06–05–17 — The Mug and Meeple — AKA Learn From Your Mistakes
Originally, when I attended this fourround, 12 person tournament at The Mug and Meeple in Gravesend, I’d already decided I wasn’t going to write a battle report for it. I figured it wasn’t going to be a big enough event for people to want to read about it. Thus, whilst playing in it, I didn’t write any notes or take (many) pictures.
However, what became apparent on my way home after the tournament were two things 1) don’t go to tournaments with Lloyd and Full-on, because you will play them and they will beat you but, more importantly 2) sitting back and really looking at what went wrong in the games that you lost is so monumentally important that I thought I could write a blog post about just that.
Essentially, I’m now going to write a blog post about my two losses on the day (I went 2–2 by the way) and, with any luck, it will be useful to me and you!
What I was running:
Quickdraw — Draw Their Fire / FCS / Targeting Sync / Lightweight Frame / title
Tomax — Crack Shot / Homing Missile / Lightweight Frame / Extra Munitions
Deathfire — Homing Missile / Cluster Mines / Long Range Scanners / Extra Munitions
My first loss was against Full-on who was running this jank!
Whisper — VI / FCS / Kallus / ACD
Captain Oichun — Expert Handling / Seismic Torps / Thermal Detonators / APL / Inspiring Recruit / Intel Agent / BoShek / Dauntless
Just look at it! It’s the absolute definition of jank, right? Well the consequence of this was that I went into that matchup feeling pretty confident and by the time Oichun was dead, I’d taken a shield on Quickdraw and a damage on Deathfire. My entire list against Whisper. This is going to be easy!
Right, backup a minute, because twothings happened on the round that Oichun died.
1) Deathfire, moving before Oichun, barrel rolled to drop a perfect triple cluster mine onto Oichun. I knew I was going to do this — Deathfire moves before anyone else, I had perfect information, however, I managed to barrel roll straight into position to block Tomax’s 5 K-turn. So now Tomax is stressed and totally facing away from the fight. That mistake is mine and mine alone and is going to take me at least two turns to mitigate.
2) I had not realised the interaction between BoShek, Intel Agent and Oichun moving earlier than Quickdraw. At the beginning of the round, Full-on used Intel Agent on Quickdraw (who was doing a 4 forward) he then asked me if he could just check the moves either side of the 4 forward on the dial, I allowed him to (it’s not hidden information, after all) but asked him why he wanted to know — Quickdraw wasn’t touching Oichun so he couldn’t use BoShek. Except, by the time Quickdraw activated, Oichun HAD bumped him so he BoShek’d me. This left me with either a 3 sloop right onto debris or a 1 hard turn left which would have bumped, triggering APL. I went for the 3 sloop and ended up double stressed. This proved to be my undoing as Whisper took full advantage for two turns of unmodified defence.
I’ve never seen anyone running BoShek so, I’m pretty sure I won’t get caught out like that again BUT it’s still a lesson in making sure you know when things happen.
In the end, Whisper soloed the rest of my list, pretty much because I couldn’t get more than one gun on her at a time. If I’d got Tomax back in the fight earlier and not lost Quickdraw to a silly BoShek mistake, I would have stood a much better chance.
So, onto my second loss, against Lloyd, who was playing this.
Corran Horn — PTL / FCS / Engine / R2-D2
Ashoka — VI / title / Captured TIE / Crane / Jyn
Biggs — R4-D6 / Integrated Astromech
It’s a good list. My plan was to joust it and see if I could alpha strike Corran off the board with two Homing Missiles and then deal any remaining damage with a Deathfire bombing run.
We set up in separate corners. I had been setting up in formation in the corner for the whole day and my usual strategy was to edge forward and, when I turned in, use barrel rolls to convert the formation from a triangle, to a line, thus, all of my ships would be at the same range upon engagement.
Mistake number 1) It had worked in every game so far, however, when I tried it in this game, Tomax was a whole 1mm too close to the board edge to barrel roll. No biggie, I thought, I’ll just stay in this formation. The following turn, Corran raced into range one of Deathfire, boost/barrel rolled out of arc, blocking Tomax and getting a range one, unanswered shot on Quickdraw. This entire event would not have been nearly as disastrous, had I been in the formation I was planning on, Corran may still have boost/barrel rolled out of Deathfire’s arc BUT he wouldn’t have had a shot on anyone. As it was, Quickdraw lost all her shields that round and so became much less of a threat. So the moral of the story is: sort out your opening properly, don’t just eyeball it! You can use any of your templates to measure distances when deploying (so long as they don’t go out of your deployment area) so why would you not get it spot on?
Mistake number 2) I’d done it. I had created the perfect Corran killbox. The situation was this, Quickdraw with 2 hull at range 2 in arc of Corran, I’d taken a target lock with her to make absolutely sure I could get maximum damage through, Tomax (with Crack Shot) at range 1, stressed and tokenless (but don’t forget I can reroll using Quickdraw’s target lock) and Deathfire at range 1 with a focus (and a perfect bombing run for next turn)
I had taken a target lock rather than a focus with Quickdraw to make sure I got maximum damage through. I knew she was dying this round anyway as there was no reason that Corran wouldn’t double tap.
I rolled and then rerolled with Quickdraw and ended up not getting any damage through, that’s fine, Tomax would have to seriously whiff a target locked range 1 roll with Crack Shot to bugger this one up… and then Quickdraw died.
If I’d taken a focus, she would still be alive. And you know what happens when a ship dies? Thier target lock gets taken off the board. No target lock for Tomax to use, he subsequently rolled averagely and Corran evaded. Then Deathfire got a damage through on his shot. Next turn, Deathfire layed down clusters on Corran and took him down to one health… yep, had I not been stupid and wasted Quickdraw so early, the chances are that Corran would have died and that, pretty much would have meant game for me!
Alright, so to sum up, I have four things to take into account in future:
1) If you are planning a barrel roll or boost, make sure you take that into account when planning your other ships maneuvres. I suppose this doesn’t happen often, re-positional actions are just that — re-positioning your ship after it moves, generally when you have more information about the game state (ie. other ships have moved before you and you have a better idea of where you want to be) but with a ship like Deathfire, it’s really key to getting the best out of his ability (and, by the way, moving, then barrel rolling, then dropping three cluster mines on a large base ship is the most fun you can have in a game of X-Wing… until they roll all blanks that is)
2) Try to get a really good grip on your opponent’s list and when things trigger. As I said, I’d never played against BoShek before and, I would hope, that I wouldn’t get caught out by this again but the simple act of re-reading the card and thinking about the implications could have saved me that match.
3) Sort your openings out, it’s not hard, do it on Vassal or on the table at home, just do it, it’s easy, do it now, OK?
4) Know your own list. The important shot in that round against Corran was definitely Tomax and I should have done everything to make that shot count. Forgetting that losing Quickdraw meant losing the target lock for Tomax was a big blow.
Well, hopefully that was as useful and interesting to read as it was to write. I’d like to give a shout out to my other two opponents, Fred Bettesworth and Paul Schaller, both great people who played great games that were really hard fought. Thank you both.
Our TO for the day, Harrison Sharp also really deserves a shout out. I know the X-Wing scene at The Mug and Meeple is only just developing but I’ll certainly go back there. It was a really great day!
Oh, and by the way, I came 7th of 12 participants. The mid-tabler returns ;)
