X-Wing: Conclave 2015 X-Wing Tournament Report - Part 2

This is the second and final part of the Conclave 2015 X-Wing Tournament Report.

Part 1 can be found here.

As a quick recap from the last article: I won my first 2 games. Both were nail-bitingly close. This meant I was in the upper-middle of the pack in terms of Margin of Victory. Not a bad place to be in all honesty. So I was going into my 3rd game with cautious confidence. The last 2 games were a bit too close for my liking so couldn't get too cocky!

Conclave X-Wing Tournament 2015 (continued)

Game 3

My 3rd game was against Jay and his Imperial Squadron.

This is a very similar list I played against in the Irish Regionals……and lost. However I was confident going in because if you remember at the start of my last article I mentioned that I made changes to my Regionals list. This is the reason why. My list was tweaked to be able to specifically handle Chiraneau and friends.

Asteroids were placed quite symmetrically with a big open corridor in the middle. This was fine with me given that I needed room to get to grips with him while he didn’t care as much with his 360 fire from the Decimator.

Turn 1 I moved straight up with a 4 forward. His Decimator creeped up slowly while Soontir flew the other way to loop back around.

We started to bank towards each other on turn 2.

Here I was able to take advantage of my Engine Upgrade and boosted Boba up. This resulted in both of my Firesprays being able to shoot at Chiraneau. I think I surprised him here as he was probably hoping to engage me the turn after this one.

I unloaded hot laser death at the Decimator and took out his shields. In return he shot at Kath and took out a couple of shields.

This turn was pivotal and I considered my moves carefully. Given that Kath had to move first I moved her up 4 forward with the aim of 1. blocking Soontir if possible and 2. presenting her rear arc to the Decimator. As expected Soontir turned into my formation and pushed the limit to get his cocktail of tokens i.e. 2 focus and 1 evade tokens. The Decimator then looped around right into the firing arc of Kath.

Boba in turn bumped into the back of Kath right in front of the stressed Soontir. Things turned out exactly as I had planned!

In the combat phase Boba shot at Soontir at range 2 giving him another stress token. I think I may have managed to take out his single shield. The important thing was that I gave him another stress token which effectively neutered him for the next turn.

Kath unloaded on the Decimator with her extra dice taking out a few more hull points. In return Jay concentrated fire on Kath taking out her shields and putting a critical on her for good measure.

In the next round I moved Kath up to get as far away as possible given she was damaged but still in range to shoot from her rear arc. The Decimator gave chase.

Soontir used a green hard left 2 to get rid of one stress token. I then did a hard right 2 with Boba and made it with around a millimetre to spare.

This was a checkmate on Soontir.

Without his usual set of tokens due to the double stress there was nothing he could do when I threw 8 attack dice at him from my Firesprays. Soontir promptly vanished in a cloud of debris.

The game was effectively over. Jay gave a good chase with his Decimator on Kath to try to finish her off. However with Kath always getting an extra dice shooting backwards and Boba being able to quickly catch up with his Engine Upgrade it didn’t take long for me to send Chiraneau back to meet his maker.

Another win! This win was pretty conclusive simply because I built my list specifically to kill this type of elite 2 ship builds. Jay had a mountain to climb even before we set up and thankfully I avoided making stupid mistakes.


Game 4

With 3 straight wins this put me in the position to play against my evil nemesis from Galway, Sean, who was also coming in with 3 wins.

Sean and I have played each other numerous times at other X-Wing events. I believe I was racking more wins than losses from our previous encounters so I think he was determined to take me out!

Sean was running a version of Biggs walk the dogs.

This was bad. Really bad. I played against the exact same list twice previously and lost both times. B-wings were just hard counters against big ships like Firesprays. Their ample attack dice just gobble up big ships like there is no tomorrow.

Of course I didn’t enter this competition without having a plan to deal with these types of lists. It was just going to be very very difficult!

Asteroids were clumped in the middle. This didn’t matter much as I set up opposite him to joust.
Jousting against a block of B-Wings is usually suicide but my only chance at winning is if I was able to bump his ships and force his ships to forgo his attacks at best or split fire at worst.

Sean set up in the classic Biggs formation that allows him to pull Biggs in at the back of the formation to disrupt enemy fire.

I moved up cautiously. I had to make contact at the right moment. If my timing is off I may end up in front of his formation and get shot to pieces.

Sean moved up slowly and as I feared he started to re-position his formation using barrel rolls. Dang I hate these things!

My original plan is obviously not going to work now. So I went to plan B. Kill Biggs as fast as possible.

I shot Boba up to within range 1 of Biggs while Kath hung back making sure she has arc on Biggs. This put Boba right in the middle of his formation. Pretty dire position but it also means he will effectively be able to re-roll all of his dice thanks to his special pilot ability.

In the combat phase I unloaded 4 attack dice from Boba with re-rolls and 3 Mangler Cannon shots from Kath at Biggs. I managed to take out 2 shields. Uh oh.

In return his formation took a good chunk of shields from Kath and completely stripped all the shields from Boba. Ouch!

In subsequent turns I went back to the blocking game. Boba was near death so I had to make sure I force him to split fire as often as possible.

Biggs was still alive and kicking and regenerating shields every turn thanks to the R5-P9 droid. I was also forced to split fire with Biggs still hovering in my sight.

By putting multiple stresses on Biggs I was able to take him out of the game for a few crucial turns.
We exchange fire and he slowly started taking hull points from both my Firesprays thanks to his Fire Control Systems.

I continued to move up and down in that corridor and tried as much as possible to concentrate fire. I took 2 B-Wings to near death. One was on 1 hull point with a Consol Fire critical i.e. he rolls 1 attack die at the start of each combat phase and blows up if it’s a hit result. The other was on 3 hull points. I may yet pull this off.

However he was beginning to put crits on both Firesprays and in a pivotal turn he caused Blinded Pilot on Boba i.e. the next time I attack I don’t roll any attack dice. I could have taken out 1 B-Wing if Boba was able to fire that turn. In addition, that pesky B-Wing was able to survive 2 turns of Consol Fire without blowing up. The dice gods were not smiling on me this day!

I was eventually able to take out those 2 annoying B-Wings. However by that stage Boba was blown to bits and he still had 2 healthy B-Wings and a fully regenerated Biggs. It was only a matter of time before Kath met her end which came with just under 10 mins left on the clock.

Final game lost!

Pretty disappointing but not entirely surprised! Sean played a perfect game. He flew really smartly forcing me to shoot at Biggs when he was around and bumping me to split fire when he was not. I went back over the game in my head and there was nothing that I could have done to change the outcome of the game. If my dice was better I may have scraped a minor win but nothing more. I was out-flown and out-gunned. Great performance from Sean to win and take 1st place.

Congrats to Sean for coming 1st! 4 wins out of 4. He came, he saw and he conquered! P.S I wouldn't be so easy next time though!

Sean with his 1st place prize and smug grin

Me and Bruce sharing 2nd place position. Handshake was strong and crushingly firm.

In Closing

Similar to last year, this tournament was really fun! Everyone I played with was a gentlemen and each game went smoothly with no difficulties whatsoever. This is the main reason why X-Wing is my Number 1 game for competitively plays. Each tourney I go to seems to go off without a hitch.

The games I played were really fun and very close. I could have easily come out of that with 3 losses instead of 1! However I did pretty decent and came join second. So not all bad!

The event was run really well with minimal down time. However if I had one critique it would be that the format was changed from 5 games to 4. I personally preferred playing more games as a general rule. More bang for my Euro. I’m sure they had their reasons to move to 4 games but I found myself sitting around for an hour after my last game waiting for the results. I could have been playing another game! But that’s just my personal preference.

I like to thank Kevin and the rest of the Gathering team for hosting the event. I hope it will continue for many years to come!

I hope you enjoy the report. If I made any mistakes please feel free to drop me a line and I will make the necessary corrections.

Alright lads stay on target and keep the flying casual!

X-Wing: Conclave 2015 X-Wing Tournament Report - Part 1

Resurrection Protocol Activated

I’m back!

After a long hiatus from hobby blogging due to real life getting in the way; I’m now back with a vengeance.

I will resurrect this long forgotten realm that is the Hobby Foundry Blog and get back to releasing regular posts covering my hobby and gaming, in equal measure.


Conclave 2015

For my first article back I will report on a recent local X-Wing tournament I attended: Conclave 2015. Conclave 2015 is an annual gaming convention that was held in Limerick City, Ireland, on the 20th -21st June 2015. This year was the second year that featured an X-Wing tournament.

I attended the same convention this time last year and had a great time so my return was inevitable. See here for the report of last year’s tournament:

Part 1: http://hobbyfoundry.blogspot.ie/2014/08/x-wing-conclave-2014-x-wing-tournament.html
Part 2: http://hobbyfoundry.blogspot.ie/2014/08/x-wing-conclave-2014-x-wing-tournament_24.html

I think that’s enough of a preamble, onwards to the tournament report. Enjoy!


My List

I ran a slightly modified Scum & Villainy list that I used in the Irish FFG 2015 Regional Tournament earlier this year (battle report coming soon!). It was a good list but it had serious trouble with high pilot skill lists so I decided to change it up. The current iteration looks like this:

From my experience a 2 ship list is very unforgiving. If you fly badly and lose one early it is almost game over. However it performs very well with Margin of Victory (MoV) i.e. you either lose both ships or not at all. And if you are winning chances are you did not lose a single ship. This was a big deal for the Regionals where I had to ensure I maximised my MoV to help make the top 8 cut to go into the final rounds.

There are a few concepts running through this list. I’ll explain some of my thinking below:

Playing 2 identical ships simplifies flying. Having 2 dials with the exact same moves means I can fly in formation easier (if formation flying is required).

Veteran Instinct pushing Boba to PS10 is there to allow me to get a jump on the likes of Whisper or Soontir Fel. In these cases, shooting first is a must.

Tactician is there to help me shut down builds that rely heavily on Push the Limit. It is also very useful for restricting my opponents’ movements. The ability to force your opponent to delay a K-turn can be a big deal.

The Heavy Laser Cannon (HLC) and Mangler Cannon is a 1-2 punch. HLC strips shields while the Mangler Cannon pile on crits.

Predator on Kath together with Boba’s innate pilot ability give both ships rerolls even without performing actions. If I can combine these rerolls with a Focus token then the damage output for both ships can be consistently high. Enough to one-shot small ships in a single combat round.

Engine Upgrade on Boba is the icing on the cake. Together with PS10 it turns him into a pseudo arc dodger. Boosting with big ships covers a lot of ground. This ability to reposition combos perfectly with Tactician for maximum douchebaggery.

This list started life mainly because Firesprays are one of my favourite ships in X-Wing and I had repainted both ships as Boba and Kath. So when Scum came out I wanted to have both of them on the table.

However despite its fluffy origins the list you see above has been play tested excessively and is highly fine-tuned. There are a number of list archetypes that it cannot deal with (i.e. B-wings) but otherwise it has the tools to deal with almost anything the current meta can throw at it.

The Tourny

Game 1

My first game was against Ben and his Blue Squadron/Z-95 mini swarm. I did an epic face palm here. My first game of the tourney and it was to be against one of my worst match ups!

Asteroids were placed in a clump close to my table edge with clear flight corridors around it. He deployed on one table edge and I promptly deployed as far away as physically possible. Jousting with that many B-Wings was suicide.

He moved up slowly while I burst forward to try to clear the asteroid belt.

As expected by turn 3 we started to bank towards each other. I decided to gamble and boosted with Boba to take a pot shot at the nearest Z-95. Unfortunately I only managed to strip a single shield.

The next turn we collided in a big pile up. Ben has deployed very well here. By staggering his formation only one ship was in contact with mine meaning that 4 out of 5 ships were able to focus on Boba. My tactic was to move up and try to bump as many of his ships as possible as this meant that he would not have been able to shoot the ship that bumped. Forcing split fire is crucial to surviving with only 2 ships.

We traded blows and I decided to target the Z-95 at the very end of his formation and took him out in one round. HLC and Mangler Cannon did its job perfectly. In return he decimated the shields from both Firesprays. B-Wings are scary at range 1!

In the next round I flew Kath straight forward so as to maximise her fire from her rear arc. She always looks better from behind anyway ;D. As for Boba I moved him 1 forward. Boba is a knife fighter. He is most vicious when within range 1 of the enemy as this maximises his reroll ability.

Ben was very restricted on where he could go and tried to block me. Unfortunately he ended up with 2 of his B-Wings out of position. Not being able to perform a 2 K-turn really screwed him here.

With both of my ships in their optimum position I was able to vaporise a B-Wing and the damaged Z-95 over the next 3 turns while Ben tried to get back into position. He further whittled down my ships and managed to land damage on Kath’s hull.

With 1 Firespray in front and 1 behind his remaining B-Wings, Ben decided to chase Kath who was down to 4 hull points by this stage.

I decided to run away with Kath as surviving at this point was more important. Boba on the other hand used his Engine Upgrade to catch up and was able to kill another B-Wing.

Ben was determined to take Kath down. I looped around the asteroid clump and stupidly clipped an asteroid and suffered a single damage to my hull. Ben pointed his last remaining B-Wing towards Kath and let loose. If he got 3 hits and I fail to dodge he would have blown Kath away in the last round. Fortunately he only managed to put a single point of damage through.

Time was called and that was that!

Phew that could have been disastrous! I think the turning point was when we collided and Ben turned 2 of his B-Wings out of position. I had the upper hand from there and was unlikely to lose as I was able to pick his ships off one by one. Having 2 firing arcs gave me a huge advantage.

Apart from the above, Ben flew really well. He didn’t crash into any asteroids and kept his focus. He was also one of the nicest young lad you will ever meet. He even gave me a chocolate muffin after our game! Thanks bro! He was much nicer than his evil big brother (and my nemesis), Seoirse, whom I played against in last years’ tournament.

I was off to a good start.

Game 2

My second game was against Aaron. An Aussie recently moved to Ireland. He told me this was only his 4th game of X-Wing!

Aaron was playing an eclectic collection of Scum ships. Scum vs Scum. This should be fun!

Once again I tried to clump asteroids in the centre to give me room to fly around the edges.

He moved up slowly on this side of the board while I scooted up with 4 forwards to allow me to loop around quickly and get into position.

Unfortunately Kath was in range 3 of both Suhlak and Guri and lost a few shields in the initial exchange. I took a shield from Suhlak in return.

The next engagement was going to be crucial. Aaron was already ahead in terms of damage dealt so I had to make the next combat phase count.

Again I flew Kath so that she presents her rear to the enemy for maximum damage while Boba went straight into the middle of Aaron’s formation like a boss.

Boba took a pot shot at the IG-88 and took return fire from Suhlak. Kath was in range 1 of Suhlak and let ripped with 5 attack dice thanks to her pilot ability. Suhlak had a stress token so did not perform any actions and was subsequently blown into smithereens. However before he died he activated his Dead Man’s Switch and blew out Kath’s last remaining shield. Boba and Guri were also caught in the blast.

With Kath vulnerable, Aaron decided to focus fire on her with his remaining ships. Together with some nice rolling and a Direct Hit critical he was able to destroyed Kath! Uh oh. This is bad. Really really bad! Losing 50% of my fleet at such an early stage is a disaster.

With odds stacked against me the only way I can win is to fly smart and focus on one ship. With that in mind I tried to stay within range 1 of his ships to give me free rerolls while focusing fire on the damaged IG-88. However with 3 defense dice I was only putting through 1 damage a turn. Luckily his shooting was equally dismal and had a similar effect on me.

We continued to fly around each other. To minimise his shooting I tried to bump every turn so that he could only shoot at me with 1 of his ships. This also gives Boba rerolls to his attack and defense.

Even though I was only doing the minimum damage to his IG-88 each turn because of his 3 defense dice I was continually piling on stress tokens thanks to Tactician. This significantly reduced his return fire and his ability to perform Segnor Loops.

I eventually came out on top thanks to my superior firepower and destroyed the IG-88.

This left me duelling with Guri. The Star Viper is relatively fragile but with 3 attacks as default and the ability to perform Segnor Loops he was very dangerous. However thanks to my PS10 I always got a jump on him.

Last round was called and I was down to 3 hull points while Aaron was down to 2.  I let loose with my HLC and came up with 3 hits. I used my target lock and rolled another hit to make it 4 out of 4. Aaron rolled his defense dice and only managed 1 evade. Victory!

That was a very very close game! For a beginner Aaron played like a pro! I thought I was goosed when I lost Kath so early. However I stuck at it and flew with a purpose and managed to claw myself back. Boba definitely earned his bounty in this game. He went to a 2 vs 1 fight and came out on top. Scum Boba is a beast!

That’s it for part 1 of my Conclave 2015 battle report. Hoped you enjoyed it. Tuned in again next week for part 2!