The time spent waiting from Dathomir for my next Gold Squadron Galaxies Qualifier, Ryloth, has passed. Again, I’ll attempt to make cut using First Order and again it’ll be a bit of an all-nighter to participate, given that the timing of the tournament is that of GMT+2, a full quarter of a day ahead of GMT-4. But I don’t have the mental strength to hold it out tooth and nail with a blockable Kylo in a list sans debuffing the opponent.
As good as Kylo + Holo + Tavson is, I won’t be fielding it. It’s not just the matchups against Spamtex, but also the various salads, Bobas, or strong area denial pieces that give me stress, if not have a positive matchup under some configurations against me if I take Kylo Holo Tavson (or straight up have the advantage against me in the case of Spamtex). Plus, local powerhouse Pyoinator had a very good run at Crait with a Precognitive Reflexes Vader + Thicc Rexler: I enjoy pre-maneuver repositioning force users and he demonstrated that even in a hyper competitive scene that they can still churn work and have a solid chance at making cut at large tournaments. Hence, I fielded 2 ship Super Kylo and Vonreg with an 11 pt bid: yet another counter to the generic 6 Petranakis, but unlike a lot of the counters out there, strong enough against the rest of the field as long as I don’t face more than one I6 per match. Fortunately, in this environment of Rock Paper Scissors, I6’s get culled rather early unless the player fielding them is truly a force to be reckoned with and/or lucky in the matchups. There will also be some margin of error for cut as there are “only” 168 players, and thus Top 32 constitutes an entire top 19%!
Given that my 2 Spacejam runs of SuperKylo + Vonreg didn’t go out nearly as well as its run in pickup games and a kit tourney, I took a closer look at my games. The main problem was that I built and flew the list as if it were a 3 ship list instead of a 2 ship one. Vonreg has too much utility, and at 80 pt in that setup (today’s equivalent would be 78 IIRC), he’s good, but without support those points would die with him. He needs to trim down to be purely a damage dealer/trade piece. Super Optic Kylo certainly is good, as past precedent had indicated, but with only one other vector for the rest of my list to advance, he’s not going to be splitting up the forces enough. Which means he either over-commits in order to get that range 1 and deal damage–a problem mostly unknown to a decently-flown 3-ship Super Kylo–or he’s holding back but not doing enough damage. Thus, the decision was clear: give Kylo munitions and try to min-max Vonreg.
It wasn’t all that simple, however. I didn’t know if Vonreg would deal more damage by living longer with Deuterium Powercells or if I should just hold on to Outmaneuver and Afterburners. I knew that without Targeting Synchronizer, Advanced Optics would pose a negative synergy with most munitions and I didn’t want Vonreg burdened by another 4 pt., especially if I decided to take the Powercells. Also, I knew not which munition/s to take with Kylo.
Fortunately, since our cut game in IG-88 (the invitational conclusion to the BOTS tournaments), Bohan and I have been chatting about First Order teching/gameplay. Given his creation of Spamtex and his subsequent victory at Corellia, his inspiration for Sloane Agressors, his making cut at World’s 2019 with Kylo + Quickdraw + Tavson, and his model that does tend to predict what players will eventually find success or disappointment with–it did me well to take his advice. I was initially actually going to field Kylo + Malarus (TIE) + Gideon, but he swayed me from that considering how quickly the non-Kylo in that list dies or the opponent choosing to ignore it: and the subsequent practice reinforced that. When I bit the bullet and returned to Kylo + Vonreg, he offered a litany of reasons why Plasma Torpedoes when removed from their vacuum are actually not a suitable replacement for Proton Torpedoes, why Primed Thrusters are this Kylo’s safest tech, and why Outmaneuver should be most Vonreg’s default talent. I did test Pattern Analyzer just to be sure and didn’t like it. Similarly, I tried using Daredevil + Deuterium Powercells just to make sure it wasn’t the trap of lying to its wielder that it maybe makes Vonreg a more mobile and harder-hitting T65. After embarrassing myself with a sloppy win followed by a disastrous routing on Hexiled Gaming’s stream (which listed my name as “Ben”, as I suppose my Discord moniker was far too silly for Scott’s stream), I built the following return to Spacejam [but leaner] Vonreg and a Kylo efficient to SpaceOwls’ model and advice [for the most part, anyways, as Torpedoes on a 3 red dice ship aren’t really efficient according to the model but I need that extra DPS and the 13pt aren’t useful elsewhere in the list]:
Kylo Ren (76)
Supernatural Reflexes (24)
Primed Thrusters (9)
Proton Torpedoes (13)
Ship total: 122 Half Points: 61 Threshold: 3
Major Vonreg (55)
Outmaneuver (6)
Afterburners (6)
Ship total: 67 Half Points: 34 Threshold: 2
Total: 189
View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0: https://raithos.github.io/?f=First%20Order&d=v8ZsZ200Z236X74W178W136WY381X126WWW105&sn=Unnamed%20Squadron&obs=
Let’s get this bread! And maybe an invite too!
Game 1: Daan (a Belgian currently residing in the Netherlands)
SEPARATIST ALLIANCE (192)
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Well, I get to face a list that I’m countering first round, and that’s good, but it’s against Daan. Daan might be netlisting, but he isn’t just some netlisting chump that I can get the jump on: he was runner up to last year’s Netherlands Nationals flying Ensnare Nanteces. He’s familiar with the chassis and at the very least will give me a run for my money. Speaking of running, that is the plan. I am hyper-aggressive as a player, but I can’t afford to engage anymore than I need to. Futhermore, Vonreg will die very quickly and he’s worth more than 2 Nanteces. I have to trade him for at least 2 and half Nanteces, and then not get halved with Kylo.
I was hoping to use my positioning convince Daan that Kylo was going to fake a joust only to run laterally away, but he didn’t buy it. Thus, Kylo’s joust was suboptimal: in this matchup a joust is typically a torpedo in exchange for 2 turreted Range 3 shots, but one of those Range 3 shots will be in bullseye. At least it’s still Range 3 and there is no Predator. Green is halved and Kylo slightly unfortunately loses both shields. That is fine enough of a result for me as it wasn’t the significantly more unlikely but catastrophic halving of Kylo. Time to extract, recharge and relock, and then re-engage while the Red Baron jumps into a slaughterfest!
I will say that this was the game that reinforced how Afterburners are clearly the modification for Vonreg. His ship type “Interceptor” is merely branding, as he can’t natively link a green token into a boost like any other proper lore-based Interceptor-class ship represented in the game (TIE/vn, TIE/IN, TIE/V1, Rz-1 A-Wing, Rz-2 A-Wing, TIE/sk, Fang Fighter, Starviper, Aethersprite, etc.). Without Coordinate/Terrex or Afterburners, the TIE/BA is an efficiency ship with high aggro and low defense best used as an expendable anvil, which is why 4 Provacateurs + friend is so good. You can wield some aceplay with just the chassis, but it is trickier than most chassis in the extended format without support. But with Afterburners I can keep boosting in towards a target while boosting out of bullseye and still get my ship ability and my action step! And I can choose which order to reposition thanks to the timing of Fine-Tuned Thrusters and Afterburners and the rules of the ability queue! Vonreg is now flying an Interceptor!
That also means Vonreg dies like an Interceptor. Fortunately, as obscenely good as the Nantex’s dial is, none of its turns are blue, so Vonreg’s ability is either making a ship take longer to kill him or making it die quicker to him. As such, he’s able to continue pushing in high amounts of damage even when he is not outmaneuvering his target. Once he’s dead, Kylo from the rear can sneak in some more damage and eventually bait the bugs into forming another killbox. Given its Range 3, the lack of bullseyes catching Kylo, the single-modded nature of the shots, Kylo having force for defense, and Primed Thrusters yet again let Kylo escape nearly every permutation of the closing of the net the following turn, the killbox hurts the bugs far more than it does Kylo. But I don’t know what else he could do. Not setup a killbox on Kylo and expose the bugs to Range 1 unretaliated shots? Obviously not. By the same principle, going after Vonreg on the first turn is a horrible idea because it immediately opens Kylo’s torpedoes before his strafing runs. When I realized that, it dawned on me that he was probably hoping Kylo wouldn’t joust, but was simply forced to joust.
After the final points needed to win have been scored, Kylo is never shot again by more than one ship a turn as his speed disrupts the formation and any synchronized approach. With those shots being at best 2 dice at Range 3, often 2 dice unmodded and obstructed at Range 2, Kylo scores another half points on a Nantex on his way out. 96 – 67 victory.
Game 2: Eirik (Norway)
RESISTANCE (197)
Zizi Tlo RZ-2 A-wing (52)
Heroic + Proton Rockets + Advanced Optics
Tallissan Lintra RZ-2 A-wing (47)
Heroic + Proton Rockets + Advanced Optics
Rose Tico Resistance Transport Pod (33)
Heroic + C-3PO
Nien Nunb T-70 X-wing (65)
Heroic + R4 Astromech + Pattern Analyzer + Integrated S-foils + Black One
Eirik and I have had a pickup game in the preceding week followed by a nice chat about the game, so he knows to be cautious. Outmaneuver Vonreg and Proton Torpedoes burn through Rey and Nien concerningly and shockingly quickly, and even a Damaged Engine Kylo can dance around arcs (as I initially accidentally parked Kylo just barely Range 1 in arc of Rey). He’s not flying Rey today, but he knows that my list devours Resistance lists as if they were Reywings. As such, he’s not going to let himself get baited into a tight killbox around Kylo, all while sending an A-Wing to keep Vonreg honest. But alas, it’s not a good matchup for him. I’ll Show You the Dark Side [Panicked Pilot] and Vonreg’s debuff abilities reinforce that to Nien. I’ll Show You the Dark Side to Rose [Stunned Pilot] is just the psychological attack/rapscallion power move that makes him more nervous about clipping a cloud again, even if it wasn’t Rose to hit a cloud in the first place.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, however. Eirik applied the pressure to my pieces so that they would have to disengage targets that they could have wreaked havoc on. Even with the occaisional hot A-Wing reds matched with sub-par Vonreg greens, that evade token even on a strained Vonreg goes a long way. He only bled down to half points, all while having a plethora of Outmaneuver targets depending on who was trying to catch the more tempting piece of mine. This may be a 2 ship list, but its DPS is very deceptive beyond what’s on paper, especially if focus fire can be engineered. I don’t need all the tools other lists have to cripple the opposition in a good matchup. Besides, many 4 ship lists don’t put out too much damage in reality given the arcs sacrificed to cover escape routes, block, and the quality of shots put in against various defensive values that can get lucky greens.
Given my high damage output and Eirik’s low-HP modified green-dice dependent list by this meta’s swarmy standards, 75 minutes was more than enough time. 200 – 34 victory.
Game 3: Brian (United States)
SCUM AND VILLAINY (200)
Black Sun Soldier Z-95-AF4 Headhunter (31)
Swarm Tactics + Cluster Missiles
Black Sun Soldier Z-95-AF4 Headhunter (31)
Swarm Tactics + Cluster Missiles
Black Sun Soldier Z-95-AF4 Headhunter (31)
Swarm Tactics + Cluster Missiles
Black Sun Soldier Z-95-AF4 Headhunter (31)
Swarm Tactics + Cluster Missiles
Black Sun Soldier Z-95-AF4 Headhunter (31)
Swarm Tactics + Cluster Missiles
Serissu M3-A Interceptor (45)
Swarm Tactics + Jamming Beam
Brian’s got a delightfully clever counter to the Petranaki Arena Ace spam and I love it, even if I’m one of those people who own only 3 Z-95’s. He rolls up to the bugs–and he inevitably catches some in Range 1 bubbles even without having to shoot out a blocker sometimes as there are an entire 6 of them in most lists–and locks up. Serissu chains Swarm Tactics with the Z-95’s so there’s a volley of I5 3 dice attacks, some of them modified. It doesn’t seem all that impressive, until one realizes that each Petranaki Arena Ace has only 1 defensive token at most per turn and that the dice ceiling on this list is 33 red dice! Killing a Z-95 with a turreted shot takes longer than anticipated thanks to the rerolls and proper arc orientation makes lining up a bullseye on Serissu a death sentence. But I digress. Sadly, with the bugs behind us for now, we must fight and question our decisions: I pulled an all-nighter and Brian, whilst being in Alaska, is GMT-9, an entire 15 hours behind Warsaw.
Even though Serissu is the swarm buff piece of the list, I’m not placing her on a high priority to kill. Each Z-95 is only 2 agility, unlike the typical M3-A you see flying with Serissu, and even Kylo’s primaries are 3 dice base. Overloading the green dice counts with hits aren’t all that hard with Proton Torpedoes, Outmaneuver, and Vonreg’s ability. Taking one shot and running with Vonreg does its work: Kylo easily gets behind and does his work while Afterburners help Vonreg on his long journey to get back in the fight once the swarm gives up on his to do something–even keeping him honest with a weak 2 die attack at Range 3–about Kylo.
Even if Brian has halved Vonreg and held on to a lead for almost half of the game, I do enjoy my gamestate. Kylo, free to move about the Z-95’s lands shots on whatever seems to be a safe yet reasonably easy target to engage. Skimming the shields on 3 Z-95’s returns me the lead! As Kylo starts to score even more points, Brian realizes that he simply has to turn all guns in on a nonchalantly approaching Kylo, which launches a single cluster missile and 2 Range 3 primaries. Losing only shields, an unfortunate outlier for me but more unfortunate for Brian in not being the very extreme outlier he needs, his desperate attempt doesn’t land. It’s Outmaneuver time!
Since FFG has already designed abilities such that it is unfortunately too late to redefine “Fully Executing a Maneuver” as not having overlapped obstacles, it’s time to abuse the wording on Fine-Tuned Thrusters and Afterburners. Passing through the cloud, Afterburners still let Vonreg zip into the fight from the other end of the mat. Rolling the lucky 3/8 on the gas cloud roll, he doesn’t get strained, so Fine-Tuned Thrusters allow him to take a strain and lock to throw out more damage. It gets to a point where even if I fully lose Vonreg, I’ll still win just by Kylo, who’s not going to defend except against the safest of shots.
The highlight of Vonreg finishing the madness that Kylo started was in the turn depicted by the above screenshot: Outmaneuvering a strained Yellow Z-95 and rolling 4 hits, he 1-shots the fully-healthy ship that had access to Serissu rerolls if only he had dice! The expendable TIE/BA continues to deal damage along with Kylo before the former is destroyed. A 200 – 67 victory.
Game 4: Megasilver (United States)
GALACTIC REPUBLIC (200)
Anakin Skywalker Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter (56)
Passive Sensors + Proton Torpedoes
“Wolffe” ARC-170 Starfighter (54)
Clone Commander Cody
Barriss Offee Delta-7 Aethersprite (41)
Calibrated Laser Targeting
Plo Koon Delta-7 Aethersprite (49)
Calibrated Laser Targeting
Tommy and I have alternated winning whenever we play each other, and if the trend continues, it’s my turn to win again! Since Vonreg is better than Quickdraw by leagues in the 2-ship archetype, I like my odds, especially since Tommy’s fielding his forte that has not done well in pickup games against my list: Republic salad of decent pieces that aren’t dependent on each other but still work together to be greater than the sum of their parts.
As with any salad that works best when the pieces are functioning in tandem, the best strategy is to split them up and generate as many 2v1’s or even 1v1’s as possible. Tommy knows that I want to divide and conquer him, but his hand is completely forced in this bad matchup for him. Jumping in at Kylo is obviously a bad choice directly proportionate to how effective the killbox would be against a ship without the Supernatural Reflexes + Autothruster combination. He’s got to kill Vonreg fast enough so that Kylo is forced into bad engagements when he rallies the points back. Except that’s far easier said than achieved given that he has to devote arcs to Kylo’s direction so the TIE/vn is can’t pull anything too cheeky quick enough.
On top of a bad matchup, Megasilver was consistently unlucky. He wasn’t generating the hits he needed nor was he producing the evades required to keep his ships alive long enough to at least have that chance of maybe catching Kylo with a lucky Proton Torpedo attack. On top of that, Vonreg half-points Plo while disengaging from Anakin and Bariss, which turns things from bad to worse. Now with enough points scored to run forever with Kylo and win, Vonreg essentially has nothing to lose and everything to gain from going full aggro. The bad variance isn’t doing the Republic any favors as it means that Vonreg is not punished for his reckless berserking, which even includes a 5-K turn but afterburning into Range 1 obstructed to Anakin so he can’t get torpedoed as he deals more damage. With the guns trying to take down Vonreg, Kylo has enough time to recycle through an unused portion of the board to reengage with 100% certainty that he won’t get torpedoed thanks to Supernatural Reflexes and Anakin’s status of red tokens and whom he has locked. Even with Passive Sensors, Anakin can’t guarantee that he can setup a Proton Torpedo on Kylo should he pull something unexpected, as using the Passive Sensors action telegraphs to Kylo not to engage and Supernatural Reflexes permit a full declination of anything an N-1 has to offer.
That being said, Kylo was half-pointed. He took a damage from Plo’s Range 3 non-bullseye shot and took another 2 damage from Anakin’s primary. He didn’t blank out against the 2 hits, as he was simply using his force to modify his torpedo to eliminate Plo. But any hope of a rally disappears along with the other 2 Republic ships when Kylo’s hard 2 into a lock and a roll gains an unretaliated Range 1 shot on Anakin hoping to catch the 5 forward disengage, which Supernatural Reflexes wouldn’t have helped all “trapped” against the board edge like that. All the options that rolling about and turning in or even not using the reflexes were still open. Vonreg turns portisde to catch Bariss’ attempted punishment of Kylo bumping into Anakin. With range 1, full mods, some crits, and Outmaneuver, he 1-shots her while Kylo produces The Grandfather Paradox thought experiment. 200 – 61 victory.
Game 5: Abel (Netherlands)
SEPARATIST ALLIANCE (192)
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
I suppose Faan has convinced his Dutch squadmates that you can’t take Predator, or else you lose the bid and the game to the mirror. But that doesn’t make the bullseye’s of the Nanteces any less terrifying to my 2 ship list. This time, I’m not going to risk the fake-out to end up in a bullseye. I will commence with a Round 1 torpedo alpha, disengage, and continue the game from there, with both shields still active on Kylo.
Since Kylo’s very torpedo-plane-esque behavior isn’t conducive to splitting the forces if Vonreg also ran up the board edge, I’m having Vonreg take the baseline and try to snipe-joust with him. After that, I can then jump in guns blazing when Kylo recycles and I should have the 80 points I need to guarantee a victory.
The bullseyes lined such that Vonreg was taking a Range 3 bullseye attack, so I evade for defense after strain-locking Red. Fortunately, after smacking the Red Nantex hard enough, Green isn’t generating the hits without Predator. I was fine getting halved this round, but I still have a full-point Vonreg as a result of what would be Abel’s consistently poor variance.
The 3-turn Afterburner boost help Vonreg disengage while still getting his evade after dodging Brown’s bullseye. The pursuing bugs, hoping to catch a more conventional disengage into the cloud, don’t have any shots this turn. Abel nevertheless mad the correct decision with that play, as having all the Nanteces in a corner with Kylo behind them isn’t all that favorable if it only kills Vonreg. Unretaliated, Kylo scores more points.
With Kylo poised to score points, it now becomes safe to play very aggressively with Vonreg to draw the fire and guarantee the points. Trading Vonreg was the correct decision, as Kylo not generating enough uncancelled hits for 2 turns was hurting my win condition, but Vonreg guaranteeing the points snagged me the lead. When the Red Baron was fully destroyed to a high volume of turret shots, I was sitting comfortably at a 80 – 67 lead.
An 80-67 victory? Alas, It was not to be! I kept dancing for so long, draining the clock as I declined engagement after engagement, but when it came to facing a single bullseye obstructed at Range 3, I decided to use the Autothrusters on top of Supernatural Reflexes on a 5 forward to escape the battle. Tabletop Simulator distances are harder to judge than real play or Vassal, and I apparently put Kylo in a spot where not even Supernatural Reflexes and the hard 1 would keep me on the board. Kylo didn’t die…but I still handed Abel the victory when his base clipped the mat’s edge by more than a few pixels. Full health Kylo fleeing the battlefield, an 80 – 200 defeat!
Between Rounds: Tactical Retreat
Where are the screenshots? That’s what I am asking as I’m writing this, and it looks that I simply forgot to take them more and more as the tournament progressed. I suppose it’s another symptom of the sleep deprivation I’m going through during this tournament, as with work I couldn’t participate without pulling an all-nighter. I knew I prided myself on staying up for 28+ hours during Dathomir and still giving each of my opponents a great game and that I wouldn’t have to stay up as long this time as I did then thanks to the time zone being 1 hour more favorable, but I had to face the facts. The day before the tournament was considerably more taxing this time around and I am slipping up only slightly over 24 hours awake in. I just flew the hardest ship in the game to fly off the board…off the board. I essentially took an ultra-powerful Nantex counter and went 2-0 against some of the Netherlands’ best with it, except I threw that easy 2nd victory right out the window with laziness, poor distance gauging, and poor decisions. Technical wins are the only kind that matter here, and that cold reality is reinforced: by achieving quite the achievement in simply bad play, the record shows that I am now at-risk for entering the cut after a match I was heavily favored. Granted, my still high MOV will probably sneak me in if I go 4-2, but who’s to say that I won’t get tabled in Round 6, particularly by a hard counter to me of multiple I6’s? If this is how I play in a game I should win, what happens if I should be paired to be the underdog?
Swallowing my pride, I set an alarm for the time remaining in the round, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling with drifting consciousness. I wasn’t dazed from my defeat, as I was too tired to compute anything. I suppose that the way I loss the game was the most Zen way to lose an X-Wing game: handily defeat it and then flee, being too numb with exhaustion to comprehend what happened. I’m not sure if I actually fell asleep during that time, but I’m certain that it helped. Even if it didn’t, the placebo effect probably helped me power through Round 6.
Round 6: Marcin (Poland)
Oops. Forgot to screenshot, again.
SEPARATIST ALLIANCE (192)
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
Petranaki Arena Ace Nantex-class Starfighter (32)
Crack Shot
I don’t know how I feel about this matchup. On one hand, it looks to be a safe win into the cut, but on the other hand, I could just fly off the board again or do something else stupid. I’m not getting paired up into an unfavorable game, but the burden of execution is on me. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know, there was a pairing technical difficulty, as one comes to expect even from gaming conventions as the Round 5 drops are being processed. On the brightside, it meant we could break the rules against flipping the digital table and do so to vent our frustrations, given that the room would have to be deleted and remade.
Round 6 re-pair: Johannes (Germany)
FIRST ORDER (196)
“Blackout” TIE/vn Silencer (69)
Fanatical + Advanced Optics
Gideon Hask Xi-class Light Shuttle (46)
Agent Terex
Kylo Ren TIE/vn Silencer (81)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes
Neither stressed and angered at myself by a loss nor made jittery by playing on stream, sleep deprivation is now an advantage! And I don’t have to worry all too much about burden of execution because it is placed squarely on Johannes’ shoulders. In fact, I would venture to say that this–in a more “real” tournament setting–would be an impossible game for him to win simply by nature of my munitions, Outmaneuver Afterburner Vonreg, my Kylo moving last, Supernatural Reflexes, and Primed Thrusters. However, I still must play carefully, as I am 0-3 on Gold Squadron’s stream across 2 tournaments that I was featured on their stream. Miracles can happen, and I can’t be the victim to another one again today.
Fortunately, it was decided on the 2nd turn. On the opening turn, the opposing Kylo tried to guard the flank, but was a little too far forward. Realizing that and the Afterburner + Fine-Tuned Thruster combination on Vonreg, he acknowledge that holding the further back position would not net him a shot on Vonreg. The best he could hope was that I faked out and tried to overshoot towards Blackout, and thus be caught in Kylo’s arc. I didn’t, so across an Outmaneuver Range 1 shot and my torpedo, his Kylo took 4 damage while mine took none. With a Disabled Power Regulator, his Kylo would be ioned after the next activation.
The enemy Kylo blocks my Kylo’s portside roll to better catch him with Blackout advancing. Thanks to Terrex’s calculate and Blackout’s focus, his Blackout has full mods on my Kylo. But it’ll be at Range 3, a risk I’m fine with and too tired to not intricately dance around. I simply roll and hard turn in towards Johannes’ Kylo and focus: if I don’t use it on defense I can use it on offense. Vonreg executes the hard 1 in and applies the pressure. My Kylo takes a damage.
Expecting Blackout to pounce on Vonreg to reduce the incoming damage on his Kylo, I dial in the 3 hard starboard with my Kylo to disengage. That was a mistake, as Johannes swivels Blackout around the asteroid to face the disengage. The geometry is such that unless I get dangerously close to the board edge, which I am too tired and too afraid to risk skirting again, I will be taking a shot from Blackout unless I ram into the asteroid for 2 consecutive turns. I thus simply execute the maneuver and double reposition to make the attack Range 3, thereby cancelling out the Blackout ability. Vonreg creeps on Johannes’ Kylo’s ion maneuver. 1 more damage is scored, while my Kylo lucks out and dodges Blackout’s shot and Gideon’s unmodified shot, when taking at most a shield is all I wanted.
From then on, things stay under control. Gideon moves to block Kylo and Blackout swings to catch most disengages. Unfortunately for Johannes, without knowing his dials, I dialed the maneuver that would answer literally anything he could have dialed: the hard 2 to starboard. If he held back, I could roll, execute, and then boost out or boost, execute, and then roll out. Since he pushed Blackout up, I could save force and just bump into Gideon and not take shots. Meanwhile, his Kylo’s Talon Roll of desperation is countered by a quick roll from Vonreg and another Outmaneuvering fully-modded shot.
Gideon’s jam is helpful to Johannes in removing Kylo’s ability to lock, but force is still a good source of mods, and Outmaneuver cancels Range 3. Vonreg’s ability, Afterburners, Fine-Tuned Thrusters, and focus allow the Red Baron to perform a fully-modded 4v0 attack that removes Gideon. Kylo squeezes past Blackout and locks for a Torpedo the following round. From then on, my aces either pursue or lazily engage Blackout. There’s nothing he could do except get absurdly lucky against one, but even then, the other is still leading and can easily finish the job. 200 – 0 victory.
End of Swiss:
Through no small dose of matchup luck, I was able to stumble my way to 5-1 on Day 1. Thanks to a shockingly enormous 1747 points of MOV, I’m actually 6th overall. Despite flying something so cancerous that it looks unimpressed at the undercosted and game-harming plague of 6 Petranaki Arena Aces, I’ll continue to pretend that the high 0.73 Strength of Schedule is something to brag about. My prospects look good in the cut as well: there aren’t too many lists with multiple I6’s to handily defeat Kylo, yet there are Boba’s, Resistance lists, Sloane Swarms, efficiency salads, and Nanteces aplenty to demolish! Even if many of the players fielding them are better than I am, a lot of those matchups are skewed so hard in my favor. Sidenote to the comment about Nanteces, I do fear Niklas God’s Fac + 4 Petranaki’s, as he is a good player with an I6, a deeper bid than mine, and almost-spam of Nantex. But one round at a time, especially since I can rest up before the cut.
Top 32: Ximatique (France)
GALACTIC EMPIRE (198)
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
Scimitar Squadron Pilot TIE/sa Bomber (33)
Ion Missiles + Concussion Bombs
To be honest, I’d prefer to face Spamtex over this. Granted, it’s still a match in my favor, but there is a high burden of execution placed on both of us. I have to watch out for the strong area denial of the carpet bombing and once locked, a front arc attack is a 3 dice attack that ignores range bonuses. The plan is to get “trapped” with Kylo, pounce with Vonreg, disengage to avoid bombs, and continue to renengage with whomever is not being shot at.
Even if Max’s list loses hard and quickly to Nantex, it is a good choice in the meta for being able to die slowly to the Nantex counters out there while bombing low-hull ships to death. With 2 more health than a Nantex apiece, the bombers take a lot to remove from the board, and thus it becomes a difficult task to remove them quick enough before Vonreg inevitably dies. And Vonreg will inevitably die. That Nimble Bomber ship ability of the TIE bomber can carpet-bomb any flanking attempt by Vonreg, forcing him into a corner at some point or another. And if enough missiles are lined up on him, he will get ioned.
Thankfully, the bombers don’t have the boost action, and thus it becomes easy to spot the positions that they are guaranteed to not be. The 3-turn to starboard allows the cloud to dodge all the missile shots even with strain, and the evade token nullifies the primary from the bomber sweeping in from a more distant range. Still, I can’t engage with Vonreg here on account of the wall of bombers acting as an inside-of-turn wall that can block.
Vonreg disengages towards the baseline while Kylo alphas off blue. Despite being obstructed, Kylo is unfortunately hit by Yellow’s missile that generates only 2 hits. It’s only a shield and at least not the ion token, but it was still a significantly unfortunate outcome against such a beefy list. There are a lot of hit points on the table for Max, and if I continue to get unlucky on shots like that with Kylo, I will be hard-pressed to gain the points to retake the lead. I have to balance aggression to rack up those points with reservation to avoid getting shot. Even one missile obstructed proved to be one missile too many fired in Kylo’s direction.
Out of Afterburner charges, Vonreg didn’t have the speed to escape. Caught in arc by 2 Ion Missiles, he could only evade and hope for the best. Deciding to save his evade to not get ioned by the 2nd shot, he let the first shot eat a shield but not ion him. It was the right decision, but the wrong result as a result of some rather unfortunate circumstances. The 2nd missile generated full hits but Vonreg didn’t have a natural evade. Thus, even with his token saved, he got half-pointed and ioned in an unfortunate spot.
As a silver lining, the bombers are distant enough such that only 2 of them will be able to lock Vonreg and fire the missiles again. Kylo has to settle for a less favorable target with Green’s arc keeping him honest, but unfortunately the double-modded attack misses despite the target being tokenless. For more silver lining, he’s not going to get bombed or shot at anytime soon. Meanwhile, Vonreg takes another damage, allowing him to engage one final attack before his inevitable death. The 5 forward won’t get out of enough arcs and any other disengaging maneuver is blockable. I just have to make the most out of his final attack.
Since the bombs are thoroughly a-dropping now, Kylo has to fully disengage. I didn’t even try to pursue with the wall of bombs that could catch him. Props to Max to patiently holding on the trigger for most of his bombs until he could guarantee that Kylo would be warded off. In the process of guarding all of Kylo’s possible engagement routes, Pink takes 2 bombs and strains to avoid the critical effects being applied. This at least means that Vonreg could potentially eliminate him with his 3-turn starboard, lock, and focus, but sadly my dice could only generate 3 hits and Pink nattied the evade. When Vonreg died as expected, I didn’t like Kylo’s position all that much with the recent strings of tough breaks.
The bombs keep dropping because Ximatique couldn’t afford to take a disarm to reload them when Vonreg was alive, but he mitigates the self-inflicted bombs thanks to the TIE Bomber’s Nimble Bomber ability. It’s not perfect, as Pink and Red take another bomb not out of current sacrifice but in aftereffects of previous turns, but it’s still impressive. Indeed, he probably saved health on him bombers by keeping Kylo off their backs and taking the flat damage or so. Meanwhile, Kylo’s cloud-weaving option is disrupted by Green’s bomb, so he has to resort to the snipe. I’d prefer not to engage, but I have to start taking shots, even if a single-modded Ion Missile will be fired. I save my focus for defense and manage to score an attack that hits while not taking damage in return.
My luck reverted to the bad sort, as the dice gods punish me for reaping greedily so much bounty from the matchup gods. Kylo turns in and locks the reloading green, saving his force for defense yet scoring the needed half points to put him so nearly in the lead. But then the only shot Kylo would be taking this round, perhaps otherwise the last shot for the entire game, was a single-modded primary attack that generated a hit and a crit. Obviously, Kylo blanks out so the last shield is deactivated and the crit goes through. I’m actually OK with the crit being Structural Damage, as greens certainly haven’t been helping me that much this game. I’m not OK with this essentially defeating me on the spot. It goes without saying that I won’t begrudge Max of his victory, especially since he played well and efficiency beats decently-flown aces by dumping high volumes of dice and simply hoping for the best (although I am disappointed in just how small this volume of dice was to get Kylo hard and badly). Props to him for making cut and now the Top 16 with a list that depends so heavily on prudently dropping devices and staying alive with those devices. But it also goes without saying this is not a fun way to lose a game by any standard. Against Dee’s advice to players earlier in the event, I did check the dice statistics. And they weren’t pretty.
That being said, I refuse to accept reality and thus defeat, not until the bitter end of this bitterest of ends. Kylo slams 5 foward after a double reposition to finish what was started on Pink, not taking any shots that round. He then rolls around the cloud and locks, taking only an obstructed shot that is deflected. Following that, he boosts, turns portside in, and rolls out to score even more damage–halving Brown–without getting shot. Finally, he turns portside in again to catch some surprise K-turns and rolls out to kill off Green while blocking a Range 3 primary from Yellow. With only a minute and a half left on the clock, it would be the final turn. Since we are a solid 15 minutes ahead of the universal timer’s expiration, we both understood us to be able to play the final round as one would in a normal tournament (in the qualifiers, Dión ruled that when the universal timer expired, the final round would only be played if the System Phase was in play so as to keep the tournament on schedule. We were well beyond that timer). As such, we congratulated each other for such a good and well-played game, expressed that the other deserved the win should they achieve it, wished the hypothetical winner the best of luck for the rest of the tournament, and agreed to one more round.
Since I need to either finish halving Red or to kill Brown, I am forced into the hard 2 starboard. I can’t boost round the cloud with a 2 bank because that only lets me try to snipe Brown out of existence, which isn’t all that possible with the Range 3 and not being able to lock after the boost but before it (the roll is used on the cloud, obviously, and double repositioning gets me stressed even after the maneuver as I am stressed now). Red and Yellow move, well-played, to prevent the roll starboard into the 2-hard towards Brown followed by the lock into the boost into Range 1. As such, Red is my best target. I save both force charges by simply turning in through the cloud, letting Kylo get strained. Even in this strained and structurally damaged state, Kylo has good odds of surviving: in retrospect, I checked the math and saw that it comes out to nice 69% of survival if he saves a force for defense. I calculated with only 1 force for defense because my plan almost certainly required spending 1 of the force for offense on Red.
My Range 1 attack on Red, once modified with Force, generate 3 hits and guarantees the half points. Now I am up in the lead, and just need Kylo to survive this scary, but still favorable all things considered, position. Yellow generates only 2 hits, but Kylo blanks, allowing those 2 hits to go through. At least it wasn’t the worse of outcomes, and its removal from the chain of attacks actually bolsters Kylo’s odds of surviving: I retrospectively checked the odds and his chance of surviving rockets to 75%. Brown generates 2 hits, and Kylo needing an evade and a focus, drops only 2 focus results and a blank. I literally was eliminated from cut by a single result, twice in one game. 133 – 200 heartbreaker of a loss. Muh dice, etc.
Concluding thoughts.
Despite flying Kylo off the board in Swiss and losing a favorable match right off the bat in cut, it was by all standards a good run, especially in comparison to the already good runs at Corellia and Dathomir. Heck, in that good cut game, Max had to defeat me twice: first get a lucky desperate primary off on Kylo (3% chance of working), and then when he rallies lightning fast with a minute thirty left on the clock before the final round, hope that his reds go really bad or that the greens fail him again on top of maxing paint on a focus only 2v3 primary. So as demoralizing as getting rekt in the Top 32 was in the moment and its reduction of my ultimate placing in the tournament, it’s not going to meaningfully get to me. It was a tad contrived and I have to stay concentrated on my flying and decisions instead of worrying about what’s out of my control. As an additional bonus, Coruscant is only one timezone away from mine.
5-1 at a large tournament for all of this game’s run of 2 years had been but a dream for me until this point, and 6th in Swiss with 1747(!) MOV was icing on the cake. To be wholly honest, I was expecting to go either 3-3 or the lower rankings of 4-2. Playing consistently good players has also been a pleasurable experience: Eirik went 3-3 and Johannes was one of the 4-2’s out of the cut. Everyone else made cut, even though Brian and Megasilver played each other in Round 6! It’s also really cool that I was able to be the first to make cut at a large tournament with 2-ship Supernatural Reflexes Kylo. 3-ship Supernatural Reflexes Kylo was proven by multiple people multiple times, but now that the meta’s been so distorted by Spamtex, you don’t need the 3-ship Quickdraw variant to deal with I6. Just matchup dodge what’s left of them (as you’ll probably face one of the maximum if you’re doing well), or at least pull an upset, and you can fly the 2-ship Vonreg version! Is this 2-ship Super Kylo better than SuperKylo Quickdraw and TIE/FO friend? I’d wager certainly not in most metas, but this meta is so distorted that it’s better by an indescribable amount. Similarly, in most metas I prefer Kylo + Holo + Tavson for needing 0 bid and just dealing with I6’s indifferently for the most part, but Ryloth’s list is definitely my Coruscant list.
Before elimination, I got greedy for more wins once I let my mouth water with how many things my list wanted to see and how few there were that it didn’t want to see in cut. On the brightside, that’s all the more reason and reassurance to fly the list at Coruscant, for only those who make cut in this meta at the Qualifiers are making it there *(I know, a long chain of footnotes with that statement, but roughly it’s true). The meta will be roughly the same, and people play best when flying what’s familiar to them. It’s also a psychologically documented fact that it takes a lot to convince people out of their decisions when precedent had worked well for them. I don’t have to worry about a new meta that appears from nowhere. The odds of the Spamtex-afflicted meta (which favors my list) being nuked by people screaming about all extended-format qualifiers being won by Nantex has been reduced to zero. Because Spamtex didn’t win, let alone make the final! And all the new releases coming out at the end of the month will add some variety to certain archetypes, but nothings dramatic is changing, except maybe more Resistance players, a plus for this list even if some Resistance matchups will be a tad trickier.
I’m glad to see that Megasilver made it to the Top 16! I’m a bit saddened that Ximatique couldn’t take it all the way, as his list is what 6-ship lists should look like. To rub salt in the wound, he faced what countered him but what I counter: Spamtex. Oof. I was also rooting for Reywings because more people flying them at Coruscant would be a lot of fun for my egregious Kylo that has a tendency to 200 – 67 or 200 – 34 either the 3 or 4 ship variants, but sadly most of them were eliminated in the Top 32. But I can’t complain about the top cut, given that some reaction or at least tools to deal with Spamtex, have been exhibited in it. Furthermore, Timo wins another big tournament with Boba + Dengar, the certified madlad! Also, very intriguing that Samuel Summa made cut with Malarus + Epsilon Cadet swarm. The Imperial Howlrunner Swarm is dead. Long live the First Order Howlrunner Swarm!
That will do it for today. May the 2-ship lists lay siege to bug-infested Coruscant!
Actually that won’t do it for today. As a little thought experiment, imagine if PhilGC–the undisputed master of Guri + Fenn–took my list and participated in Ryloth. He’s GMT+1 and so he wouldn’t have been sleep deprived, and he also knows how to dissect things so that his green variance plagues him even lower than how my moves tried to mitigate it. People would probably be complaining incessantly about 2-ship FO, bizarrely enough.
Screaming into the Void 
Great writeup! It’s the best feeling I can get if I perform well with such a 2 ship list. Keep it up!
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So you were the 5-1 that put me in 7th! How dare you!?! 😀 Congratulations on top 32 with such a daring list! I got to Top 16 again and fell out the same round as MegaSilver. Best of luck at Coruscant!
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I think you placed 5th, just above me. Best of luck at Coruscant as well! Please continue to fly Reywings, as it’s good for me–I mean it’s good for you! We likely won’t get paired up!….;)
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