smashthedean

This can probably be unstickied whenever. Thanks all for attending!

The X-Wing game day was a big success so I'm looking to put together a tournament in March. As Corey is running his event on the third Saturday and I'm out of town on the 22nd, I'm looking at the last Saturday, March 29th, as the day to shoot for. Does anyone know of any conflicts with this date? I'm looking to run the tournament with the standard Fantasy Flight Tournament rules with the following exceptions and random thoughts: Tournament Organizer Participation I'm looking to play in this tournament as well as run it, which is allowed in those rules as long as this isn't a regional, national, or world championship tournament, but that means I'll need a second for deciding rules disputes in my games. Kevin or Joey, are one of you up for this? You won't really have to do anything, just know stuff if disputes come up. Squad Building As much as I'd like to say that proxy cards or just running off a list is allowed, I think we should probably stick to the tournament rules for this, but am open to discussion on the topic. I'm fairly torn on the subject myself, but if we're calling this a "tournament" I think this is probably the right call. I do however encourage people to be cool dudes and share your Advanced Sensors or Push the Limits or Wedges or whatever you aren't using in your current list with each other to get the maximum experience of awesomeness. Component Modifications I think the rules against heavily modifying or scratch-building your own ships are dumb don't have a place in our local scene. If you want to go crazy and hobby up a model, I say go hog wild as long as it's fully painted and you have the appropriate pilot card/upgrades for it. I don't think anyone has tried doing anything like this yet, but my stance is go for it. Round Duration I'm thinking 90 minute rounds are the way to go here. Tournament standard is 75, but they come with the option of adjusting anywhere between 60 to 90 and I think having more time to play and hang out is fun. I suppose if we did have a huge turnout this could be adjusted to fit in more games, but for now I'm thinking 90. Does that sound good? Entry Fee/Prize Support The standard way that things are run for the 40k tournaments is $10 entry with that pool and half of whatever if raised put in by Nathaniel going to a raffled off prize support (with extra tickets going out for wins). I'm cool doing things that way or cutting the fee down to $5 since X-Wing stuff is less expensive in general or pretty much anything people want to do (and Nathaniel okays once I clear it with him). What do you guys want? Does this sound good to everyone? I'm probably going to talk to Nathaniel tonight about it.

See the long and detailed summary post I did in the Pathfinder thread yo.

I've actually found the big base to make barrel rolling even more effective because you can hop all over the battlefield, jumping out of firing arcs and putting yourself in for range 1 shots. And aside from swarms, I just haven't felt like a well-piloted Falcon with backup can get focused on for 3 turns in a row. I feel like as an Imperial, I have no problem dealing with 4 ship Rebel lists as I can just keep out of their arcs with my Interceptors while shooting them up, but Falcons have always given me trouble unless I've brought a swarm.

Well, I have run Han with Chewie as crew and Expert Handling as his only upgrades, but he always works out to be pretty crazy brutal. Just the huge amount of durability combined with Expert Handling letting him move around the battlefield and the 360 line of sight giving him whatever shots he wants always seems to be a winning combination.

I've been thinking about beating Falcons lately and was thinking I'd do a little analysis of the different Imperial ships and how they can deal with them. Basically whatever you're looking at it comes down to needing sustained focused attack dice to down the big bird and while the fragility of Imperial ships does make this a little difficult, there are still some options. Firespray-31 The Falcon's "big ship" counterpart in the Imperial fleet, the Firespray is pretty poorly matched on a ship to ship basis. It has the same attack dice and better defense dice, but lacks the Falcon's higher durability and 360 line of sight (though it does get a rear arc). In my early dealings I'd dismissed the Firespray having a place in the Falcon meta game as even 4 dice a turn with a Heavy Laser Cannon just didn't put out the firepower I needed for the ~40 points I was shelling out. On a closer look though, I'm considering giving the Firespray another shot. Why? Missiles. Specifically, Cluster Missiles. Cluster Missiles are practicially designed to kill Falcons and other ships with low agility and the Firespray is likely going to live long enough to get a lock and an opportunity to fire these bad boys off without any issues. Add in the possibility of a reroll with each missile with Krassis Trelix and you've got a pretty formidable Falcon-fighter at the cost of 4 points for the missiles more than your normal Firespray. Lambda Shuttle I haven't really figured out Lambdas yet, but on paper a Lambda should have the staying power to help take on a Falcon and it is certainly cost effective. The Lambda's biggest weakness is its lack of manuerability on its dial combined with its front-only firing arc, neither of which the Falcon is particulalry designed to take advantage of. I could see a cheap Lambda with Anti-Pursuit Lasers being good against a Falcon, getting in the way and generally being a pain in the ass while taking shots when it has them and providing support if you spring for one of the named pilots. TIE Advanced AKA Darth Vader's ship AKA The overpriced TIE Fighter. Yes, these ships are not the best for their points, but they too can equip Cluster Missiles. I personally wouldn't recommend a basic Advanced for the cost, but throwing a set of missiles on Vader is definitely a viable option, especially considering he can focus and fire them on the same turn. TIE Bomber These look like the pure and simple solution to Falcons with their multiple warhead slots and Jonus' reroll ability, but a lot of people (myself included) shy away from them due to their potential cost and the perceived lack of fun in running a "bomber wing," but I propose an alternate solution: 20 points for a Scimitar bomber with Cluster Missiles. He's 8 points more than a TIE Fighter and packing heat with the missiles. He might not be the sexiest beast on the table after he blows his load, but he can still perform as well as a TIE in combat with only a slightly [big bad swear word]tier dial and is fairly durable in his own right with 6 hull. TIE Fighter I think everyone at this point has figured out that TIE Swarms can work at taking down Falcons, but they do essentially require building your list around them. If anyone doesn't already know, Howlrunner + 5-6 TIE Fighters put out a lot of dice with rerolls and can generally wreck [big bad swear word] up. That's all I have to say about that. TIE Interceptor AKA Everyone's favorite ship that doesn't work against Falcons. Yeah, it's true. The Falcon is the counter to the TIE Interceptor, that's pretty much all there is to it. Interceptors dominate the majority of the Rebel ships due to their amazing manueverability and it's really not a big surprise that the Rebels would have an answer to them. If you're running a list that is entirely focused on Interceptors, you're going to have problems against Falcons, it's pretty much as simple as that. Looking at that info, how about some lists to put it into practice: Krassis, Turr, 2x Academy Vader, Turr, Scimitar, Academy Soontir, Turr, 2x Scimitar These all seem more fun to run than a basic TIE Swarm or Bomber wing while still packing in some anti-Falcon elements. What do you guys think?

I definitely like the idea of a tournament if we have the interest in it. As for the Falcon, I pretty much completely agree that it is a game-changer, but I guess I've resigned myself to the fact that I either have to make my list more swarmy or just run a Falcon of my own. Also I have someone's 3 bank template that got left there.

The game day was a big success! We had about 10 or 11 people down there throughout the day with games going on from noon until around 8ish. We had some new faces and some old ones that we haven't seen in a while and everyone had a good time (except for Joey when he had to play against Falcons). I'm thinking I might try to make this a monthly thing, possibly looking at the last Saturday in March. The big question at this point is do people want more free form game days like this or do we want to do an actual tournament?

What Joey is trying to say is bring 2 Falcons

Looks like Fantasy Flight put out a preview of the new Tantive IV corvette. Range band 5! http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4663

Apparently tomorrow is Ragnarok: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/20/viking-apocalypse-end-of-the-world-saturday/5643717/

I get off work at 5:45, would that be too late?

It's looking like I might be free for some X-Winging tomorrow evening if you'd be down. Thinking of trying out some new lists...

I'm looking for a game of Polly Pocket actually. Anyone down for next Tuesday?

I've been feeling like my Bounty Hunter, Soontir, 2x Academy TIE list is having issues dealing with Falcons and I'm trying to come up with some alternative strategies. The way I see it, the Falcon is the perfect counter to the Imperial strategy of fly around and be really mobile to avoid target arcs as it is impossible to get away from the thing. The two options I've come up with are: #1 - TIE Swarm: I don't know that I'd have a lot of fun running a pure TIE swarm, especially in tournaments where I'd likely butt up against other TIE Swarms and things would get kind of crazy. I was however looking at this list with Soontir, Howlrunner, and 4x Academy TIEs #2 - TIE Bombers: I haven't actually run TIE Bombers yet, partially because I shy away from one-use items, but I've been thinking about giving them a shot. I can't decide if it would be better to run Jonus and Rhymer decked out with 2 racks of missiles/torps or some of the cheaper guys with some Academy support, but I'm looking at either a 3-ship list with Soontir, Jonus, and Rhymer or a 5-ship list with some Fighters... or sucking it up and dropping Soontir to try out a Lambda too (and finding reasons to buy 3 more ships) Oh, and option 3 of just giving in to the light side and playing Rebels :P

The way I see all of the new rules pretty simply boils down to "If you don't like it, don't play it" Personally, I prefer standard games of 40k with no real crazy dataslates or superheavies or whatever thrown into the mix and I feel like that is what most people I run into also like so that's what we play and there's no problem. It seems like people are afraid that these things will find their way into tournaments, but I really don't see that happening so I'm not really too concerned.

I'm going to be down for some X-WIng, any point level works for me!

Would anyone be up for a game Sunday, preferably later in the day? I'd be down for 100 or 150 points or doing a demo of the game for anyone interested in learning.

The pig using the wand? I'm not so sure about that one, but I can look into it.

A new meaning to tossing around the old pigskin.

Well you do have a pretty cool warhorse right now. He's no pig, but he does like kicking goblins.

Eh, I can make all of the ability score +2 items at this level as well as cloaks of resistance and amulets of natural armor. Technically I can make anything that's Caster Level 16 of lower if it's a spell I can cast or Caster Level 11 or lower if it's something I don't have the spell for (By taking a 10. I could theoretically do higher with a roll, but you'd be risking gold then). Being able to cast the prereq spell isn't a requirement in Pathfinder, it just increases the difficulty by 5 if I don't have it.

I'm guessing the new "Epic Play" format they keep talking about will have something to do with bigger board sizes and higher point costs.

We're having an X-Wing Game Day up/down in Bellingham on Saturday the 22nd from noon to whenever at Dark Tower Games. It will be free to attend and there will be both demo games and full-size games running throughout the day. If you've got the Saturday free and feel like making the trip for some gaming fun, you should come by!