WORLDS PREP I: Infinite Possibilities... But Not Infinite Time

I'm going to play in the World Championships of X-Wing at the end of March, at Adepticon.

This is exciting, and because it's probably the biggest competitive event I've played in for a long time I want to be well prepared.  I want to share some of the journey in that preparation with you, and along the way I'd appreciate any feedback and help I get back in return!

In one way this World Championships is landing at a perfect time: we've just had a points update and three expansions worth of new ships dropped into the game (Hotshots & Aces II, Battle of Yavin, Battle of Coruscant) so the metagame is swirling with uncertainty and unrealised potential.  In another way, though, it feels like it's too close and coming at me altogether too quickly.  I would always describe myself as being 'faction agnostic', meaning I play a bit of everything that takes my fancy across all seven factions, but that becomes a problem when all seven factions have just received new stuff at the same time.

How do I even know where to begin?  Should I be looking at the new Han Solo?  Should I be looking at Tri-Fighters?  Having a new 4pt T-70 makes beefy Resistance look pretty scary, but is it scarier than a 4pt Wolffe in an ARC-170?

I feel like there is a galaxy of infinite possibilities stretching out in front of me... but I definitely don't have infinite time to explore them all!

In actual fact, my timeline for getting ready for Worlds is very tight, and it's largely being dictated by three key gates I need to pass through along the way...

My first gate (at time of writing) is just ten days away, on the 21st of January.  The Wampa Warm Up is a tournament being held at Element Games in Stockport to both kick off the new year of X-Wing but also (as the name suggests) function as a warm-up for anyone in the north of England who is going to Worlds.

A little over a month after that comes the second gate, which is the Sith Taker Open 2023.  The STO is now an annual fixture in the UK events calendar and in the absence of large scale official organised play events has become the largest X-Wing tournament in the country.  The 2023 date was set well befeore Worlds was announced to be taking place at Adepticon but it's given the STO a bit of an extra bite as it's likely to be the best chance anyone in the UK (and wider Europe) has to play in a proper big event before Worlds itself.

The final gate in my timeline is an actual literal gate... it's the departure gate at Manchester International Airport by when I'll need to have packed the ships and pilots and upgrades that I'm intending to play for an enture week in Chicago.  There will be room for some spares and options to come along, but packing necessities will mean I need to be pretty close to locked in to my final squad list by then.

The Four Corners of the Galaxy

I'm an average Joe.  I work 9-to-5 five days a week, I have a daughter to look after and a wife to keep happy if I want to be able to take a week off parenting to go and play with plastic spaceships on the other side of the world.  That's a lot of my X-Wing prep time gone already.  I also don't use Vassal or TTS, I prefer to play in real life with actual ships and things.  I tried TTS a bit during 2020 but it left me cold and I found I'd rather spend my evenings painting real ships I wasn't playing with that I would actually playing with digital ships.  Right now I'm regretting that a bit, but I'm probably too far behind the curve on TTS to catch up and get a meaningful amount of practice and prep from it.

I play 2-3 games per week on a Tuesday evening, and I've got two tournaments ahead of me to get actual live combat practice in.  

That's a long-winded way of saying that I felt like I needed to cut my options down dramatically so that I could focus my efforts to get maximum results quickly.  Use the Wampa Warm-Up to get a check on my general direction of travel, between Wampa and STO would be my best time to make a dramatic course-correction if needed, then ideally I'd come out of the Sith Taker Open with a list that I liked enough I could get into details of tweaking upgrades and getting enough repetitions in that I wasn't missing triggers.

So how could I chop seven possible factions and ~infinity possible squadlists down to a manageable number?

How do I solve anything in life?

I opened an Excel spreadsheet.

I cannot tell you how much that quadrant chart has helped me to put some list-building blinkers in and focus down onto my best chance of finding a list I like.

On the Left-to-Right axis I rated factions by how familiar I was with them.  I might say I'm faction agnostic but in reality there's some factions I've played a lot more of than others.  On the far right is thte Empire, which is the faction I qualified for Worlds with, while on the far left is Separatists because every time I've put Vultures and calculate tokens onto the table they've been awful and made me want to throw them at the wall.

On the Top-to-Bottom axis I rated factions by how much I was currently interested in flying them, before I started digging into list-building too deeply what was my surface level interest in them?  At the top is First Order because I love their aggressive style and Tie Whispers are perhaps my favourite ship in the game right now, while at the bottom was Rebel and Scum because I felt like I'd be leaning into big base ships (which I don't play much) or alpha-strike synergies (which I personally find dull to play).

Anything in the top-right quadrant is something I think I want to play and I'm familiar with playing it,, while anything in the bottom-left quadrant is something that I'm not too interested in and think other people will play it better than me anyway.

Cutting this quadrant grid in half immediately chopped my options right down.

I won't even open a squad builder for Rebels, Resistance or Scum.  I'm sure there's good lists in those factions, and I'm sure I'll run into them at Worlds, but I'm not the right person to go dredging through those factions for the right combinations on a short timeline.  I'd happily play them for funsies on a Tuesday night and see if anything clicks for me, but not while I'm trying to be serious for a minute.

The biggest sacrifice I think I made here was Separatist.  I really like a lot of the new Separatist toys and I think I'd be able to make a squad that I liked in the faction.   I actually had a CIS squad built and packed into my bag for yesterday evening before I made this chart and took it out, but two things have swayed me against spending time exploring in that direction.

1. I've been here before with CIS.  It must be a good half a dozen times that I've looked at CIS and gone "yeah, I think this is gonna be really good I'll give it a try!" and every time I wind up picking up a Calculate token and waving it at my opponent and cursing how crap they are compared to Focus.  CIS is the faction of underachieving my expectations and I could easily be about to get burned yet again.
   
   
2. If I'm right and there IS something in CIS that's really good then lots of other people are ahead of me in being familiar with the faction.  They'll find it first, they'll make better listbuilding choices than I would, and they'll fly it better on the table than I would.  The faction is so far over to the left side of the Familiarity axis that I don't think I've got time to drag it over onto the right-hand side.

Seven Becomes Three... Becomes One

The quadrant chart had been so helpful in looking at factions that I started to apply it within factions and sort through possible squad styles and pilot choices.

What became obvious quite rapidly was that I had a clear Plan A to focus on: First Order.

Because I qualified for Worlds playing a Sloane Swarm I'm emotionally attached to wanting to follow through on that and fly Imperials at Worlds at well.  But it's a different game now and none of the pieces I flew in February 2020 would be with me at Adepticon.

Sloane is banned, generics are no longer enjoying the moment of efficiency and success that I'd struck upon three year ago... as much as I loved this list it was in the past and my options for the future in Empire weren't grabbing me.

I feel like an Empire list I made would be pivoting around a particular central piece to the strategy (much like how I'd pivoted around Admiral Sloane), and I either don't believe in them, or don't enjoy flying them.

I've never believed in Defender Vader and I DEFINITELY don't believe in Battle of Yavin Vader.  I tried a Howlrunner swarm last month and actually found it a bit boring and lacking in dial/repositioning options to keep me interested.  I do believe in TIE/x1 Vader but I think other people will play an ace like that better than me and that he's a known quantity most opponents will understand how to play against him.

The pilot I'm most likely to play in Empire is probably Morna Kee in her Decimator after I hit on a list I really liked for Morna just before all the new points and ships arrived at the end of last year.  My initial reaction was that things like Rebel Alpha and Wolffe/Jag Republic lists would rise to the top and be a real problem for Morna to survive so I've not used her in a while,but as that doesn't seem to be happening (yet, it's too early to tell) maybe she can still work for me.. although I've not played Decimators much in general, hence why she's over on the left-hand side of the grid.  

I would happily be championing her at Worlds but Morna's a Plan B at best, and a Plan B that I feel I'd need to switch onto quite early.

The Galactic Republic was in a different boat, for me.  I've flown Republic a lot less than I have Empire over the years but I nearly qualified for 2019 Worlds with it, and I was an early adopter of the Calibrated Laser Targering/Seventh Fleet Gunner combination and have played that a lot over the last two years.  But while I know that particular list style quite well the rest of the faction is pretty much an unknown for me - I've never flown Anakin as a top ace, I've never really embraced the Naboo Starfighter, and I've literally NEVER flown an Actis ETA because I was always so focused on having the CLT/7FG combo instead.  There's a lot of cool looking stuff in Battle of Coruscant but it's all new and I'll need time to figure it out.

So the whole Republic faction, for me, boils down to actually being the Seventh Fleet Gunner faction and I'm not sure that strategy is in a great place right now, especially after nerfs to the LAAT loadouts (thanks for nothing, Satine!).

I'm confident there's going to be very strong lists in Republic, but I'm not sure I know the new strong stuff well enough to play it at a high level.  What was really telling to me was that, as with Empire, this quadrant chart didn't really place anything into the top-right box.  The stuff I liked I didn't trust in the current metagame and the stuff I thought had the most value is stuff I wasn't familar with.

So with Republic joining Empire as a Plan B, we were down to one Plan A...

I won't go through all my First Order options and thoughts right now because I think I'm going to be talking about them a lot more in the next two months, but I think that quadrant chart shows clearly why I'm happy to focus onto the faction.

There's a lot of stuff that I'm confident is good AND I enjoy playing it AND I'm pretty experienced with it.  That's a solid base for the faction and lets me work around and explore other options.  

I can look at pieces like Captain Phasma (which I know but think is probably not good) and see if I can move them up into the top-right quadrant.  I've got time to look at pieces like Kylo Ren and see if I can get enough games with him to move him across into the top-right.

At some point I'll run the exercise of cutting this grid in half, like I did with the factions, but before I do that I'm going to spend some time moving pilots around this grid (and some other ones that I've left off for now so it's not too cluttered.  And I'm confident that there's enough options that I like/know in First Order that I'll be able to find a list I can take to Worlds.

Morna Kee and Wolffe are still standing by, for now.  The first real test will be the Wampa Warm-Up, where I'll be hoping to lock in to First Order at faction level or make the decision to change course completely.

What that First Order list will be?  Unsure.  Will it have six ships?  Five ships?  Four ships?  Unsure.  But using the quadrant charts has already massively helped me in focusing my energy away from the likes of Han Solo, General Grievious and Poe Dameron, which feels like a step in the right direction.

Space Nazi's FTW!