WORLDS PREP II - The Wampa Warm-Up

In the last blog I shared how I’d quickly managed to cut my virtually infinite World Championships squad options down from being ‘faction-agnostic’ to being able to commit (almost) fully to First Order, as I was confident I could find something in that faction that I would like and feel comfortable with.

I want to share a bit of how that’s been going, and if you remember I shared my Worlds prep timeline with you and how there were three key gates I needed to pass through on the way, and the first of those was this past weekend: the Wampa Warm-Up at Element Games.

Before we get there, though, I had a couple of weeks of tinkering and testing to get in…

Firstest Orderest

One of the reasons I settled on First Order so quickly was that I was already pretty familiar with the faction.  I spent a lot of 2022 playing various First Order combinations, especially with the TIE Whisper and that’s probably my favourite ship in the game right now.  I love the dynamic of hunting those bullseye arcs, I love the white linked jam actions, I love the synergy with Pattern Analyser (one of my favourite upgrades) to sloop and k-turn but stay aggressive with double linked white actions, and I also love the tactical options of being able to flip to the turret and go in unexpected directions to score objectives.  

I actually enjoyed the TIE Whisper so much that I went out and found somebody who was willing to sell me theirs from the Fury of the First Order box so I own four of the spiky little death balls, which through the second half of 2022 I played in several different configurations:

You could have followed these exploits (but mostly just seen me show off things I painted) on my Instagram. But if you aren't interested in squinting in at these photos I was mostly playing:

• 4x TIE Whisper & Grudge
• 4x TIE Whisper & Ember
• 3x TIE Whisper & Ember & Grudge

I was locked into the 4-4-4-4-4 formation (five ships of 4 squad points each) and really enjoying it.

The other ship I knew I liked, even though I wasn’t playing it much, was the humble TIE/fo.  I know Scorch, Malarus is obviously ever-present (even though I think Scorch is better) and even Static with an Ion Cannon was a solid pick.  And now Hotshots & Aces II has given us ‘better Scorch’ in DT-798 and ‘better Static’ in Lieutenant Galek.  There’s now five TIE/fos that can all throw 3 red dice while only costing 3 squad points.

 

That’s the stuff I knew pretty well and you can see a lot of it up in the top-right quadrant of my First Order pilots chart, which I shared in the last blog.  Known quantities that, by and large, I knew I liked (with a question mark on Grudge after points changes took Proxy Mines off him).

For my first bit of dedicated Worlds preparation and practice I decided I wanted to avoid as many of those known quantities as possible.  I was going to pick up stuff I wasn’t familiar with, or thought was bad, and just double-check my assumptions that I was right to be avoiding them.  With ships like Nightfall, Ember and Scorch safe in the bank I wanted to try the likes of Kylo Ren, Wrath, Captain Phasma and Recoil instead.  My natural instincts are to reach for more ships and more red dice, but are the 5pt and 6pt ships worth losing 2 TIE/fos to bring a tougher or tankier ‘ace’?

6-4-4-3-3 

This shape of squad brings the 6pt Kylo Ren, two 4pt mid-level ships and two of the efficient 3pt TIE/fo fighters.  Kylo in his TIE Whisper was probably the single pilot I most wanted to explore quickly and fully, because I was most confident that he would make it into my squad.  He’s a TIE Whisper (great), he has higher Initiative to hunt bullseye arcs with (great), he has Force (great), and he brings Concussions Missiles to offset having a 2-dice arc outside of his bullseye (great).  For a few weeks I basically stapled Kylo, DT-798 and Scorch together as the two pieces of bread in a sandwich and then rotated various 4pt elements into the filling to see if I liked the taste.

First to go in was Captain Phasma and Backdraft.  I’d really enjoyed the TIE/sf a lot, and Phasma in particular, until the TIE Whisper came along and took my attention away.  I’d noticed the TIE/sf doing some good things at the Exegol Galaxies Championship toward the end of 2022 and was happy to give the /sf another try.  They didn’t last long: I found the /sf required a more rigid approach and formation than I’d become used to playing with the TIE Whispers.  I struggled to get Phasma to even keep arc on things and fire every turn!

This was clearly a ‘me’ thing - the TIE/sf shouldn’t be struggling to shoot at things because its not a particularly awkward ship to fly and use.  But most important to me, given the short timeframe I was working within, was that it being a ‘me’ thing was a valid reason to cut Phasma out of my thoughts.  The TIE/sf is working for people but it’s not working for the way I’m comfortable approaching scenarios, and how much I’ve been enjoying the tactical flexibility of the TIE Whisper to dynamically switch from objective to objective at short notice.  

I’m glad I tried them out to settle a doubt from the mind but I quickly stuck all the TIE/sf pilots back on the shelf – if I wanted to take a TIE/sf I would pick a TIE Whisper instead.  Which, to be honest, is exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 6 months anyway.

After moving the TIE/sf back out for ships I knew I liked: Nightfall with either Ember or Grudge alongside, I shifted my focus to what I thought about Kylo Ren’s TIE Whisper.  And I thought he was pretty good!  Having an I5 TIE Whisper was great, although I did decide early on that I wanted Instinctive Aim over Brilliant Evasion in order to fire Concussion Missiles, just because the TIE Whisper’s linked actions don’t interact with its Target Lock action, so I was never actually getting my locks out to fire the missiles.  Kylo was good, but I was also finding he was a clear target for opponents to hunt and 6pts was a lot to have to give up if I didn’t play him defensively enough.  I was really enjoying Kylo Ren, everything I thought would be great on him was, in fact, great.  

But was he worth 6 squad points?  Maaaaaybe? 

5-5-4-3-3

I now had enough games under my belt with Kylo then I felt like I knew his strengths & weaknesses and where he ranked on the power level table.  With my first gate looming – the Wampa Warm Up – I wanted to test out a different squad shape.  5-5-4-3-3 essentially trades Kylo Ren down for Wrath at 5 squad points, buying Recoil’s TIE Silencer in return with the pennies we’ve saved.  I’ve not really been enamoured with any of the First Order’s 5pt ships, just because there’s so many really good 4pt ships that I enjoy using, and this was a chance to see if I was missing out on anything.

And the answer was… eh, they’re pretty good?  Wrath felt pretty solid, I liked keeping Kylo Ren’s I5 TIE Whisper without paying 6 squad points for it, and I got his double tap attacks off profitably now and then.  Recoil was solid but unspectacular, which I pretty much expected.  He's another decent I4 gun but I have a reliable I4 gun in Ember that only costs 4pts.  And, really, that was the biggest problem with this shape of squad… I’m already having trouble picking which of Nightfall/Ember/Grudge I need to leave at home when I’ve got room for two 4pt ships, so a structure that only brings one of them was just causing me more of a headache!

Warming Up For Wampas

Testing time ahead of my first ‘gate’ was now up and I had to make a decision on what to play.  It was time to reflect on what I’d learned in those few weeks and that meant digging out that handy dandy chart and updating it.

I was really pleased with what this looked like.  My testing was creating a clean separation between things I did/didn’t like and meant that I could happily cross them off from my thoughts and hone my choices in even further without feeling like I needed to keep checking behind me to see if I was missing out on something.  

In that respect, at least, the testing was working.  

Winners

• DT-798 & Scorch are exceptional value for 3pts, and I was happy I’d picked the right upgrades for them both.  Solid, rugged, quick, low maintenance, high damage output, and for all the effort it takes to kill them the opponent scores a measly 3 points.

• Grudge is still good.  I’d been on the fence about his value without Proximity Mines in his locker, but the Electro-Chaff had still been an incredible tool for forcing opponents to engage in sub-optimal ways, and he was still fast little runabout for picking up objectives with.  The threat of him dealing damage was largely gone but he was still valuable.

• Ember is bae.  I’ve liked Ember more than most for a long time and I think she’s probably the most underrated ship in First Order.  Because nobody else sings her praises I always feel like she’s a bit of a guilty pleasure and I’m waiting for it all to blow up in my face, but she continues to be reliable offence in a tidy little package with a great dial.  In a list of single-modded attacks she’s my trusty completer-finisher that will actually put opponents into the ground if other dice rolls happen to whiff.

• I5 Whispers are good – I’d enjoyed both Kylo Ren and Wrath when I tried them out, that little bit of extra initiative really helped them land their bullseyes usefully and importantly they also both bring a secondary weapon to mitigate the weaker 2 red dice turret.  That’s important when you’re chasing a higher initiative ace and failing to land the bullseyes.

Losers

• The TIE/sf was too rigid, dull, and slow for me to enjoy flying.  I’m sure it’s a solid workhorse but it wasn’t for me and my more dynamic and instinctive style of play.  Phasma, Backdraft and Quickdraw could all take off them flight suits, they would not be needed.

• Kylo Silencer – I didn’t even play his Silencer and Kylo lost out!  I think I learned enough about competing elements like the Kylo Whisper and the points ‘Tetris’ of making a First Order squad to know that I didn’t want to invest 7 squad points into an I5 ace.  That’s not how I wanted to fly and I would have to give up too much in the rest of the list to make it happen.

• Nightfall – wow, sad face.  I did not expect this result but somewhere along the way I think I noticed Nightfall’s limitations and flaws for the first time.  Sandwiched between how much I was enjoying Kylo & Wrath having the 3 dice front arc weapon but Nightfall didn’t have it, and how much Ember and Grudge were delivering at 4pts so I didn’t want to give up either… Nightfall was dropping from teacher’s pet to maybe actually being a problem?  Surely not.

So for the Wampa Warm-Up I was picking from just three basic squad structures:

        6-4-4-3-3 = Kylo, 2 from Grudge/Ember/Nightfall, 2 from Scorch/DT-798/Malarus

        5-4-4-4-3 = Wrath, Grudge, Ember, Nightfall, 1 from Scorch/DT-798/Malarus

        4-4-3-3-3-3 = 2 from Grudge/Ember/Nightfall, DT-798, Scorch, Malarus, Galek

I think I would have been happy to take any of these choices, but what swung it for me was deciding that as much as the Wampa Warm-Up was a ‘gate’ on my journey to Worlds it was still primarily a learning opportunity, so I decided to continue testing the things I knew least about.  The 4-4-3-3-3-3 list with all four TIE/fo pilots in had seemed so strong on paper that I’d never actually put it onto the table and I’d just taken for granted that it was good.  Maybe it was time to put that to the test?

I’d also begun to focus more and more on how suitable my squad would be at facing into multiple I5/I6 aces that I needed to take points off, which the little bit of X-Wing I’d seen was suggesting that was where the game was moving.  While my creative juices starting flowing around wildcards like Concussion Bombing my own Rush, or trying Midnight out again in order to play at I6 the more grounded and practical side of me just wanted to put more firing arcs onto the table and work the angles to pressurise those aces with blaster fire.  That was a solid argument for moving towards a 6-ship list over a 5-ship list, it was a tick in the box of something like Galek’s Ion Cannon being a decent addition to the squad, and it was also cross against bringing the bullseye arcs of the TIE Whisper.

Speaking of which… I’d not actually played a single game with First Order that didn’t include a TIE Whisper since the day that Fury of the First Order was released.  It seemed like high time to see what happened if I left my favourite ship out altogether.

(Briefly) The Wampa Warm-Up 

I won!

There was a modest 14 players, most of them quite local although several had travelled in from around the north of England, and it was a pretty decent mix of metagame lists and stuff people just liked flying.  Two of us in the event had Worlds invites and were practising hard, while a third Worlds competitor sadly had to sit out and TO the event.

I played the six-ship variant and left Nightfall at home.  Over four rounds of swiss I was the only player to go unbeaten and finish on 4-0, so in that respect it couldn’t have gone any better.  But that apparently dominant result masked that three of the four games came down to pretty much the final dice roll and I could have lost any of them.  

Here’s a quick roundup of how they went…

Round 1: Dave Lever (Han, Wedge, Fenn, Airen)

Grudge blunted his alpha strike a bit and the rest of my squad raced in and smashed Han down in two turns of firing.  Then Wedge started gobbling up my TIE Fighters and Dave started to claw his way back into it.  I think Dave would agree that he was dicing me pretty badly throughout this game and I was lucky to steal the win on the final roll of the dice: Ember hit Fenn Rau and pushed exactly lethal damage through because Fenn rolled double eyeballs and couldn’t spend Focus.  If that sounds “wow, that was lucky!” then you’re right, but then those were the first time Fenn hadn’t just rolled straight evades against every attack in like three turns.  It was that kind of game.  

WIN 19-15 (Assault)

Round 2: Marc Rider (RAC, Ubbel, Oicunn)

Wow, that’s a lot of hull!!!  I have a lot of red dice, though, and that proved decisive as I could simply burn through Marc’s ships too quickly.  Ubbel went down in one round to halve Marc’s damage output then we swarmed onto RAC to finish the game. 

WIN 21-7 (Chance Encounter)

Round 3: Ewan Farr (Whylo, Malarus, Recoil, Blackout) 

If you know Ewan you know he’s going to be playing TIE Silencers, and here we were as the two loyal First Order players (only FO in the room) fighting it out in the unbeaten bracket.  There’s a saying that “top level X-Wing looks like low level X-Wing” and if that’s true then Ewan and I were both playing 4D chess as this game was rotten from both of us – Ewan voluntarily flying into rocks, me spending whole turns planning around a T-Rolling TIE Silencer because I’d forgotten it was ionized.  I won 14-11 because Ewan made 14 mistakes and I only made 11.

WIN 14-11 (Salvage)

Round 4: Rich Polley (Ezra Gauntlet, Kulbee, Arvel, Keo, Derek Klivian)

I was relieved Rich was running Rebels instead of the ‘Republic refuses to take damage’ squad that has become popular in the team but as he was on 3-0 I clearly still had a lot to worry about in this game.  I think I got the better of the initial engagement, encouraging Rich to stay out wide with most of his ships with a feint then diving back the other direction to pick on half his list with all of mine.  That switch caught Rich out and I got ahead early, but on turn three my red dice and Keo’s green dice conspired to mean I’d effectively passed the whole turn to no effect and suddenly Rich was right back in the mix.  Ezra finally made his way off the flank and into the middle of the table where he could dominate the fight, Rich bagged a couple of objectives and a dead TIE Fighter and was well and truly back in the game.  

I think I always felt like I was ahead and likely to win as we approached the end of the 75 minutes, but it was close enough that Rich had a couple of shots on the final round that could have bagged ships and pulled him ahead.  I lost Grudge to being too brave with him but one kill wasn’t enough for Rich and I still edged it.

WIN 13-12 (Scramble)

Four good games, three of them extremely close.  So what were my takeaways?

DT and Scorch are S-tier.  Don’t leave home without them.  Malarus is good, Galek is clearly the 4th best TIE/fo but actually still fine.  Grudge was very worthwhile all day, though I need to work on how to position him on approach as I had success in both hurling him forwards for the Electro-Chaff in some games, or holding him near my rear and using bombs to cover my ship’s rear as we move beyond the initial fight… but it’s difficult to do both because that needs him to be in two places at once.  More attention needed on which mode I want to use.

I didn’t feel like I missed Nightfall at all.  That was important.  And I definitely felt like bringing all that critical mass of firepower had been decisive several times in removing ships ‘ahead of schedule’ and getting ahead in the early game.  At the same point, I needed to work on maintaining focused pressure after the initial engagement – I had a bit of tendency for it all to break up a bit and struggle to extend those early leads into safe margins of victory.  I’m a trading list and I *will* give up points over 5 or 6 turns and that midgame lull in my points scoring could be problematic.

But for a list I’ve never once played before I turned up with it… I went 4-0.  It’s got to be a big thumbs up!

Oh, and what was my prize for winning the Wampa Warm-Up?

Perfection.

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!

I'm a humble Jack, and that's ok

Warning; This blog is very self-centered. There's no metagame tips or strategy or any of that good stuff in here this time. But it's about being a gamer, about being competitive, about winning some games while losing others, and about coming to terms with all of that and finding an emotional balance point. I've been playing games competitively for nearly 30 years now and over that time I think I've found tools to give myself that essential emotional balance, but as my trip to the X-Wing World Championships in March approaches it's brought the struggle back to mind with a renewed focus. 

I wanted to share the journey through which I achieved that balance because, who knows, maybe it'll resonate with somebody else out there.

I'm a humble* Jack...

I'm a Jack.

What do I mean by that?  Well, if you took out a deck of cards and had to place yourself somewhere in that deck based on how good you are at X-Wing, I'm pretty sure I'd be a Jack.  A Jack is pretty good, it's one of the 'face' cards and it's better than a lot of other cards.  Indeed, if you're playing Aces High (and this is X-Wing so aces have to be high) then there's 9 cards worse than a Jack and only 3 cards that are better.  But, importantly, there are 3 cards that are definitely better.

So the experience of being a Jack is that you'll win a lot more games than you lose, and I do.  I can only think of a handful of times when my win record at a tournament was 50-50 or worse, and I take for granted that I'll pretty much always be on the winning end of the scoring.

But the experience of being a Jack is also that when it comes to sharp end there's always goimg to be something better than you, because plenty of things *are* better than you.  To get to the final and pick up the big prize you're going to have to face a Queen, or a King, or even an Ace, and you're probably going to lose that game.  Like the England football team I've got "Quarter-Final Knockout Heartbreak" written all over me before I even start round one.

And this isn't just an X-Wing thing, by the way.  25 years ago when I was spending pretty much every waking moment thinking about Magic: The Gathering I was a Jack at that too.  Then I was a Jack at the World of Warcraft TCG, and Netrunner too.  Hell, I'm a Jack at video games too: Apex Legends, Mariokart, FIFA, Rocket League, Marvel Snap and probably countless others... Jacks all across the board.  Playing football in real life?  Jack.  Writing?  Jack.  Excel skills?  Jack.  This list could go on much longer but I daren't ask my wife to contribute anything... maybe I'm the Jack of Hearts.

I think there's some aspects of the game - and of games in general - that I'm a lot better than a Jack at.  Deckbuilding/squadbuilding was always my key strength and I was easily a King in that sphere.  I've often had the 'proud father' experience of watching better players than me taking lists I'd made much further and higher than I ever could have taken it myself.  And enough companies have paid me ridiculously well for my insight over the decades for me to believe that I'm probably a King in terms of high level strategic insight and seeing trends and truths that others who are more detail-oriented than me would miss.  But when it comes to actually playing those lists and executing those strategies on the table it's probably exactly that lack of detail-oriented mindset that holds me back and makes me a Jack. 

I've often thought of it as like being in a racing team.  I could design a fast car and fit it with a powerful engine.  I could look at the circuit we were going to race on and make strategic decisions about gear ratios and wing settings and tyre strategy.  I was good at all that stuff.  But none of that stuff happens on the track and there was a lot of people who were much better drivers than me, who could make this split-second decisions better than I could, nail the apex better than I could.  I had a role to play, and that role was usually pit crew, or being the second driver in the team and not the team lead.  I've been part of a lot of teams over the years where I was simply proud to have played my part in getting success for the ace driver by adding that kind of planning and support.

It's not all doom & gloom as a Jack, though.  There will be times when the style of list I'm playing is particurly well-aligned to the zeitgeist of the metagame and I get to outperform my level for a while, and maybe pick up wins more like a Queen would.  And maybe there's even some days when I'm playing particularly well and I can feel what it's like to be a King for the day.  But I know I'll never be an Ace, even for one game let alone a whole day - I've been close enough to Aces to know that there's an X-factor involved that I simply don't have - so if I'm in a room with an Ace then at some point the pairings are going to put us onto the same table and I'm going to lose.  And time and again that has been my experience in big X-Wing events, where I very reliably go deep enough to lose to somebody clearly better than me.  

Even the times when I was having a good day and got within touching distance of a something important, like qualifiying for Worlds, there would always be a King or an Ace standing between me and the big prize, like a Jack Mooney, Stuart Blucke or Tom Reed.  Because they're better than me.

Sometimes it's quarter-final heartbreak.  Sometimes it's semi-final heartbreak. Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, it'll be final heartbreak.  But it's always likely to be heartbreak.

 =================

Looking back over the mists of time to when I played Magic it's completely clear that I was a Jack all along.  My best friend, Neil, was always better at the game than I was, he just saw the web of interacting factors and subtle queues in a way that I never did and never will. 

Because I played literally thousands of hours of Magic with Neil I was under no illusions that he had something I didn't. When games hit a tipping point of complexity Neil would always make it more complex, knowing that he could solve the complex board state better than most opponents, while at the same tipping point I would always seek to simplify the board state and avoid hitting thte point that the mental maths in my head would break down and simply go "ah fuck it, attack with everything and see what happens".  But even Neil was only a Queen - on his best day with a good deck he *could* be an Ace, he could (and did) face down the best players in the world and turn them inside out, which I could never have done.  But on the few occasions that I did run deep into major Magic events or got to attend Pro Tours it was very clear there was probably another two tiers of players even above Neil.

PVDDR, definitely an Ace

There was the Aces, he guys who were winning all the big events.  Then there was the Kings, the guys who weren't actually winning Pro Tours but were happily chugging away on the gravy train doing well enough to get invited to basically every major event and pick up their appearance money.  There was guys like Neil, who was good enough to semi-regularly make it to the big events and occasionally run deep enough to win a nice pot of cash.  Then there was me, and thousands of other people at my level.

 =================

What The Deuce?

So, why am I telling you this?  And why now?

Well, to make it all a bit more relevant to current events: almost three years ago (THREE YEARS!!!) this Jack found himself playing in a World Championship Qualifier side event on the Sunday of the Milton Keynes System Open.  And this Jack had been beavering away on Excel spreadsheets and had cornered the market on generic efficiency and was playing a good list, so he was performing like a Queen.  And this Jack was also having one of his occasional good days when he was really on top of it and playing very well, so in that room at that event he was a King.  And it so happened that this was a side event and most of the other Kings and Aces were still playing in the cut of the System Open.  ,

So for the first time this Jack wound up being the top trump in the deck and winning a ticket to the 2020 X-Wing World Championships.

That was February 2020.  Shortly afterwards a load of stuff happened.

Then more stuff happened.

Then EVEN MORE stuff happened after that.

And in around 80 day's time this Jack is going to be getting on a plane to fly to NOT the 2020 World Championships in NOT Minnesota, organised by NOT Fantasy Flight Games and using NOT the rules that he won his ticket with.

And this Jack is going to be walking into a room almost exclusively filled with Queens, Kings and Aces.  When you have an event that non-face cards aren't invited to then Jacks become the new Deuces.

This Jack is very nervous about this proposition.  I'm not used to being a Deuce.  I don't think I'm going to like it very much.

So... if this was a film this would be the perfect time to cut to a training montage. I'd hit the X-Wing gym hardcore style, download TTS and there'd be shots of me playing TTS at home, at my desk, on the train, in the corner of a house party ignoring everyone else, just playing playing playing.  Trudging through waist-high snow with a pair of Decimators held high above my head, sweating and grunting through calculating dice math and memorising trigger interactions.  Maybe practising my 3-bank template placement while balancing on a log hammered into the sea as the sun sets behind me, Karate Kid style... "SLOOP THE LEG!".

Yeah, in a movie I'd be stepping off the plane in Chicago in two months time as a secret King or Ace, ready to take down the world.  They're never going to see me coming.

Practice, study, raise your game, be the best that you can be.  This is the ideal opportunity, seize it and prove yourself.  There's no shortage of performance coaching theories and slogans to support this sort of thinking.

Ironically, it was too much effort for whoever made this to run it through spellcheck

And if it was anyone else going through this situation instead of me then that's exactly what I'd be saying to them:

"You've gor two months, pick a list and get loads of practice with it, play as much as you can, watch what's happening in the metagame, build a gauntlet of top lists and practise against them relentlessly, seek out other players who are going to Worlds and see if you can team up and be stronger together.  You've earned the ticket so you're obviously good enough, now focus and give yourself the best chance at being proud of what you do at Worlds.  Don't accept being a Jack, you can be a King if you put the effort in!".

There's a problem with all that, though: I *like* being a Jack.  I like it because it's an important defense mechanism for my mental health.

I'm a humble Jack... and that's ok!

I've been here before.  In 1998 I was playing Magic: The Gathering 40-50 hours a week after dropping out of university (because I was going to fail because I was playing Magic 40-50 hours a week) and for a little while this Jack cornered the market on a great deck nobody else had seen, and had some good days, and he had a run of playing at a King level.  I won some Pro Tour Qualifiers, played in a Pro Tour, won some money at a Grand Prix, saw his friends winning big events... leaving 1998 and heading into 1999 I was doing really well and ready to kick on towards proving that I was an Ace.

And then I reverted to the mean.  I wasn't a King or an Ace I was a Jack who had been getting on a hot streak, and now I started playing like a Jack again.

I did not deal with this very well.  Looking back I liken it to Smeagol turning into Gollum, a gradual and indidious poisoning of my mind and my outlook on the game and on life.  I *had* to win.  I *had* to prove I was something that I now know I wasn't.  Every Quarter-Final knockout darkened my mood, but what was worse (I realise in hindsight) was that every victory darkened it even more because it doubled down that I had to win the next event as well to prove that this win wasn't a fluke.  Down and down and down I went, more and more bitter and with more and more unrealistic goals to turn it around... like the gambler who doubles down to win his money back, only I was gambling with my mental health.

It's not great when you finally run out of that particular line of credit.

I crashed out of Magic altogether.  I've got a great story about how close I was in my final Magic tournament - UK Nats 2001 - to finally achieving my goal and becoming National Champion and everyone recognising my greatness.  It's a tale of how I was so powerful an so far ahead in my game that I made a simple error and then was wronged by a bad judge call that robbed me of glory.  I tell it now and then but I'm genuinely not sure how true any of it actually is, or how much I've invented to keep my inner Gollum happy. 

In the twenty (20!) years since then I've seen other players fall into the same trap, and a lot of them get eaten up the same way.  In my time away I gained a lot of perspective on what had happened to me, and I've learned how to live with my inner Gollum.  You see, once you grow a Gollum it never goes away.  It might sleep, it might be kept distracted and away from bothering you, but it will always be there.  And I know he's there because failing to keep him under control is why I had to quit other games in the past, like the WoWTCG and Netrunner.  

When I got a bit of a taste of success in those games and decided that this was a small enough pond that I could try to be a big fish... Gollum would appear on my shoulder, demanding success and poisoning my attitude.  I can tell you how my last WoWTCG and Netrunner tournaments ended, because one of Gollum's hallmarks is dwelling on how we were cruelly and unfairly denied what was rightfully ours.

The way I learned to live with my Gollum was to never actually *try* to win.  Not properly, not llike I was doing when  I lived and breathed Magic.  It's important that I always have an excuse for why I lost a game - I'm not taking it seriously, I'm playing a squad I've never played before, I've not practised, I'm playing a game where the prizes don't matter and aren't important to me.  It's important that I've tied one hand behind my back somehow in preparing to play because then I can keep the Gollum off my back: "I lost because I wasn't really trying to win, go back to sleep, Gollum".  

I can't really tell you about any X-Wing events I've played where I remember how I lost, and that's deliberate on my part.  As much as I get a kick out of anaysing X-Wing, thinking about how the game works, looking for the best ships, upgrades, pilots and lists... I don't really care about winning or losing a game of X-Wing.  Or I try not to, at least.  

I don't always succeed and Gollum may get a hand on the wheel for a monent here or there, but after leaving WoWTCG and Netrunner inside 24 months I'm pleased that I've been in X-Wing for over 6 years.  It's a testament to how succesfully I've maintained that balance and kept him away this time.

For all those reasons a ticket to Worlds is an incredible achievement that I'm rightly proud of, but it's also a problem.  A room full of Queens and Kings and Aces is a problem because it's disturbing a balance of wins and losses that I'm happy with and which keeps Gollum away.

I can't go into that room as a Jack so I need to put at least some effort into upping my game and getting prepared for the biggest day of X-Wing of my life, so that I don't get dunked on.  But there's a delicate balance I need to strike because Gollum is going to be watching developments very closely.

Practice a bit more.

Try a bit harder.

Care a bit more.

But not too much more.  Although I'm not sure quite where the line is between 'a bit more' and 'too much more'.  Hopefully I'll recognise it as I cross it, instead of a decade later like I did for Magic.

I'm a Jack.  I know I can't be an Ace, or even a King.  And I know that trying to be an Ace will be very bad for me.  But maybe Gollum will let me put in enough effort that I can at least be a Queen.  Just for a day.  Or if top cut is on Sunday, then maybe for a couple of days?

* If you think calling myself a Jack, or anythting else in this blog, comes off as anything but humble then I'm only throwing humble in as a reference to Monty Python!  Once I see the potential for a good line I can't leave it out.