Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170703223814/@comment-454133-20170831065136

I'm tired and brain no workie, but I should report that I played Horton Hears a Who again today and did well with it, though as much thanks to luck as anything else IMO, particularly in that first game.

It's casual night and next Wednesday will be a Original Trilogy Only tournament, so I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the fleet. I have to say, it works very well for what it is; I think it will do fine in an original trilogy tourney (where there's a very limited subset of ships it can face). I struggled a bit today and pulled the win off mainly by luck, partially because my brain was foggy, partially because my attack dice took a vacation, and partially because my opponents were just very very good. ^_^

Wes + Adaptability + R2 Astromech + IA

Wedge + Expertise + R4-D6 + IA

Horton + TLT + M9-G8 + Vectored Thrusters

My first fight was against a mess of ships, Jess with Swarm Leader + R2-D6 + Primed Thrusters + IA; Sabine Wren (TIE) with A Score To Settle; Captain Rex all by himself; a lone Prototype Pilot with Refit ; and Biggs Darklighter with all the usual stuff. He put the Score To Settle condition on Wedge.

I didn't want to face the range 1 6-dice nuke being toted around on Jess, so I led his fleet into the asteroids (hoping to break up his Biggs Bubble formation), and then hit punched it with a 3 bank to the left with wedge and right with wes. Wedge ended up in a bad spot, in arc at range 1 of Sabine and Prototype. However, Jess bumped Wes according to plan and failed to get her full-reroll Swarm Leader nuke off. She would in fact get to use Swarm Leader only once or twice this match, and only with moderate shots with 1 evade token. Wes in turn got to fire at Rex, and Wedge didn't take serious damage. Horton was slightly too far East to contribute, but he had Wes locked just in case he needed a reroll.

After this initial exchange, there was a lot of scuffling where I lost HP and didn't give much damage back. I went a while without being able to nail down any decent damage, and he killed Wedge with Sabine and the Prototype. No matter my rolls, he always managed to dodge the damage, so Wedge contributed basically nothing but damage soaking all game.

This was a bad situation for me because I was down points & a valuable ship, and I hadn't managed to do more than scratch his ships. However, a round or two later I finally killed Rex and this helped a lot. A few rounds later I managed to kill Jess (with a lot of effort), and then we danced around a while before I managed to kill Biggs. I kept bumping with Wes and not getting actions and sometimes not shots, but in the end I started to gain a foothold.

My secret weapon that I was somehow rolling ridiculously, unfairly good with Wes' green dice. My red dice were well under average and my opponent's green dice were hot, but my defense rolls with Wes were amazing. It took until the late stages of the game for him to lay a single damage on Wes, and it was the A-Wing that did it. Because of course it was the A-Wing... Wes dodged a moderate Swarm Leader blast (4 or 5 dice?) and numerous Range 1 shots, but finally took damage at range 2 or 3 from the rookie A-Wing. It's the dull knives that end up cutting you, I tells ya. ;)  Things went downhill from there and Wes was taken to 1 HP + IA before my opponent broke off pursuit (due to positioning more than anything) and tried to bring down Horton instead.  This was very fortunate for me... had he managed to keep the pressure on Wes he could have killed him easily, but that's not how it worked out.

The other secret defensive weapon I had was M9-G8, a droid that must be worth its volume in uhh... space-gold (gold-pressed latinum?). It saved my bacon so many times. It not only saved me from numerous hits, but also at least 2 crits that would have cooked me. I'm glad I switched my lock over from Wes to opponents. Poor Sabine and Jess really got cheated by it; their shots would have chipped down or simply killed Wes outright, but then he rerolled that hit/crit into a blank and I rolled just enough evades to avoid damage.

So back to the narrative... With Wes behind Sabine and the A-Wing and Horton running away while firing, it was basically over. That layout favored me completely... I managed to kill Sabine within a couple rounds, and the A-Wing followed quickly after.

We forgot to time the game, and I'm not sure who would have won if we'd cut it off at an hour like usual. That cutoff point is vaguely somewhere close to the turning point for me where I swung from losing badly (dead Wedge and not being able to land a hit on much of anything), to feeling optimistic, to finally starting to dominate.

That Jess swarm is a brutal fleet, hard to kill anything in it and he flew it really well. I won due to Wes apparently cheating with weighted green dice, or something like that, because it was his amazing defense rolls that turned around that disaster for me. Maybe he had a Jedi stuffed into the droid slot with R2 Astromech, or something.

My next game was against a very interesting fleet... RAC with A Score To Settle + Agent Kallus + Rebel Captive + BoShek + Engine Upgrade; and Kylo Ren with Expert Handling + FCS + Inspiring Recruit + Intelligence Agent + Pattern Analyzer. Might have been one other 1-cost upgrade to put him at an even 100 points?

So he says this is a fleet that fans voted for and built for him to fly for the Sept 16th Intermountain Cup tournament, so he's flying it today to learn it. It's a good thing he's practicing, as there were some kinks to work out and I won only because of mistakes he made due to unfamiliarity and/or mistakes in planning. If not for those mistakes, he could have cleaned me off the table, as he's a very competent pilot and this fleet is mean. Kylo's condition, RAC's crits, and the Rebel Captive stress are very disruptive, and the fleet can put out a terrifying amount of crippling damage in the first couple of rounds if things align right. It will be scary to face him on the 16th...!

He put A Score To Settle's condition on Wedge (Wedge apparently has a lot of people mad at him). We had both brought all asteroids, which was brutal for him this game since he's flying large ships and I'm not. But I'm jump'n ahead again, I apologize.

I started in the bottom-left corner, hoping he'd enter the asteroids. He started out in the upper-right corner with Kylo near the center, and then performed a stationary maneuver with Kylo, pattern-analyzer-barrel-rolled over toward kylo, and forced a bump to slow down his fleet and watch what I was doing. Next round he cleared that stress, and then barrel rolled again. This time though he'd made a mistake; his goal was to Coordinate a boost but Kylo was blocking that (hence the extra roll instead). This meant RAC ended up launching 4 forward, just a centimeter from an asteroid (which he'd have to plow through next round).

During this time I'm ponderously moving north, looking for the right time to curve into the asteroid field. I picked this round to curve in, but no one was quite in range yet, sadly. Next round he curved Kylo into the asteroid field, and RAC also turned into the fight. I turned both X-Wings in to look at RAC, who I absolutely wanted to kill first (Kylo didn't scare me if I could get RAC off the table, but together they were a serious threat). Unfortunately Horton turned northward and ended up right in Kylo's face at range 1, and had a bad day. Thankfully it wasn't anything serious (lost 2 shields due to a lot of luck), but it was a mistake for me and it was kind of a wake-up that I needed to be more careful.

In the mean time, RAC was picking on Wedge, doing a solid amount of damage to him. He stressed Wes when I attacked, which meant the k-turn killbox I'd like to do next round wasn't going to work. But I did put solid damage into him.

Next round I k-turned Wedge east, lining him up for a good shot. Wes had to scoot forward to clear stress and force Kylo to bump. This helped lower RAC damage, but it was trouble for next round because of BoShek. Kylo deliberately bumped and stayed in place, clearing stress, which meant Horton also stayed in place. RAC plowed some mean damage into Wedge, putting him on Death's Door  Wes wasn't much help, not having arc on anything.

Now I had to pick my maneuver with BoShek in mind. I decided on a 1 bank, since I could choose K-Turn if he BoShek'd me. Unfortunately I'd forgotten he had me in Intel Agent range, and so he didn't fall for that. Instead, Kylo did a stationary maneuver, and used Pattern Analyzer to Coordinate a boost onto RAC to see if he could pull off threading the needle betwen Kylo's butt and a large asteroid... and wouldn't you know it, he succeeded. Wes tried to get turned northward but didn't get anything in arc, while Wedge turned slightly northward and Horton bumped.

Once RAC revealed his dial, my opponent lamented that the boost had been a mistake. His maneuver put him on an asteroid... Holy cats! What luck! I unloaded Horton into RAC for 2 damage  and I got him down to needing only 4 more damage. Wedge shot Kylo in the rear and got a condition in return (attached to Blinded Pilot). Wes wasn't getting anything into arc that round, but Wedge and Horton did some damage.

Next round Wedge turned west (avoiding an asteroid) and had a shot on Kylo, and Wes turned north and expected to get a shot on RAC if he moved like I expected. Kylo stayed put, bumping and clearing stress. Horton bumped again and stayed put, still being in range as needed. RAC got off the asteroid and promptly murdered Wedge, rolling two focuses and a hit, and using RAC and Kallus to turn that into 2 crits and a hit. Wedge blanked out and died violently, taking a facedown damage card followed by Direct Hit and also Blinded Pilot for what it was worth. What a painful way to go... But Wes avenged his death, finishing off RAC.

At this point, my opponent called the match. Kylo wasn't going to be able to outfly Wes and Horton, and he was extremely vulnerable. Horton was positioned to fly past him and then stay behind him indefinitely, and Wes wouldn't have too much trouble getting behind him as well.

Had he not made those two mistakes that kept him from killing Wedge a round earlier, it'd be over for me very fast after that. Instead, losing RAC was crippling. I'd say that's going to be a massive vulnerability during the tournament. He has to kill high-threat ships and make a sizeable impact before losing RAC, or it's over. Kylo just struggles to finish matches because of his shuttle dial... though with pattern analyzer and expert handling, I honestly think he could have done better than my opponent was expecting. In a tournament it's worth a shot... all Kylo needs is one mistake from his opponent, or to pull of one successful bluff, and he could get off a terrifying 4- or 5-dice shot that cripples or kills a foe. Being down to Kylo isn't hopeless... at least that's what I hope. :)

Today I fought some really cool fleets and got to hang out with great people. Today was a ton of stress at work, frankly the last two weeks have been, and today left me drained and mentally numb. It actually took me a while to gather my ships & components together, and get into the mode of playing rounds... my first couple of rounds today I was kinda blank-minded, and I kept having trouble finding my dials and maneuver templates, or remembering what was next. But I'm really glad I was able to break away from work and come play X-Wing tonight... once I woke up from my dazed state, relaxed a bit, and started to enjoy the game and the people around me, it was very rejuvenating!

Here's hoping you all have a great week.