been anounced:

- Saturday 29/11 in Tours, Mons and Bourgoin-Jallieu

- Saturday 06/12 in Paris

You can register on the T3 website, used by many X-Wing tournaments in Europe.

If you're free and close to one of those tournaments, register and go play, you will not be disappointed!

Personally I'll be at the  6th of December tournament in Paris, so even if you don't want to participate, don't hesitate to come and discover the tournament community.


This article is going to be the first in a small serie debriefing my world experience, stay tuned for more.

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X-Wing Tournament Report : La boite à Chimère (Rouen) - part2

This is part 2 of my debrief, you can find part 1 : here.

Apparently my win at the French X-Wing Nationals inspired some people, so I got a taste of my own medicine!

Game 3, PurpleBoy and a 4 academies, 4 obsidians swarm :

He deployed in 2 groups while I deployed in a loose group on the left side of the board. His obsidians are left, and the academies hug the edge.

Since he split in 2 groups I decided to defeat him piecemeal, and concentrated on the academies, closing aggressively with ties. The shuttle started a stately turn to face the obsidians. With most of my firepower at range 1, and his obsidians farther away in turn 2 and 3 I took down 2 academies and 1 obsidian, losing a single academy plus some damages.

We played a couple more turns, I think, with me trying to keep the shuttle alive and finished on 4 ties on each side, with the shuttle still alive:

At that point, I think I was not too good if the game had continued, as the shuttle is mostly out of the action for at least 3 turns and his firepower is more concentrated than mine, but due to the time limit, his split deployment cost him the game with the screen of asteroids in between.

Game 4, Ptit Pierre and another 4 academies and 4 obsidians swarm:

Ptit Pierre is a young player, but really impressed me with his knowledge of the game and skill. That game was really interesting and engrossing, which of course means that I did not take pictures as I should have...

Basically he deployed in a big lump on my left side, took a beeline to the lambda, and destroyed it, loosing 3 ties in the process to my flanking force. I then kept that 1 tie advantage to the endgame where we finished with 4 ties left on my side to his 3, giving me a modified win.

However, I think I had the weaker start. As you can see in the deployement picture I had 4 Ties deployed really far from the shuttle and decided to go forward fast to reach the board center and then flank him. That was a mistake. It meant that when our forces joined, half my force was still at range 3 diminishing my firepower. Thankfully he also made a mistake, attacking in 2 columns of 4 ties, meaning that the back ties were at least a range band behind the front ones.

Game 5, Cahal and his anti-swarm list:
Roark, recon specialist, blaster turret
Blount, assault missile, squad leader
2 Green squadron pilots, assault missile, adrenaline rush

Most of this game hinged on wether I would be able to spread my ships enough to prevent to much splash damage.

I deployed spread out, in 4 columns. He of course deployed grouped to benefit from roark and squad leader.

The leftmost A-wing, using boost and a squad leader lock, took a couple of shield off the lambda, but the Ties were too far.

Blount got to fire his missile in turn 2, but only dealt a couple of damage due to my spreading out.

I took down Blount and Roark in return (turn 2 and 3)

His adrenaline A wings K-turned and launched the remaining assault missile but it was too late by then.

3 assault missiles are no laughing matter for a swarm, but with 3 2 attack dices ships and a blaster turret, it really hinges on dealing good splash damage and even then the ships struggle to land hits on Ties.

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X-Wing Tournament Report : La boite à Chimère (Rouen) - part1

A bit late in my reporting! Last month I played in a small tournament at La Boite à Chimère in Rouen. The shop is  nice, with lots of parking and really awesome tables painted by Hert:

You can click on the following images for bigger pictures:

     

 

I decided to bring my usual swarm but with a twist : I replaced 2 Ties with a buzzsaw shuttle:
6 Academies 72
OGP, Fire Control System,  Gunner 28

I won't do a turn by turn report of all 4 games but only give you the highlights:

Game 1 :

Crevette and a pretty atypical list with :
Shadow squadron pilot, advanced cloacking device +?
Bounty hunter
Dark curse
Alpha squadron pilot

Deployment:

I deployed my ties in 2 groups ready to cross the first asteroid on my left, and deployed the shuttle in front of his interceptor. He then deployed the rest of his ships.

Pedal to the metal I closed the distance as fast as possible, taking down the alpha squadron on turn 2 with I think a lucky shot with the shuttle and some help from the lead Ties.

Turn 3 was brutal for him :

The shadow squadron got caught in the furball at range 1 of the shuttle and with the added firepower of a couple of ties exploded:

After that the game turned to hunt the Bounty Hunter.

His list was not really optimized, but against my low PS swarm a shadow squadron PS5 is not really a problem, so it's actually not that bad. He lost the game when the Phantom entered the furball.

The buzzsaw was nice in this game, mostly for its firepower at all range even when blocked.

Game 2 : 

Yann is the owner of the shop and runs a pretty tight ship.

He was playing: 

Etahn A'Baht, advanced sensors, R2D2

5 bandit squadron

A list that I was really interested to face as it's crit generation could pose a big problem to my Ties.

Turn 1, at PS2:

The only thing I knew was that I did not want to get caught byt the Z95 at range 1 while in the sights of Etahn so I spread my swarm in a big line to force some choices on his part.

He decided to go for the shuttle with Etahn so my Ties were free to run havoc in his lines. The shuttle lost some shields, but with 6 ties + shuttle to his 5 Z firepower I managed to destroy 3 Z95 while only loosing 1 Tie ( blocking with damaged Ties allowed me to spread his firepower, so it was not that loopsided  in damage dealt but it left me with 6 guns to his 3.

I then mopped up the rest of his forces:

Here I think Yann made a mistake and should have kept Etahn on the Ties, allowing him to accumulate crits and reduce my firepower faster. However, I did roll above average with my defense dice so it was really hard for his 2 attack ships to land hits and I'm not sure it would have turned the game around but it would have been probably closer.

Expect part 2 soon.

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X-Wing Showcase : Imperial Lambda Shuttle Repaint

I don't know, ...  fly casual.

The best ride to infiltrate a heavily guarded shield generator, the lambda shuttle is one of the most iconic ships of the original trilogy. I really enjoyed painting it.

With such large surfaces compared to the other ships in the game I had to increase the color modulation on each panel to keep it interesting across the table.

I went for a slightly non canon paint job, adding small red areas to the wings and giving a red tint to the cockpit.

No leds in this one : after trying for half an hour to pry it open, I convinced myself that it wasn't worth it...

I used a new idea for the ball joint with a ring magnet and a ball magnet, expect a tutorial soon!

I kept the folding wings for ease of transport:

 Hope you like it!

Last month I played a bit with the layout of the blog and I added a new page : http://rule37-ica.blogspot.com/p/hobby-links.html that you can access from the top toolbar with a few hobby ressources and links (tutorials and repaint blogs or threads). If you like those I can add more!

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X-Wing tutorial : Repainting the Millenium Falcon

Would it help if I got out and pushed?

Starting from this line, I knew that to properly represent the Millenium Falcon I would need to push my weathering techniques to the max and get away from my confort zone.

Here you can see the various paints I used:

Main hull:

- pro-color white

- atronomican grey

- ceramic white

- chaos black

- shadow grey

- scab red

- codex grey

Cockpit :

- dwarf flesh

- Fluorescent orange

Weathering:

- mars black (oil)

- burnt umber (oil)

- raw sienna (oil)

The first step was to block out the main colors. On a black undercoat, I airbrushed pro-color white at an angle to keep some shadows, insisting on raised areas. Then I took my trusty raphael 1 brush and painted the colored pannels in scab red and shadow grey. The access holes and engines received a coat of chaos black.

Top:

Bottom:

Next came the weathering. Dipping a torned bit of foam in white and various shades of grey I painted a pattern of small dots on the hull:

The second step was the oil wash. The model was varnished with satin varnish then I prepared my usual mix of black oil paint + lighter fluid and applied generously:

Using Q-Tips damp with lighter fluid, I then removed the excess wash on the panels.
Sorry for the lack of pictures here.

I then highlighted the top edges of all panels with ceramic white:

Then I threw caution out the window, and started experimenting with oils directly on the model.

I first mixed a bit of umber and black to create a dark brown color that I applied lightly with a brush to the area close to the engines (use a special brush for that folks, you do not want to mix oil into your regular acrylic brushes!). You can be a bit sloppy here as the next step will cover mistakes. You should use a dabbing motion more than brush stroke.

Using a lighter fluid damp Q-tip, then I went over the oils, gently fading the edges:

I did the same on the bottom edge of the open access panels. Then painted the canopy with dwarf flesh fading to black toward the front.
At that moment the model was a bit too blue and lacked the characteristic rusty spots of the Falcon so I decided to try some oil filters. I applied raw sienna in small dots to the hull at random points:

Then gently worked them in a general rust stain shape with a dry Q-Tip:

If the rust stain is too intense, you can go over it with a lighter fluid damp q-tip to blend the edges.
That's when I decided it was good enough! Letting the oils dry over night, I varnished again the model with matt varnish.

To give bit more contrast to the canopy I finished by blending fluorescent orange to the rear areas then varnished it with gloss varnish.

I then posted the paintjob online and got quite a few positive returns, but with several saying that the weathering was not pushed enough, that the Falcon was too clean.

Challenge accepted!

First using a mix of chaos black and scorched brown I added lots of water stains, starting from the top of the panels and small details and going toward the edge of the ship. Then using the previous oil technique, I added a dark stain around the central round panel.

Now it really looks the part!

Hope this helps, don't hesitate to ask if you have questions in the comments.

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