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Monday, July 22, 2019

The Season of Lists

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Rejoice,

Comrades, for the Old Points have been overthrown, and the New Points have been bestowed upon us. Put away your stale meta Lists, Throw open the Builders, and bring forth a new dawn, with new ships, in new combinations. What a time to be alive!


Yes, the new points and new toys have finally landed, and the summer is here. Which means, looking at my calendar, that there are a bunch of relatively “low stakes” tournaments coming up where we can try out all this stuff and see what sticks. It’s got us back on the road, first up to the Imperial March for Charity Event at Beanie Games, and then over to the more local IQ Games for their monthly event. Its been an interesting, and instructive couple of weeks.

Die Pretty, My Beauties!
First up, Beanie Games, for Charity. I didn’t want to take this too “seriously” and was on the lookout for fun lists to take that would look a bit different. Given my long-standing love of the Assault Gunboat, I landed on running 4x Nu Squadrons with Protons, FCS and ASLAM. I got one test game in which I lost narrowly, and thought “hey, maybe this is something”. Fans of irony can see where this is going; four games later and I was dead last, but at least I got a nice new Kitchen Utensil out of it.


The Teenager, on the other hand, took his Triple Silencer List, and ended up facing All-Round X-Wing Legend Rasta Maice in the last game, fighting for top spot. Very nearly did it, too, with Rasta’s Falcon closing out the game on a single hull point. It’s another big performance for him and he’s justifiably proud of it.

So naturally this week at IQ we simply swapped roles. I went with a variant Droid Swarm that I've been messing around with since Wave 3, this time bringing in DBS-32C as a support ship for 4 Vultures, and Grievous running as a solo flanker. The Teenager meanwhile took a Resistance Transport with Poe and Nien. I wound up second overall, on 3-1, and he took a pasting (including from me, in the first round, which never helps!) with a list he just couldn’t make work.


We all know losing is hard, and losing with a list you know you’re not getting the most out of is worse. Two games in, I think he was mentally half-way to the train station, just out of frustration - one week you’re rolling in the “Big Leagues” the next you’re facing dead bottom with a list you’re not even getting moment-to-moment fun out of. It’s not about winning, because god knows we’re all had a good laugh flying terrible lists terribly (and if you haven’t, I recommend it) but there comes a moment when you feel no-one involved is going to have any fun from more games.

He settled on dropping, but playing out the bye with a different list (assuming the bye player wanted to) so he wasn’t costing anyone game time and didn’t feel “forced” to play a list that didn’t work for him. It’s a tough call, I think, and (other opinions available) at least everyone got games, it didn’t affect the event any more than a straight drop would have, and at least he ended the day feeling like he had some fun matches.

 So whats next? Well we get a weekend off and then another event, so stay tuned, I guess!

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