X-Wing Tournament, Expansion and the 100 Point Squadron Dilemma

TIE (A) and Grey Squadron Y-Wings

          We went to The Game Vault a week ago for their Saturday night X-Wing tournament.  My son picked up two of the Y-Wing expansion packs and I picked up the TIE Advanced.  They are nice models and add interesting features to the game.  Having Darth Vader as a character is a force multiplier...no pun intended.

Two one-hundred point squadrons.

        The TIE (A) and Y-Wing cards/upgrades significantly changed gameplay, with additional weapons (Concussion Missiles, Ion Cannons) as well as modifers and additional Astromech Droids (repair/reduce damage to Rebel Alliance Ships in flight).

        One of the contestants had the Millienium Falcon that he won during the December Kessel Run Tournament at the store.  Nice Modeling, but with the 100 point squadron limit, if you're going to play the Falcon with Han and Luke...that's going to be the only ship in your squadron.  Need to figure out a way to speed up game play and increase squadron size.

Despite initially successful maneuvers, the dogfight did not go Darth's way.

       At the end of the tournament, my son has disabled two of my TIEs with his ION cannons.  The Y-Wings are slow and not very maneuverable, but tough.  They can take a lot of damage, which despite the fact that I had better pilots, allowed him to win the dogfight.  In the end he came in 4th in the tournament...so Dad's happy.  As suspected, the one dogfight took over an hour to play.