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.