I played my first games of X-wing this weekend and i did
astonishingly poorly. Other than a moment of making my friend Drewbacca
feel bad (he had gone 11 and 0 with his list leading up to the day, and
i managed to crater one of his ships in the first two or three turns of
our game), i got stomped viciously into the ground. I lost all three
games i played that day and managed to destroy one ship (though i almost
blew up a Firespray in game 3) while getting both of my ships destroyed
in each game.
Two things i should mention before i go into a breakdown of how the game went.
1st,
These were my first games of X-wing i have ever played. I have been
collecting the scum and villainy faction since it showed up, and i have a
fairly nice collection of pirates, jerks, and bounty hunters that i
have accumulated.
2nd, I had a ball playing, despite
the fact that i lost mightily in each game i played. I built a list
(mostly because Drewbacca poked me for three days straight about
building one) to do what i thought i wanted it to do, and picked ships
that i thought were neat. I got wrecked, but that's okay.
Now, the list i picked to play that day is as follows
I'm
running a Double Aggressor list (I discovered that this list is called
Bro' Bots, which seemed stupid to me, but hey, i didn't name it), which
is built to take advantage of the IG-88 synergy from the IG-2000
title.
The IG-2000 title lets my IG-88 pilots share their special pilot abilities with each other.
So my list consisted of (point costs in parenthesis)
IG-88A (36 )
Veteran Instincts (1)
Accuracy Corrector (3)
Autoblaster (5)
Ion Cannon (3)
Inertial Dampeners (1)
IG-88D (36)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Accuracy Corrector (3)
Autoblaster (5)
Ion Cannon (3)
Intertial Dampeners (1)
The
IG-88A lets me restore a lost shield point for every enemy ship i
destroy, and the IG-88D lets me change the direction of my turns with
the maneuver dial.
Now, those of you familiar with
X-wing are all ready probably laughing, as most of the folks i played
with were, but my game plan was to use the maneuverability and speed of
my Aggressors to stay in range 1 of the enemy ship, and use the
combination of the autoblaster and the accuracy corrector to steadily
deal damage throughout the course of the game.
I had
ion cannons to keep ships where i wanted them, and Inertial dampeners to
help me stay in the right firing arcs to keep my guns pointed in the
right direction, and hopefully killing the targets.
Autoblaster
is a range 1 weapon that says your opponent can cancel critical hits
before they cancel regular hits, but regular hits can't be cancelled at
all. It's a secondary weapon, so it only rolls the dice listed on its
card when attacking. On a good day, i get 3 rolls of the dice to put
damage through that can't be cancelled by my opponent.
Accuracy
Corrector says that after i roll dice, i can instead cancel the results
and then add 2 hit icons to the dice pool. When combined with the
aforementioned autoblaster, this means i can always do 2 hits worth of
damage that my opponent can't do anything about.
I thought it was a good strategy.
Game 1
My
2 ships versus a Rebel list that featured Wedge, Luke and Wes. In the
car ride up, Drewbacca had given me the idea that if i saw rebel aces,
kill Wedge first. This seemed like good advice at the time, and so i
endeavored my very best to kill Wedge. The player i was facing was much
more skilled at this game than i was and the people playing to either
side we very helpful at giving me ideas and directives on how to setup
the game field and be ready to play.
I set up my
ships to run down the middle of the table, and my opponent set his ships
up in the corner. I knew that the X-wings, with their smaller bases
were more agile than my larger base ships, and i figured they were going
to try to fly circles around me. We spent the first turns setting up
our maneuvering lanes to get into position, and the second turn is where
things looked reasonable. I got into position, Ion Cannoned two ships
(funnily enough, not Wedge), and prepared to move into a killing
position for turn 3.
Then i ran into Asteroids.
Asteroids disrupted my shooting from one of my ships on turn 3 (and
would continue to on turn 4, as i was unable to get off the asteroid
without running into another ship). My other ship closed the distance,
but also clipped an asteroid, meaning that my turn 3 shooting didn't do
anything. The IGs were agile enough to take a shield damage each that
turn, but one of my ships acquired 3 stress tokens from Wes and his
combination of abilities.
Turn 4 saw the X-wings
shoot past me, and get into position to shoot some more, i took a little
bit of damage with nothing in return.
Turn 5 i
finally managed to get my ships off the rocks, but they ended up bumping
into each other. I took some damage, but was still in the game at this
point.
Turn 6 i finally got turned around as was
facing the right direction, but i was out of range for my primary
strategy, and was a little gun shy about driving over asteroids again. I
zoomed back towards the X-wings, but my shots didn't land.
Turn
7 saw the destruction of one of my ships, and the stripping of shields
off the other one. I knew two turns earlier that the game wasn't going
to come up good for me, but i was still learning.
Turn 9 saw the destruction of my second ship, with a total removal of 3 shield tokens from my opponent (one was from rocks).
Game 2
Well
this was one for the ages, as Drewbacca and i ended up playing against
each other in the second round. He was running a triple Y-wing list
with a HWK-290 for support. It was going to be a bomberrific time.
He
deployed his ships all along the back edge of his deployment zone, and i
corner deployed my ships facing off against a lone Y-wing.
His
ships moved towards the center, and i chased him down. Using a boost
action, i moved into position to take a shot with the Ion Cannon, which
disrupted his bomber's flight path.
Turn 2, my ships
closed in on the slow rolling Y-wing, while his other ships maneuvered
around. I put shots into the Y-wing and stripped its shielding, before
critically hitting the dickens out of it. It exploded in a hail of
gunfire. That was the high point/bright spot of my day.
The
next three turns saw the y-wings slip away ( i was playing a little
more conservatively than i probably needed to) and the destruction of
one of my ships. Turret weapons are very interesting, and i lost one of
my ships to turret fired twin laser turrets. The last turn of the game
saw my lone Aggressor taking fire from two different Y-wings and the
HWK.
Two losses down, one to go, and i was kind of hoping to come up dead last in a tournament of 18.
Game 3
The
last game i played that day was against a two ship Firespray and TIE
Defender list. The other guy playing was slightly less new than i was,
and we ended up having a fun game of shoot the star fighters. I was
starting to wind down for the day, so i don't remember the turn by turns
of the game, but i do remember that i managed to drop the Firespray to 2
hull points before the Defender finally dropped my last Aggressor. It
was a fun game, probably the funnest i had the whole day.
Aftermath
My
desire to come in dead last was thwarted (i came in 17th of 18, two
spots worse than Drewbacca), but i had an excellent learning experience
for the X-wing game, and i have some thoughts and ideas how to improve
the list for next time.
My X-wing fleet run down is at
http://zardozgames.blogspot.com/p/x-wing-doom-of-silly-things.html
Happy Gaming
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