Green Rookie’s Playbook: Doing the maths

Published in

186th Squadron

10 min readApr 30, 2018

This is my fourth article based on my personal mission to get better at X-Wing Miniatures - sharing my findings, failures and hopefully some successes along the way. You can find How Do I Approach my first Tournament? Obstacles and Pathways of Engagement and Building (Choosing) a List here.

This article is about realising your win conditions and knowing them prior to the beginning of a game. To be clear, you should know them before going to the tournament, but this can (and often does) vary from match up to match up.

Do you know how much each ship in your squad is worth? Yeah, you’ve got the app and you might have scrawled it onto a piece of paper that you uncrumple for each opponent, but is it actually stored in yer noggin?

I guess the epiphany that I needed a break from Rey and X was playing at an impromptu tournament at Warboar in Bromley, where I lost three out of four games. The opponents that beat me were Ollie Astbury (who then went on to win the day); UK Nationals Champ Jesper Hills and Norwich Regionals Champion James Finlayson. James has had a phenomenal Regionals season — next time you see him, ask to have a look at his bag of dice from his top cuts, it’s like a visual representation of the collected souls of his victims.

Finlayson’s Regional list was:

This is very similar to the list I took to last year’s Euros (you can read about it here). I’m a big fan of the interaction of M9-G8 with Norra and 3PO with one agility ships is a bit of a golden deity.

Although this list really tugs on my Rebel heartstrings, I can’t help but think that Miranda is a more durable fit in place of Norra. Miranda can also take harpoons.

I am Ahab! (By far the best Harpoon token I have seen — courtesy of Paul Schaller of TNX Warboar)

I gave a very brief run down as to why I have fallen upon this list (100 point Miranda, or OP Cubed, whatever passes as Miranda, Fenn, Low) in last week’s post. I took a very similar list to a Q1 at ibuywargames, but Fenn had Adaptability, Inspiring Recruit and R3-A2; Miranda had only one set of Harpoons and Long Range Scanners and Lowhhrick had Rey.

I played against Mandalore Birmingham finalist Tom Forstner. That was a battle of pensive musings for both parties and a real slugfest to the end with Miranda narrowly surviving through 3PO’s omnipotence.

Then there was losing to Mandalore Birmingham Champ Martyn Chivers, where I found that my poor target priority at the beginning cost me dearly; I should have taken out his Kylo first, instead of trading Fenn for QuickDraw.

However, the game I felt that I benefitted from the most was losing to James Finlayson. James this time, at the height of his Worlds’ prep, brought Miranda, Ezra and Low. As a (sort of) mirror match, I discovered something important about doing the maths: his StrEzra (Sheathipede Ezra Bridger: Snap Shot, Gunner, R3-A2) shut down my Lowhhrick and stopped it from being a threat at all. This highlighted that one of my major win conditions was that Lowhhrick is often the first to die but must carry out some damage before doing so. If this does not happen, he’s a waste of 31 points (if you have a 1 point EPT and Rey) or 30 points (if you’re simply rocking Wookie Commandoes and a 1 point EPT).

Having felt good that my losses that day were to such high calibre opponents (the other matches were not exactly a stroll); I was more than ready for some feedback from James. His only real criticism was how my list was built, not the quality of my play. James posed three questions of me when evaluating my list:

1. Why Fenn and not Ezra?

As a points comparison, James’ Ezra comes in at 26 points, My Fenn comes in at 23. Is Fenn as useful as Ezra? Take a look at the picture above — there are 9 stress tokens on Ezra. I think we counted 10 at one point.

Taking R3-A2 on Fenn allows for choosing to turn off Expertise or simply using Fenn’s native ability. Ezra, however, allows you to take advantage of the stress by turning up to two of your eyeball icons into evades. I’m genuinely torn on this.

2. Why Rey and not Wookie Commandoes on Lowhhrick?

My argument for Rey was how tanky she made Lowhhrick. In contrast, the slow opening to build up the focus tokens makes the play that little bit more predictable and costs an extra point that could be spent elsewhere.

3. Why Selflessness and not Draw Their Fire?

Kylo. It’s all about Kylo. When you want a damage sponge, Lowhhrick is a pretty good one. When you’re concerned about the ‘Blinded Pilot’ crit, DTF is more than a one use only card.

I ended at 3 and 2 at ibuy, that’s after having played the list only once before the day. The current win rate is 60%, not enough to make the cut, but enough to take home a Shadowport Hunter alt art (I have a feeling I might well end up with a small collection of these).

This is my current jam that I took to the Mug and Meeple at the weekend for a Q1 kit, hosted by the ever chipper Harrison Sharp.

Going back to doing the maths: the ships are worth:

Fenn – 23

Low – 30

Miranda – 47

What can I afford to lose in order to keep Miranda alive for the end game?

Low can soak up the damage, Fenn can shut off Expertise with R3-A2. Miranda takes up nearly 50% of my list. Can she survive Harpoons?

How do I stop Miranda succombing to Harpoons or the crit from Kylo?

If your opponent has a target and focus lock versus your 1 agility dice, you can expect the hit rate to look as follows out of a four dice attack

Best case scenario – 3PO zero and land on a focus. You can spend Miranda’s focus and have 2 evades. You then have Low’s token and you can evade three out of four but the crit is still there. Then you Draw Their Fire.

We shall talk about probability and 3PO later, for now, I’ll leave you with this:

My win rate for the day was, again, 3 and 2. I came 9th out of 20, narrowly missing the cash money prizes but not making Phil GC’s 67% win rate needed for a cut.

Games one and two were still enjoyable and I learned more about the list and how to engage and disengage when needed. Playing against Alex Krysta in Game one, his Scout and Asajj list and then Fred Bettesworth in Game two with his Dengar Asajj list really highlighted how the games could swing in my favour. Alex put his effort into killing Fenn, by then, I had gained half points on the Scout and Asajj — I was already up by 25 points.

Fred’s dice in game two were on fire but despite him killing both Fenn and Low, and me only gaining half points on both Dengar and Asajj, I was able to use Miranda to gain the remaining points and kill both of Fred’s ships.

When Fred came in for the kill with Dengar, I was able to slow down my play, ending up with Miranda continually bumping and then dropping a bomb at the start of the next turn.

Games three and four against fellow Sparklers Paul and Lloyd were the ones where I learnt the most about moving forward with the list.

Game Three (45–100)

Paul Full-On’s Sympathizer and Dash, broke down as follows

YT-2400 Dash Rendar (Lone Wolf, HLC, Rey, Outrider title and Counter Measures)

YT-1300 Resistance Sympathizer (Ezra, Maul, Falcon title — evade)

I ended the game one point away from half health on Dash and Paul having destroyed all of my list at minute 75.

When I first looked at Paul’s list, I decided that Dash needed to be my target but in our first engagement, Paul broke my target lock with Counter Measures. For whatever reason, I then changed my target to the Resistance Sympathizer.

I’m pretty certain I fell for Paul’s trap: whilst I killed the Sympathizer, Dash focused on the Wookie and then Fenn. When it came to my Miranda versus his Dash with 25 minutes to go, my only real hope was getting his full health Dash to half points (or better) without having Miranda killed. I had managed to mainly re-gen, but with Dash being worth 55 points and Miranda only worth 47, Paul knew he could outrun Miranda and bide his time. My only win condition after this was waiting for Paul to make a mistake.

I misjudged my final move and made a 2 forward. Had I done a 2 hard in the last round, I would have likely been in his donut hole.

In our final round, I managed to fire my last lot of Harpoons at Dash and was hoping Paul would not spend his focus token so that I could gain half points.

Doing the maths: With Dash’s final attack, Miranda had 1 hull and had regenned a shield. Dash fired the HLC and got three hits. I had a focus and 3PO, my thinking was roll zero, with the possibility of getting a focus, that then gives me 2 evades and the shield – still alive.

What about 3PO when the chips are down? What I should have done: guess 1. Why? There are 3 evades on the dice and 2 focus. Statistically, my chances were greater of getting an evade. Had I done that, I would still be alive and we might have potentially had a chance for another round.

I guessed ‘zero’, I rolled a blank — got an evade and died.

I failed to get half points on Dash and Miranda exploded.

Game Four — Lloyd Bowman (32–100)

When Lloyd told me he was playing Raclo and QuickDraw, I breathed a sigh of relief that I had decided to take DTF. With Lloyd’s focussed fire on Low, the wookie was dead in two turns. I made RAC my target and correctly so as it was carrying both Kylo and Palp, taking up two thirds of Lloyd’s points.

Problem 1: my range control in the initial joust was off. I want Range 2, RAC wants 1. I was too aggressive. Consequently, Lowhhrick ended up with a Blinded Pilot crit.

This was also my most useful game in underlining how much of an MVP Lowhhrick is. We’ve already spoken about his qualities as a damage sponge, but he needs to do some damage himself before becoming a mess of ship bits and fur. When I misjudged range in the opening joust, I lost an opportunity for Lowhhrick to put out any damage.

Problem 2: I didn’t fire the Harpoons. After the game, Lloyd said that I had made him work hard to stop me from firing ordinance at him. I feel pretty good about that.

There were some positives: I Managed to regen Miranda back up to full health by disengaging. You have 75 minutes to play the game — why not use them? I also managed to use 3PO to successfully avoid a cri, having learnt to think that little bit more carefully after my loss in game three.

These were my two losses of the day and they were against my Sparkle team mates.

Some final thoughts on ‘doing the maths’

If you know your list costs, you immediately enter the game knowing how much you can afford to lose. When I think of my games against Martyn at ibuy and Paul at the Mug and Meeple, the ships that posed the most threat were those that I didn’t want in the end game. Martyn’s Kylo was worth 47 whilst my Miranda was worth 45. Paul’s Dash was worth 55 whilst my Miranda was worth 47. Choose your targets carefully.

If variance (or reducing it) is your thing — make sure you know the odds. The game doesn’t happen in a vacuum, probability is not a constant in this sense BUT it can be a useful guide when making decisions.