Veteran Instincts- Split Deployment (4-Ship)

Veteran Instincts is another new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where I discuss topics that might appeal to a more veteran level of X-Wing Miniatures player. Think of it as a more advanced version of the Bikini Battle Basics series and you're not far off. It's stuff you need to know, but might not be readily apparent or noticed, or so I think anyway. Far as I know, right?

After I'd lost out of the Championship round of my FLGS Kessel Run Tournament, I was just kind of messing around waiting for the big game to commence. Our TO had set the new Wave 2 stuff out for us to check out (read: drool over) along with the tokens, cards, and other whatnots included with them. 

I was glancing over the rules pamphlet for the YT-1300 and saw that diagram for deploying it that has the large base oriented at a 45 degree angle to the board edges and a light bulb came on over my head- figuratively speaking, of course. Not only did I remember I was supposed to pick up milk on the way home, but I also had come up with a new idea for deployment. 

I've wanted to talk about deployment on here for quite awhile now, but it's soooo dependent on the list you're running, I always kind of shied away from it, which always kind of disappointed me because I think deployment in X-Wing is a lot more important that people give it credit. I can tell you for a fact I have absolutely lost games because I've deployed stupidly. Well, that or I've at least seriously put myself behind the 8-ball right off the bat because I've deployed stupidly. 

I found the same to be true in other miniatures games I've played- mainly 40k and AT-43. I found very few guides and stuff that talked about deployment in any real depth, but it really can be such a game-changer, I could never figure out why people didn't focus on it more when it came to improving their game. 

In other words, I feel like there's a lot more to deploying effectively than just either setting up across from the asteroids or not. You may not feel the same way, but in my experience, it can definitely be the difference-maker between two similarly skilled opponents. 

I was browsing some forum threads today about Regionals meta, and noticed the 4-ship X-Wing build is starting to come back into vogue. It ain't pretty, it's definitely not flashy, but it is pretty dang effective. It's also the list I've had the most success with, and since some folks are gravitating towards it, I figured I'd satisfy my "Deployment is important!" want and talk a little about how I started deploying my 4-ship X-Wing build after the KRT. 

Ok, so to get this out of the way right off the bat, yeah, it would probably work with any 4-ship build, even if they're not all X-Wings. I've not had a ton of experience or success running Imperial ships this way or trading out an X-Wing for a Y or A-Wing. I'm not saying neither of those ideas work, I'm just saying I've either not used them enough to be comfortable saying or haven't had success with them personally. As always, your mileage may vary. 

Disclaimer out of the way, let me talk about my particular 4 X-Wing list. It changed around depending on what kind of mood I was in and what kind of upgrades and whatnot I wanted to try out, but the following was the list I used the most- 

• Luke Skywalker + Swarm Tactics, R2-F2
• Rookie Pilot
• Red Squadron Pilot + R2 Astromech
• Rookie Pilot + R5 Astromech

I'd pair them up that way too- the Rookie with no upgrades with Luke, then Red with the Rookie sporting the droid. 

The cool thing about turning your ships 45 degrees like that is it gives you what I feel are a lot of reaction options to the way your opponent has moved/ is moving/ will move in the 2nd or 3rd turns. For instance- 

A Bank of any speed will square your ship back up to the table edges if you want to do that (and of course assuming you put your ships fairly close to a true 45 to start with). This is handy because when your opponent sees all your ships pointing towards the center of the board, he may be thinking you're just going to have all your ships meet up and form Voltron, or at least one big pile of ships in the middle. 

Of course, if it would be advantageous to do so, you have the option of doing just that, but I've found if the opponent just kind of drops most of his stuff in the middle- which, dig that first picture again; kind of, well, everything that isn't actually on the left or right table edge is relatively middle from this deployment scheme, if you keep your ships together in their little 2-man groups, they work really well when crashing into the flanks of his formation. If you time it right by guessing the speed he's going to move (which let's be honest- how many times have you not seen TIEs advance with straight 5's? :) ) and adjusting your own accordingly, this is a good way to force a TIE Swarm into turning or just blowing right by you. 

Now, if the opponent would instead deploy all of his stuff on one half or even one quarter of the table (what we used to call a "denied flank" in 40k- no idea if that's a "proper term" or not), and not with his ships kind of equally spaced between my two fighter groups, I'd pull something like this- 

Turn one of your ships inboard with a Bank and send the other ship on a Bank in the opposite orientation. The guy flying square with the edges can keep on going straight then come in behind the enemy formation or perhaps cause the opponent to break off a fighter or two in an attempt to keep that from happening, while the other ship starts moving across the board to mate up with the other 2-ship group. 

If the enemy remains in a more center-oriented formation, you can always just Bank both the ships the same direction and create a really nice overlapping firing arc easily in another turn or two. This can be pretty effective, especially with the Luke and Rookie combo I mentioned earlier. I used to fly Luke into the flank of the formation first with R2-F2 active and Swarm Tactics on the trailing Rookie. Luke might not have the punch to reliably one-shot somebody out of the sky, but that trailing Pilot Skill 8 Rookie would just about always finish them off when it was his turn to fire. With Luke leading, your opponent has a tough decision about firing on Luke, who has his defensive Focus-lite with and extra Defense die courtesy of R2-F2 at close range, or firing on the more distant and decidedly less important Rookie. Remember what I said about forcing your opponent to make decisions? Well, it's even better when there's kind of no right answer to the question. 

Another movement option out of this kind of setup looks like this- 

Usage is fairly similar to the opposing orientation Bank maneuver before, but by doing a straight move, you might engage a distant target a little faster this way than making a straight up lateral move across your half of the board. Now, whether you want to engage that target faster is entirely contextual, but if it was something like a Firespray with an HLC, then sure, that's probably the move you ought to seriously consider. The other ship in the pair can follow suit or still run up the sideline to try and get in behind. 

When I talk about this deployment method on forums and to people in real life, the main criticism I hear is "Yeah, but you're splitting your force- the opponent can just key on one of those 2-ship groups." That's true, but the reality is if you see that coming (and you should, frankly- nobody can teleport or enter from a left-right table edge currently), you can mitigate it as I described above with having one ship move towards the group getting ganged up on, or if you think that group can last a turn or two, weathering the storm, send both those ships in the other group past the formation, then either Turn or K-Turn in behind the enemy and force them into making a really tough decision about which ships to fire on. If you've done it right, he's either going to end up splitting fire amongst your ships or if he chooses to focus on one group after all, you're going to have a couple of completely undinged X-Wings going after his butt, one way or another. You can also mitigate it by simply stalling a little bit or using asteroids to force the enemy formation to break up, etc. 

So that's it- it's pretty simple really, but it has been very effective for me. One caveat though, you need to practice with it a bit or spread your ships out a little farther than you might normally when you're first trying to get your head around it. If you start overlapping your own ships because you've dialed out your maneuvers in the wrong order, you're going to get yourself in trouble. Once you're solid at managing maneuvering and Pilot Skill in this kind of deployment though, this little gambit just might serve you well. Try it in a few friendlies and see how it does for you. 

Veteran Instincts- (Tournament/ Regionals) Etiquette and Protocol, Part 2

Veteran Instincts is another new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where I discuss topics that might appeal to a more veteran level of X-Wing Miniatures player. Think of it as a more advanced version of the Bikini Battle Basics series and you're not far off. It's stuff you need to know, but might not be readily apparent or noticed, or so I think anyway. Far as I know, right?

Tournament/ Regionals Etiquette and Protocol, Part 2

Part 1 in this series ran last Friday. You probably read it, but if you didn't, click that link.

5. Non-Combatants, er Non-Participants
At Games Day 2006, my last match of the tournament was against an Imperial Fists player from Ohio with a beautifully painted army and his wife. 

Yeah, right? It was kinda weird having a spectator. 

To her credit, I think she just sat and read a book the entire match, and after we were done, she came over, the three of us chatted pleasantly, and I thought, "Wow, well that was cool of her." She was just there to support her man, check out some cool models (of which I had none- my opinion, not theirs), and catch up on some reading. 

I've never had the "Oh no, there's the guy that always brings his friend/ girlfriend experience", but I've played next to a couple of tables and talked to a few of the poor bastards that have. It's not pretty and in many ways, your entourage can be much more annoying than you the actual player. I mean, look at it like this- I can beat you. You become that super-arrogant guy I beat at that one tournament. You become an NPC in my story, in other words. A beaten foe; a bested wannabe nemesis. Even if I don't beat you, maybe I managed to one-shot your Stealthed-up Turd Ferguson, or stuck Han with the critical that makes him Pilot Skill 0 and got to make a Han Shoots Last joke. 

I can't do anything to your obnoxious girlfriend or your dipshit friend. I don't have the opportunity. Well, not legally anyway. 

Long story short, you're responsible for the folks you bring with you to this thing. I don't want a bunch of hoo haa from your buddy, your buddy's girlfriend, or whatever during our match, dig? I don't want to be the guy who complains to the TO about your annoying sidecars, I really don't man. Let's just play the game. Dre puts it much more eloquently than I do, if you need further clarification on the point. 


6. Know Your List
I kinda talked about this in some other article on here that I'm too lazy to look up right now, but know what the cards in your list do. Look up any pilot abilities, upgrades, droids, whatever on here, on the AFM Forums, on the FFG forums, whatever. Fully understand what they do before our match. Play your list at least a few times before we meet in a tournament we both paid money to play in. I don't want to be the guy to tell you your card doesn't work the way you think it does, because you might have built your whole list around that incorrect interpretation, and now you're going to have a crappy day because of me. That's no fun for either of us, bro.

Further note, if you're using a pilot with an upgrade that falls into a grey area rules-wise, I'd take a long look at whether or not I'd play that particular combination in a tournament. I'm not going to go through and list all of the rules exploits that have been exposed, they're out there if you want to find them and I've talked about one of them fairly extensively on here before. Me personally, I think it's a bit of a party foul to show up with something like that. Now, you and I, we may have very different motivations for why we're playing in this thing. I'm not trying to tell you how to play your list, I'm just saying I wouldn't do it. 

I remember one time when I was teaching at a community college, we were going through contract negotiations and there were a whole segment of instructors that were convinced the district had this big slush fund and they wanted that money. It got to the point where they were talking about striking over it, which was kind of a big deal because unfortunately this segment of instructors included the president of our little union at the time. I got up and said, "I didn't take this job to be a striker, I took it to be an effin' teacher.", and walked out. 

That's kinda how I feel about tournaments. If you want to argue about rules, just do that on the internet, man. It's way cheaper and you're much more likely to find fun sparring partners than people who've paid $15 or $20 to enter a tournament where they're ostensibly at the very least, planning on playing a game rather than following Robert's Rules of Trolling or whatever. Again though, it's your dough. You can do whatever you want. Just realize the guy on the other side of the table may not share the same zeal for debate as you. He may just, you know, want to spend his day playing the game, right? 


7. Bring Only What You Need
Some folks might be interested in seeing your entire X-Wing Miniatures collection. Me personally? I'm not. This is a pre-painted, pre-assembled miniatures game, for cryin' out loud. 

I don't see any reason to bring a ton of extra crap with me to a Tournament. Hell, at the Kessel Run, I loaned out all of my Imperial stuff (including movement templates, range ruler, tokens, etc.) to a friend of mine who wanted to play but didn't own anything- I wasn't going to be using it as I was playing Rebels, so why not, right? Even if I wouldn't have loaned it out, I wouldn't have brought it with me. 

The less stuff you have to lug around, the better. As I've alluded to in other points in this article, it's probably gonna be a long day. Travel light and you'll be happier for it. Also if, God forbid, your stuff gets stolen or you bring so much stuff with you that you forget something at the venue, the curb outside the hotel, a bench at a bust stop, whatever, you're not out your entire collection. 

Note this goes for tokens and whatnot too. Actually, it goes even more for tokens and whatnot than the ships. Everyone who's played this game even once knows there's a somewhat ridiculous amount of fiddly stuff that goes along with it. Watching you try and pair up Target Locks for five minutes because you brought all 26 letters of the alphabet is time that could be spent playing, and if we go to the wire, that's really going to be disappointing. If you only bring 3 ships, bring 5 sets of Target Locks, tops. Apply that same line of thinking to the rest of your tokens too- bring what you need, then fudge the number up a couple in case you lose one or it gets mixed in with your opponent's or something.

Now, I know, I know, you've got all your stuff in a Plano box or whatever, and it's not that big of a deal to bring the whole thing, and you don't really want to disrupt your system, and blah, blah, blah. Just trust me on this- for a 100 point tournament, you can probably fit what you actually need in one of the Core Set boxes. Now think about how much easier it is to cram a Core Box into a backpack along with a couple of Diet Dews and a candy bar or something versus lugging around a tool box all day like you're Mr. Fixit. 

Or if you really want to be cool, bring all that stuff, but leave it in the car. Then if some poor guy forgot his third Interceptor back at the hotel or it got broken on the way in, you can be the dude who lets this cat borrow yours, which will elicit a slow-clap from me for sure, because well, let's be honest. I'm totally the type of person to start a slow clap- any reason will do. 

8. "Good Game"
When we're done, win or lose, throw your hand out there across the table, shake it like a man (or woman- are we still pretending girls play dorky-ass miniatures games like this? :) ) and not a limp fish, and wish me a good game. If you won, listen to me berate myself for hitting an obstacle or rolling badly, while I pretend my loss had nothing to do with your superior skill at the game and sympathize. If you lost, I'll extend you the same courtesy. I don't want to hear a bunch of gloating and bragging- this isn't HALO, for Christ's sake. We're better than that. 

Be happy you've won, take any compliments from your vanquished opponent you have coming to you, and throw a couple back their way. 

If you're the winner, resist the temptation to point out every mistake your opponent made that helped you win. I know folks who do this, hell, I'm guilty of it at times, but most of the time it isn't constructive immediately after a match, even if that's 100% your intent. Most of the time, it just comes off kind of know-it-all and dickish. 


So there ya go. How not to be a bad opponent at your next tournament, right? Well, either that or "How to spend two days on your blog being a bossy cow- MOOOO!" If my oldest could read, he'd crack up that I wrote that; it's one of our inside jokes. 

Veteran Instincts- (Tournament/ Regionals) Etiquette and Protocol, Part 1

Veteran Instincts is another new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where I discuss topics that might appeal to a more veteran level of X-Wing Miniatures player. Think of it as a more advanced version of the Bikini Battle Basics series and you're not far off. It's stuff you need to know, but might not be readily apparent or noticed, or so I think anyway. Far as I know, right?

Tournament/ Regionals Etiquette and Protocol

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but in a past job, I was in charge of a 4-man industrial maintenance team. I don't know if many of you work in manufacturing, or know people who work in manufacturing, or more specifically, regularly deal with folks who work maintenance in manufacturing, but they can be a fairly rough around the edges bunch. Oh sure, you've got some folks who work in industrial maintenance that are perfectly normal and all, but a lot of these guys are... how should I put this... outliers in many ways. Especially when it comes to hygiene. 

One of the guys that worked for me had some kind of weird setup where he hauled water to his house which was, predictably, out in the sticks. Long story short, he would get water on Monday, and either couldn't haul that much or couldn't store that much, but in any case, usually by Thursday evening, and defnitely on Friday evening, the brotha would start to reek. 

Now again, industrial maintenance can be a demanding job. I've done it before, and there were many days where I'd have sweat through my clothes, my clothes mind you, not just my shirt, by 8:30 am. That's a good time, let me tell you- sweating through your clothes by 8:30 and you generally leave around 4:30 or 5pm. That's just brilliant. Anyway, I'm not hating on anybody, but usually you find ways to mitigate. A stick of deodorant or a bottle of cologne in your toolbox, hell maybe even a spare pair of drawers or jeans tucked away in your trunk you change into at lunchtime or something. 

Not this guy though. And by this guy I mean the guy I'm talking about, not me. I'm not pointing my thumbs at myself when I say, "this guy." 

The dude would reek. I mean like distractingly so. As such, I had to have a "stinky talk" with him. I had to ask a grown man to please stop stinking at work because people had complained to management about his chronic funk. No, not that kind of chronic funk- like the body odor kind. 

What's worse, I actually had to have the stinky talk with him again before it was all said and done and he transferred away from my plant. 

This is why I'm uniquely qualified to tell you what's acceptable and unacceptable for Regionals and Tournaments in general. Because I'm the guy that pulls you off to the side, maybe even outside, to have the stinky talk with you. It's awkward and sometimes feelers get hurt, but in the long run, it benefits us all, so here we go. 

1. Attire
I'm just going to come right out and say it- wearing a Star Wars shirt to an X-Wing Tournament is kinda like wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see in concert. Now normally, in any other locale, I'm totally down with it. I have a few myself, of course. But not to a tournament. It's too obvious. Acceptable exceptions are some truly unique Star Wars shirts- like if you've managed to acquire one of the vintage Empire Strikes Back VHS box set re-issue t-shirts from 1995 or whatever. 

What to wear instead? Well, tournaments are all day affairs, so wear something you're going to be comfortable in. Something not overly tight, warm, or loose (knocks minis around, y'know) for starters. I plan on rocking a US Soccer jersey at Regionals. Why? Well, for one, it's made out of Nike Dri-Fit, which is this brilliantly light and cool fabric that is completely opaque but feels like you have no shirt on at all, which will be awesome as my Regional is in June. Secondly, it's not too loose and not too tight. Its also somewhat unique and I'm just fond of it in general. Also stay away from a ton of accessories like bracelets, wallet chains, necklaces, and other stuff that is prone to knocking over minis. We're at an X-Wing Regionals, not a Mr. T lookalike convention or attending goth kid 101 class.  

Generally speaking, you don't have to tell guys to wear comfortable shoes, but well, wear comfortable shoes. If you've never played in a tournament before, and especially if you've never played at the venue you'll be attending, you may not get a lot of time to sit down depending on how things are set up. I remember at Games Day 2006, I did a lot of standing. Like pretty much 8 hours worth. Course, that may not be a big deal to some of y'all, but it is something to keep in mind. 

Band T-Shirts are good too, so long as you pick a cool band and don't go on and on about them during the match, which segues into my next point rather neatly... 

2. Table Talk
As I've mentioned before, Tournament Rules for X-Wing involve time limits. As such, when it's time to play, shut up and play. Don't tell me your life story and slow down deployment because you're gesturing with one of your ships instead of setting it down. Don't tell me moves I should have made, then subsequently the moves you would have made to respond to those moves during our match. Don't talk to your buddy at the next table about what moves he should be making either. I also have no interest in your favorite movie, band, sports team, political party, sexual position, pizza, e-cigarette liquid flavor, breed of dog, radio station, author, or beer is while we're playing. Once we're done? Sure thing, man. Tell me all about it. I love talking to people. My wife used to get pissed at me because I'd spend hours standing in the driveway talking to this crazy old dude that lived next door to us in our duplex. I'll talk to anybody so long as they tell me entertaining stuff- just not during the match. 

For however long the time limit allows or until the match is over, focus on the match as much as possible. Can you drop a Star Wars line here or there? Sure. Just don't quote all of Empire to me while you piss around trying to pick a maneuver for your 3rd Black Squadron TIE and for Christ's sake- this isn't 40k and you're not playing Orks. No yelling on the bus.  

3. Cell Phones
I'm not crazy enough to say something like, "Leave it in the car", because, well, I wouldn't do that either. I am crazy enough to say, if you do anything more than take a few seconds to see who just texted you or called, it's a party foul. Now, if it's an emergency like your kid just swallowed a penny or something, well, I'll make an exception. If it's an emergency like your girlfriend asking you why you put an empty peanut butter jar back in the cabinet instead of throwing it away, that's crappy. 

Also don't check your email or reply to emails. If you want to take a picture of our match, by all means go ahead, I probably will be too, just don't spend forever framing the shot, and please, post it to Twitter or your Facebook after the match. Don't make me wait while you try to think of some witty caption for your picture. 

It should go without saying that actually taking a phone call during a match is just not to be done again, unless somebody is dying/ dead. Then it's cool. I guess. 

I very nearly made a seperate entry for laptops or tablets, but suffice it to say, they'd read basically the same way as the cell phone. I don't mind some light use, but please put working on your Mandalorian fan-fic on hold or watching Firefly until after our match concludes. 

4. Hygiene
You need to have showered within the past 24 hours, at least. This isn't a sport- I shouldn't smell you from across the table. It's just pathetic to feed into that unwashed, stinky nerd stereotype. We're better than that, right? 

And while I'd also prefer you didn't douse yourself in Axe body spray, I'd rather smell that than your B.O. 


That's enough for now, I'll put up Part 2 on Monday! Have a great weekend and for those of y'all attending Regionals this weekend, good luck!

Veteran Instincts- Tournament Rules versus Friendly Rules

Veteran Instincts is another new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where I discuss topics that might appeal to a more veteran level of X-Wing Miniatures player. Think of it as a more advanced version of the Bikini Battle Basics series and you're not far off. It's stuff you need to know, but might not be readily apparent or noticed, or so I think anyway. Far as I know, right?  

Yup! That's me in the Red Army t-shirt. Don't be hatin'.

Tournament Rules versus Friendly Rules

Back when I was writing the BBB- Obstacles and Asteroids Explained! article, I caught myself in a couple of rules that thought I'd been getting wrong for awhile, both having to do with the placement of asteroids at the start of the game. 

I said in the O&A article, "Initial placement is simple enough- in most dogfight games without special house rules, specific tournament rules, or scenario rules, you and your buddy each get three and you take turns placing them starting with the Imperial player (note I'm not leaving off a bit about initiative that's usually there, it's not mentioned in my rules; just says "Imperial Player"- you'll see why in a sec.). The only rules here is that you can't place an Obstacle within Range 1-2 of any edge of the play area. After you're finished with placement, the Rebel player gets to choose which side of the table he deploys from. I find lots of references on forums regarding setting up asteroids to make it tougher on your opponent. It makes me wonder if these folks know something I don't, or they've forgotten the bit about the Rebel player getting to pick his table edge."

Now, I'm no stranger to getting facets of a rule wrong as any of my readers will attest to, I'm sure, but this one really jumped out at me at the time. 

I knew this rule. I mean for reals- I knew this rule, man! And this was not the rule I knew. 

As it was late-thirty in the morning, I let it go, and wrote the paragraph quoted above. I've been known to cock-up stuff like this before; hell, in 1994 I thought Gary Busey died in a motorcycle accident (which was doubly weird because that accident happened in like 1988, apparently) and was releasing films posthumously until like 1998 when I finally reached the realization that was unlikely.

Anyway, it bothered me a bit, the O&A thing I mean, not Gary Busey, but I simply couldn't figure out how I'd gotten it in my head that obstacles were also restricted from being within Range 1-2 of each other and that I'd seemingly completely forgotten the bit about picking a table edge. I chalked it up to somebody in our club having us play it that way, or perhaps some Kessel Run Tournament-only setup that I'd confused for full-time rules and went on about my business. I remember looking at the comments pretty regularly that day waiting for someone to come in and ask a question or make a comment that might shed light, but no one did, so after a day or two, I forgot all about it. 

Until a few days ago. 

I was trolling Sean and BC for article ideas as I'm wont to do, and Sean suggested I do an article on Tournament Rules, "As they're sort of different from the rule book, aren't they?", he asked. I replied, "Sure, I guess.", thinking to myself that there probably weren't enough differences to really justify it, but as it's Regionals season, I would at least look into it. 

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, yeah, there are some differences, some are fairly significant, and no, I didn't hallucinate my crazy asteroids rules.  

1. Obstacles Are Placed Differently
Yes, this is where my previous take comes in. According to the Tournament Rules- 
"The player with initiative places the six unique asteroid tokens from his core set next to the play area. He chooses one of these asteroid tokens and places it into the play area. Then, his opponent chooses one of the remaining asteroid tokens and places it into the play area. The players continue to alternate until all six tokens have been placed. An asteroid token cannot be placed within Range 1–2 of any edge of the play area or within Range 1 of another asteroid token. "

The next bit is you place your ships out in ascending Pilot Skill order as per usual, blah, blah, blah. There's no mention of picking sides though- you stay on whatever side you're on. 

2. Time Limits
Another rather significant difference between normal X-Wing and Tournament X-Wing is the time limits. Now, this is something that likely varies based upon locale and Tournament Organizer, but to put it succinctly, the standard for tournament games is 75 minutes. The Tourney Rules say this may be adjusted down to 60 minutes or up to 90 minutes depending on what the TO wants, but of course, he has to let everyone know in advance what's up before the matches begin. 

This may not sound like that big of a deal, but there are some builds that win quickly and some builds that win through drawn-out attrition. As you might expect, the latter probably won't do so hot in a Tournament setting. Two of the three games I participated in during my FLGS' Kessel Run Tournament were called for time before they were actually done. Now, there wasn't an excessive amount of rule book flipping, table talk, or anything else that was obviously eating up time. Would my games go faster now that I'm more familiar with the rules and strategy? Sure. Am I more likely to play a full game in 90 minutes than 60? Oh fo sho. 

Here's an interesting question though- would I bring a different list than my regular 100-pointer if I knew the Regionals I was going to play in was enforcing a 60 minute time limit? 

Hmmm... 

3. Scoring
So what happens if you don't get a full game in by the time the clock runs out? Put another way, what happens if one side doesn't completely destroy the other when the clock runs out? How does the TO determine the winner and loser and how do those results compare to somebody who actually did manage to destroy all his opponent's ships? 

Totally destroying your opponent's list and still having at least one ship of your own on the table? That's easy- that's considered a Match Win and it's worth 5 points. Conversely, getting all your list killed is easy too- that's a Match Loss and it's worth 0 points. In between those two results we have a Modified Match Win worth 3 points and a Draw worth 1 point. 

So what's the determining criteria? 

Well, at the end of the round when time expires, you total up all the stuff that's been destroyed. Right on- I said destroyed. You don't get points for having more stuff left on the table (well, not directly anyway)- what's important is how much stuff you killed. If you destroyed more stuff than your opponent, you get a Modified Match Win and he gets a Match Loss. If you destroy the exact same amount as your opponent, as you'd expect, you both earn a Draw. If one of you destroys 33 points or more than the opponent, instead of a Modified Match Win, you earn a straight-up Match Win instead. 

To answer the inevitable question, upgrades like Secondary Weapon Systems, especially Missiles or Torpedoes that were spent over the course of the game do not count as destroyed for the purposes of adding up points- they only count if the ship bearing them was destroyed, and of course, for the purposes of totaling points, a destroyed ship is worth not only the points shown on it's card, but also any Upgrades that it started the match with. 

4. No Proxies
I know, this one seems obvious- if you don't actually have the ships that constitute your list, you can't use that list in a tournament setting. Here's a point some folks might have missed however- the cards count too. 

If you read the Tournament Rules closely, you'll see there's a bit under the Component Modifications sub-heading that states the following- 

"Proxies are not allowed during tournament play. Each player must use only the components included in official X-Wing products. Each ship must have the official ship base, official Ship and Upgrade cards, and the correct, official ship model."

Long story short, if your list hinges around the notion that all 4 of your ships have Stealth Devices, then you'd better have 4 copies of the Stealth Device card. Would I let you use a single copy on four different ships in a friendly setting? Hell yeah. Would I let you in a tourney setting? It's not up to me at that point, brocephus- it's in the rules. 


5. Sportsmanlike vs. Unsportsmanlike Conduct
This kind of stuff is always somewhat subjective, but as they give a few examples in the Tourney Rules, I thought I'd touch on it- probably the big one is time-wasting, but conducting yourself in the manner of a complete moron in general carries the possibility of you getting tossed out. Long story short, unsportsmanlike conduct is up to the TO, so bear that in mind if you're one of those guys who shows up to the game store and suddenly everyone already has an opponent, and oh yeah, no, we actually set this up like back on what, Wednesday? Yeah, it was like Wednesday. Sorry, bro. Maybe Jim will play you- hey Jim? Oh, right, Jim's already got a game too. Hmm. Well, sorry man- maybe next week. Yeah, maybe if my game gets done in time, we could- oh wait, I have to work this afternoon. Yeah, I have to be outta here by 4pm, so I wouldn't really have time to play you afterwards, uh... 

If that kind of thing happens to you, figure out why and address it before you roll into Regionals screaming about a rules ambiguity and get yourself checked out of the tourney, dig? 

They also mention that if you're going to definitely lose the game you simply bow out gracefully and save everyone the time and trouble of playing until the time limit and earning yourself a loss anyway. Of course, if there's a legit chance that you could turn a Match Loss into a Draw, then by all means, keep playing, but if you lose all your ships and end up with 1 hull damage, don't just drive around the edges of the board trying to play keep away until time expires.

While not explicitly called out by the rules, something I personally feel falls under sportsmanship involves knowing what your cards do. I remember hitting a little indie 40k tourney back in the day, and my opponent was using a Space Marine Librarian. That dude had to look up every single rule about Psychic Powers, Psychic Tests, the powers themselves, freakin' Psychic Hoods, you name it. I mean look, if you're that unfamiliar with that particular unit, the chance of you actually utilizing it effectively in a competitive setting is pretty much zero anyway, just leave it  at home. I ain't mad at ya, I'm just sayin'. Roll what you know rather than some list you read about on the net that can't lose, y'know? 

6. Initiative
In friendlies, Initiative goes to the player with the lowest point total, and if the players are tied, then it defaults to the Imperial player. In Tournaments however, Initiative is won by a coin toss if the players are tied on points. If a player has a lower point total, he of course, still has Initiative- the coin toss only occurs if the players are tied.