Spark of rebellion

Weirdest regional season There's the amount of tournaments, there's the interference from System Open's, there's a new FAQ. There's a meta that doesn't know what to do with itself.  # of tournaments Somehow it feels there are very few tournaments in Belgium this season. I'll list them up: 25/02/2018  Aalst  De Hermelijn (24/32) 11/03/2018  Mechelen  Spelfanaat (44/40) 24/03/2018  Seneffe  Cartazimut (42/40) This are only 3 confirmed regionals. It feels that last year we had at least twice the amount. Lets just hope that this is just a lapse and we can get more tournaments going again the following years.  Luckily our dutch neighbors also have a list  of tournaments. 3 weeks ago I attended the one at Dice and Legends in Amersfoort (taking third place) and this weekend I will be going to Subcultures in Utrecht.  System Open's There's a whole bunch of System Open qualifiers going on together with this regional...

Prepping for Belgian Nationals Belgian Nationals are coming up soon and I have a problem... Several planning issues and work-related stuff interfere with my regular scheduled training. And now the FAQ and Guns for Hire are released. So there is a disturbance in the meta and I have to prepare for it somehow. Time to start brainstorming. If you have not read the new FAQ , be sure to read it and get up-to-date. There are some huge changes in there concerning Biggs Darklighter, Jumpmasters and "Genius". I'm not going to go over them here. There are some excellent blogs and podcasts out there that have talked about it in detail :) What I want to do now is pick between 4 lists. 4 lists which I think will work well in the new meta. 2 of them are older lists, but untouched by FAQ v4.4.0. The other 2 are new lists, using the new hotness from Guns for Hire: "Harpoon Missiles".  Thug life Aka Quad TLT Y-wings. I talked about it in length on my previo...

Imposter Syndrome Hey, I'm an X-wing player that likes Quad TLT Y-wings. Recently I've been playing (and winning) with 4 TLT Y-wings, also known as Thug Life. Just today I took it to a 5th place with a 3-2 record in a 22-people tournament at Ludotrotter . And while the list is old, in the current meta it's absolute bonkers. It eats up Captain Nym's for breakfast. This bomb-meta is a way better environment for it then the ace-wing meta when it was first released.  But there is a bias against the list. After all, it is a very "easy" list. And I admit, it's probably not the most fun list to play against. And it's very luck-dependant. With that I don't mean dice-luck, because the list is very variance-friendly, more on that later. What  I mean are match-ups. Today I faced 3 Dengar-Nym lists, a real staple list here lately. And I ate them up. Easily winning 100-0 or 100-25. But I also met a list with 2 defenders and against three-agility ...

Shout-outs! It has been a while since I made a post. Sorry about that. I do want to give some credits to the amazing tournaments I went to the last few weeks.  Store Championship Charleroi A few weekends ago I flew Dengar/Nym for the first time at the Store Championship in at Ludotrotter in Charleroi. I played Fabrice, Jean-Christophe, Arnaud, Laurent and Benoit and went 2-3 finishing 13th out of 23. I flew Dengar/Nym, but without any previous experience. I'm a quite aggressive player and my Nym usually doesn't survive it to round 3 as I fail to keep it out of arcs. Dengar on the other hand is a beast with a very good action-economy. There is a reason this list is doing so good in the current meta.  Rostbaerdt Cup The weekend after there was a small 60-point at Demo-Spel . Great fun with some really good players. I went for fun and giggles and brought Death ! Off course if the opponents all continue to roll 3 blanksies on those Proximity Mines it doesn'...

I give up Well, not on X-wing of course. But on my challenge. Honestly there is only one Store Championship and one list left. But I'm just not feeling on submitting and playing that list next week. I went into the challenge with confidence. But then Wave 11 happened. So many new toys and good lists came out.  And my last list was going to be a fluffy list, just like the list I played this tournament was an older one. But in the current meta it just doesn't work. So yes. I'm giving up. Next week in Charleroi I will be playing a competitive list in preparation of the Nationals, foregoing my last challenge-list that was aptly named " The last Jedi ".  So this weekend's tournament was at Spelfanaat Sint-Niklaas . And it was great! And I lost every single match and ended in last place. Reason for that was the list, I think... I was flying BBBBZ . It's an older list, but during practice it seemed to work. One improvement to the original list is th...

Invincibility lies in the defense Or not.... But first the introduction! This weekend's tournament was at Outpost Brussels . It's basically my X-wing home away from home and I have competed in more tournaments here than anywhere else. Organization is always top-notch and next to the FFG door-prizes (Engine Upgrade and Integrated Astromech/R2-D2) we also got a bunch of custom-made acrylic tokens.  My list was not one of the original six . With the addition of an extra Store Championship I was able to use this tournament to try out wave XI. The list contains the very-high defense combo of Biggs and Lowhhrick. Added to them is some alpha-strike potential with Nera Dantels. It's not the new fur-ship rebels that became popular in the last week (with Rex and Jess Pava). Main reason for this, as I'm not afraid of netlisting, is that fur-ship rebels wasn't as popular yet when we had to send in our lists almost 2 weeks ago. Sending in your lists b...

Win fast, lose faster Yesterday was the store championship at Outpost Ghent . There were 18 people attending. As per the rules of my challenge I flew a new list. This time it was Dengar-Tel . It's an insanely strong and fast alpha-strike list and there's obviously a reason Justin used this list to win the world championships. I did slightly worse, but still managed to take 4th place against some really enjoyable wave 11 lists.  Round 1: TIE Aggressor First round was against Gertjan. A new player who brought Double Edge, Lt. Kestal and Backdraft. His Kestal was pushed up to PS 9 with Veteran Instincts. He chose initiative and this turned out a mistake as he moved first, with the Lt in front, and I slowly rolled into range 3, got a target lock on both jumps with K4. Now that first round of shooting only Lt. Kestal had  range, took 2 shields of one jump with TLT. I promptly returned fire with 2 plasma torpedoes and deleted one Aggressor. I'm afraid things went poorly ...

Something old, something new Today I went to the lovely Store Championship of Namur. It was organised by ZFMSC  and Imaginarium . The tournament itself was hosted across the store in the burger-bar City Break , a pretty trendy place with good music and an overall fun atmosphere. And during lunch break we had an amazing hamburger! 34 people were attending, among them a former World-Champion. As per the challenge : I flew one of my previously introduced lists. This week it was triple Defenders . The list is pretty straightforward. Ryad and the Onyx Squadron Pilot supply target locks for Vessery. Vessery is free to barrel roll or take a defensive focus every turn since the free target lock and Expertise give him every possible attack modifier imaginable. However when Vessery is the only one left it's pilot ability becomes useless. Round 1 Chewbacca - Kanan A proof of this is already present in the first round. The opponent was running Chewbacca with Predator, Gunne...

Swag, swag, SWAG! No Store Championship this weekend, so this blog post is all about swag! Everyone loves swag! Don't you love swag? I love swag! And lately more and more players have taken to handing out custom (non-official) alternative art cards in tournaments. (I'm trying to start the movement in Belgium) It's in no way a requirement and no-one will look at you dirty if you don't bring anything. It's just a little extra to be nice. Look at this picture of all amazing cards I was gifted by other players. So if you think you're kind of an artist or know someone who draws stuff and you're allowed to use their art, you can make these cards yourself pretty cheap! For those that want to, but have no idea on how to begin. Here's a small guide! Creating the card Today I'm going to show you the process by making an actual card out of this amazing picture of a TIE fighter I drew! I've long thought about which pilot to use, but ar...

Just keep swimming Alright. Last weekend's tournament at Cartazimut (Mons) didn't go as planned. I brought my Kanan/Biggs list from the European Championship and got destroyed. I ended up 17th out of 22 with a 1-3 record. What happened? Round 1 - Yassin - Jan/Keyan/Thane My opponent was a newer player which probably explains the unusual (at least for me) list. Jan with Predator, TLT and Nien Numb. Keyan with Advanced Sensors and Push the Limit and Thane with R2-D2 (droid), Alliance Overhaul title and Chopper. Going into the match I felt it would be rather easy. Having a double TLT shot with the Ghost would ensure me almost guaranteed 4 hits on those 1-agility ships. However Yassin flew way more aggressive then I  expected which meant I had to switch around targets every turn to have some use of that Fire Control Systems. I traded Keyan for Biggs and then a lot of the Ghost for Jan.  Ezra ejected before the Ghost blew up and I ended up chasing Thane. I was c...