Stay on Target: Disco Vader 4 Tournament report

This Thursday I took part in the 4^th Disco Vader X-Wing tournament being held at Kirton Games (and their last in their current venue, as they’re moving to a new, bigger store!).  

I decided to enter my new scum list (IG-88C, Manaroo and Gand Findsmen), even though I had only played it twice before during some practice games I really wanted to see how it would hold up in a tournament and this would be a good opportunity for me to test it out and start to develop some strategies and tactics for it. 

As in previous Disco Vader tournaments we were going to play 3 games over the cause of the evening.  My first game was against and Imperial List that featured the new Kylo Ren shuttle from the Force Awakens.  The game was closely matched and even raised a few questions (Like what happens to condition cards such as “I’ll show you the power of the Darkside” if you destroy the ship that created that condition.  If you know the answer comment below because we were stumped!). In the end I managed to snatch the victory. 

My second game was against Disco Vader himself and I was almost tabled!  I had some really unlucky dice rolls (and my opponent also had some very lucky ones!).  At one point I had an opportunity to destroy one of his ships with IG-88 but I drew the damage card that prevented me from being able to attack during the next opportunity to do so, which left me missing out on the perfect chance to take a ship out at range 1.  Fortunately IG-88 managed to hold on just long enough to prevent me from losing 100 nil! 

NB: My opponent during this game would go onto later win the tournament.  So I don’t feel too bad loosing this game to the eventually champion! 

In my final game I faced a scum off.  Both of us were using Attanni Mind links which is a very nice trick the Scum faction have access to.  I messed up a bit early on in the game forgetting the order my ships would fly in and as such ended up bumping IG-88 into Manaroo (I’m putting this down to being tired).  In the end I managed to win this game as well, finishing with IG-88 down to below 50% damage and Manaroo just over 50%, so it was close.  

In the end I finished 7^th out of 14, so middle of the table, which isn’t too bad at all. More importantly I’ve also got some more games under my belt with my new list and I’m fairly happy with the set up.  I just need to focus on some tactics.  Anyway here are some photos I took during the tournament.  Hope you enjoy them. 

 

Stay on Target - Testing out a new scum list

This evening I managed to test out my new Scum list for X-Wing.  I decided after Regionals that I wanted to try a new list with some new ships (I normally play Rebels or Scum) and as I had been playing a lot of Rebel lists recently I opted to go back to Scum. 

My plan was to do a loosely themed list that was competitive enough to play with in future tournaments.  Ideally, I wanted a minimum of 3 ships and I wanted each ship to represent one of the many Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars universe.  With a lot of tinkering I eventually managed to come up with the following…

IG88-C (36)

Autothrusters (2)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

GAND FINDSMAN (25)

Misthunter (0)

Tractor Beam (1)

4-LOM (1)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

MANAROO (27)

K4-Security Droid (3)

Unhinged Astromech (1)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

In my first practice game, it went down to the wire ending with Manaroo slogging it out against a TIE Advanced Prototype.  It got down to both of us having 1 hull point left each but the TIE managed to get the final shot on Manaroo and thus winning the game.  To be honest the game was a lot closer than I thought it was going to be.  I thought I would get bested very early on.  The Tractor Beam never really came into play and the Gand Findsman was taken out early in the game.  Although I did use the 4-LOM crew ability I didn’t really take full advantage of it (Mainly because I forgot what it could do).  IG-88 did well and held his own and Manaroo was rolling some mean attack dice.  My opponent was using two TIE Advanced, a TIE Fighter and the new Upsilon Shuttle with Kylo Ren on board and General Hux.  There are some nice builds that you can do with that set and the new condition cards can be deadly in the right situations arise.

After the first game, we rejigged our lists and tried them pout again.  The only change I made was to ditch the Misthunter title (and tractor beam) and use the 2 points left to give IG88 a Fire Control System.  Here’s my amended list…

IG88-C (36)

Autothrusters (2)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

Fire Control System (2)

GAND FINDSMAN (25)

4-LOM (1)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

MANAROO (27)

K4-Security Droid (3)

Unhinged Astromech (1)

Attanni Mind-Link (1)

As in the first practice game the Gand Findsman got taken out fairly quickly (Turn 2 if I remember).  He got Swam leader’d to death (no escaping 7 attack dice!).  Next to go was Manaroo who got ganged up on.  Luckily IG88 was in good shape and managed to win the game for me taking out the Upsilon Shuttle and a TIE Advanced Prototype.  I think this list worked a bit better, especially as “Iggy pop” got the free target lock whenever he performed an attack on someone, thus giving him a free action. 

I was pleased that my list performed much better than I thought it would.  I still need to play it a few more times before taking it to any tournaments, especially as I need to get my head around the sequence to play things in and figure out which action I should do and it what order.  However it seems to be working well so far.  I’ll probably stick with its current configuration, play against a  few more opponents with different lists and see how it performs against them.  

Once I’m happy with the list I move on to figuring out how to use the new Quad Jumper!