A Barrel of Laughs - Squadbuilding handcuffs for fun & profit (mostly fun)

If you skim-read my blog you may wind up mistaking me for a hardcore competitive player because it's so often about tournaments or my trying to find a chink in the competitive metagame for a new squad to function.  That's definitely part of who I am as a player, especially the part about analysing the metagame for a weakness because that tends to be the first step in launching a new squad idea, but although I may occasionally do well at a tournament or two it's usually despite my best efforts to sabotage my success.  

Today I want to share one my favourite ways of forcing myself to shake up squadbuilding and play a bit less seriously: the Barrel.

ENFORCED FUN

That hyper-competitive player is who I was maybe 20-25 years ago when I was tilting myself at breaking through onto the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour gravy train, but it's not who I am today.  What my run at the Pro Tour taught me was twofold: the first was that I wasn't quite good enough because the guys who can make it onto the Pro Tour and stay there are exceptional talents and I don't have what it takes, the second was that trying to dominate the world and failing was twisting me up inside and making me very bitter and unhappy.

I'm a lot older and wiser now but while I've found more balance in my gaming I know that I always have to be on watch for the nasty side taking over again.  One of my favourite ways of keeping him at bay is by creating my own squadbuilding 'rules' that ensure I'm always pulling my punches a bit... 

• Have minimal practice with a squad before you use it.  I'll often play something to the point where I know it's not awful, but ideally I'll have never used the squad before.

• Don't play the same squad twice.  Six rounds is usually enough for me with a squad and then I get itchy feet and want to move on.  Ever since I ran deep at UK Nationals 2016 there's been very few occasions where I've *ever* used the same X-Wing squad in more than one tournament.

• Handcuff myself during squadbuilding.  If I'm forcing myself to take suboptimal decisions and compromising with a squad then I'm happier to keep playing it multiple times. 

Deliberately sabotaging myself like this may seem a weird thing to do but I've it means that I've always got a handy excuse for why I was the bridesmaid and not the bride.  Having that excuse to hand means the other guy will mostly leave me alone and not demand that I win everything in sight.

That third one, the squadbuilding handcuffs, is something that I've written about before.  In First Edition my go-to for this was what I called the 'Wretched Hive' format for Scum squads.  The rules of the Wretched Hive were as follows:

1. Four ships.  All named pilots.
2. None of the pilots could be recognisably 'good' from a competitive standpoint
3. Janky control effects - Ion, Bombs, Tractor etc - were a desirable trait.

That tended to leave me with some fairly silly but fun squads that were good enough to win >50% of games with but would never trouble the top tables of a proper tournament.  Exactly where I wanted to be, in short.

Imagine my shock and horror (and yes, a little delight) when I discovered that virtually exactly the same ships and pilots from my janky First Edition 'Wretched Hive' squad were one of the first powerhouse squads of Second Edition and I accidentally nearly won a massive tournament!

It was clear that I needed a new janky template for Second Edition squadbuilding and during the last 18 months of lockdown I think I've found it.  I want to introduce you to "The Barrel of <insert name here>"

The Barrel of <insert name here>

My first and longest-running Barrel squad started life as a spin-off from my Sloane Swarm that I was playing as the walls closed in and the Covid pandemic started, and I called it the "Barrel of TIEs".  The rules of the Barrel of TIEs were simple:

1. Six ships
2. Each ship has to be a different type
3. TIE Fighter variants only

Look at that, isn't it magnificent?  As a lifelong Imperial fan it's bringing out my inner Krennic just to look at it.

The Imperials are really well-placed to do something like this as there's so many cheap throwaway TIE variants: the TIE Fighter itself, the TIE Aggressor, the TIE/v1, the TIE Bomber, TIE Interceptor, TIE Striker... there's so many cheap models that it's easy to fit in something bigger as well, with room for a TIE Brute, TIE/x1, TIE Phantom, TIE Reaper or even a TIE Punisher.

I've really enjoyed flying six ships with all their different capabilities and their six different dials.  It may sound incredibly daunting at first but I found that as they were all base TIEs there was some maneuvering commonalities that helped you out, and once you had a few games under your belt the challenge in dealing with all these different ships quickly passed over to your opponent for them to try and work out what the hell you were going to do! 

I've flown lots of little iterations and variations on my Barrel o TIEs over the last 12 months but the current version is this one:

Barrel o TIEs

• Lyttan Dree (TIE Brute) - Synced Laser Cannons, Target-Assist MGK-300
• Baron of the Empire (TIE Aggressor) - Proton Rockets
• Scimitar Squadron Pilot (TIE Bomber) - XX-23 Thread Tracers, Bomblet Generator
• Planetary Sentinel (TIE Striker)
• Alpha Squadron Pilot (TIE Interceptor)
• "Wampa" (TIE Fighter)
  (200)

Do you often expect a janky handcuffs list to be able to roll 20 red dice in a turn?  The key strength of this list is that in the Striker, Interceptor and Wampa I've got probably the three cheapest 3-red dice ships in the game.  The key weakness is that almost all my ships are made of papier mache and the dreams of small children, and will crumple and die just as easily as either of those two things.  Range control on the initial engagement is really important to mitigate that weakness, but if you can get in close without half your squad being destroyed then the raw firepower is here to mince up all but the strongest opponents.

I've even managed to persuade somebody else to pick up the mantle of the Barrel o TIEs, and from their feedback in playing the list online it's done very well for them in a couple of tournaments and made the cut despite being a meme!

Tenuously, the Barrel of Monkeys is the original inspiration for why I call these squads Barrels.  Although I thought it was also a Barrel of Soldiers and you tipped them out and they were all different shapes and poses but still all soldiers.  It's actually a Bucket of Soldiers in Toy Story, though, so I screwed the name up right from the get-go.

For the longest time I stayed there and flew my Barrel of TIEs very happily, but now I'm spreading my horizons a little bit and I think there's probably a Barrel to be made in any faction, though First Order and Resistance may need to wait for the upcoming Fury of the First Order and Resistance Y-Wing expansion packs.  Not every faction may be able to run a satisfying six-ship Barrel but I've expanded the rules to mean a five-ship Barrel is allowed when you can't make a fun six-ship Barrel (one of the perks of making up your own rules is you can decide to change them whenever you want).

I've just taken to flying a five-ship "Barrel of Clones" as my new fun list and it was just as much fun as the Barrel of TIEs has been in the past:

Barrel o Clones*

• 212th Battalion Pilot (LAAT Gunship) - Seventh Fleet Gunner
• 104th Battalion Pilot (ARC-170)
• "Goji" (BTL-B Y-Wing) - Ion Cannon Turret, Thermal Detonators, Delayed Fuses
• Loyalist Volunteer (V-Wing) - Alpha-3B "Besh", Thermal Detonator, Delayed Fuses
• "Tucker" (V-19 Torrent) - Ion Missiles
  (200)

In this squad I've leaned into two key things - the first was that as I was borderline forced to take a V-Wing I may as well try to abuse "Goji" with loads of extra green dice if possible, and the second was that I've long been a fan of Seventh Fleet Gunner on the LAAT to give my otherwise puny ships a bigger punch when I need it.

I've had a lot of fun with it, although getting "Goji" active has been tougher than I originally thought the bombs have also unwittingly also acted as bombs and dealt damage and controlled space (which I kind of forgot they would do, duh).  It's a second time where a random assembly of ships & dials has created a really fun playing challenge for me, and what's more: the clones* may have been winning ugly but they've been winning!

And it isn't going to stop with Clones.  As soon as my beloved First Order faction get the TIE Whisper and their own Bomber I'm sure I'll be straight onto building them a "Barrel of Nazis" squad.  A Barrel of Pirates, Barrel of Rebels, Barrel of Droids?  It's all possible and hopefully before long I'll have had fun fielding a "Barrel of..." squad from each of the seven factions.

Can I interest anyone in joining me for a barrel?

* the first person to tell me that a Loyalist Volunteer isn't a clone gets a slap.