On Sunday the 16th of December I attended the X-Wing Kessel Run event being held at Rules of Play in Cardiff.
Prizes on offer were the new second wave miniatures including the Millennium Falcon, Slave One, 2 A-Wings and 2 Tie Interceptors. First prize was first choice of the new miniatures, Second prize was second choice of the…. well you can probably work it out.
This was the first tournament I’ve ever taken part in and I had one goal for the whole event… not to come last.
Squad List – Empire 100pts
I love the rebel ships but during my test games it became apparent that the Empires ability to flood the board with ships didn’t give the rebels much of a chance. So I decided to go with a Empire squad and field 5 models.
Darth Vader with Swarm Tactics
Black Squadron Pilot with Markmanship
“Mauler” Mithel with Swarm Tactics
Obsidian Squadron Pilot
Dark Curse
Tactics
I though in theory my squad was really quite good. Swarm tactics was the key to giving the lower (cheaper) models the chance to fire at the same time as their better skilled wingmen. I paired the two lowest skilled pilots with Darth and ”Mauler” Mithel so my squad was firing at 9, 7 and 6. Not bad I thought, get straight in there and use Darth’s Cluster missiles giving me two chances to hit. Then the lower ship could also fire giving me three hits on one ship. I thought that would be quite devastating on a first turn.
“Mauler” Mithel also had Swarm Tactics allowing two ships to fire. That left Dark Curse to fend for himself but with no re-rolls allowed on any attacks against him I thought he would be a fearsome enemy to take on.
So how did it go?
Round 1
Not as planned… that’s the best way I could put it.
We had to flip for initiative as we were both using 100pt squads which I promptly lost. My opponent was fielding Wedge who also had 9 initiative and having initiative was able to fire first… he also had Swarm Tactics meaning his lower skilled Rookie Pilot also fired.
Darth’s missiles rolled miserably with no damage dealt and then nothing from his wingman. Dark Curse was fielded too far to the right so he was out of the first four turns as he had to navigated his way around the asteroid field.
The shields on the Rebel ships soaked up all my hits and the less said about the ion cannon and Darth Vader the better. It didn’t take long to see where the match was going and at the end I was left with one Tie Fighter against three of his ships.
So that was a loss for me giving me a grand total of 0 points… Yay!
Round 2
With my thrashing still fresh in my mind I moved into the next round, again against another Rebel player. It was a close thing and ended with us down to one ship each. My Darth Vader against his Y-Wing. Oh yes! I thought I might get a win…
The Y-Wing was tooled up and had shield re-generation. Balls! It turned into a dogfight which went on and on. In the end we reached the end of the time allotment (75 mins) and we tallied up points…. we both had 31 points on the table. A draw, so one point each which took me off 0 points. I was over the moon with that one point, literally I was all grins.
Conclusion
So I was out of the competition, but I wasn’t at the bottom of the scoreboard as someone had lost both their matches. Oh Yes! I was a happy man, over the friggin moon, dancing in the streets….
So I’ve re-jigged my feelings on the Rebel squads and have a lot more respect for them. We watched the new ships battling it out in the final and I want those new models. They look great and have some excellent upgrades which I would love to try out.
Not empty handed…
Not only did I attend this competition but I let my friend Tristan use the Rebels that I had left to field a squad. He won his first battle so came third with 5 points. The Millennium Falcon and Slave 1 were taken by first and second place but Tristan nabbed himself a A-Wing to try out.
P.S…
On a side point the guy I fought first went on to win the event so I put my defeat down to his strength in the ways of the force. Also the fact that he was bloody good at the game.
