Beanie Games X-Wing Regional 4th March 2018

This weekend 4 of us from West Coast gamers (and Carlisle Gamers) headed over to Beanie Games in Stockton for the 2018 Regional. 

L-R: Juan, Me, Damien & Michael

Between us we’ve done a few regionals before, including Beanie games last year too. We’ve kept talking about doing something like team T-shirts in the past and this year I finally got round to doing it. We got the shirts printed by a local printer and they came out looking great! 
I also decided to make some upgrade cards with our logo on too. We gave them away to the people we played, they seemed to go down pretty well with everyone, click here for more information! 

The venue at Beanie games is superb. There’s room for well over 100 players (I think there was 110 this year, with room to spare), as well as a shop & that’s just downstairs! Upstairs there’s a club and a cafe (and the toilets), the cafe is well stocked and reasonably priced (sarnies were £1.5, and the legendary hot dogs for £1 are worth the trip on their own!) 

some of the games were live streamed too, which you can find on the holocron youtube channel. 

My list:

I’ve had a few months off x-wing recently for various reasons, my old favourite list included deathrain (DR). Deathrain was never very competitive really (I won lowest ranked imperial player last year!), but with the new bombers deathrain really has lost his magic. 
With retiring DR, I needed a new list, I liked vessery from my old one and I like the tie SF too, So I had a look online to see if there was anything that would fit the defender, an SF and then something else. Turns out it’s been done a few times before with the “gunboat”, a ship I’d bought but was still in it’s box. 

With a little tweaking of the list I put this together & then had two games with two of the guys from the club the Tuesday before the Tournament. I won both games! That settled it, I went into the tournament with a 100% win rate with this list! Spoilers… It didn’t last long! increase your discord community here https://themarketingheaven.com/buy-discord-members/  

Prizes & free stuff

A great day for free stuff! When we signed in, you were given a £5 voucher, a stationery set & a mug (there were a few to chose from too!), 
Since I came in the top 64, I won a Zucuss Alt art card, and as I’ll explain later, a very kind player gave me a set of acrylic range rulers! 

Purchases on the day

I try where possible to buy something when I go to these events to support the hosting store, with the free £5 voucher It made that purchase even sweeter! Not exactly a big spend, but these were some much needed sleeves & a new toy to play with! 

The Games

Here’s a quick breakdown of my 6 games, I ended on 3 – 3 which I was more than happy with. Last year I ended on 1 – 5 so anything better than that would have been an improvement, I ended up placing 46th which I’m really happy about. 

My first game was against “Twiggy”, using his double shadowcaster list. 
I’ve not faced the shadowcaster much, for some reason our local meta has completely ignored this ship. So I don’t really know how to handle facing one. Let alone two!! 
The game was great, I couldn’t have asked for a better opponent on my first game (well, maybe one easier to beat would have been nice!), we had a great game and he was a really decent guy. We both applauded our great rolls (of which there were a few) and we commiserated our poor rolls (of which there were a few). 
I thought in this one I would try and play it smart and fly the defender round the back for a flank attack as the defender is pretty quick. 
Turns out it was a couple of turns too slow, the route I took was too long so it stayed out of the fight for way longer than it should. I also came to the conclusion pretty early on that I wasn’t going to win this one. My goal became to destroy one ship, even if I got tabled, kill one. After Vessery took a galactic tour I had to shelve that ambition and go for “get half points on one ship.. just one…”. My first engagement early on went pretty well, Quickdraw got off some harpoons and i took out the shields on Ventress, I decided to keep going at ventress as I’d had that early win and boy was it a grind. JUST to get it to half points (which I only barely scraped) was incredibly difficult. 
Ventress was giving me stress, which Latts Razzi was then using as a free evade, PTL and some green turns meant that Ventress had an evade & focus  pretty much every turn, that meant I had to use quickdraw and the gunboat to strip all the tokens, which would have been fine if Vessery was there to do the damage but he wasn’t.. by the time he showed up it was already too late. 
I managed half points on vessery and decided if I played this list again I would go for Ketsu instead. 
A great game, I learned a few things and I had fun even though I lost. 
At the end of the game I gave Twiggy our alt art card and he seemed genuinely pleased with it. He gave me a set of acrylic range rulers (as I was using the standard cardboard ones) 
I am extremely grateful for these! I hope I said thank you enough! 

So after my first round loss at the hands of Ketsu & Ventriss, my second round game was against… Ketsu and Ventriss! Wonderful!  Going into this one with my primary plan as “kill at least one them”, armed with the knowledge of how awful ventriss is to damage, I went for ketsu this time. 
Long story short, it worked. I wasn’t going for a win, i just couldn’t see one unless something went seriously wrong for him. 
The guy I played wasn’t as chatty as Twiggy had been, but the game progressed nicely, and it went pretty much how I imagined it would. I didn’t go into this with a defeatist attitude, but I did go in thinking “I’m probably not going to win this, so aim for something achievable. go for a kill, finish happy, even if you lose”. 
The gunboat got taken out pretty quick, before any harpoons had even been fired. After the game the guy got a bit chattier, and he even said that it was only because I made a gamble to get my gunboat out of the way which failed (and he ended up on a rock), that put him in the firing line so he went for it. His plan was actually to go for Quickdraw but I presented him with a better target. So hey ho! my own fault! 

I was pretty annoyed with myself that I also lined up Vessery for a PERFECT range one shot against Ketsu mid game that potentially would have taken Ketsu out of action, but I also PERFECTLY limed myself up right in both his arcs, so he tractor beamed me onto a rock. So I didn’t even get to shoot. 

Eventually though, it played out how I thought it would, I took down Ketsu, so the game ended 51 – 100. A respectable loss and exactly what I expecting going into the game. 

The ships were lovely too, a nice cusom paint job and some reworking on the engine compartments. lovely ships!

This was the game I screwed up the most. The chap I played was from Liverpool and one of the “Just Play” team, he was a nice bloke and we had a great game which I really enjoyed. 
It’s been a while since I’ve played against Dash rendar (even though it’s a popular ship), but it’s also one of a relatively small number of ships that I’ve used myself quite a bit. Because of that I felt confident I knew what was in store for me which gave me a little confidence. 
I totally cocked up though. I went for dash as usually Poe is an utter nightmare to kill, Dash has a low Agility value and as it’s a big ship, taking a few shield can easily get you “some” points. I went for dash first and completely ignored Poe. Why bother? He’ll just regen his shields right? 
mid game, after things were going neither well nor particularly badly for either of us (both of us seemed to get better than average rolls, so basically nothing was happening!) I noticed he didn’t regen Poe when I had taken a shield off him (it was my only shot, so I took it) 
That’s when it dawned on me that this WASN’T A REGEN POE!! it took me until about 55 minutes into the game to work this out, but by this point it was really too late. 
he’d worked himself into a position where I couldn’t really fight back, and he ended up taking me down. I Managed to get a harpoon off (from quickdraw, not even the gunboat) and i managed to trigger the effect too! which was nice! 
But alas, the game didn’t go my way and I was simply outflown. Well done that man, a well deserved win. 
Great game. 

***Completely forgot to take pictures in round 4! ***

So I totally forgot to take photos this entire round. at this point I was nearly at the bottom of the table. Where I was at the end of last year. The table next to me was two children playing who were bickering like children their age do. That depressed me slightly, I’ve been playing this game for years, I’ve never been a totally competitive gamer (although I do enjoy the events) I don’t play to win, I play for enjoyment; but still, I thought I should be better than being one step away from the kiddy table! 
Once I got over myself and got on with it I had a pretty good game. 
Ben was nice and Chatty and I found out that he lives in Sunderland, but is actually from Cockermouth (where I live) and he often returns home to visit family. He’s interested in coming to our local tournaments! which is brilliant! This is one of the reasons why we come to these events, to see if there’s anyone else locally who might not be on our radar. Hopefully Ben will make it along to one of our events soon. 

Ben was flying a classic list, Vader (with Accuracy corrector) Turr Phennir with Royal Guard title, stealth device, autothrusters and push the limit as well as Soontir fell with the same loadout (this is from memory) 

The game started well as we both pretty much went straight for the joust. I used to fly against this list a lot a few waves ago and I would get hammered nearly every time. One of the  reasons I wouldn’t fair well was the pilot skill. Flying against triple 9’s is tough, but I have a PS 11 quickdraw, so I figured I should make the most of it. 
Since I feared vader the most, I went straight for Vader. The results couldn’t have been better. In the First Engagement of the game I used Harpoon missiles (from quickdraw) and got 4 hits, he got 4 blanks. Ben then stuck out with Vader’s return fire and Quickdraw shook off the accuracy corrector hits. Which was a shame as I really wanted to lose a shield and fire back! Vessery did nothing, then 
The plucky little gunboat that could showed up and did the final damage on vader. 
For the next few turns I tried to manoeuvre the gunboat to get a shot on either of the interceptors, but they were just too quick. I couldn’t get away to use long range scanners then get back AND have either of them in arc to fire harpoons, so I gave it up as bait. The bait worked, but Ben’s dice really just left him and it took him quite a while to take down the sacrificial gunboat. 
While that was happening I lined up and picked off the two interceptors in a few rounds. From memory I believe between Vessery and Quickdraw they didn’t actually lose a shield. 
One of my better performances. 
I don’t think Ben had fun if I’m honest, with 3 loses already under his belt then losing Vader in the first round (of firing) that couldn’t have been good. He took it better than I would have though. A good sport. He seemed to like the Alt Art card VI and hopefully he’ll make it along to a tournament with our lads soon. 

Filled with confidence from my last win, I went into this one with a renewed spirit. We swapped lists at the beginning and I noticed that this wasn’t a regen Poe either! wonderful! Still though, I decided that Rey would be the better target. 
Afron was probably my favourite game of the day (not just because I tabled him) but he was a genuinely nice lad to play against and talk to. 
He wasn’t having a great day in terms of winning, but he said he was having a fantastic day of X-wing, which was exactly the attitude I wanted to be around. I often complain about my dice, I get sick of myself going on about it, so I’m sure my friends do to. It’s something I’m working on, but I realise it as a flaw. This game though I could only apologise for my rolls. Multiple occasions I rolled 3-4 dice and got straight hits or hits and crits. No rerolls or focus required. The same for my defence dice. 

Everything just went right for me and wrong for Afron which led to me taking 100pts from him and not giving up any from myself. A first for the day, and probably a first for a very long time for me too! 
Again, he seemed to love the alt art card & after the game we spent some time chatting. 

I took a few pictures of his minis and he showed us the others he’d had painted in the same style. They were painted by Rasta Maice, and they are some seriously F**king good paint jobs. 

The last game of the day. By this point both myself and Mike were pretty tired. Mike was very friendly and we had a good laugh. I only wish I’d played him at round 2 or three when my brain was functioning a little better. 
3 Star vipers. I literally had no idea where these guys were going to end up in every turn and it hurt my brain the entire game trying to keep up. I had fantastic dice in this game too and at one point he had one ship with 3 hull points left and another with only one hull. I had the same. it was close run thing then I managed to gain the upper hand by finishing off his ship with only 1 hull. It became clear that even if Mike killed vessery (who had 1 hull) Quickdraw was worth more paints, so he would have to table me to win. That didn’t look likely so we decided to call it with around 10 minutes to go and record it like it went to time (technically, since he conceded, I could have called it a 100- 0 win. but that didn’t seem right given the circumstances. I was happy with a 66 – 22 win!). 

So there we have it! I managed to finish in 46th Place overall which I thought was pretty good. 
Looking at my SoS (Strength of Schedule) though, it was pretty low. only 0.39. At least three of my opponents finished lower than me, so I’m not sure whether I had an easy time that felt challenging? or I’m just reading into it. 
Regardless of that, I had a great day. I had an awesome time at this event last year too eventhough I finished nearly last. But this year I had even better opponents AND i won some more games! 
Massive Thanks to Twiggy for the Range rulers, this community really is one of the best I’ve come across in my 20 years + playing games. 
I hope the guys who got a copy of our Alt Art card liked it as much as I did making it and handing it out,  there will be more opportunities to get one at other events we go to as well as we have lots of spares! 

All in all, a fantastic day had by the Phoenix Squadron from West Cumbria. We really enjoyed it, and can’t wait until next year! 

Lee Dalton the Tournament Organiser can be clearly seen in the front row. I’ll let you work out which one he is! Top marks for a great event guys!

(Photo credit Beanie Games, shamelessly taken from the event page on facebook!)