Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170302073900

Tonight I flew 2 games with my pilot draft pilots. I have no unused pilots left, so I flew my Nera + Biggs + Jan fleet again for both games and had a lot of fun.

First game was against Duchess, Carnor Jax (I think with Stealth Device ?), and "Deathrain" (conner net, concussion missile , extra munitions , long range scanners, not sure on System slot ). First few rounds were spent in leisurly flight, collecting focus tokens. I pinged a bit with my TLT as he approached and Nera got off a torpedo, and Biggs did well at dodging. I managed to take down Deathrain first... He had me worried when he rushed forward to plant a Conner Net on Jan, but he missed her and ended up barrel rolling into a bad spot -- he could turn right and fly off the map, or turn left into his own conner net. But Nera rescued him from the decision with a proton torpedo. ;)

He considered calling the game at that point, but we decided to finish it. I had a healthy team, no more torps, but well-prepared to fight. I think his Duchess was far away, navigating around obstacles, and I hoped to focus down the other ship quickly once I finished turning.

But from that point forward, Carnor became a real devious thorn in my side. He was extremely hard to shake, and his ability caused me a lot of problems even though he spent a lot of time bumped and not firing. Duchess was dangerous too, but far less of a threat on her own compared to what Carnor could do for his own shots and hers. Eventually I managed to kill both of them, but not before finally losing Biggs (at least I think it was biggs... I lost one ship but now I don't remember). I don't remember exactly how they went down, but I celebrated finally ending Carnor. ^_^

Second game was against Zertik Strom, "Countdown" , and Major Stridan loaded with support crew (including General Hux, who ended up doing a lot of bad things to me). I initially flew casual around the edge of the map to fill up on focus tokens. When I turned in to fight, I initially tried to attack Countdown and Zertik, but had little success (Zertik completely evaded my 2 hits + 2 crits proton torp, the jerk). Fortuntately Stridan was out of range so there was substantially less Wazat murder than there could have been. Second round Biggs died to some terrifying firepower, but he absorbed everyone's shots, and this time I was wise enough to target the big points sink with low agility, the U-Wing. I managed to fill Stridan with holes and kill him in one turn (I think).

Nera and Jan danced around with his ships for a while, and Jan died. Down to only my B-Wing, I was worried, but Zertik had only 2 or 3 hull left and Countdown was down to maybe only 1 life. We spent several rounds just running into each other repeatedly, with no one getting shots. Finally I managed to get Zertik in arc and killed him. I was worried that my B-Wing would be easily out-maneuvered by a TIE Striker, but instead we spent several more rounds bumping uselessly. Whatever we thought the other guy would do, we ended up surprising each other.

Eventually he got a shot off and removed my remaining shields, but I flew well and dodged arc repeatedly. I flew into the asteroids to get him out of the open field were he could outmaneuver me. It all came to an end when we were facing each other in the middle of the asteroid field, outside range 3 with a debris cloud separating us. He banked thinking I woud be aggressive, but I slow-rolled instead (staying out of his arc), and then rolled well thanks to FCS + Focus. I got one only crit past his defense, and that single damage was enough to finish him.

That striker sat on one life for a long time. Countdown's ability never came into play (I chipped him to death), but man was he squirrely and hard to get in arc. Really good flying on his end, but thankfully I managed. B-Wing Power! (and luck!)

At this point I learned that I'm somehow in second place for the pilot draft tournament (this was the last day), and only one pair of players was left playing. If the Paratanni player won his game, we'd be tied. The guy running the tourney floated the idea of having us break the tie with a massive game where we field all our named pilots against each other, or just roll a million attack dice against each other, etc. I really didn't want to do an epic, ultra-slow game, so I was rooting for the guy's opponent. :)  Sadly his opponent was still very new, and didn't know how to take down Paratanni and kept targeting Old Teroch and missing (this was a slight variation of Para, but pretty close and very deadly), while Para got both his large ships to half points, and eventually took one out.  So he got thrashed.

The good news is, the guy who would have tied with me just gave me 2nd place and took third for himself, so we wouldn't have to do anything wacky or annoying to resolve the tie. I was so relieved! Really cool guy (BTW if you're reading this, you rock!).

When I started this tournament with all these great players (many of whom played in Regionals and did really well), my goal was simply to not take last place. I wasn't paying much attention to prizes so I don't even know what I'm eligible to win; I'll find out in a week. :D

And I had a ton of fun with my pilots. It felt good to do so well with rebels and enjoy some of my favorite pilots for this many games in a row!

Apparently next week after prizes, we'll be playing 2vs2 epic matches, and I need to field a Huge ship... something I've never done before (I've only fought huge ships twice). I have 200 points and I recently bought all the released huge ships except the Tantive (used price, otherwise I wouldn't have even them), so I have some options. But now I'm going to have to poke around the rules doc and finally learn in detail how the dang things work. ^_^  Wish me a non-firey death!

I'll probably miss my usual Friday X-Wing games because I'll be attending Salt Con, the Salt Lake Board Gaming Convention,  Thursday through Sunday. I plan to play some Arkham Horror, Mayhem RPG, Pathfinder, lots of assorted board games I've never played, etc. Maybe even GM some Mayhem one-off campaigns. Salt Con also has a special place in my heart because it's where I bought the X-Wing core set for $25 on a whim, and didn't get around to trying it for a couple months or so after that. When I finally played it, I had enough fun to look up the best ships to get next, and things escalated from there. It's been a great year!