X-Wing Doubles Tournament Report - Sanctuary Gaming

IX-wing tournament which was also at the Sanctuary. Once again Darren and Andy were in attendance and with Dave Ellis (who used to work at the Outpost) running the event it felt like a pretty friendly atmosphere from the off. As ever I took along Matt as my partner. We've played a lot of doubles events in 40K over the years so we know we work well together and were hoping this would transfer into X-wing. The tournament required each player to bring 100pts each (i.e. not just 200 for the team). We'd had some practice games pitting his best Imperial list against my best Rebel list and we decided that his list gave us the best chance:
t'd only been a week since my last

200pt Imperial Aces
Commander Oicunn (42), Expose (4), Experimental Interface (3), Ysanne Isard (4), Emperor Palpatine (8)
Whisper (32), Veteran Instincts (1), Advanced Cloaking Device (4), Tactician (2)

Darth Vader (29), Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1), TIE/x1 (0), Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
Countess Ryad (34), Push The Limit (3), Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1), TIE/x7 (-2)
Delta Squadron Pilot (30), Ion Cannon (3), TIE/D (0)

The general idea was to try and have ships that put out a lot of damage for their points. Oicunn can be brutal with Expose and Target Lock at range 1. Whisper is, well, Whisper but with Tactician for a bit of stress. Darth has the ATC so that he's nearly always adding a crit. Ryad and the other Defender are generally good for being able to white K-turn to keep damage coming and the Delta's ion cannon helps with that or might help something bump into Oicunn if the situation arises.

Game 1 vs. 4 Jumps and Palob

We'd been worried about facing Scum lists because we've only ever played them at tournaments and that was well over a year ago. Neither of us have ever faced Jumpmasters but I knew from reading Luke's blog that they're pretty tasty. Our first game gave us a baptism of fire then with four of the things. One half was what is apparently called Dengaroo and the other had a Scout. Tel and Palob in the Moldy Crow with TLT. Our lack of knowledge of most of their list was a bit of a worry going into this!

One thing I did know was that they prefer to turn left so we sent the Decimator blasting up the field to try and get behind them and force them to be making right turns to engage us. We'd baited them with our PS1 Defender on the opposite side. Sadly he was the first to be targeted by Dengar who scored four hits. We were fairly confident we wouldn't take much damage until Matt completely blanked on the green dice! Meanwhile we took Palob into structure early on but my first rolls with Whisper and Oicunn were poor so he clung on which would prove to haunt us.

Our opponents had clearly prioritised the Decimator so started piling hits onto it. With the first damage card being dealt face up they decided to take away the Emperor with Boba Fett too! Ouch! Thinking about it now that was probably pretty decisive. Anyway, it wasn't long before we lost the Delta but by now the Scout and Tel had some damage. Dengar was keeping his distance which suited us fine. We weren't interesting in shooting him at this point anyway. It wasn't long before Oicunn and Ryad finished off the Scout but I'd put Whisper into Dengar's range (I was frankly still getting used to using her at this point having been reminded several times to Cloak/Recloak when I'd forgotten).

I made this mistake of evading near Palob just before I was going to shoot him (her?) and therefore caused less damage than I'd have liked. In the next turn Palob had already bolted so I was set up to finish off Manaroo with a range 1 Expose shot but Dengar had other ideas. He managed to cause to take Oicunn down to just two hull remaining (the guy controlling him hadn't rolled anything but hits/crits so far - seriously!?!). Palob's TLT then took the remaining hull destroying Oicunn before he could fire.

We were now way behind so our best shot was to try and finish off the two damaged Jumps and continue to ignore Dengar. Darth took on Tel whilst Ryad went after Manaroo. Both succeeded but we were now running out of time in the round (mostly thanks to us not knowing what we're doing). We hadn't kept a track of current points so didn't realise we could win if we killed Palob. In fact, we thought were were already in the lead but didn't know how much Dengar was! We therefore bolted with both Darth and Ryad and by the time we realised we needed to hit Palob he was out of range and time ran out. Frustratingly we lost the game 111-133.

Game 2 vs. Imperial Aces
We were both pleased to be facing Andy Lane and his partner Chris. We've known Andy a while through 40K so it was good to be playing him (I don't think I ever did in 40K though?!?). Anyway, their list featured Ryad, Vessery, Darth, Inquisitor, Soontir and an Omega. No Palp though!

They deployed a lot of their stuff sideways so that they could respond to what we did (apparently anyway, we thought it seemed like nonsense). Still, we ended up with a pile up in the middle of the board pretty quickly. Apologies for the lack of pictures, I forgot for the first few rounds. They ganged up on Darth from the start but We'd put some heavy damage on the Inquisitor but they blasted him away as soon as possible. We drove Oicunn into Vessery leaving him with a single hull point. We followed up with an ion hit that meant he'd definitely die next turn if we could bump again which we did. We also managed to finish off the Inquisitor with the Defenders. Unfortunately, all that staying still had left the Decimator exposed to fire from Ryad and the Omega Leader which was eventually enough to finish him off.

We then managed to line up Soontir with both defenders and Whisper. Somehow he managed to surive the onslaught but at the expense of his cloak and shield. He was stressed too so we lined him up again and finished him off. We thought we now had a slim lead so we wanted to kill off another ship to make sure. With time running out we'd managed to line their Ryad up with a shot from Whisper and the Delta. Whisper's attack bounced off his triple evade roll but the defender could still do it. The ion cannon failed to hit though and the main guns couldn't then finish the job. The timer ran out and to our surprise we found out we'd actually won 101-92.

Game 3 vs. Double Brobots

We'd both played Brobots in a singles event early last year but feared we might come up against all four in this event. I was surprised it happened in the last round though as we expected to be near the bottom. If we'd won this game our MOV meant we could've placed in the top 3 if we got a decent enough win. Can't say we felt especially confident given what we were facing but I'd played both of our opponents in the last event separately and beaten one of them so I thought it was at least possible.

We deployed in diagonally opposite corners. We'd planned on heading towards the opposite edge to get behind them but a combination of asteroids and poor move planning meant we ended up meeting them nearly head on which didn't do Darth any favours. Again, I haven't got many photos of the early parts of this battle. Darth limped through but it wasn't long until he became the first casualty.

We were doing fine, slowly putting damage onto a couple of the IGs but then we had probably the worst turn of X-wing either of us has ever had. We'd planned our moves but then questioned whether we'd bump. We switched the dial on the Decimator but didn't then readjust the Defender dials to compensate. This resulted in bumps for both of them (and the Decimator but that was intentional). Worse still, I'd misjudged Whisper's decloak meaning she actually couldn't at all. Wouldn't have been a problem but I hadn't planned for it so she piled straight into a debris fielding causing stress, no focus and leaving her in arc of two of the IGs. She'd already taken heavy damage in the turn before so this sounded the death knell. The Delta wasn't far behind leaving us two ships to take on all four of theirs. Killing our ships also gave a shield back to one of the IGs.

All wasn't quite lost yet though. The combination of Oicunn and Ryad was worth a chunk of points so if we could keep Oicunn from going below half and destroy two of the IGs (or some combination of destroying/half damaging). Wouldn't be enough to make the top 3 but at least we go out with a winning record. The dice just weren't on our side though. We kept bumping with Oicunn but sadly not on the one we'd have like to hit. We struggled to line both ships up on one target since there were a lot of bumps going on. Eventually Ryad bought it and the game was out of our reach. Oicunn simple couldn't avoid the damage. He took down an IG but his death was inevitable.

At this point I should've simply flown off the board but I'm not prepared to do that when it doesn't really matter. This meant one of the IGs got a shield back from killing Oicunn, pushing it above half and costing us 25pts on our MOV. Our opponents found this pretty funny but we really didn't care.

That gave us a 50-200 loss and, by my reckoning an MOV of -163. I think that equated to 7th out of ten teams. Bit of a disappointment when we could've placed but we'd done better than we expected.

Conclusion
Well, the first game was easily our favourite. We quickly found our feet and it basically came down to a single roll of the dice not going our way early on. If Palob had gone down we'd have most likely won sooner. It was helped by Manaroo bumping on about three turns in a row but one of our opponents only started rolling anything but hits on the last turn or two. Granted when it came it was a four blank roll but it was long overdue by then. Just one poor roll earlier on and Oicunn would've been alive to finish off Palob or Manaroo. No point dwelling on what if though. The key problems were that I hadn't gotten used to placing Whisper meaning she died prematurely and that we hadn't realised how close the scores were.

The second game could've been a lot more fun than it ended up being. In our opinion at least, our opponents were over discussing everything. I don't mean this in a horrible way and I've known Andy a while so I mean him no disrespect. It just meant that the game felt like it was dragging and it took ages to get any ships off the board. We played it pretty well though and kept them guessing with some of our moves. I don't think we'd thought about Oicunn bumping or else got to a point where they couldn't avoid it. Granted we basically traded Oicunn for Vessery in the end but it was an opportunity for guaranteed damage we couldn't pass up. Always nice to win a close game though and gave us the win we'd hoped for at the start of the day.

The last game was a pretty dull affair to be honest. Obviously losing is never fun but we felt like we didn't know the list well enough to know how to pick it apart. I think it basically game down to the one horrendous round we had as well which doesn't help. If Whisper had been decloaked we'd have probably taken an IG down sooner and therefore turned the tables a bit. Ultimately I need to learn to think a couple of turns ahead with her but I'll probably not play with her again for months now. I've never actually used an Empire list barring the odd time with the starter set so Whisper and Oicunn were deemed to be the easiest to use by Matt. My lack of practice with them was probably an issue throughout.

We were pretty happy with our list. I reckon Oicunn could've been loaded out slightly better to make more use of the ramming and Darth needed Adaptability really (we don't actually own the card though). We'll have hopefully played some more before the next event and I'll own more sets so we should have all the cards we need.

One final thing, the organisers were running a background competition to win the coin which meant each individual player chose a named pilot and kept track of their kills. The pilot with the most points destroyed won. Oicunn only got me 85pts and Matt chose Darth. Not sure how many points he got but I know that Ryad got significantly more. Still, we both got an alternative art Predator card which was a nice bonus. We may not have enjoyed the final game but at least we got to learn more about Scum. I'll be collecting them anyway but it's good to play against them. No more tournaments planned for now but we'll be on the look out!