The Phantom always calls twice

Second game with my phantom based list:

• Sigma Squadron Pilot (34) x 2 - TIE Phantom (25), Recon Specialist (3), Sensor Jammer (4), Stygium Particle Accelerator (2)
• Soontir Fel (32) - TIE Interceptor (27), Royal Guard TIE (0), Push the Limit (3), Autothrusters (2)

This time against a Corran Horn - Horton Salm - Ten Numb combine:

• Ten Numb (33) - B-Wing (31), Fire-Control System (2)
• Corran Horn (37) - E-Wing (35), Fire-Control System (2)
• Horton Salm (30) - Y-Wing (25), Ion Cannon Turret (5)

Set Up
I got initiative so I started with the placement of obstacles. As my three obstacles, again I took the bigger asteroids as I think that my list needs as much hard obstacles as possible. My opponent also was of the same opinion about his list, so we ended up with pretty a lot of big rocks :)
My phantoms deployed first looking towards the open lane in the middle of the battlefield.
All my opponent ships were PS 8, he deployed Ten Numb and Horton Salm on the centre and Corran Horn on my left side, so I deployed Soontir I-am-awasome Fel on my right with the idea to made him run towards the back and approach the centre from an angle.

Set Up

In the first round I went very slow with the phantoms, they did a 1 turn to the right, keeping the distance and letting my opponent come towards the centre.
Horton and Ten moved 2 forwards, whereas Corran approached the centre with a bank.
Soontir speed up toward the enemy and boosted towards the centre also.

End of movement on round 1

Round two saw a what-if moment. From my point of view, Ten Numb and Horton were having two options: either moving forwards towards the centre and the flank of my phantoms or turning to face Soontir. My doubt was what to do with my phantoms.

If the enemy moved forwards I was wondering about making a K-turn and wait for the next round to decloak and attack. In this scenario Soontir will bank to his right and boost behind the asteroid at the end of the battlefield to get cover against the two enemy vessels and try to approach them from behind.

If they turned to face Soontir, then he will need to go towards then to get maximum attack power and the phantoms should try to face the centre of the battlefield and be ready to fire, that mean, decloak.

During the game I usually found myself confronted with this problem, the need to decloak to be able to attack and the apparent bad positioning which this decloak was forcing me to.

However, in this case, I was lucky. I choose to decloak to the side and to turn, so that both phantoms were facing the centre. During the time that I took to think what to do, my opponent changed his mind about what he was going to do from moving towards the centre to chasing Soontir. So, his change of mind suited my final movement.

Corran Horn moved further towards the centre and Soontir closed on the enemy.

The attack round was furious as I concentrated all my fire on Ten Numb who lost several shields. Only Horton Salm was able to fire back against Soontir to no effect.

End of movement on round 2

For round three I was able again to predict the movement of my opponent, this time the obvious move of Corran Horn (except for the barrel roll) who moved towards the centre. So Soontir turned I thin 2 and placed himself right behind Corran.

My phantoms moved to try to block the wounded B-Wing, which collided with one of them. However in the picture the Y-wing seems to be were it was at the end of the previous round of movement, this is due to the fact that when it tried to moved, both the B-wing of Ten Numb and the Interceptor of Soontir were in the way, so it barely moved this round. No actions for them also.

The uncloaked phantom killed Ten Numb and Soontir started chipping down Corran :)
Corran, however, double tapped the phantom on the back, which lost its shields.

End of movement on round 3

On round four, there was no Ten Numb any more, so my phantoms tried to block the Y-wing. The clocked one (with the number 1) decloaked right and turned 1 to try to get arc on the Y-wing whereas the other did a 2 bank and finished cloaked more or less where Ten Numb was the previous round to try to block Horton. The Y-wing turned 2 and avoided the collision with the cloaked phantom but not to be in arc of the uncloaked one and in range 1.
Corran did a 2 turn to his right and Soontir just did a 2 bank to his left and barrel roll to get Corran in arc at range 1.
I don't remember the outcome of the attacks but I think that Corran was lucky and was either undamaged or lost one shield, not more. Horton was able to ionize the phantom with the number 1, the one on the right.

End of movement on round 4

Sorry about the blurry picture for round 5.

The cloaked phantom decloaked left and did a K-turn whereas the ionized one collided with the Y-wing and barely moved forwards.

Horton ran for cover behind the asteroid and Corran did a K-turn which I was not really expecting, however Soontir is so manoeuvrable that it didn't really matter and none of then was in arc of each other that suited me well enough.
Horton managed to ionize again the phantom which finished the round lossing its last shield. Now, both of then were shieldless.

End of movement on round 5

Round six saw the forced movement of the ionized phantom which cloaked to increase survivability as no target was in range, the other one did a bank to approach the cneter and wait for Soontir to turn around and join and also cloaked.

Horton decided to try to get after Soontir with the idea of placing an ion token on it whereas Corran went after the phantoms.

Soontir turned away from the incoming Y-wing and boosted to turn around towards the phantoms.

The cloak and the asteroid helped the phantom on the right to survive undamaged to attack of Corran who double tapped him.

End of movement on round 6

Round seven. The phantom on the left, without number, did a turn towards Corran without decloaking and landed on the asteroid, the other did a K-turn also to try to look for Corran, who being stressed opted to go straight forwards to clear off the stress.
Horton turned towards Soontir who said "ciao bella" to him by speeding and turning to his right.
This was the moment I was referring before. From a tactical point of view I needed the phantoms uncloaked to be able to attack Corran but decloaking will have placed then somewhere else without proper way to chase Corran. So I was having a nice position to fire but no possibility to do so...

End of movement on round 7

On round 8, the phanotm on the right, the one without number, decloaked to its left and did a 1 turn and cloaked to block Corran. The other one decloaked forwards and did a 1 turn to try to cover a left turn for Corran.
Horton was turning to follow Soontir and Corran surprised me again by K-turning. I seem no to be able to predict those K-turns which now appears so obvious when reviewing the game...
Soontir speeded to help the phantoms.
Corran double tapped the phantom to no effect and Soontir attacked him but don't remember the outcome.

End of movement on round 8

On the final round, the phanotm and Soontir closed into Corran who moved just forward, the second phantom tried to turn around the rock and Horton was still trying to get to Soontir.

The initial attack of Soontir destroyed Corran and we finished the round and the game.

End of movement on round 9

It was a very nice game. I was very lucky being able to take out Ten Numb so quickly at the beginning of the game. I think that this really pushed the balance in my favour. Also, this time I did not forget to use the sensor jammer and the autothrusters. Those two upgrades are great imho, Soontir was free to fly and to attack the Y-wing at range 3 without risk of being ionized and with nice chances of not being damaged by the responding fire.
I also liked the list of my opponent and he really lamented his change of plans on round two; this was for sure a key moment of the game for both of us.
I am looking forward to fly my list a few more times :) :)

First flight of the Phantom - a X-Wing battle report

When I started with X-wing upon it release I was a bit frustrated with the game and I did not liked it too much, however some months later with more ships than the few ones coming with the core game on the table, I loved it.
However, for some unfathomable reason, I decided to buy only the ships that were part of the movies, so no HWK. Then wave 4 arrived and they were only ships not from the movies, so I passed. Shortly after I changed again my mind and got them but after reading on the web and watching videos of the way phantoms were played and taking into consideration that I was still learning to fly TIE interceptors I decided to let them rest in their storage box.
Actually, a friend of mine used one of my phantoms before I even considered trying it :)
Now, there is the new FAQ with new rules for the decloak and here I am trying my phantoms for the first time, maybe a little bit to late for the great decloak party but anyway...

For my first flight with phantoms I took two generic, low PS ones, which should be great blockers now and this little fellow called Awesome Fel.
My list:

• Sigma Squadron Pilot (34) x 2 - TIE Phantom (25), Recon Specialist (3), Sensor Jammer (4), Stygium Particle Accelerator (2)
• Soontir Fel (32) - TIE Interceptor (27), Royal Guard TIE (0), Push the Limit (3), Autothrusters (2)

My opponent knows that I like to fly Empire, so he went with the following Rebel list:

• Dutch Vander (39) - Y-Wing (23), R2-D6 (1), Proton Torpedoes (4), Ion Cannon turret (5), Shield Upgrade (4), Wingman (2)
• Dash Rendar (60) - YT-2400 (36), Squad Leader (2), Heavy Laser Cannon (7), Proton Rockets (3), C3P0 (3), Outrider (5), Engine Upgrade (4)

A very heavy two ship list, with a Dash on steroids.

When I saw that, something in my brain started yelling to me "stay outside of arc, stay outside of arc", which is one of the mantras of the TIE Interceptor although at that time I was having the impression that I was missing something and of course, try to get into range 1 of Dash because of the famous "donut hole".

For the Set Up, my phantoms were first, then his two ships and then Mr. Baron.

Set Up

I you can see we were using the new tournament obstacle placement rules, so each one of us took three from the two core sets and the YT-2400 and Decimator expansions and made the obstacle pool and place them following initiative order.
Having highly manoeuvrable ships I went for the biggest rocks, also Dash laughs about the debris clouds as he ignores then during the activation phase, therefore no roll of dice and no stress and as you can land on them and still shooting, he will have a lot of fun doing so and flying carelessly all around if you only put debris clouds or too many of them.
I placed my phantoms on the central lane to keep my options open and let Soontir la-mano-de-dios on the right with an open acceleration lane to the far end of the battle field.
Dash Rendar with engine upgrade is able to cover 9 units of forward movement on the first round (36 cm) and he will be able to fire at range 3 if you try to move towards him which is disturbing if you happen to have lower PS as my phantoms do. Therefore they turn 3 to the right, to keep the distance with the enemy and cloaked (free evasion due to the Stygium Acc.).
My opponent went soft with his ships and moved forward on a straight line.
The Baron went also forwards and boosted left to go into the back of the enemy.
There was no exchange of fire this round.

End of the First round

 Here I had a "what if" moment. My phantoms could turn to their left again keeping the cloak to seek cover behind the debris cloud and try to decloak next round to attack the approaching Dash or to follow Soontir to the back of the battlefield or could do a K-turn, still cloaked, to be prepared to confront the approaching Dash face to face also on the next round.
I was afraid of the jousting face to face which with Dash maybe was an error to be afraid of, so I decided to turn left.
He bank with the two ships and I think that Dash boosted forwards.
Soontir went forwards, boosted left and barrel roll to stay away from Dash, outside of arc of the Y-wing but keeping it within his own arc. This was the part when my brain was happy about the being outside of enemy firing arcs, however:

• Dash has turret weapon and was in range, so Soontir was attacked by a Heavy Laser Cannon which rolled three impacts; Lady Fortuna gave Soontir three pure evades on the defence roll. So far so good.
• Dutch Vander also has a turret weapon (surprise!!!) which I have forgotten about and he also attacked Soontir.
• Soontir was equipped with autothrusters but maybe concerned as I was with the movement and options for the phantoms I totally forgot about it.
• Relevance of it: I cannot tell because I cannot remember if Dutch rolled  two or three impacts. Soontir rolled one evade and two blanks; therefore if Dutch rolled two impacts with the forgotten autothrusters there will be no damage to him; if Dutch rolled three impacts there was no difference.

Any way, Soontir finished the round stressed (Push the Limits) and ionized due to the attack from Dutch. Just the dream of every Tie interceptor's opponent.

End of the second round.

I decided to decloak the phantoms to the left and made them turn 1 to the left. One managed to avoid the debris cloud and was able to focus (2 tokens because Recon Spec. and evade because Stygium Acc.), the other one only got the evade from Stygium Acc.
Dash was blocked by this second phantom, so no actions for him :)
And universal Karma made Dutch to collide with the asteroid, so no actions and no shooting for him which overcompensate the forgotten autothrusters :)
Soontir was forced to go 1 straight and to keep the stress.
Dash fired on the other phantom and here, again, I forgot something, the phantoms have Sensor Jammer, I designed then to be as tanky as possible and then I forget about it...
Anyway, that was end of round three.

End of round three.

On round four I made another miscalculation. I moved one phantom forwards over Dash and into cloak but for no reason I let the other one, which was flying behind, to fly onto Dash instead of over him. So no actions, therefore no cloak, ouch!
Dutch cleared the asteroid and approached the phantoms; Dash moved a bit away.
Soontir turned left just right on the border of the battlefield to approach Dutch from behind :)
There was some heavy shooting here, an one of the phantoms was ionized, the one closer to Dash. I forgot again to use the sensor jammer :(

End of round four.

The phantom closest to Dash moved the forced 1 straight of the ionization, the other one I cannot remember.
The Y-wing moved towards the phantoms and Dash started to turn around.
Soontir approached Dutch.
And it seems to me that I do not have a picture of the fifth round...

On the round six, one of the phantoms made a K-turn and the other one somehow managed to move close to the asteroid to block Dash who was turning. Soontir also managed to get there. Both phantoms have a evade, so both decloaked somehow and got no further actions, one because of the stress of the K-turn and the other one I have no idea, sorry.
The mixing picture of round 5 makes it difficult for me to recall the details.
Obviously there was some heavy shooting here, Dash fired against Soontir and both, Soontir and the left most phantom fired against the Y-wing, which was destroyed.

Anyway, end of round six.

Next round, obviously the phantom closed on the centre of the battlefield. The other one tried to use a rock for cover and Soontir just flyed pass Dash. This round finished with the death of the phantom closest to Dash.

Round seven at the end of movement

And we called it. We did not count victory points, but my phantom was 34 points and his Dutch was 39 points, so it would have been a modified victory for me. Not so bad taking into account all the thing we forgot concerning not only my ships but also his, for example, both of his ships were having ordnance which was not used (yes, we are aware about all the discussion concerning the uselessness of ordnance, and it can also be that he did not find a moment to use it, but I think, honestly, that he forgot about it).
A special comment about his list. Dutch Vander allows another friendly ship at range 1-2 to acquire a target lock after himself acquires one. So, he was moving Dutch (PS 6), making him to do another action apart from target lock (for example, focus) and then moving Dash (PS 7) and using his action to activate squad leader and ordering Dutch to acquire a target lock. This allowed him to give target lock-focus to either Dutch or to Dash according to the circumstances. I found it very nice.

Game's Club tournament - Round 3

Final round of the tournament, this time against Antonio who was flying a "Panic attack list" which he developed without knowing that he was working on an already known design, which for me probes that basic, solid design are sometime that people find again and again independently from each other.
His list:

• Blue Squadron with Tactician x3
• Gold Squadron with Ion Cannon Turret and R3-A2 (the so called stress-bot)

Both of us we were already tired after the other two rounds and the working day as the tournament took place Friday after work, so we made probably not the smartest decisions during the battle.

Anyway, I calculated more or less the amount of "pure" hits that his list was worth as 24 (each Blue is 3 hull, 5 shield and the Y-wing is 5 hull, 3 shield) whereas my one was about 28 (Vessery is 3 hull, 3 shield; the shuttle is 5 hull and 5 shields and each bomber has 6 hull) and I decided to go in a pure jousting run.

Set Up, ready to smash into each other

 Both of us moved forward, so that at the end of the second  round we were in range of shooting but I moved too far away one bomber and the other not enough so that I was not able to concentrate my fire on only one B-wing, so all his ships were alive after my initial salvo.
The end of round three is depicted in the awful picture here, it seems to me that my mobile phone was drunk, anyway we block nicely each other on the left side and on the right side my bomber was able to K-turn onto an asteroid (!) and Vessery was totally out of position.

Drunk mobile phone photo

 All his available ships fired on the shuttle which went kaboom. I was still trying to reposition my forces :(

Shuttle gone and Vessery looking for Vespene gas :(

 At the end, time was called and even after been able to destroy one of the B-wings it was a lost for me :(

Final round.

It was a nice confrontation but a bad game, we were tired and not really focused.

It was a nice, friendly tournament and everyone got something (cloak tokens, yepa!! )

Game's Club tournament - Round 2

After winning against Ciro I got to play against the other winner, our best player, Jose Luis as the other game between Andreas and Antonio finished in a draw.
He was supposed to fly a Ten Numb / Dash Rendar list for which everyone else was trying to find a counter. I have early on decided I wanted to try Vessery, so not worries on this front, or so far so good for me :)
However he shoed up with the following Dash/Corran list:

• Dash Rendar with Veteran Instincts, Heavy Laser Cannon, Outrider and Engine upgrade
• Corran Horn with R2-D2, Fire Control System, Lone Wolf and Shield Upgrade

A very tanky Horn and a Dash Donut of Death, copy-paste more or less from the more current meta.

Just to recap, my list was:

• Vessery with Veteran Instincts (36 points)
• Omicron with Adv. Sensors, Fleet Officer and Engine upgrade (31 points)
• Scimitar x2 (32 points)

My list was 99 points, his was 100 points, so initiative was for me, with Vessery moving and shooting before Corran.

Set Up

 For the Set Up I decided to try to get all the asteroids on one section of the map and to avoid that section by deploying on the other side. Jose Luis, so far, has always deployed his two ships on opposite corners. This time he deployed Corran on one corner opposite my one and Dash in the centre.
I am aware of the incredible speed of a Dash with engine upgrade, so I decided to roll it slow in the first round (part of the battle field is occluded in the picture, actually I moved 1 forward with the shuttle and the rest of the ships moved accordingly).

End of the first round

 As you can see, he also moved slowly forwards, so that at the end of the first round we were not even close to engage in combat.

 For the second round I tried to start turning towards Horn using the Fleet officer with Advanced sensors to get the two focus tokens before revealing a green maneuver to clear off the stress immediately. My opponent kept moving slowly towards me. Again we were outside of engagement distance.

End of the second round.

 In the third round I "banked" again with the shuttle which was able to target lock Corran, I used barrel rolls for the bombers to cover the exit of the pocket where Dash and Corran were and stopped Vessery against the shuttle (I cannot remember now if on purpose or just by accident).

Third round after my movement.

 My opponent made Dash to slice out the pocket whereas Corran just came through it firing like crazy. I tried to block him on the fourth round.

Fourth round after my movement.

Fourth round after his movement.

 As you can see Dash was just flying around shooting with his turreted heavy laser cannon and, I must say, the Lady Luck was on his side; he did not stopped rolling impact after impact (we all known that a "hit" is not an outcome of the red dice ;D )

End of the fifth round

I was forced to try to regroup my forces after the dispersion on the fifth round, but lost the two bombers on the final round, without being able to seriously damage any of the enemy ships...

End of the game

To add salt to injury, I must say that my opponent was playing simultaneously on another table against Andreas and also beat him.
As I said, our best player :)