Green Rookie’s Playbook: Building (Choosing) a List
This is my third in a series of articles that explore getting to grips with X-Wing Miniatures if you are a beginner. You can find my first article, How do I approach my first tournament? and Obstacles and Pathways of Engagment? by clicking the links or exploring 186th Medium.
This article is about the refinements and evaluations of a list that I used throughout three separate regional tournaments. My intention is to explain what I wanted from a list, how I then reflected upon how the list suited my playstyle and how I will take it further (or not).
There is a lot of talk (as always) of ‘you’re dead to me if you fly that…’ (Hi there, Mynocks!) and I find myself asking: ‘where is the compassion?’
I’m at the end of a regional season and what do I have to show for it? Templates? Dice? Stress Tokens? Zip. Well not exactly zip, but you know what I mean in terms of swag, right?
There are many reasons that you might undertake competitive play and, sure, swag is a really good one — but right now, it’s the one that I’m punishing myself about. What is swag anyway? It’s a symbol of recognition for how high you managed to place in a particularly challenging field.
How did I fair at three regional tournaments?
Warboar London 4 and 2
Wayland South East 3 and 3
Athena Games Norwich 3 and 3
If you’ve read Phil GC’s blog post on his mission for the year, you’ll see that he has set himself the target of becoming a 67% pilot — to you and me, that’s somebody who consistently makes 4 and 2 in major contests and therefore should make the top cut.
What are my stats for the above three tournaments?
Warboar London 4 and 2 (66.6% win rate)
Wayland South East 3 and 3 (50% win rate)
Athena Games Norwich 3 and 3 (50% win rate)
Is it the list?
Is it me?
How tough was the field?
What will I do next?
What preparation did I put into the regionals that I attended?
For the London Regional, I practised at least once a week for nearly a month leading up to the event. Unusually for me, this was my first tournament of the year. What list did I take, how did I refine it and what was needed?
Something that I have begun to do is to track my win and loss rate across practise and tournaments.
For my first Two Regionals (London and Wayland) I took Rey and Poe.
Why this build?
Rey in the Falcon is almost (bold, underlined and in italics) making the arc of the Falcon much more relevant than its qualities as a turret, especially when paired with Finn crew. Since I made the decision to fly Rey in January, Rey/Low has become a real thing, winning three System Opens (not to mention Tom Forstner’s coming second at Mandalore Birmingham this year) and Ian Courtney taking Rey and PS8 Poe to the second day of Mandalore Birmingham, finishing 43rd out of 500.
The synergy of BB-8, Black One and Intensity make my favourite Poe build. Unfortunately, when pairing Poe with Rey in the Falcon, there ‘s no room for Engine, let alone a bid. That meant it was likely a safer move to take Veteran instincts and Advanced Optics Poe.
With London, my biggest mistakes were in my first game and my last game (those were the ones I lost). With the first game against Andrew Hobson, I didn't read his list fully. Such a rookie error — he played a list I was familiar with:
Tie Advanced — Darth Vader (Veteran Instincts, Harpoon Missiles, Tie/x1, Advanced Targeting Computer, Engine Upgrade)
Tie S/F — QuickDraw (Veteran Instincts, Fire Control System, Harpoon Missiles, Advanced Optics, Special Ops Training, Guidance Chips)
Alpha-Class Star Wing — Nu Squadron Pilot (Harpoon Missiles)
The biggest difference to the list I had been practising against was the choice of Harpoon Missiles over Cruise Missiles. Fellow Sparkler Matt Button had been building the reps with the a similar list but had taken Cruise missiles on Vader to help with his initiative bid. I approached the game wrong because my eyes had read ‘Harpoon’ but my brain had said ‘Cruise’. I went charging in to avoid a five dice attack from the cruise missiles that weren’t there and instead I got a bunch of harpoons. Hook, line and sink her.
Andrew made QuickDraw an easy target but the first engagement was an indication of how the game would continue.
With our second engagement, Rey took the Shields off of QD with a range one shot. Not doing too badly, but…
When you’re playing Rey without Engine, judgement of her arc is pivotal. With each round for the first half of the game, Rey was just shy of having arc on an opponent. Rey was on half health within three rounds of engagement and had two Harpoons stacked on her. At this point, the Nu was down to one shield and Andrew had disengaged with both Vader and QD. With the next round, Vader managed a two crits on Rey, which then meant both Harpoons would explode.
With the final round, Poe killed the gunboat but we re-measured the range and Andrew had an extra agility die to roll. The Gunboat came back from the dead and then promptly helped with killing Poe.
My mis-judgement of Rey’s arc and my lack of definition with target priority was completely on me and it set me up for the rest day; I win the next four games because I was so much more alert, having scrubbed out so badly in game one.
Game Six against Callum Brown with his Stress bunker list was my other 0–100 loss of the day.
K-Wing Miranda Doni (Twin Laser Turret, Harpoon Missiles, C-3PO crew, Bomblet Generator, Long Range Scanners)
Auzituck Gunship Lowhhrick (Selflessness, Tactician, Rey)
Sheathipede Ezra Bridger (Snap Shot, Hera Syndula, R3-A2)
Without Engine Upgrade, Rey is a sitting duck to the stress that comes her way. Certainly 3PO crew and the old Falcon title help to fend off the attacks, but if you’re not careful (what can I say, this was game six and my win depended on me making the cut) you could take 1 stress from Snap Shot, another from the attack from Ezra and one from Lowhhrick at range 2. That’s potentially three per turn on a worst case scenario. Not only that, but the real trap with Ezra is that his native ability allows him to turn focus on his agility dice to evades when stressed. He’s a 22 point tank of shit, and he’s goit his mum riding with him (sort of).
Below is my only picture of the game. All guns are facing in the right way and it’s only Rey that in range of both Ezra and Lowhhrick. It wasn’t an awful opening, but I still don’t think it should have been a joust. I managed to get Miranda down to 1 hull afte Rey had died, but she did her Miranda thing and re-genned away. Lowhhrick too was bleeding but the game was over when I lost Rey without having killed either of Callum’s ships.
These evaluations may well seem redundant when examining my losses after having changed my list, but it was my inability to reposition the Falcon that led me to sticking Engine Upgrade on Rey and trying to find a purposeful Wing (wo)man for her.
Determined that my love of Poe should keep me flying my list, I took the same list to Wayland Games and went 3 and 3. What’s most annoying about my performance here was that I won games 1 and 2, lost game 3 to the lovely Ollie Astbury, picked myself up and put myself back together for game and then promptly lost games 5 and 6. It felt like a tale of how I had clutched victory away from the jaws of defeat.
The second loss that felt the most poignant for me at Wayland was against nice guy of X-Wing Dale Cromwell. Losing to Dale is like watching Kevin McCallister rain down upon the Wet Bandits.
Wait, I can do better than that — it’s like having a porg kick you repeatedly in the nuts.
Paul had just lost to Dale as our pairings were announced and in the very brief changeover, he said ‘Don’t try to kill his Ryad. It’s a trap!’
Hubris, stupidity, fate, whatever you want to call it — I went for Dale’s Ryad laden with stealth device and a little help from the Palp shuttle. I lost, all of my ships and managed only half point on Palp. My target priority was wrong.
I adopted this for Norwich:
I figured that I needed Engine much more than I realised and that meant either taking a sub-optimal Poe at PS9 (that’s PS8 Poe with Adaptability and Advanced Optics) or finding someone new entirely.
Miranda fills 38 points incredibly well and is, no doubt, the most cost efficient in this scenario.
I went 3 and 3 having only played the list six times beforehand and having a win ratio of 60%. I managed to beat a Ghost Fenn list, a decimator with Kylo crew and Dash/Poe.
After well over 50 games under my belt with Rey, I’m not sure I’m done with her — but she needs a rest for now.
My Rey and X experience consistently struggled with three ship lists, whether Imperial or Rebel. So again, I ask myself what do I want of a list?
Episode 44 of the 186th Squadron podcast has Lloyd Bowman (South East Regional Winner) and Paul Owen (London Regional Winner). Lloyd and Paul are both founding members of Sparkle Motion, I meet with them weekly and we slug it out together on the mats (I’m probably done trying to inject some masculinity here — grrr!).
Lloyd’s view on how to select a list comes down to three key factors:
- What does it joust harder than?
- What jousts harder than it?
- Will it underperform and let me down?
I think this is a good methodology to adopt. If you find that your answer to question 3 might well be ‘no’, and you’re uncomfortable with the answers from question 2. Maybe it’s time for a new list.
Though my experience of bombs is limited, understanding them more and how to control the board with them will definitely enhance my play. So Miranda is likely a game stay for me.
Well, that’s all well and good but I want to keep Miranda alive for longer.
3PO should help, but that Lowhhrick fella — there’s a dude with momentum and a large firing arc. He looks out for his friends too.
So now what do I do with the remaining 23 points?
I could bung in a PS1 A-Wing or maybe even a Z-95. Who am I kidding, it’s always been a Sheathipede.
OP Cubed?
Some final thoughts:
If you really do want to get better and, like me, you have trouble choosing a list because you sometimes worry far too much about being assumed a netlister. Do it anyway.
Out of six games with this, five of those at ibuywargames Q1 last Sunday my win ratio is 4/2. There’s my 67%. Broken? Maybe.
Fly casual y’all!
This blogpost would not have been possible without also listening to the Krayts Listener 4 — Git Gud.
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You can also read some of my older posts at https://itsgettinghothinhere.wordpress.com
