We had a team event in Woking a few weeks back, I was the rebel component. It was an excellent lesson in how not to fly a Millennium Falcon, and why I’m not taking the Falcon again!

At Yavin 2016 I flew and A-Wing crack swarm (started well, went downhill), and think that it could be a good shout in a team meta. My team mates Graham and David will be again running their Triple Scouts and Imperial Alpha lists respectively so we should have a pretty efficient toolbox between the three of us.

I’ve tried variants of the list Crack Swarm cause since I last ran it damage spikes have become much more dramatic in the game and they generally need both a focus and evade every turn to have a chance of tanking the damage coming their way. I previously run 4 A-Wings pretty successfully (with Push the Limit and Juke), until one fateful Regional at Warboar in Bromley where it got utterly eaten alive and had a woeful day of it! Largely due to the heavy presence of Ventress and Latts.

I don’t think I’d take them to a standard format tournament, but where there are options to dodge certain lists they could be considerably stronger. I have also tweaked the list that I was using then to try and make it’s damage more consistent. I did have Juke and PTL on my four but there are points there for Predator, to get Juke to work you have to have the hits in the first place, and not have spent your evade earlier in defense. Predator gives a better chance of that. Convenient that between then and now Predator was an alt art card so I have plenty…

I’ve also looked at the classic Wingman option to keep them stress free but with great action economy. Problem is with Wingman there is no damage output, you’re just running naked dice most of the time unless you haven’t had to spend your focus on the way in, very rarely would I envisage taking a target lock with this list. If we were still in the Parattanni Meta then I think Wingman would be the best option.

Green Squadron Pilot x5 A-Wing Test Pilot x5 Chardaan Refit x5 Adaptability x5 Crack Shot x5 Autothrusters x5

Jonathan Scott wrote a great article on flying A-Wings in formation, one written with so much detail that I’m slightly jealous of his analytical writing skills. It’s a good read and if you’re trying to get better at formation flying I highly recommend it.

Having not played for a while I headed to Basingstoke and Firestorm Cards to get a few games at a Q3 kit event. It didn’t go well. I finished 1-3 for the day and the black pit of despair filled my mind at having to wake up at 6am, travel 2 hours, play 6 games, lose 6 games, let my team mates down, travel 2 hours, collapse of exhaustion and then wake up for work with a proper gaming hang over… Or had I just forgotten how to fly them after over a 12 months absence?

Arriving at the UKTC on the Sunday I still felt like I should have bought something else, but others were more positive about my choice as we put stuff on the table. The event was awesome, so much more impressive than I had imagined it would be, and the caliber of players was staggering. There were quite a few rounds when I just thought to myself “if I lose quickly then I can go and watch that game” this was especially true in round four seeing Rasta, Sim and Kev of the Warlords lining up against Andrew, Jesper and Ben of the 186th. Scratching the surface that’s the European Champ, 2 Nerf Herder Champs, Yavin 2016 champ, UK 2015 Champ, and worlds top 4 player (robbed by dice) all playing at the same time. As a fan of the game that’s a genuine blockbuster of a match up.

My teams first round pairing was against Tee Squadron, and a jubilant Lee Dalton gleefully declaring “I’m playing the A-Wings”. An ominous greeting. His two decimators like running into things and rolling lots of red dice, he even has an A-Wing modelled as having been rammed on one of his Oicun… Psycological warfare there. His amazingly good range 3 green dice got crackshotted multiple times, had to use them while I could right? It came down to his big hitting Oicun on 3 health vs my one remaining full health A-Wing. I wasn’t feeling too confident… then the Deci took a crit, and if I could have picked a crit I would have picked it: Stunned Pilot. All of a sudden the ship that loves to bump didn’t want to bump, with little option Lee threw Oicun into a hard turn, but there wasn’t enough table edge left and the decimator left a very relieved A-Wing on the table.

The next game was against Ben of the Weekend Warlords. Double IGs are a bit daunting for A-Wings as they generally just shrug off two attack dice for fun while throwing a load back. In the opening engagement one of Ben’s IGs got blocked, then popped glitterstim as 2 A-Wings had a range one shot on him. The A-wings pretty much bounced off him, but the following turn the same IG got blocked again and had 4 A-Wings pointing at him, 3 at range one. Naked red dice from k-turned A’s vs naked green dice on the IG. Ben braced for a painful turn and prayed to the dice gods, who promptly didn’t listen to him. Repeated rolls of 3 green dice saw nothing good happened and by the end of the turn it was four A-Wings vs one IG. It was a cracking game, and Ben dropped another A before his second IG dropped, but like so many games the opening engagement was utterly decisive.

With two team wins under our belt we were feeling better than we expected and I was beginning to believe in the A-Wings. Memories of Yavin still persisted though and having already enjoyed the “bad roll kills a ship” feature that all A-Wings come equipped with and still couldn’t feel really confident.

Cue game three, and the first of two Scottish teams we would play. My opponent for round was Ed Holmes, who was flying a U-Wing! Someone with as much disregard for the meta as me… except that Biggs and Miranda were also in the list. I got the opening to this one right and Ed winced as one A-Wing blocked his entire list, while the other 4 locked Biggs.

I had to shoot him anyway so it made sense. Biggs melted. Then the A-wings set about the U-wing as it’s easier to kill than Miranda. It dropped pretty quickly, but not fast enough, surviving for a turn longer than it should have done, which was enough for the A-Wings to be down to 3. They chased Miranda but the irrepressible K-Wing did what she does best and I couldn’t get enough damage through on her. Down to two A-Wings and equal on points I could have tried to run and play for final salvo, but that’s not fun! I probably should have had less fun as Ed got Miranda into position to drop first one then the other remaining A-Wing. It was another brilliant game though (making three for the day). TLT Miranda is really tough for A-Wings to take on. We lost the round but the lads from Common Ground were truly excellent competition.

Game four arrived and the titanic “Game of Champions” between the Warlords and the 186th was kicking off about 10 foot away from us, Ian Wardle, organiser of the brilliant event wandered over and it was great to have a chat, apparently 5 A-Wing was worth coming to visit for. I managed to blag 4 extra Alt Art Cards A-Wings from people at the start of the day…

As we lined up against a second team of Warlords (there are A LOT OF THEM). I got to pick my opponent for this one and I somewhat selfishly picked Stuart flying 4 TLT aggressors. I flew against Richard Smiths 4 TLT HWKS on Saturday at Firestorm Cards, and it was my only win of that day, so I was feeling confident against the Aggressors. Autothrusters and staying out of arc against them is what the A-Wing is designed for and Stuart was an absolute gent as his Aggressors were bullied across the table. Not getting light weight frame most of the time and having to spend his focus tokens on defence every round meant that the damage input vs output of his ships was the wrong way round and whilst a couple of A-wings dropped this was a list mismatch in my favour.

By the fifth game my head was really hurting from swarm flying, I don’t know how people fly 7 tie fighters!

More Scots in round five. I was frustrated by a 2 hour journey and several hours of X-Wing. Theirs was 7 hours! Total admiration for their commitment.

Nick put 32 health on the table. A Trandoshan Slaver and two Scurrgs is ominous. Nick was a phenomenal sport, I put one of my dials down with a bank the wrong way, which would have taken me off the table with my lead A-Wing, but he graciously allowed me to flip the move the other way around. The opening engagement went right (after that glaring error), the squadron raced around the board and hammered 10 damage into the slaver in a joust, not what Nick expected. It died soon enough after but there was still 20 health of Scurrg to chew though. After my success against the aggressors it was only a matter of time before I chipped them down. Nick realised pretty quickly that his TLTs weren’t going to damage me fast enough, so switch to his primary attacks, which really hurt. Using Outlaw Tech to talon roll and shoot with a focus dropped three A-Wings before the last damage went through on the scum.

Which took us to game 6, the final game of the day and I was paired against the same man who started my losing streak at Yavin getting on towards two years ago. Lewis Witham of Team Harlequins. He was flying Dash and the ship that had already proved my nemesis once on the day, Miranda. Lewis had gone for the mangler option on Dash, trading the output of the HLC for not having the range one bubble for Nym to exploit. The A-Wings did bad things to Dash. Dropping him without loss before gunning for Miranda.

100 points vs 40 something points. Surely I had this game in the bag. I was thinking it, Lewis was saying it, Miranda was got rinsed down to one health in one attack. Then one turned flipped everything. Two attacks through a debris field, one unobstructed, all with target locks.

First roll, two hits, Miranda rolls double focus. Lewis Spends his focus. No Damage.

Second roll, one hit, spend the lock, two hits, Miranda rolls two natural evades. No Damage.

Third roll, unobstructed with a target lock. One hit, re-roll, one hit. Miranda rolls one dice, evades.

And thus did the rest of the game go. Neither Lewis, myself or any observing team mate/spectator could quite believe just how good one green dice can be. Lewis flew like the veteran he is, running away, healing up, turning in to fight when it favoured him, then dodging away again. The A-Wings needed to get to range one of her to have a real chance of hurting her, but that was just never going to happen. He got me down to two A-wings and could have run with point advantage and no hope of me ever catching him, but he didn’t cause that wouldn’t have been fun. Instead he fought on until the end, killing me agonising slowly, we finished 10 seconds from time with the last A-Wing going pop.

His win put the Harlequins team third. If I had won that game or at least kept 40 points on the table then one of the other Zombie Squadron teams would have come third instead… I should have been gutted but it was such a great game, one of the best I have ever played in, and he’s such a top bloke I couldn’t help but be really happy for him getting that third place trophy.

David, Graham and I finished 15th for the day going 4-2 overall, and we were really please with that, I’d have settled for finishing 3-3.

So could A-Wings be a thing? I went 4-2 with them and enjoyed every single game I played on the day. Am I brave enough to continue using them in the meta we currently live in where bombs and big turrets rule the roost? I don’t know, I think they could be better than I first thought but a format that lets you pick match ups to some degree may have reflected favourably on both them and me. I definitely don’t think they’re bad though, their only draw back is the two attack dice, but with so many ships being low agility at the moment that isn’t nearly as crippling as it could be.

Again that haunting question “how well could I do if I fly something properly ‘meta’?” rings in my ears and part of me wants to have a go at something that is considered top tier, just to see. My house mate asked the other side of that question: “are you scared to fly the meta in case it doesn’t go well for you?” So there maybe some soul searching over the next few weeks, likely followed by Star Vipers and Tie Silencers!

The UKTC isn’t an official FFG event. It’s an offspring of the community, it’s a lot of hard work by people who love the game and it was awesome. 52 teams from across the country, 156 gamers, and I only played one person who I had played before. Events rarely come with a better atmosphere than this and it was great to get to meet so many people who I’ve only known through reputation/facebook spam before.

The attitude and sportsmanship maintained the unflinchingly high standards that I have come to expect from us lot and it made me feel genuinely proud to be a part of this community. This was epitomised by the auction that was help halfway through the event where hundreds of pounds were raised for charity. Superb job Ian Wardle and team.

The day was won by the Weekend Warlords team, George, Sim and Kev in a very tense game against the Podcasting members of the 186th. It seems that the Dellapina household is rather keen on making 2017 their year. They’ve won Euros, Nerf Herder, the UKTC but you know… only second at UK Nationals though. Maybe in 2018 someone else will get a shot.

Q4 kits are finally here and this weekend sees the first of them. Regional season is fast approaching and I need to work out what the heck I’m flying!

SOMETHING WILL RETURN!

If you’re looking to get into organised play head over to the 186th Event Calendar and see what is going on local to you.