First 2.5 Tournament Batrep

Fear the CHONK!

This is the list I went 4-0 with at a recent small 12 person tournament. We played 4 rounds, so each scenario was represented.

My List:

4 Thane Kyrell w/ Crackshot, Hull, Config

3 Airen Cracken w/ Hopeful, Ion Torps, Hull

5 Ten Numb w/ FCS, Proton Torps, Ion Cannon, Jamming Beam, Config

4 Kullbee Sperado w/ Predator, Hull, Config

2 Lieutenant Blount

2 Derek Klivian w/ Config

This list was just a bunch of tanky rebel ships which seem undercosted after the shift from 2.0 to 2.5. Ten Numb can reliably nuke a PS1-3 ship, and combos well with Airen Cracken. Cracken supplies some utility to the list with a red coordinate at PS5, and his Ion Torpedoes provide some extra control. Thane and Kullbee are just efficient 4-cost X-wings, supplying cheap 3-dice attacks with 7HP at agility 2. Kullbee's ability to boost and still contribute 3 attack dice was surprisingly useful. Blount is an efficient pseudo-3-dice gun, who is dirt cheap in the 2-cost slot. Finally, I think Derek Klivian might be the best 2-coster in the game. He's 4HP at agility 3 with the evade action, which allows him to take a hit or two before he goes down. His system phase boost and blue 5-forward makes him very fast for blocking and/or capping objectives. He also has a butt cannon, allowing him to contribute to the fight while moving around and doing objectives. 

Game 1: Assault at the Satellite Array vs Scum.

10 Boba Fett w/ Fearless, Perceptive, VetTG, Proton Bomb, Hull, Fuses, Marauder

6 Old Teroch w/ Outmanoeuvre, Fearless, Shield

4 Kad Solus w/ Elusive, Baffle

I forgot to take picture of this match, so I'll keep it brief. Boba and Old Teroch started in a corner, with Kad deploying in the centre. The majority of my squad deployed in the diagonally opposite corner with Derek copying Kad to contest the centre objective. Kad came in fast and early to contest the middle objective, with Derek doing the same. This cost Kad 2 hull for Derek's 2 shields. Kad was positioned well as he was able to 5-forward and jump over most of my squad the turn after.

Boba slow-rolled and spent 2 turns capping an objective in front of him. Old Teroch came in fast and got an early shot on Thane and stripped him of his shields and a hull. The next turn Boba gave Thane a second wedgie and reduced him to 2HP. Thane proceeded to run away and spent the rest of the game capping an objective on the other side of the board.

Meanwhile Boba and OldT clashed with my squad near the table centre (minus Thane and Blount). OldT died in the engagement, and Kad followed him the turn after when he came back in. This cost me Airen and a bunch of HP from other ships. OldT, Kad, and the objectives got me to 21 in the end phase for a 21-6 win.

Game 2: Chance Engagement vs Imperials.

6 Soontir Fel w/ Predator, Shield, Hull

4 Pure Sabacc w/ Predator, Shield, Connor Net

4 Moff Gideon w/ PRockets, Cybernetics

4 Iden Versio w/ Elusive, Ion Cannon

2 Night Beast

Again I forgot to take pictures of this game. I deployed most my ships in a corner with Hobbie and Thane deploying central. The Ties deployed central-ish, with Pure Sabacc on the flank closest to me, and Soontir in the far corner. 

The first engagement happened Turn 2. Hobbie saw an opportunity and boosted + 5-forwarded to block Sabacc's ailerons move, reducing his ability to respond at PS4. Soontir boosted in on the flank to try and 1-shot Blount with Gideon's help (who strained Sabacc). Unfortunately he fluffed his attack only scoring 2 hits with a R1 focused + Predator shot, which stripped Blount's shields. Thane's R1 return shot knocked out Soontir's shield + a hull.  Nearby Cracken knocked a shield off Sabacc, after which Sabacc hammered Ten at R1, knocking out his 4 shields. Iden followed up with an ion shot, locking down the B-wing's engines. Gideon's PRocket finished off Blount, but he did get to shoot before he died. His R1 shot took another hull off Soontir. Kullbee's R1 shot annihilated Sabacc, and Ten suddenly didn't need to shoot Sabacc. Instead he took the R3 shot at Soontir, and pushed 2 damage through, claiming the Baron's scalp. 

With Soontir and Sabacc Dead at the cost of Blount and Ten the turn after (he was ionised into an asteroid), it became a case of slowly mopping up the remaining TIEs. The imperial remnants fought bravely, but with their 2 heavy hitters dead, it was just a matter of the rebels slowly grinding them down. A 1HP Night beast was the last Imperial alive, but was out of range of the central objective, which gave me my 20th point. Win 20-10!

Moff Gideon was very good at helping ships push damage through. Luckily my ships don't rely on green tokens, and can afford to take a hit or two. Also, Blount surviving Soontir's aggressive kill-shot allowed me to snowball to a victory.

Game 3: Salvage Mission vs Separatists.

5 Grievous w/ Outmanoeuvre, Ion Missiles, Hull, Impervium, Title

4 DBS-32C w/ Shield, Kracken, Config

3 Hunter w/ Ion Cannon, Hull, Config

3 Hunter w/ Ion Cannon, Hull, Config

3 DFS-081 w/ Energy Shells, Shield, Hull, Config

2 TFDrone w/ Config

TURN 1: Both forces shuffle forward, except Grievous, who comes screaming down the flank. Blount grabs the Rebel 'safe' box, and Derek picks up the other. The droids grab their two safe boxes, with one landing on a debris cloud. (Score: 2-2)

TURN 2: It's at this stage in the tournament I remembered to take photos. Now the fun begins. Derek skirted a little too fast around the droid force. H was in a prime position to get behind them next turn. The rest of my squad lazily turned to face the centre of the droid formation. The droids mostly moved up to joust. Grievous came screaming into my main formation, so I decided to commit to him early instead of just swatting droids. Airen, Ten, Kullbee, and Blount all shot Grievous who limped away with 2HP and a single impervium charge. In return Airen was killed, and Thane lost his shields and a hull. (Score: 4-7)

Grievous the sponge limps away with 2 hull. Oh no!

TURN 3: The droids slow-rolled forward into block positions. Derek turned in behind the droid formation. Grievous surprised me by turning in to attack. Kullbee had to 3-hard through a gas cloud, and ended up focused, stressed, strained, and ionised. Ten Numb dodged the droid trying to block his turn in and ended up directly behind Grievous with a TL + stress. Blount bumped Grievous and Thane bumped a droid, with both taking a red focus. 

The shooting was much more one-sided this turn. Thane snuck a crit through on the droid holding a box forcing him to drop it. Importantly Grievous then whiffed his R1, outmanoeuvre shot on Thane. Ten Numb annihilated Grievous with a R1 shot into his butt, and Thane survived the droid counter with 2HP (but was ionised). Finally Derek knocked 3 hull off the support droid. (Score: 11-8)

Kullbee, king of the red tokens.

I made the decision to commit to Greivous early, but he managed to limp

TURN 4-6: Again I forgot to take pictures of these rounds, but with Grievous dead it was just a matter of mopping up the surviving enemies. Over those three turns I lost Thane in exchange for the support Hyena, which resulted in a win 21-17 for me.

Game 4: Scramble the Transmissions vs Imperials.

4 Turr Phennir w/ ???, Controls

4 Pure Sabacc w/ Predator, Shield, Connor Net

3 Zertik Strom w/ FCS, Hull

4 Nash Windrunner w/ Shield, Controls

2 Night Beast

3 AlphaSP w/ Disciplined, Controls

TURN 0/1: This is easily my favourite of the 4 scenarios. I setup most of my forces in a corner, with Derek and Thane more central. The first turn saw Derek rush to cap the centre objective, where he was met by 2 interceptors. He escaped with a single hull point. (Score: 3-2)

Derek barely survives a fierce attack by the Imperials.

TURN 2: Next turn Derek boosts towards the interceptors and causes a pileup, before shooting over the Imperial formation with a 5-forward. The Imperials take control of the central objective. Nash dies to heavy rebel fire and the Alpha survives with 1HP. In return Thane takes heavy damage and gets knocked down to 3 hull. (Score: 9-5)

Turr: "Nope I'm outta here."

TURN 3: Derek's system phase boost saves him from dying to a connor net, and allows him to cap the right-most objective. The alpha moves in to block my formation, and Zertik comes in slow with a 1-forward. Pure Sabacc uses his ailerons to slip in behind Zertik. Blount jumps 4-forward and caps the centre objective for the Rebel Alliance, but Turr pounces and steals the safe Rebel objective in return. Thane closes his S-foils, and 3-hards to get out of the danger zone. He focuses and attempts a boost, but can't get past Night Beast. He plinks a damage off night beast, in exchange for a disabled power regulator crit (ion at engagement). Airen fires an ion torpedo at Sabacc for a damage and an ion, then Ten Numb finishes him off with a Proton Torpedo. Zertik, and Sabaac's dying shot manage to kill Airen. (Score: 15-11)

Thane enjoying his stack of red tokens.

TURN 4: The Alpha caps the other safe Rebel objective, and Night Beast reclaims the central objective. Blount performs a daring K-turn and misses the conner net by a millimetre. Ten Numb Tallons behind the Alpha and obliterates him. Thane drifts 1-forward and manages to dodge Zertik's attack. (Score: 19-15)

Blount wasn't worried for a second.

TURN 5: The final turn sees Ten, Derek, and Blount capturing an objective each. Turr is killed by the combined firepower of Ten and Kullbee. Thane finally succumbed to Zertik's onslaught. (Score: 27-20)

List Thoughts: 

This rebel list did pretty much what I expected. All my ships were tanky for their cost, requiring heavy fire to kill, and giving up minimal points when they eventually succumbed. The two X-wings in particular absorbed absurd numbers of shots. They all hit decently hard, with Ten Numb providing some scary alpha. Derek spent most games doing the actual work of claiming objectives. It's not an optimised list, but there's plenty of simple swaps that could be made. There are plenty of really good rebel 4-costers that could be swapped for Thane and/or Kullbee:

• Gina Moonsong w/ Selfless, Trajectory, Seismic, Jamming Beam, Config 
• Ibtisam w/ K2S0, VetTG
• Sabine w/ Crackshot, Predator, Shield, Hull, Config

I also think the X-wings (particularly Kullbee) might get better use out of the R4 astromech to assist in shedding stress. Kullbee was often stressed and unable to hard turn and rejoin the fight, and predator wasn't particularly impactful.

Airen was probably the weakest link in the list. He combos well with Ten Numb, but I'm not convinced he's better than a supporting sheathipede (AP5 or Zeb). Another consideration is leaning heavier into the alpha-strike aspect of the list. Blount and Kullbee could be exchanged for Wedge, who provides a greater ability to alpha-strike enemy ships before they shoot.

Regardless, there's lots to fiddling around I can do with this list. I'm not convinced it's the best sort of list for 2.5, but it was fun to just throw my ships in and brawl.

X-wing 2.5 First Impressions: Chance Engagement

I WILL DESTROY YOU!

Chance engagement is a slightly modified version of the 2.0 dogfight, so it seemed appropriate to start with this scenario.

Setup: There's a central objective placed before any obstacles are put down. Obstacles cannot overlap this objective during setup.

This changes obstacle placement slightly, as there's now a space in the centre which cannot contain an obstacle (it's not a big deal). The central objective has a large scoring area (range 0-2 is huge), so I don't think you can realistically setup a 'roadblock' to make contesting the objective difficult for you opponent. If you setup facing the objective a 3-forward will get your ship in range to contest the objective, and will probably still keep you out of range of a round 1 engagement (unless your opponent goes fast and boosts). I don't think obstacle placement will be much different from how we're been doing it in 2.0; place obstacles in a way to advantage your list while disadvantaging your opponent's.

Scoring: We're given three ways to score VPs in this scenario:

1) The first way you score VPs is when an enemy ship is reduced to half it's starting HP. This nabs you VPs equal to half the ships squad point value, rounded down. 

Notice how I've drawn attention to that last bit. The fact these VPs are rounded down is a big deal for your ships with an odd squad cost (especially those in the 3-cost slot). This can be demonstrated with the following two squads:

1. An Imperial list made up of six 3-cost TIEs, and Night Beast. 
2. A Rebel list made up of four 4-cost Rebel ships, plus Derek Klivian, and Blount.

Both lists are 20 points, so you think they'd score VPs equally, right? After heavy fighting Night Beast and Blount are dead (both 2-costers), and all other ships are reduced to half HP. So what does the score look like? The imperials have scored 11 VPs compared to the Rebels 8 VPs. The odd squad cost of the Imperial ships is actually helping them to deny VPs to their opponent. Now this will only be an issue if the game goes to time, or the Rebel player allows the Imperial play to score VPs off the centre objective, but is is worth considering during squad building. Here's our first take away: Due to the way half-points are calculated, odd costed ships have an advantage in this particular scenario. I would say it's a pretty minor advantage, but it is worth acknowledging and thinking about when squad building and playing.

Another thing to consider for some factions is the half HP rules are written in a way to prevent you regening back over your half HP threshold, and denying your opponent points. However, you can still use regen to keep your ships above the half HP threshold. As an example: Luke Skywalker with Shield upgrade and R2D2 can potentially suffer 6 (of a possible 10) damage  and still not cross his half HP threshold. It may very well be worth absorbing some early hits on Luke's shields and then flying off for a few turns to regen his shields back and come in for a second pass.

2) If an enemy ship is destroy or removed from the game, you gain VPs equal to half the squad point value of that ship, rounded up. There's also a caveat that you score full VPs if the ship didn't already give away half points. 

This is obviously related to the previous scoring condition. You absolutely want to keep your wounded ships alive, and finish off enemy ships if you can. 

3) At the start of the End Phase, you score a VP if you are the only player that has ship(s) at range 0–2 of the satellite.

As I mentioned earlier, range 2 is a pretty huge bubble, so you can contest this with a lazy 3-forward on the first turn. There's no need to recklessly speed into the centre, especially since it's only a single VP, which can be easily denied. The question with this centre objective is do you commit early for a joust, or do you skirt the edge of the board for a better engagement and forfeit some VPs? The answer will depend on your list and/or playstyle. 

IMO losing 1-2VPs isn't the end of the world, as long as you have a clear idea of where you want to engage, and you can gain an advantage from it. Also, if your list doesn't include a 2-coster (unlikely, but you never know), your opponent can score a single VP off the centre objective, and still need to table you to score 20+ points. It's a very niche situation, but again worth mentioning. 

Victory: Basically, kill your way to 20+VPs before your opponent can. 

How are we trying to win this scenario? First things first: You cannot get to 20VPs without fighting. In my experience, it's very easy to win the other 3 scenarios with a large portion of your VPs coming from the objectives. That's not going to happen in this one, as the central objective will only net you 12VPs max before the game times out. So you're really falling back on some X-wing 101 strategies and tactics to win you the day:

1. Ships are really just guns; keep your guns alive as long as possible, while focusing on removing your opponent's guns as quickly as possible (and hence damage their ability to remove yours). 
2. Don't be afraid to peel off a wounded ship and bring them back into the fight later when it's safer. You can also just deny your opponent the kill unless they commit ships to chasing that 1HP TIE fighter down.
3. Modifiers win games.
4. The best defence is not being targetable.

Squad Building Considerations:

• You will score most of your VPs from killing in this scenario, so your list needs to be able to remove enemy ships, while preserving your own. This hasn't changed much since 2.0 dogfight, so you can focus on all the same things when building a list (look for efficiency, combos, bonus actions, etc).
• I don't think a complete ace strategy is ideal (eg: triple aces). In 2.0 aces could apply pressure to less manoeuvrable squads by stealing some early points in the form of half points on a ship and then forcing the opponent to 'chase' them. They could then bait and switch to slowly pick the enemy apart and get/protect a lead to win on timeout. The addition of VPs for holding the central objective makes this a much riskier strategy. Can an ace-heavy list afford those turns of setup? My gut says no. I do think aces are still relevant, but I don't think they can be the only thing you have. A more hammer and anvil approach seems viable, eg: Soontir + 6x Obsidians + Night Beast seems like a sold 7-ship swarm to brawl with, and an ace to be the flanker.
• Odd costed ships, especially those in the 3-cost slot, have some inherent advantages in this scenario. It's debatable how impactful it is, but it is there. I'm not sure if this would affect my squad building choices as much as how I play those 3-cost ships in this scenario.
• Regen also offers some additional advantage in this scenario, by giving your ships 2-3 extra hits before they drop past their half HP threshold.

I hope this analysis is helpful!

X-wing 2.5 First Impressions: The Rules

Our local X-wing league has been using a hybrid of X-wing 2.0 and X-wing 2.5 over the past couple of months. Basically we were playing X-wing 2.0, with the new random order after dials rule (ROAD), the new obstacle rules, and the new bump/range 0 rules. This was in an effort to give people practice and make the shift to 2.5 as easy as possible. I thought I'd offer my thoughts on those specific changes:

1. ROAD seems good. I always hated the bidding system in 1.0. It was such a clunky way to decide who was first and second player (for the whole game!). The bids became so large as 2.0 progressed that I gave up on bidding, even when flying my beloved Soontir (I'll take the extra 10-20pts thanks). From what I've experienced ROAD has stopped ace fights being a one-sided affair, and also just seems like a better representation of the chaos of conflict. 
2. I'm not quite sold on the bump rules. I understand why they needed to punish intentional self-bumping in objective play. I have no issues with that, but I kinda wish they'd left blocking opponents alone. Blocking and dodging blocks has always felt very interactive. It may just be I'm hanging on to a strategy I used extensively. It's obviously still very useful to control where your opponent can go and limit them to a focus, which they may not want to take because of the stress. I will wait to pass judgement on this until I've had a lot more games with the changes.
3. Like the bump rules, I'm not sold on the Range 0 attacks. Again it might just be because I frequently used blocks, so now getting shot when I pull off a block feels bad. Also, by their nature range 0 shots are very swingy, which can also feel bad. I will wait to pass judgement.
4. The new obstacle rules are fine. Hitting an obstacle feels really bad (as it should), and choosing to fly through an obstacle feels like a very calculated, and risky play (again, as it should). 

Overall I think the rules changes are a positive, and the designers seem to have a clear direction they want to take X-wing in. 

Some rough X-wing 2.0 vs 2.5 points comparisons:

As my first actual post, I thought I'd post a spreadsheet I made showing some rough point comparisons between X-wing 2.0 and X-wing 2.5 (was previously posted on the Aus X-wing Facebook group).

Basically I've taken every pilot cost/loadout in X-wing 2.5 and reverse engineered them back into an X-wing 2.0 point value (it's pretty simple. The sheet explains how). I then grouped the pilots in each faction with all the pilots of the same cost (threat?), and ranked them by their 2.0 value. It gives a rough idea of what ships are 'good value' in each cost slot. It's obviously still very dependent on what you want in terms of stats, slots, and dials, plus what the rest of your squad looks like.

It's been useful enough in my list building (in conjunction with YASB 2.5) that I figured posting it would be helpful.

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Hello and welcome!

I've been an X-wing player for many years, ever since beginning of X-wing time. With the shift to edition 2.5 I've finally decided to start a blog and shout my thoughts into the void of the internet.