An Article on Preparation by 2014 North American Champion Rick Sidebotham

As we look back on the 2014 World Championship Weekend, we finish our series of Gen Con wrap-up articles with 2014 X-Wing™ North American Champion Rick Sidebotham’s unique preparation and how it affected his results. If you plan on attending a major tournament such as Nationals or Worlds in the future, Rick’s advice can be a valuable tool toward improving your experience and your results.

Prepare to Make Your Run

Greetings X-Wing players! Because my experience at Gen Con 2014 has been covered in the past, it was really important to me to include some fresh material in this article. Therefore, I’ve decided to share how I prepared for the tournament, how that preparation (or in some cases, lack thereof) affected my performance, and the potential benefits to thinking outside of the box.

The Squadron

This squadron was not originally built to be flown in a major tournament setting, but rather for an evening of casual play shortly before a Regional Championship earlier this year. At the time, I thought it would be fun to fly a list that included a TIE Phantom, a TIE Interceptor, and a Lambda-Class Shuttle.

When I made the decision to try the list at the Kingston, ON Regional Championship, the final pilots and upgrades were based on making the squadron as competitive as possible with those three ships. While fielding a squadron that was fun to fly was my primary motivation, I at least wanted to make sure I had a fighting chance against the most likely competitive combinations I could expect to face.

• Whisper (32) with, Fire Control System (2), Gunner (5), Advanced Cloaking Device (4), and Veteran Instincts (1)
• Soontir Fel (27) with Push the Limit (3)
• Captain Yorr (24)

Tournament Preparation

While I believe the squadron itself is solid, I think the primary reason why I was able to have success with it at both Kingston and the North American Championship was due to my preparation. In preparing for my first-ever X-Wing tournament earlier this year I created a list of the squadron archetypes that I expected to see. Ever since that first tournament, I’ve been adding to the list along the way. So now, whenever I decide to work on a squadron for competitive play, I always refer back to my master list. An abridged version of my list prior to the North American Championship consisted of the following:

This was my best educated guess of the potential squadrons I could face. If you decide to do some similar preparation before your next league event or tournament, I encourage you to create a list of your own based on your knowledge
and experience.

Once I had an idea of what squadrons I could expect to face, I had to get in some practice playing against them. Between work and family commitments, I was only able to get in about three or so games per week, not nearly enough time to play against everything out there. I decided there were a few steps I could take to streamline the process.

The first step was to try and figure out a way to put some of these archetypes into larger groups based on the squadron I was fielding. As an example, early in the process, I was able to develop a good general plan for opposing squadrons that came at me in a large block of ships. I generally had success if I could engage in a military pincer with Yorr securing the middle and Whisper and Soontir Fel on each flank. Now, if there was something special within that block of ships, I’d have to modify my tactics accordingly, but having a general plan to deal with a large group of archetypes was a great time-saver for me.

The next step I took was applying some priority to what I was going to practice against. I looked for archetypes that I felt I had a smaller chance of facing and then further selected ones from that group that I felt confident my squadron could handle most of the time. This allowed me to eliminate another large portion of my list from the playtest pool. For example, I looked at the Jonus archetype and didn’t think there was a good chance of facing it, and I didn’t think it would give my squadron too many problems if I did.

In further prioritizing squadrons for preparation, I looked for those that I felt would be both most difficult for my squadron to face and had a high probability of being represented. Whisper with a mini-swarm, a named YT-1300 with a Z-95 mini-swarm, and Han Solo with Veteran Instincts (making him Pilot Skill 11) plus support were the three squadrons that I playtested against the most. From there, I tried to play each of the remaining semi-unique archetypes at least once.

As my playtesting continued, I considered making some tweaks to further overcome some of the squadron’s shortfalls. In the end, I decided those tweaks caused more harm than good. With my squadron finalized, I was ready for the North American Championship!

Or so I thought.

The North American Championship

The format for the North American Championship involved two preliminary flights of up to 128 players. The top 32 of each preliminary flight would move on to the Finals to compete in five rounds of Swiss play before cutting to the top 8 to play in a single-elimination bracket. I had purchased a ticket to play in the first preliminary round and decided that I was going to give it just that one shot, so I had to finish in the top 32!

My first loss was against a squadron that consisted of Han Solo (with Veteran Instincts and other upgrades, but didn’t include Gunner or Luke) and 4 Z-95’s. This squadron fit into the archetype that I had considered my biggest challenge. I had practiced against it more than anything else and had an overall strategy and some specific in-game tactics that allowed me to win more times than I lost against it. The biggest thing for me was that I couldn’t make a mistake.

Of course, I ended up making a number of small mistakes about two thirds of the way through the round. A combination of failing to see a potential block, choosing a maneuver that limited me to one decloak location, and letting emotion cloud my judgment led to my defeat. As hard of a loss as that was, it had confirmed everything I learned in my preparation. My squadron had a very good chance of beating one of its worst matchups, even when piloted by a very skilled player. (My opponent was Matt Baxter who finished in the top 8 overall.) It also confirmed that my squadron is not forgiving.

My second loss came in the very next game. I played against a 2-ship “shield-gaining build” that included Corran with R2-D2 and Luke with R5-P9, in addition to a slew of other upgrades on each. I hadn’t playtested against anything even remotely similar, but I knew what my opponent’s general strategy was going to be. He was going to try and hit hard, and once one of his ships took a bunch of damage, break it off and let it regain shields while occupying my squadron with the other, then switching the two roles once the initial ship had regained its shields. I hoped that having two mobile ships in Soontir and Whisper would allow me to catch the damaged ship and finish it off before turning my attention to the other.

Well hats off to my opponent, Christian Bush! Even knowing in principal what he was going to try and do, I couldn’t stop it from happening. I had Corran down to one hull but failed to have a move the following turn to take him out. I wasn’t confident that I could accurately guess where he’d be in two turns, so I felt I had no choice but to switch up and go for Luke. I worked on Luke until he was down to one hull when Corran returned and killed Whisper right as time expired. This was my first game against a squadron I hadn’t prepared for, and it ended in a loss.

After a couple wins, I experienced my third loss of the day against a squad that consisted of Whisper with Veteran Instincts, Soontir Fel, and Carnor Jax, all with a number of nasty upgrades. Looking back at my list of archetypes, you won’t see anything like this there.

I knew Jax had the potential to be a huge problem. Both Soontir and Whisper rely heavily on focus and evade tokens when they are unable to arc dodge. With my opponent also having Whisper and Soontir, I was either going to lose shooting first or lose the ability to dodge arcs against two ships that were great at reacting. I felt like keeping my focus and evade actions was critical, and my on-the-spot plan was to try and create a pincer such that I could catch Jax in the middle.

As our ships maneuvered closer, I was able to engage just as I thought I had wanted, but I was unable to take Jax out. At this point, I realized there was a huge flaw with my plan; if I couldn’t take Jax out next turn, he’d be within range 1 of all three of my ships, not allowing me to take or use the tokens that are so essential to my list. Engaging that way was a huge mistake.

I failed to kill Jax the following turn and proceeded to get massacred by my opponent. If I had playtested against Jax at least once, there’s a chance I would have been able to see how devastating Jax could be if he got into the middle of my pincer and lived. I again tip my hat to my opponent, Randy Baker, for handing me my worst loss of the North American Championship.

In the end, I finished the preliminary rounds with a 4-3 record. That, combined with my strong margin of victory, allowed me to barely slide into the Finals at 28th out of 32. Not my greatest day of X-Wing, but the most interesting part as I reflect back was the squadrons I lost against and how those squadrons compared to my preparation.

Tune In to Worlds Coverage

Thanks, Rick!

Be sure to return tomorrow to read how Rick did in the Finals, including an undefeated record on the way to becoming North American Champion!

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