A Stressful Time (Leaving Your Comfort Zone: Part Two)
The UKTC is an awesome event, and this year saw 52 teams compete. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was to be my third, and I had picked Rebels, despite having the least experience with this faction.
I brought this along, having gone 7–1 in practice games.
ARC-170 Braylen Stramm (25)
Gunner (5)
R3-A2 (2)
Alliance Overhaul (0)
Ship Total: 32
Auzituck Gunship Lowhhrick (28)
Lightning Reflexes (1)
Tactician (2)
Gunner (5)
Ship Total: 36
Auzituck Gunship Wookiee Liberator (26)
Lightning Reflexes (1)
Tactician (2)
Operations Specialist (3)
Ship Total: 32
Due to the nature of the UKTC, there were some rounds where we got to pick our match ups, and some we didn’t. This format allows a break away from a potentially meta-heavy day.
Round One Scum Mark Evans, Tricked out Accublaster Nym, Quin Jast with Cruise Missiles and Palob with TLT.
We deployed in opposite corners, and I swung my ships round while Nym came in hot, unfortunately for my opponent I slowed down so Nym ended up at range 2 of my list. The following pictures will accurately explain what happened next.
After this it was a simple mop up, handing out stress then nuking down action-less ships.
100–0 (Team win as Pete Wood also won his, while Tom Duncan was late therefore auto lost his match).
Round Two Scum flown by Chris Stokes Asajj (without latts), Fenn and Terroch. My opponent had been thrown under the bus!
This was always going to be an uphill battle for my opponent, and once I started stressing his list out a win was never in doubt. I took out the Fangs, then went for Asajj, who folded pretty quickly.
100–0 (Team loss, as Pete and Tom lost theirs as we had paired up wrongly and got out flown).
Round Three Imperial, Lee Dalton flying Double Decimators. A tricked out Daredevil Oicunn and Patrol Leader with Vader. Neither Tom nor Pete fancied chewing through all that hull with their lists.
Lee set up for the joust, and I obliged, diving in headlong on Oicunn. He managed to get one daredevil ram off on Lowhhrick, then my list was behind him. Poor Lowhhrick died, however Oicunn had 4 stress at this point and only survived a few more turns, then the patrol leader followed soon after.
100–36 (Team win, Pete won his while Tom finally won a game!)
Round four saw me face off against the mighty Oliver Pocknell, fellow 186th, flying as part of 186th Green Squadron. He was flying VI Dash and Intensity Poe.
I flew up the left hand side then turned into the middle, while Oli flew Dash down the opposite side to try and flank alongside my board edge, my ships were taking a battering and only managing to apply a stress every now and again thanks to Dash barrel rolling around. I managed to double stress Dash after taking him out over the next 2 turns, but losing Lowhhrick. Poe followed soon after.
100–36 (Team win, Pete won again while Tom lost)
Round Five saw me take on Scum again, Danny Anderson with Telgar.
We engaged in the middle after turning in, however the first engagement saw Dengar in range one of all my ships, letting me only put one stress on him whilst my Liberator took a pounding. The next turn I proved how awesome Lightning Reflexes can be, trapping Dengar in a stressful situation. I then managed to stress out Tel and get behind him, while losing the Liberator.
100–32 (Team win, Pete and Tom won theirs)
Round six and I was facing Jon Easter’s Imperials, Palp Yorr, expertise QD and OL.
I set up to take down Yorr, and he sent Yorr towards me, while QD and OL flanked me. OL ended up outside of range two of Yorr, so I took this opportunity to double stress him, however I ended up fixating on piling the stress on Yorr so he couldn’t use his ability, where I should have just burned him down (which also stops a ships ability from working, DUH). I managed to take out Yorr and OL, however QD then finished off a 3 hull Lowhhrick and a 3 hull Liberator in a single round, leaving a 2 hull Braylen vs a 2 hull QD, Qd came out on top.
61-100 (Team win, both Pete and Tom won).
Myself and Pete had gone 5–1, while Tom had gone 3–2 (plus his round one autoloss), while our team had gone 5–1 too!
As the top 3 are called out we came 2nd! behind the mighty Warlords who went undefeated. We won some very shiny Cog’o’two template holders, but I was very happy as I’d had 6 enjoyable games of X-Wing, and got to catch up with loads of players that I hadn’t seen in ages.
Keep an eye out for the next UKTC, as its a great format, and a great time.
