X-Wing Tournament Report(s): Part 2B - Bangor Assault at Imdaar Alpha Pre Release Event 31st May, 2014

This is the final article in the second part of my two parter tournament report. (See here for Part 1 and here for Part 2A).


X-Wing 2014 Assault at Imdaar Alpha Pre Release Tournament

Game 3

I left off my last article at Game 3 with Jenny. As previously mentioned this game was pivotal in deciding who was going to go through to the final round.

Jenny was running Chewie with Gunner supported by two HWK-290s with Blaster Turret. Any list with a Falcon is always tough to get through especially in the hands of a player that know their stuff. And Jenny definitely knew her stuff.

Again asteroids placement and my opening formation is the same as last game. Jenny set up in a corner to my left.

I shot straight up with my swarm while Jenny moved the HWK-290s behind Chewie.

Knowing that the HWK-290s were relatively slow compared to the Falcon I continued with a five forward to try to catch the two HWK-290s out of position.

Jenny got the jump on me with Roark's ability giving Chewie a PS of 12. I weathered the storm and retaliated. I traded a few hulls for some of her shields.

In the next round I did a K-turn to come back around with the swarm. Here Jenny flew one of the HWK-290 to block my higher PS ships and successfully stopped Dark Curse in his tracks.

However this left the single HWK-290 isolated. This was my opportunity to get ahead and I focused fire on the unfortunate Roark and left him to sleep with the fishes.

In the next round I tried to keep my swarm in formation and within range one of Howlrunner. I sent Dark Curse to go after the other HWK-290.

Chewie continued to move forward and started to make a turn to come back around all the while firing at full effectiveness. Jenny finally took down one of my TIE fighters while I struggled to take down the HWK-290. Those guys are pretty tough.

In the next round Jenny again plowed the HWK-290 into my formation and this time she was successful in breaking up my swarm.

With only two TIE fighters with firing arc on the HWK-290 I struggled to take it down.

I send Dark Curse to go after the HWK-290 and after some nice rolling on my part I finally shot it down. This still left Chewie with nearly full health right up in my grill with my formation broken. I was getting very worried at this sage.

In the next few rounds I threw everything I had at Chewie but with his pilot ability allowing him to ignore crits I struggled. On the other hand Chewie was taking chunks out of my squadron downing another TIE Fighter.

Time was running out and the game was still very close.

In the last round I took Chewie to one hull but made a massive mistake: I put an evade token on one of my TIE fighter instead of a focus. Without it I wasn't able to take the final hull off the Falcon. Aarrgh!

Time was called and we tallied up the points. I just about scraped a modified win by 3 points. That was really close! Thankfully my late screw up didn't cost me the game. Well that's the last time I'll make that mistake!


Final Round

With two wins and one modified win I was through to the final round. Didn't quite expect this at all!

My opponent was none other than Richard. The same guy I played my first ever X-Wing tournament match against (see report here). I think he's setting himself up to be my nemesis...

We broke out the Wave 4 ships (with care) and started making our lists.

Richard had more points than me and so had first pick and decided to go for Imperials. This left me in a bit of a bind as apart from the Falcon I never flew any other Rebel ship. This is not starting well!

Richard took a TIE Interceptor in addition to the TIE Phantom and TIE Defender.

 I went with what I know and took Chewie in a Falcon with the E-Wing and Z95 Headhunnter.

 The Game

Asteroids were placed more or less in the middle leaving room around the edges.

I set up on my left corner while Richard set up on the opposite corner.

Using Chewie as the meat shield I sent him forward with the E-Wing and Z95 coming up behind.

Richard flew the Defender and Phantom directly towards Chewie. 'Echo' the Phantom pilot activated his cloaking device. The Interceptor flew down the flank at speed.

Recognising Richard's intention to flank me but trying to turn it to my advantage I swung my entire squadron around to attempt to take out the Interceptor before his cavalry arrives.

Unfortunately I didn't take account of the outrageous movement that Echo had up his sleeves when uncloaking. He was able to come right up to Chewie when he uncloaked. Wowza!

Here I also showed a bit of my own inexperience and had both my E-Wing and Z95 going over an asteroid and losing a shield off the Z95.

I took shots at the Interceptor but failed to destroy it. I must mention here that Corran Horn was awful. The guy couldn't hit anything!

Richard meanwhile picked up five attack dice for the Phantom alone and started to single handedly take massive chunks out of the Falcon. Five attacks basic at range one! I was in real trouble.

Leaving the Falcon to Echo, Richard used his TIE Defender to take pot shots at my Z95 and managed to take him out in two turns. Oh dear.

Things were looking grim.

The Interceptor made its fly past and tried to hightailed it out of there. Fortunately after some softening up of the Interceptor in earlier rounds, Chewie finally got the Interceptor under his sights and blew it into smithereens.

The Phantom continued to slaughter Chewie with its ridiculous quantities of attack dice and the TIE Defender contributed with its own attacks.

Chewie was down to his last couple of hull points.

Echo was really difficult to deal with as he was PS 6 which is higher than Chewie's PS 5. Together with his Advanced Cloaking Device he was able to re-cloak after his attacks to avoid the worst of Chewie's retaliation. Things were looking very bad.

I did a K-turn with Corran Horn and to his credit, he grew a pair and one shot Echo when he had his cloak down! Alright that's what I'm talking about!

My elation was short lived as his Defender then finished off Chewie. Now it was just Corran in his piece of junk vs. Col. Vessery in his state of the art warship.

Things were getting very tense.

The two elite pilots dueled. Mano-a-mano.

However Corran being Corran couldn't land a hit to save his life. Nor could he evade any of those hot lasers coming his way. The guy probably couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery! That's how bad he was.

Also the Defender had this little trick whereby he could do a four Kiorgran turn that wasn't a red manouevre. Wut!

Every time I did a K-turn I had to forego an action while he did not. This quickly took its toll.

Corran's antics finally came to an end when he failed to dodge Vessery's mean laser shots.

A loss at the last hurdle! T_T

Man that was a great game though! Turned out to be a much closer game than anyone expected.

Richard is not known for flying small ships (he likes em big) but he flew brilliantly here, especially the Phantom. Well played sir, well played!

With the win, Richard had first pick and went for the TIE Defender. It made him nostalgic apparently. This left me with second choice. The E-Wing was definitely out of the question. That Corran Horn guy is such a jerk and I had no plans for a single Z95 so I chose the ship that impressed me most, the TIE Phantom.

Ermagurd. The TIE Phantom is so awesome!

In Closing

This was a great event. The format of the final round is actually pretty neat as it gives people a glimpse of what Wave 4 had in store for the game once it finally hit stores.

I was gobsmacked I did so well. Never expected it. Although I did secretly wished for a top four placing. Finishing second was unreal. 

In addition I really felt like I've made vast improvements to my game. I still committed a bunch of stupid mistakes but definitely a lot less of the game changing ones. I'm still pretty inexperience mainly because I've only actually able to play a small subset of ships from my collection. I must make a point of playing more rebels. I've absolutely zero experience there (not counting the double Falcon list).

All my opponents were real sound. Not a rules lawyer in sight. A great X-Wing community they have up there in the north. Thanks all for the great games! Also congrats to Richard for the win. The better player definitely won on the day. I'll take you down next time though!

The event was well run so thanks a mill to the guys at Replay Games. My only beef would be the playing mats. They look real nice but very difficult to actually make out gaming components like asteroids and tokens during play. Still it's probably better than no mats!

Well if you're with me this far thanks for reading. I hope it was enjoyable. I have more X-Wing tournament reports in the pipeline so stay calm and keep gaming!

BFG Battle Report: Space Marines v.s. Eldar

I had a Battle Fleet Gothic game with Gavin and his gorgeous Eldar Corsair fleet at our FLGS a couple of weeks back.

It was a pity I didn't bring in my space gaming mat as both of our fleets were painted to a very decent standard and would have been a thing of beauty to behold. However the game was still a spectacle and we had more than a couple of curious onlookers checking us out.

The fleets

Given that we were still a bit rusty with the rules we decided on 1,000 points per side to allow us some toys in our list without having too big a fleet engagement that would go on for ages.

Eldar Corsairs

1 Shadow Class Cruiser

2 Aurora Light Cruisers

4 Hellebore Frigates

2 Nightshade Destroyers

Space Marines

1 Battle barge with Master of the Fleet

3 Strike Cruisers

2 Gladius Escorts

Set up and Deployment

Similar to my previous game with Jeff, I suggested we play with some asteroid fields to add a bit of tactical depth to the game. We alternated placing asteroids which eventually formed three separate fields.

We then rolled for sides and alternated deploying our ships. We both ended up splitting our fleet into two detachments to facilitate movement through the asteroids.

I deployed my Battle barge with a squadron of two Strike Cruisers in the middle with a clear path into the centre of the table. I deployed my other Strike Cruiser beside a squadron of two Gladius on the left of the table.

Once again we decided to play a straight shoot em’ up game. Kill or be killed!

The Game

I had first turn. I advanced my main detachment with the Battle barge towards the centre of the table and launched Thunderhawks and torpedoes.

My other detachment flew into the asteroid field for cover.

In my ordnance phase the Thunderhawk squadrons and torpedoes flew straight into the middle of the table in an attempt to influence his movement next turn.

On Gavin’s turn he moved his ships forward. His Shadow and two Hellebores flew at my ordnance in the middle of the table. He moved his two Nightshades around into the asteroid field. On his right he flew the Aurora and the other two Hellebore straight parallel to the asteroid field. He split the other Aurora and moved it into the middle of the table.

The Corsairs then launched their own torpedoes directly at the Thunderhawks which together with his ships’ armaments managed to destroy the majority of my ordnance.

On his ordnance phase all his ships did a 180 and ran. Eldar ships can turn freely and can move in both the movement phase and their ordnance phase. In addition, if the sunward edge is behind them they get a massive boost to their speed. This was my first time playing against Eldar and was completely unprepared for this. Very tricksy.

On my turn I continue to move forward with my main detachment to within weapons range. On my left, the Strike Cruiser continued to move through the asteroid field. The Gladius, with their 30cm speed, flew through the asteroid field right beside the Aurora that was trying to escape.

Eldar are very resilient due to their holofields. This provides a 2+ save against lances and ordnance. Against weapon batteries they force a right column shift reducing the number of attack dice.

I issued the ‘lock on’ special order and unloaded with all my guns reducing the Aurora to a drifting hulk. Space marines’ bombardment cannons use the gunnery table and therefore negate the Eldar’s holofield saves.  Eldar ships without holofields are as strong and resilient as wet toilet paper.

The Corsair responded by springing a trap.

In the centre, the Shadow and Hellebore that were running away made a complete turn and zoomed directly at my two Strike Cruisers. His Nightshades also successfully navigated their way through the asteroid field to come up right on the Strike Cruisers. On his right he punched his other Aurora and Hellebore through the asteroid field right on the port side of my Battle barge.

He then unloaded all manner of deadly Eldar munitions against my fleet. His weapon batteries stripped shields from my capital ships. He then followed up with pulsar lances which made mockery of my heavy 6+ armour. The icing on the cake was when he launched torpedoes at point blank range and started to strip my hull points at an alarming rate. Eldar torpedoes are hard to hit with defensive turrets and can reroll any misses. It was not a pretty sight. To top it off, his ships than did another 180 and ran off into the asteroid fields!

Somehow, when the space dust settled, none of my ships were destroyed. Both of my Strike Cruisers were crippled and my Battle barge loss four hull points. However my fleet was still intact and ready for vengeance.

On my turn I moved away from all the blast markers bringing my shields back on line. I also succeeded with reloading all of my ordnance. I reckon the only way to destroy more ships were to concentrate fire so I flew all of my ships towards the right side of the table in pursuit of the Shadow Cruiser, Hellebore Frigates and Nightshade Destroyers.

The Eldar had speed on their side and I would never catch up with them with my capital ships. However my Thunderhawks can move in both of our ordnance phases. Therefore, I scrambled all Thunderhawks from my launch bays and hurled them at his ships. On my shooting phase my main armaments couldn’t find any gaps through his holofields but my Thunderhawks managed to land a couple of critical hits against his Shadow Cruiser.

On Gavin’s turn, the Eldar once again did a u-turn and came right up on my grill. He reloaded ordnance and again shot them point blank at my ships. This time around he managed to blew both of my Gladius Escorts into scrap adamantium. He also succeeded in overloading my shields and stripped a couple more hull points from my Strike Cruisers.

With that we ran out of time and ended the game.

Post battle analysis

Eldar

Pirate Prince Gavin:

"It was my first time facing Space Marines and it was quite a challenge dealing with their high armour and fearsome bombardment cannons!

Due to not having any attack craft tokens I was forced to rely on holofields for ordnance defence. Next time I will make sure to take ships with fighters and bombers to deal with pesky Thunderhawks!"

Space Marines

Master of the Fleet Voiddragon:

"That was a thoroughly enjoyable game! It was my first time against Eldar and I was very impressed with their special abilities. They had advantages in both their movement and weapons. However my Space Marines held their own thanks to their heavy armour and Thunderhawks.

Also I realised I cheated after the game as both of my Strike Cruisers were crippled (i.e. lost more than half their starting hull points) but I forgot to play them as such. Sorry about that Gavin!

Tactically, I don’t think I could have done any better given the placing of the asteriod fields. Deploying centrally meant that no matter which direction he went I would be able to chase and keep within weapons range most of the time. Also I realised there was nothing I could do against point blank torpedoes. Man those were nasty!"

Hope that was an enjoyable read. We certainly had fun playing it. More to come soon. Stayed tuned.