First off its been a while since the tournament but finally I have found a spot to write the blog, Match of the Day on TV family in bed.
The build up to this event was really good, plenty of chat and updates on entrants, leading to 36 people signing up for the event, certainly the biggest event that I have been to for X-wing.

The venue
With having been on holiday and not having had the chance to play since Patriot games I had thought about a new list but with no practice fell back onto the same list.
Omicron Shuttle with Vader, Gamma Bomber with Concussion Missiles and Seismic Charge, 2 Academy TIES, Turr Phenir with Push the Limit
So without further adieu onto the games.
Game 1
Game one and its the Aces! I was drawn against Cadan who had taken an elite three ship imperial list all with stealth devices…it was going to be hard to hit them, I had to hope that Vader would do his thing.

Game 1 – Cadan Jones
So I set up with Vader in the corner in an attempt to keep the Aces in sight for as long as possible, the aces in the other corner seemed to have a plan to try and flank my force.

Vader surveys the Imperial Aces
It was a tricky game this but things helped when an Academy took a pot shot at the Royal Guard at Range 3 through an asteroid…scoring 1 hit…and promptly 6 evade dice later bam bye bye stealth device. With this and more focussed fire the Royal Guard went down, but Turr died in return, but some poor maneuvering saw Soontir Fel hit an asteroid and then Vader took his chance and crushed him. The remainder of the game saw Carnor Jax outflying everyone and in a reverse of the royal guard TIE kept his stealth device all game, despite a critical from Vader.

Carnor Jax dodges another bout of incoming fire
I have to say this is my closet game to date in X-wing winning by 65-64.
Game 2
This game saw me draw a double firespray list flown by Matt

Game 2 – Matt Robinson
Knowing i could not face off against the superior fire power for long I decided to take out Krassis, but this failed and I fluffed a maneuver causing a failed k-turn on my bomber. What this meant in the long run was that the I only could then shoot Boba and stripped his shields too.
The only highlight for me was eventually (with a single hull remaining) Krassis misjudged a turn and flew off the table!

Krassis flies off the table in an attempt to fly another day.
Still this left Matt the winner with 76-46.
Game 3
So dropping down the tables a bit I faced Paul who was flying Mr Han Solo himself.

Game 3 – Paul Davies
I felt confident again going into this game and again I wanted to reduce the firepower that Paul could bring on me so with the rookies flying forward I flew everything towards them with Turr distracting Han on the flank.

Han Solo is intercepted by an Imperial fleet
With one rookie blow from the sky the entire force flew after Han and with the combined wire power stripped his shields and Vader causing a stunned pilot on Han. With my swarm in front of him it was only a matter of time till his destruction.

Chasing Han
With the falcon destroyed the rookie was next and I ran out 100-36 winner.
Game 4
So after chatting with a mate Marcus Pitt and his opponent, Martin, whom he had just beaten. Interestingly all three of us had Vader in an Omicron shuttle. So as we finished chatting about how well this ship was doing the draw came up and I was playing Martin.

Game 4 – Martin Hotchkiss
So with us both understanding what Vader can do I also knew how important it was to reduce the fire power and so used my academy pilots as they should be used and blocked where I could. Despite the bad turn shown below where I flew Vader onto an asteroid it was the poor flying of the firesprays that let Martin down and a couple of crashes for him later in the game was the downfall for him.

Close quarters flying
Once the shuttles were at each others throats I had the fire power to take his down, swiftly followed by one of the Firesprays. Despite my ships being on their last legs I ran out 67-0 winner.
Game 5
After this game I found time to chat to the guy who was on the top table and he was flying Han, and I really wanted to get to play him as my list works well against falcons, but with my early loss it was going to be hard.
So turning up to my table I met Mike, and sure enough he placed a Falcon down in front of me!

Game 5 – Mike Parkinson
So facing Chewbacca and two y-wings I instantly decided to completely ignore the Y-wings and just focus totally on Chewbacca. Even though the y-wings had turrets I did not think that once the Falcon was down they would have the agility to take out the TIE fighters.

Chewie tries to avenge the loss of Han
Despite losing Vader he managed to go down fighting and although he could not cause any critical’s on Chewbacca he did a couple of extra points of damage which saw him off. In return even a y-wing had no problems staying on the tail of the shuttle! The only problem for the rebels was they had 4 TIE’s on theirs.
I ran out 100-24 winner.
Game 6
By this time I was getting tired, and there were a few guys all on 4 wins unfortunately I was in last as one of these was a modified win. The draw seemed to suggest Marcus would play another guy we knew from the Warhammer scene Shane Metcalf, but Cadan had been winning too and so as we had already played he drew Marcus and I drew Shane.

Game 6 – Shane Metcalf
So yet again it’s a falcon and Han was piloting it, I had obviously not done enough to kill him before. Shane had been playing this list really well and with two elite pilots with Marksmanship I really had to do something about one of these and fast.

Ten Numb flies into the combined firepower of the Imperial fleet
This time it was Ten Numb that drew the firepower of the Imperium and he was blown out the sky in short order in exchange for an Academy TIE.

Not Han again
With my 4 ships against Shane’s one I used Vader to destruction doing as much damage to Han as he could before he was destroyed. Still it was a chase and Han was the deer in the headlights. The Bomber had a target lock from early in the game and the targeting computer had time to compute the optimal shooting pattern. Han tried to finish off the damaged Academy TIE but failed and in the end it was his shots that took the final hull point.

Han finally goes down
So the final game was over and it was another big win to me 99-36 and a points total of 23/30.

My results
So we all retired to wait for the final results, all that was know was that “Andy” had won…but seeing as there were tow on the top table which was it…

The wrong Andy got his hands on the medal…temporarily.
Well it was not this one – unfortunately the organisers had the wrong total and shouted the incorrect surname.
So congratulations to Andy Southern for winning against a big field of competitors and also how he only just pipped Andy Robinson to 1st by a few points killed.

The right Andy wins the event
I finished a respectable 4th just behind Marcus. We all had 5 wins, but my modified win earlier in the tournament meant I could not catch them.
The full standings for the event are below.

Top half standings

Bottom half standings
Lessons Learnt
Well another tournament done and dusted and it’s time for some lessons learnt. First of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my opponents, yet again every game a cracker and played in the right spirit of things.
My list flew well yet again and with 10/11 wins across two tournaments it seems it is quite forgiving too. Having said that the game I lost was to a solid list which was flown well and coupled with some mistakes on my part let me down. Cadan with his aces also gave me a run for their money.
The aces make a solid list and I am tempted to fly some of these next time I get a chance to. What it seems though is that the falcon builds seem to really struggle against this build. Three faced and maximum points against all of them. I am yet to face a proper swarm with these guys and I still feel that may the downfall of the list still.
I lost to the twin firespray list and this I should have been able to deal with, I thought that the only opportunity to do this was to focus fire, but I tried to outflank with Turr and this seriusly reduced my fire power, in hindsight he should have been front and central for the initial run on the ships. I think that would have given the extra few hits which would have possibly taken Krassis down.
Any way I came away with another card box and with the number of cards stacking up with all the ships I have this is a great for my storage, in addition all the players there came away with a promo Y-wing card and a Acrylic token.
It was my first trip out to the North West Gaming center and I must say that the place was really well set up for gaming. There was plenty of space around the boards for tokens, cards and elbow room, food amenities and the Element Games shop were all spot on. It was also an easy drive in over the Pennines from Nottingham.
Finally a big thank you to the event organisers and Sai Harris who ran the ship really smoothly I would definitely attend an event run by these guys again.
Thanks for reading, till next time.