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Episode 13: The 312 Interview Series | Sith Taker Open
128 Plays11 months ago
A long time ago… in a windy city, far, far away… Your host Nick Sperry interviews the bloody British across the pond! Rich Polley of The Sith Takers Podcast, Matt Coggins (Top 8) and Tom Fieldsend (Top 2) discuss the recent STO event and life as a European X-Wing player!
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Transcript
Introduction and Special Guests
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to the 312 Squadron podcast. This is our first of many bonus features, where we have conversations with various members of the community at large. Today, I am joined by three very special guests all the way across the pond in the United Kingdom. I am joined by Rich, Mr. Rich Polly of the Sith Takers, as well as our top-cut players from the Sith Taker Open, Mr. Matt Coggins, who made top eight, and Tom Fieldson, who made final table at this recent event.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, gentlemen. Welcome and thank you for your time today.
Meet the UK X-Wing Players
00:00:34
Speaker
Joining me here. Hello there. Hello there. General Kenobi. I integrate hello there. It's like everything at work. Nobody nobody ever does it. I'm just holding out for what one person some day says General Kenobi. You're going to see how many Sith Taker podcast Easter eggs I can drop into this. Yes. Yes. Well, I'm super excited to talk about the Sith Takers and just European X-Wing overall. So
00:00:59
Speaker
Let's just start with some basic introductions like we do, you know, in the workplace when you have, when you meet a new coworker for the first time. So, Rich, I'll start with you. If you want to introduce yourself, uh, your favorite faction at X-wing and a fun non X-wing fact about yourself. Okay. I can feel the judgment come out of the camera already because how I know Matt and Tom quite well. Um, so I've been, uh, my name's Richard Polly. I've been playing X-wing since the force awakens packs came out. Um, so.
00:01:27
Speaker
reignited my love of Star Wars and got into tabletop gaming after. I like first ever tabletop game as well. So my favorite faction in the game is probably is Resistance, conceptually, but I'm not vibing with Resistance at the moment. I just can't get on with what's good for them. I used to be a big fan of the old, the old prawns, the space prawns, the space bombers.
00:01:52
Speaker
Um, but we can't have those at the moment. We're not allowed that kind of fun. So, um, yeah, and an interesting fact about me, that's not x-wing related. Um, I learned to solve a Rubik's cube this year. Um, I was quite proud of that. It took me about three months of repeated effort and building muscle memory, but I can now solve a Rubik's cube. So that's phenomenal. And so can you, can you believe how people can solve that at like five seconds or 10 seconds or whatever it is? Like, yeah. Yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually got art. See, just there's proof. I mean, I do appreciate the proof. We did need the proof and you backed it up. You backed up your claim. I accept. I do accept. Thanks, Rich. How about you, Matt? Yeah. So I have been, oh gosh, playing X-Wing 4. I feel like I've since wave one, to be honest. Yeah. I just played one game of it and I think it was, I maybe wouldn't
00:02:46
Speaker
I think it was like the original starter pack. Yeah, and I've just absolutely loved it since gone all the way through. Met some like fantastic people on the way. I was a main well before resistance came out, I was kind of a bit more of a rebels for republics. But as soon as resistance came out, I would say that became a main faction. Then over COVID, I think as everything kind of went more online. I just yeah, just stuck with sort of resistance and we all kind of know each other through
00:03:13
Speaker
the same sort of faction, several kind of big sort of resistance fans. Fascinating fact about me, this is very random. In my spare time, I like to dress up as a Roman soldier. There you go. You didn't expect that, did you? No, so you are the man that thinks of the Roman Empire quite often. Every day. Every day. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, follow that one, Tom.
00:03:39
Speaker
Is, yeah, is that, um, or is that, I have enough follow-up question for that though. You can't just drop that and walk away. Like, okay. Um, is this, is this like a certified, is this like a high level, like 501st level, like certified recognized group? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're like, uh, yeah. I re-enact spot of a, uh, a guard, a group called the Ole Miss street guard, which are like,
00:04:00
Speaker
kind of, I don't know, I've been around about 52 years. And yeah, we do sort of like reenactments all around Europe and stuff like that. We've never been to America for obvious reasons. But yeah, yeah, no, it's a it's a full on thing. It's a proper hopper, you know? Can I ask a follow up question to Matt? Yeah. Has he an underpants or modern boxer shorts? Yeah, you'd have to come and watch for it to be fair.
00:04:25
Speaker
And then, you know, then I'd show you Tom's always, that's an invitation, rich. That is an open invitation. Hold on to that one. Oh, that's so great. Tom. Hi. Um, I started playing X-wing. It was, it was 1.0. I think it was before the resistance stuff came out. Cause I remember sort of being really excited about the T-70 because it was like, oh, it's an even better X-wing. Um, my main faction is Ray.
00:04:53
Speaker
And that kind of happened because I put her on the table in 1.0 and it was the first thing that kind of went like, oh my God, this is not something I like, but it kind of feels like it's me. So through thick and thin, she's almost always on the table.
00:05:07
Speaker
when I'm flying it. At random fact, I've just hit 3,000 days on Duolingo, so my German is all right. I'm going to have to prove it now. I'm going to say something like... which gets me past quite a few German people. It's like, oh yeah, that's okay. That's not too bad. So you can keep going then. What does that mean? Are you just going to say that and not tell it to translation?
00:05:31
Speaker
I'm sorry, it means my German's not that bad. Oh, oh, it literally means that, okay. Nice, nice. I think the most, what I love about German language is that everything sounds so violent the way it's said, you know? Just like, you could say like that dainty butterfly in that open field is beautiful. I'd be like, I should run!
00:05:54
Speaker
But those are definitely, there's definitely two accents. You can do the really aggressive one or you can do the really flirty one. It doesn't really help just the nature of the words like butterfly, like you mentioned is Schmitterling. It's either very aggressive or it's Schmitterling and you just end up going to the aggressive one most of the time.
00:06:15
Speaker
Well, I think aggressive is fun. Yeah. I mean, if everyone's on the same page, like, yeah, be aggressive with describing anything in a language. It's great. Good stuff. That's a very fun fact. Because as it relates to Star Wars, it's easy for me to name drop. My mom worked for George Lucas when I was very little for about 10 years. So I basically grew up with Star Wars in my blood.
00:06:40
Speaker
fell in love with X-Wing when my roommate in passing bought me the Resistance Core Set, 1.0 Core Set for Christmas. It was like, you know, on clearance. And I didn't even play tabletop games. I just kind of just deeply fell in love with it. It bought everything. It just did that whole shebang. So I think I have a soft spot for for Rebels because of the E-Wing, but I've been playing a lot more Empire with a lot more success right now. There's just way more depth in that faction than some of the other good ones right now.
00:07:10
Speaker
That's kind of why I keep playing them. But yeah, so let's let's dive into the Sith Takers and S.T.O.
The Rise of Sith Takers
00:07:19
Speaker
Rich for you. Who are the Sith Takers? Maybe for folks who are, you know, have heard the name or are just overall vaguely unfamiliar. And how did you all start off? Back in the dawn of one point of wave one, we're really lucky there's an enormous game store that we play out of in Stockport called Element Games.
00:07:40
Speaker
And people might know of it because it sells Warhammer at knockoff prices, but they also have a game store. And it can hold upwards of about 200 gamers. So we can play big X-Wing events with over 100 people in it with space around the tables. So as a result of that, there's loads of people from the area who play all games. Like any night you go there, every game is being played, any miniatures game that you want. And there's guys there that just play everything.
00:08:10
Speaker
And a bunch of them, on wave one, started playing X-Wing together when it dropped to see if they liked it. They kind of got deep into it and they decided to form into a squadron in the UK. In version one, squadrons were a very big deal for people that were part of them. So there was quite a lot of rivalry that went beyond the friendly almost. It was very, very kind of
00:08:34
Speaker
territorial, like, you know, your local area was your squadron, and you went to other people's areas to steal their stuff and all this kind of thing. So the Sith Takers started off in that kind of environment. And we've got like, it's this is the this is the nerdy, weird stuff, because none of those people still play. But we had a lawyer who was one of our members at one point, so we pulled together a constitution. So we have like a formalized constitution, we have a committee,
00:09:03
Speaker
We have a treasurer, we have a chair, we have a secretary. It's very British. We have an annual general meeting where we talk about what we're going to do and all that kind of stuff. As a result of that, even though that first group of people no longer play, as new people come in and new people join the group, the people who are interested in continuing to run the club kind of step up and continue to do it. So we've managed to survive as a squadron.
00:09:27
Speaker
beyond most of the other kind of big squadrons in the UK who've kind of fallen away or merged or split or whatever. So that's kind of where we started. Recently, we've become a little bit better known globally because we run an online TTS league as well. So we do that and we have a podcast that we do weekly most of the time.
00:09:54
Speaker
Like we miss the odd week for reasons that, you know, family sickness, whatever, because we don't have a Patreon. So people can't force us to record when we don't want to. So it's fine. That myself. Yeah, we have one. Yeah. So we've got so, yeah, we've got so we record. There's I'm trying to think there's about 20 active X-Wing players who are actually set takers at the moment. And we are we've spread beyond element games now. So we've got members from a store in Birmingham in the UK.
00:10:25
Speaker
So Borden Brum, if you ever listen to the podcast, you'll hear Liam mentioning constantly. And then we've also picked up a few other players from around, kind of Leeds and Sheffield, Nottingham. So kind of across the country whose game store is shut down or their club has broken up, but they still want to play X-Wing and they want to have a group to belong to when they go to big events. So yeah, that's where we come from. And that's kind of what we're doing at the moment.
00:10:51
Speaker
And the thing you want to talk to us about today, of course, is we've been running the SysTaker Open. We've just had our fifth one. It's not our biggest one, but it was bigger than last year. So our biggest one was- That's crazy to say too, because you guys put big numbers for that. What was the total number? We were 113 this year. But in February 2020 or 21, must have been 21, February 21, we had 119.
00:11:19
Speaker
just out of COVID lockdowns, everybody just wanted to play X-Wing. So loads and loads of people from across the UK just kind of went, ah, room full of nerds that I can play spaceships with, let's go. So we got 119 people for that one. We sold for this year, 132 tickets. But then obviously people, we sold a year in advance in a day.
00:11:43
Speaker
So we put the tickets live about 11 months before the event and sold them in 28 hours, which is crazy. And then had a wait list, which was crazy. But then by the time everything settled down on the actual event day, yeah, we had 113 people showed up to play X-Wing. So it was really cool. Yeah, I'll ask this to the wider group as well. You guys, it wasn't because of the timing, I assume. It was just the timing.
00:12:09
Speaker
It wasn't an official event in terms of like a world's invite or, you know, like, I don't know if you guys had official prizes or anything, but as far as I know, it wasn't official. And you still drew in like the biggest for any sort of what anybody could dream for an unofficial event. Do you feel like.
00:12:25
Speaker
that speaks to the availability of these events abroad, especially in the UK, just because people just want to play in person at a structured tournament like event? Or why do you think you pulled in as many people outside of the influence you guys have had for so long? I know what I think, but I'd be interested to hear what Matt and Tom think on that. Yeah, I mean, for me, the big draw is
00:12:54
Speaker
When I say you guys, it's sort of the effort and the time and the buildup that comes through the event, the prize support and the welcome feeling and just the kind of enormity of that room. It was two days of just bliss, right? You just constantly, there's just free stuff being thrown at you all the time. There's the community who are just a joy to be around. And all of that's kind of supported and structured by what you spend a year doing before each one.
00:13:22
Speaker
And I think for me, that's something that you really just want to get involved with. And once you've tasted it once, you then immediately want to do it again for the same reasons. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's the it's the continual improvements year on year. So every year I've been, they've listened to what's been said. And it's really intricate things. It could be like the toilets or it could be the pricing structure or it could be I know it's really, really simple stuff. It's just the fact that they just want to make it kind of better every year. And
00:13:50
Speaker
It's just like that FOMO as well, you know? Like, everyone's going to this event, are you going? Are you going? And it just creates this hype and this build up. And yeah, you know, like I said, we were getting our tickets, you know, like you said, 11 months in advance, which is crazy just to go to sort of anything. But it's just such as Tom said, it's such a lovely, familiar, you know, family feeling, can talk to anybody. It's just, well, I mean, I think that's what we love about the game anyway, right? But the way it's sort of structured and built in that room.
00:14:21
Speaker
is fantastic. I don't know what rich things, hopefully things to say. So there's a structure to it. So first of all, I didn't conceive of the STO. A guy called Colin Brown and Will Pintar decided to have a big event and our first one was like 50 people, which was mostly locals. About three years ago, a lad called Christian Jesperson came from Denmark.
00:14:51
Speaker
And we were blown away that somebody had traveled. It was like a 70 something person event. And we were like, this guy's traveled, like he's taken leave from work and he's come over. And that was amazing. And then we got a bunch of lads from Germany came over, got a bunch of the Berlin X wing players came over and they started promoting it around other parts. And suddenly it kind of became this.
00:15:17
Speaker
kind of everybody just wants to go to the STO once a year because it's a weekend where you get to go and meet your friends and it is a full weekend so you have the Friday night pre-social which leads to some people missing round one because they oversleep or haven't been to sleep so they don't make it and they have to drop from the main event because they're too hungover slash still drunk to play X-Wing so you know that's fine and then but you know you get this kind of
00:15:47
Speaker
And on the Saturday, we have a mainline event, which is whatever the AMG standard event is at that point in time. So at the minute, it's scenarios. It's variable round timer. It's played as if it is a formal event. So we'd call it a premier level event. And then on the Sunday, we run CUT. But we also run a whole bunch of side events for people who've made the journey. So this year, we tried out a 10.2 ship format
00:16:16
Speaker
which was like a much shorter timeframe. So you like no large bases kind of thing, like a varied rule system, which went down really well. And we also had, you know, an extended event that people could play and if they still wanted to play full lists kind of stuff. So we do make a full weekend of it. And as Matt said, kind of the main thing that we do is we always listen to feedback and we always hack it on it. So last year we said we were going to do a cut to 16. We had eight people went four and one or five and O.
00:16:44
Speaker
which, sorry, 18 people went 5-0 or 4-1, which meant that two people didn't make cut. And we felt super bad. One of them was Matt. He lost his first round game. And because of that, his strength of schedule sucked. So he missed out on cut. So we updated our format this year so that that wouldn't happen. We had a playing round instead. So we had everybody 4-1 or better made cut. We had a playing round at the end of day one. And the same with prize support. We realized that our
00:17:14
Speaker
winners were always taking the stuff that we were making and kind of putting it in a drawer because the people at the top end of these big events have often won everything. So, you know, we do these nice sith taker open trays with like champion written on it for the winner and all this kind of stuff. And we're like, well, you know, it's just going to go into a box with all of your other ones because you've already got world's templates or you've already got, you know, system open templates or something else that, you know, you want to use because they're official.
00:17:42
Speaker
So again, we took on feedback from the community and this year we basically spread like the big expensive pricing down through the cut. So we did best in bracket and we gave them template tries. So people who were the top finishing person with zero wins or five losses or four losses or three losses would win a template try. So that's like a, you know, like a premium prize that normally you would only get if you came out in the top. So yeah, we, um,
00:18:12
Speaker
I think, as Tom and Matt both alluded to, the main thing, though, is that we've now got the heritage, for want of a better word, of running the event. And people remember how much fun they had last year. So we've kind of leaked next year's dates. We're not leaked. We've said this is the weekend we've got the whole book for. And we know that about half a dozen people have already booked their hotel, even though tickets aren't for sale yet, because there's a hotel just over the road from the game store.
00:18:39
Speaker
They're like, yep, we want to be in that one. It's good. It's cheap and cheerful, and it's very basic. But it's literally 20 yards away from the game store. So they can drink as much as they want and still make round one, which is.
00:18:54
Speaker
And some actually get to sleep. Yeah. Try to get at least four hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I found when I played in cuts, I've been running on fumes like a Gen Con. I made top top four at Gen Con and I had like two hours of sleep. So try to get a couple. Let's try to get a couple.
00:19:09
Speaker
That's that brain just going 100 miles an hour the whole night and eventually pass out from unconsciousness like because you're so tired and then you just wake back up again. Yeah, back up at five or six a.m.. Yeah, you start real early. Yeah, it's it's really interesting because I there's kind of a different sentiment here for folks, even with just the store champs. If we had a lot of issues with people, you guys are well aware of this with people just not going.
00:19:38
Speaker
When they'd find out that we wouldn't hit the threshold for an official event. And yet over, meanwhile, you guys are hosting something that doesn't even offer a world's invite and has over a hundred people attending. And I think that's really exciting, very interesting and very.
00:19:55
Speaker
different than what I see here in the States with the attitude that people have. Because I do think the sense of community transcends just one part of the globe. It transcends just the UK. We have a great sense of community here and everywhere else where X-Wing is played. But the way people look at attending events, I feel like is skewed a little bit here than for you guys. And I just find it... I want to commend you, Rich, for
00:20:21
Speaker
you know, in your team for being able to uphold a great community. Your treasurer, your president, your vice president, the entire cabinet, all the big wigs. It's really cool. Thank you. And it's interesting that you say that because we had two world's qualifiers in the UK. We had one in London and one in the UK Games Expo in Birmingham, which is like our, what's it like? It's a bit like PAX, I guess.
00:20:51
Speaker
Um, but not as big. Um, and we had something like 40 people at London and something like 60 people at PAX. So combined, not PAX, UK Games Expo. So combined, our unofficial event was bigger than them. Um, there's a lot of reasons for that. Um, primarily it's the amount of notice that the community in the UK gets from Asmodee.
00:21:19
Speaker
the events have actually been officially sanctioned. We all are pretty sure that the LGT, which runs on the same weekend, will have an X-Wing event. It will be a world's qualifier, but they haven't announced it yet. And the same with the UK Games Expo. We're pretty sure it will, but they haven't announced it yet, where we can announce our event a year in advance, and everybody knows it's going to happen. We usually have some official stuff to give out. We have asked Asmedine, we've asked AMG about becoming an official event,
00:21:48
Speaker
Because we're a single system event, we've not had it. So we've noticed that the community-run events that have the four Star Wars games running in them, they can get sanctioned as full events. But because we're only X-Wing, we're not getting it. We don't know if that's the reason. But we're continuing to push on that door, and we're getting support from the community in the United States as well as here. So people are opening doors for us with AMG.
00:22:18
Speaker
And we're hoping to bend some ears when we're in Chicago in a couple of weeks as well. Yeah, absolutely. So let's see. I guess we'll just specifically throw it over to Matt and Tom. So how did STO go for you guys? They're doing a bat rep on every round because we don't have the time. As much as I'd love to hear about every single round and die roll from you guys, because I would love to. How did it go for
Sith Taker Open Highlights
00:22:44
Speaker
you guys? How was it? How many times have you attended this event? It probably were.
00:22:48
Speaker
It's probably worth providing the context that me and Matt are in a sort of a menagerie to our kind of relationship with Ray and the sort of our... The way you started that sounds like... It's the best way I can describe it. I wanted our friendship sort of like I was literally put in contact with Matt and the rest of the resist tank, which Rich is also part of by one of Matt's friends who went, oh, you seem to really like Ray. Well, my friend really likes Ray as well. So now I don't have to talk to him about it anymore because you two can talk about it.
00:23:17
Speaker
And we, since then, we kind of have viewed, certainly in the last couple of months, who did they, Matt? We've been trying to build something that he could take to the STO and I could take to Worlds. And just sort of really try and run with it and see how far we could take it. We certainly weren't expecting to hit the top cut. We thought, well, you know, one of us might if we have a good day.
00:23:41
Speaker
So for both of us to do it was a bit eye-opening. And I think certainly in the week and a half since then, we've had a lot of people who've kind of looked at that and gone, oh my God, this identical list made top table and top eight. Tell me about how it works. Which I think is really important to know. Day one was really, really good for me. Obviously after the disappointment of last year, when I did form one as well, I kind of said,
00:24:08
Speaker
I don't want to do win three on the troll and then like panic in those last two games if I just, you know, lose those two. So did exactly what I didn't want to do in one three in a row and then lost my fourth game to a guy who actually went into the top 16 and then won my fifth. And yeah, no, I had a very, very good day. I didn't come up against anything that I hadn't not necessarily seen before. I've been repping and practicing absolutely loads with the list. So
00:24:38
Speaker
You know, I felt, you know, pretty confident sort of going in. And then for me, I've never made cut before, not anywhere near in a sort of a big event like this. So getting into the top 16 already was like amazing. And then it was just very strange going into the car on the Sunday. And then, yeah, got through my top 16 game. That was a really, really good game. And then I lost to the.
00:25:00
Speaker
The eventual winner, Corotar, with his racklist, who also, well, seemed to knock quite a few of us resistance lists out, I'm afraid. Very, very good game. Came down to the classic, you know, just classic ending, really. It was all down to dice rolls, and I had a heroic hombre. It was like, I roll three blanks. Oh, I need to roll another dice. I roll another blank. It's like, heroic. Here's my forward dice.
00:25:29
Speaker
You know, heroic abandon me just wasn't enough, but had a very, very good run over the two days. What a shame. I know. I mean, it would have been the dream. All you players, you had resistance players to get to reroll your plague results. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, I had a really fantastic time. All the opponents were brilliant.
00:25:48
Speaker
The main thing is, just like I said, just to do is, you know, does the list. The thing is you come up with a list, right? Like a good friend and you, it's that same old thing. You build it together and you think, yeah, this is going to be brilliant. And, you know, it's going to do this. And, but you're never really quite sure. And then for us to sort of both do so well with the, with the list, which no one had really seen coming or, you know, if you look at the sort of data and stuff, you don't see Ray, you don't seem to trigger happy fly ball. So you don't really see too high wing. So.
00:26:16
Speaker
for have it all together. Yeah, it was a big, I dunno, it was a big confidence booster for us, Tom, right? I mean, it was huge, wasn't it? And you obviously went a bit further than me as well, so.
00:26:29
Speaker
It was amazing. My goal going in was to do well enough that if it was worlds, because again, the caliber of the room was very similar, that I would have made day two, because flying Chicago for three and a half days would feel a bit naff if I don't make day two, but that's fine. So I was aiming for three, two, and I ended up going four and one, which was great. I think there were a couple of the wins where I got a little bit lucky. There was one where ETA Anakin and Poe exchanged, arranged one shot.
00:26:59
Speaker
and Poe just one shot an Anakin. And then Anakin went, okay, well, I'm going to ionize you with the ancillary ion weapons. And the turn after Poe got very lucky in that he bumped one enemy ship and then managed to survive well enough that he was limping for okay. And then because of all of his upgrades, he was able to then get out of arcs and just be a pain for the rest of the game. The one loss I had was against Dale.
00:27:25
Speaker
who was incredibly aggressive with his imperialism, which I knew that's the one. And I was like, and in my head, I was like, right. He's been really aggressive with his aces. So I'll be really aggressive with Ray and Poe. And it turns out that was the wrong choice. I should have let him come to me instead. But, you know, that's, that's good learning. And so then again, in the court, I just, it was great. I was in thinking, amazing. I've had a really good time. Anything that happens here is lovely. And as soon as I lose, I can slide into the side event, which was going to be extended.
00:27:55
Speaker
the one that I was going to drop into and suddenly then that's a nice challenge because you've got to try and spot your win conditions against ships that you wouldn't always see. Especially when I got a Dom in my top 16 match, he's currently flying a resistance salad that's just chock full of Ferris sphere paint, which isn't a problem for Ray and the Y-Wings, but for Poe, it kind of turned off his big gun. However, again, he wasn't expecting the Y-Wings.
00:28:21
Speaker
and they really got in and blocked up a lot of stuff and that meant that Ray and Poe could pick things off quite effectively and Poe managed to put his proton torpedoes into the only ships that didn't have ferris sphere paint and took them off with each torpedo. Then I ended up against Martin Chippers who is a really fantastic player and who just knocked out Tom Veal who's another Steel City player in the knockout rounds.
00:28:45
Speaker
But ironically, it meant that he went straight to Dale and said, Dale, tell me what Tom's list does. And I ran straight to Tom Beal and went, tell me what Martin's list does and how it works. So there was a lovely point where he knew that I was either going to sloop with Ray or keep going forward. And he had Kylo coming in the same way. And we both made the same really defensive choice of he ran away. And I just went really slowly. It meant that he could put a concussion missile into Ray's side, but then it meant that Ray
00:29:13
Speaker
was nowhere near Kylo for the rest of the game, and she could just concentrate on doing as much damage as possible. And between, again, her and the bombs, it was just slowly taking his ships off. And I think he also made a really big mistake at one point. He knew that Quickdraw could get concussion bombs, so he three-hearted her out of the match. And that basically meant there was three, three or four turns where she just wasn't involved, which again means that Rey and Poe can just go... with all of the small FO ships.
00:29:41
Speaker
And then in top four, I was against him who I'd played in round two. So we already had a bit of a, an idea of, um, how each other liked to play, but it was cargo, which is, I think one of the weaker, uh, match-ups in my list. And it literally came down to the last shot where if I could put our damage in sports, that would have been the end of the game. And it was Ray and Ray went, yeah, of course I can do that.
00:30:03
Speaker
and then the final it was against quarantine and his what on paper looks like a 26 28 point list and in practice i don't think it was so bad just because ray and poe could look at his three two points high fives and go you're dead you're dead you're almost dead why are we gonna finish it off
00:30:20
Speaker
which really helped me to pull it back. Unfortunately, I planned out a turn to get all the objectives, which would have put me on 20 to his 19, or something like that, dialed it all in, and then time was called. So I didn't have time to do that, and the moves I had, it came down to a dice roll of tan ray, put two damage, I think it should have been, into the Zia.
00:30:43
Speaker
but the shots you had was obstructed and it was range three. So with an Evain and Palpatine, I needed really good dice and I needed his dice to be crap. And I got perfectly average dice and he got all paint and it's like, oh well, end of game. But it was really fun. I was looking at his list on paper. I thought he was going to absolutely spank me. So to lose 19, 17 was like, well, that's fine. Another day I could probably do it.
00:31:09
Speaker
What's it like being, um, I mean, do you have a lot of experience making like final tables or was it like, what could you just maybe in a few words just describe that feeling? Were you nervous? Uh, did, you know, did it set in like halfway through? Um, how does that affect you? And, um, I think I remember what, so one of my friends, Nick Burke, who used to play X wing, unfortunately doesn't, it didn't enjoy the transition at 2.5.
00:31:34
Speaker
he always said one of my strengths was when I was losing that I just kind of go, right, well, this is what I need to do to win. And I think the same mindset sort of kicked in. There wasn't really a point on the three stream games where I felt particularly nervous. I think it was just so much going on. And at that point, as Richard Matt will attest to the louder part of my personality kind of comes to the front. And I think that that kind of almost like a wave kind of washed me over anything else I was feeling.
00:32:05
Speaker
So fingers crossed that happens again if I get anywhere near that far in Worlds. Just from a viewer's perspective, both Tom and Correnton on the final table were playing incredibly clean, incredibly friendly X-Wing. It was like watching two people playing a casual game on a club night. Tom might say he wasn't nervous, but unless he's got really bad shakes normally, he was a little bit
00:32:33
Speaker
little bit of a sweat going on. Um, but it was, um, no, like, um, I've been on like one top table for a, a largest event before. And it was weird because I didn't expect to be there. Um, so just picking up on the question, what it feels like I was kind of in a bit of a daze. My opponent was a seasoned kind of top table player. So he was picking, you know, his moment to dive in. It was back in the, in the days of two hour finals as well. So it was.
00:33:01
Speaker
You know, I played as if I was going to win at 75 minutes and I was up on 75 minutes, but then he had 45 minutes of the game left to close out a victory, which he did. Um, so, um, but yeah, I know the final table is really cool. Like, you know, quarantine, I don't know if you've ever seen him playing, but he does like sound effects and.
00:33:20
Speaker
He's great fun to watch when he's playing the game, like he's standing on his chair and hiding under the table and blowing kisses to his dice and, you know, imploring the Lord above to do things for him. He's very, very animated when he plays. It's amazing fun to watch. And the energy on the final table was being like quarantine and Tom were matching each other's energy. So there wasn't like a quiet, reserved, non-talkie player and somebody trying to bounce off them and get nothing. They were giving and getting.
00:33:50
Speaker
as good as each other. So there was a really good energy around it as well. So it was, it was a great fun game to watch. And I think it's going to be on YouTube at some point too. Maybe. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Firecast focus, right? Is that we're trying to be able to, even a half hours of, if you want to beat Tom and that's list, watch how they play. Yeah.
00:34:11
Speaker
plenty of scouting opportunities, I suppose, although I'm not sure how much it matters when you have an i5 and i6 that are capable of doing that kind of damage. But there are ways to beat it as proven even on final table. That's very cool though, Tom. I appreciate you enlightening us on how things went and congrats again for making it so far. You were so close. Another opportunity at Worlds on the biggest stage. So looking forward to seeing you there and seeing how you do.
00:34:35
Speaker
You know, I will both be playing on the Friday Swiss. So we might even run into each other and we'll see if I can at least score double digits and points. Yeah. Like, you know, some of the tricks now. Yeah, I was also not playing the list. You and I play to not play the list that I like to play. I played Deathfire. I never played that fire. It's real bad. I don't know what I'm doing, man. Clearly. So moving moving on, like, how would you guys describe
00:35:02
Speaker
The European, I'm going to, obviously lumping you guys into that, you know, European culture of X-wing versus American
X-Wing Culture: Europe vs America
00:35:07
Speaker
culture. If there's anything that you, you know, you've noticed, obviously people like to stereotype, which I think is always amusing. Some people credit the sweaty tryhards in Europe for why objectives exist now. You know, like, just curious, what have you guys noticed? How do you feel about people stereotyping? European players is sweaty, tryhard or delayed engagement, slower playing players sometimes or whatever that means.
00:35:36
Speaker
Okay, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I, I, it's not something that I would sort of stereotype. You know, Europeans, generally, are definitely not British people. We're far too polite and, you know, courteous and patient for, for stuff like that. I don't believe we've got a huge stereotype in that way. And again, I wouldn't believe, yeah, that anything the other way as well, to be totally honest, I, I definitely don't sort of play in that way or fashion.
00:36:06
Speaker
I like the objective game as it sort of come in. And I don't, you know, believe there's been sort of any direct influence. I think there's always the stereotype that it's this whole like European meta and how different it is. I was listening to a podcast the other day and I think it was Yaxpi or something. And they were basically saying that the STO was one like big fake
00:36:28
Speaker
show to kind of like, because they couldn't believe the lists, they were just like, there's no way scum came top in Swiss and there's no way this and they were actually the sort of thing like we were like joking and like just trying to trick
00:36:42
Speaker
the American meta into thinking this is what they're going to bring. So I don't know. There's a lot of laws. Yeah. Yeah. Literally dead. Like they thought we were winding them up. They're like, everyone's got together. A hundred and thirty people have got together and they said, right. These are the lists that we're going to rise to the top. I'm going to trick all of America to believe that these are the lists that are coming. And these are really good. And I always find it just to interject, I always find it really humorous when Americans try to
00:37:10
Speaker
say these things or you know, it talks back or stereotype Europe is even an x-wing because We are we've got so many screws loose as a country is so much to make fun of it There's so many awful things to and I you know, I obviously you know, I'm not gonna get political I just think it's really ironic right because to be honest I'm kind of jealous of y'all in a lot of ways like
00:37:34
Speaker
You know, y'all, I feel like I would have a lot of fun, um, playing X-wing the way, or, you know, quote unquote, the way that you guys play. Um, and I, Matt, the last time we talked about this, you had alluded or maybe it was rich, maybe you would have been the one alluding to the star Vipers from 2.0. I had that joke in my locker. I had that joke in my locker. I was gonna bust it out again for you.
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, just just just to pick up kind of on the question, like a lot of the experience that people have of playing against European players is if they come to a big US event like a PAX or an Adepticon or something like that. And it's worth noting that somebody who's paid at least £1,000, £1,500, about $2,000 to travel to America to play X-Wing, they're not going to be there flying something
00:38:30
Speaker
rubbish just because it might be fun. They're going to try and win. There'll be competitive gamers who are trying to win. There are some people and some cultures in Europe, because it's worth pointing out as well that Europe in inverted commas is, I don't know, something like 30 countries, which all have distinct cultures. All the gaming, never mind actual national cultures. So yeah, there will be people who play in that way.
00:38:59
Speaker
There are people who enjoyed playing the toilet bowling and then dipping in half in one ship and then dipping back out again, style of X-Wing. But equally, there were also people who played to kind of top table who enjoyed, you know, tabling people and smiling while they did it. Like, you know, one of our most successful ever sith takers was Jack Mooney, who got top four, I think, worlds in with Han Jake.
00:39:27
Speaker
Um, and that was a whole big off meta choice that he made then, you know, he flew what he called, you know, here's a wave two list and wave five or whatever. I want to see how far I can get with it. Um, and he did well, obviously. Um, but you know, there's so, there's such a broad variety and it's like kind of saying, Oh, what's the U S met alike to somebody from California? When in your brain you're thinking about people from Baltimore. It's like, you know, what?
00:39:54
Speaker
You know, they're literally thousands of miles apart, so the metas will be different the way people play with different. I think there's an interesting point about how online play has kind of coalesced the meta a little bit and the impact that that's having on it. And it's possibly a discussion for another day. But I think good lists rise to the top, irrespective of where they come from. It's harder to keep a good list secret now.
00:40:18
Speaker
Um, because people will see you trying it out that one time on NCX or see you trying it out that one time on three, one, two or whatever. Um, Oh, thanks so much for that shout out. I mean, they're all listening to you already. So, you know, not going to grow your list or on firecast focus or whatever. But yeah, it's funny, like they talk about stereotypes. I mean, stereotypes exist because they're true sometimes, right? That's, that's why they exist. So, you know,
00:40:46
Speaker
There's the stereotype about all Irish people being drunk and all Americans being loud and everybody from Yorkshire being tight with money. And everybody from where Coggins is from, which is called Somerset, which is where the Shire from Lord of the Rings was based on, being farmers and owning their own combine harvesters.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, whenever anybody brings the Lord of the Rings, always like bring out the one ring I wear around my neck every day. I'm a big fan. Look, look at my ring. Yeah, he lives in the Shire neck. Literally, he lives in the Shire. Oh, God, it's amazing. Before I go to Tom asking about this, another thing that I find really funny is that if you guys just weren't in the time zone that you're in, I think people would just be just already less tilted. But the funny thing is you guys have to deal with our time zone.
00:41:40
Speaker
But like, whenever there's like an American based, mostly American League and or like in our league, you guys, there is EuroTrash, which Matt and Tom were made made up two thirds of the team. And, you know, you play against EuroTrash, you're like, well, get ready to be playing some really late games or some at some funky times. And people are like, ah, it's like these European players, these guys in London and England driving me crazy with these time zones. It's like, well, they got to deal with that in almost any league they play in because it's just how it works.
00:42:10
Speaker
And then there's those who've got that issue with literally every game every single week when there was a new parent, it was like, Oh God, time zones again. Why are we ended? What are we doing? Yeah. But you guys even played on stream a few times. Like made it work. Yeah. Made it work. Tom, how do you feel about, uh, about the stereotype that y'all are so sweaty?
00:42:32
Speaker
I think, so I try not to come across that way, because I think when I think in that way, it makes me a much worse player. I'm much better when I'm relaxed, and me, rather than trying really hard. I don't know, I don't give in to that European stereotype of the, like, the ace play, or the finding the most optimal thing. For me, it was always right. Ray should have Finn and Rose, because they were winner in the film, and Luke Shaw would have R2-D2 and Proton 12 videos, and all of that sort of stuff.
00:42:59
Speaker
So when it switched with 2.5, I really liked the changes because it suited my play style and my play style isn't, I don't think the stereotypical European one.
00:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting going back to like the whole idea, like what you hear versus what you see. A lot of people, this is my quick, very quick defense of 2.0. I'm enjoying the game right now. But a lot of people are like, well, 2.0 is bad because you had people mobile fortressing and never engaging. And I'm like, I've played thousands of 2.0 games at tournaments and casually and like never had that problem. But it still existed. But just like those broad statements like, oh, like,
00:43:39
Speaker
you know, this entire culture, this is the way that they would play. And then, you know, the idea those are just not just categorically false. And so objectives, though, I think kind of created a cohesive way for everybody to get on the same page about how to play the game, like just the approach of the game, because, you know, you could have one person that was willing to engage and the other person just to, you know, stay on one side of the board the entire game.
00:44:02
Speaker
you know, that's still on their terms. And now I feel like both players kind of have to compromise and how they play through the game and try to win. And that brings everybody together. Stereotype being true or not or whatever, you know, but obviously you had instances where you had, you know, the mobile fortress thing with the star Vipers, you had people self bumping for three or four rounds in a row with like the YV triple six or whatever. But
00:44:28
Speaker
very rare cases and I never thought I got to the point where like we need to change the game because of these like two or three outliers but nonetheless we did and here we are and ultimately I am enjoying objectives but I just I just find it amusing you get these ideas in your head about how an entire country or continent plays the same game you play and then you realize that it's really not that different and especially with online play we
00:44:58
Speaker
We all, I feel like, are more on the same page than we ever have been about how the game is played. I think just to kind of support that, Fortreson has been an issue since Triple Jump Masters, when people used to pile three Jump Masters up in the corner and then wait for Instinctive Aim Dead Eye shots with guidance chips to do four hits three times and nuke something off the board. And there's been multiple lists that did it. I mean, even on World's Final Table in the last version,
00:45:28
Speaker
Simeon Delapina, where there's two bro-bots, sat in a corner for four turns and just one-hearted them into each other and didn't move. And that's just been a way that the game was played. I think you're absolutely right. Objectives have changed it. You're forced to come out and play the game in some way. It's made it more complex. And the points now are lower, like, irrespective of the change to how the points are structured. You can now put so many more ships in a list than you used to be able to. You know, you used to be able to put two, three, four in.
00:45:58
Speaker
If you're putting six or seven in, that meant you were taking a load of really, really low-powered stuff. The complexity of lists has gone up as well. So the game itself has got more complex. But I think one of the things that is absolutely better is the fact that you have to come and play. You can't not. It's great.
00:46:19
Speaker
as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I'm bad at some of the scenarios. I won't tell people which ones I'm bad at, but I always seem to make the wrong choices. But, you know, I think it's great as well that they've iterated them. Like, I think it was Adepticon two years ago when Nathan ID put Marcel into a cocktail on Final Table at Adepticon before it was Worlds. It's the worst game I've ever seen. Ran away giggling after 15 minutes when he was 15-2 up or something. And AMG looked at that and went,
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's bad. That's wrong. Let's change scenarios. And now I think Scramble is probably the
00:46:57
Speaker
scenario, people in general like the most because it was salvage. That was that final game. Oh, it was salvage. I was working with Dion as a part of the staff. Oh, that's right. Scenario was going to be picked for that. Yeah. Yeah. So it was salvage, but yeah, they changed it. So, um, yeah, anyway, probably people like scramble the most anyway, cause they changed it from five down to three and, you know, um, and took the random element out of it, but you know, they've iterated it and that makes things better. Right. That's true.
00:47:29
Speaker
So before we wrap up here. Just quickly on the side of pace of play, like on slow playing specifically, I feel like people whenever I'm at a tournament, someone always approaches me and like, man, I lost this game because my opponent was slow playing. And what always happens is that they say this. You don't know exactly what that looked like. The game is more complicated.
00:47:54
Speaker
Uh, there's a lot more, you know, if, if, when, if this happens, this will happen, uh, there's a lot of depth in each game and, uh, there's more ships, like the average ship count, like, you know, it used to be three, maybe four. Now it's like, you know, if you're playing four, you're probably in most cases, you're not going to necessarily do fair, very well, but five or six ship lists, unless you're Tom playing, you know, he has four ship lists, but, um, so.
00:48:18
Speaker
And they never call judges on that. They never call it. Yeah, Matt, you play the same. Yeah, there you go. But they never call a judge and slow play. It's really hard for me to determine like there is no metric to hit to be like if your opponent takes more than this amount of seconds per dial, they have officially started slow playing. Like how do you guys feel about do you see a slow play at these big events that you guys attend and run? How do you feel about just kind of where that whole ideology is at right now in the game?
Tournament Challenges: Managing Slow Play
00:48:48
Speaker
So from an organizer's perspective, slow play is relative. So if you've got two players playing big swarm lists and they get through five turns, but they're both satisfied that the conclusion of the game is fair and that it's been played to a fair conclusion, then that's not slow play. But if you've got two players with three ships each, and one of those players is taking 15 minutes over dials on turn one or turn two,
00:49:16
Speaker
then you'd be in your rights to say, I think this guy's slow playing me because we're going to get five turns here and we've got three ships each. So it's so relative. I think the key thing is that if you feel like your opponent is not slow playing you, but is taking a long time to make decisions when maybe those decisions are obvious, then you should call a judge on turn two or three, not on turn five and say,
00:49:42
Speaker
You know, or like after an hour and say, we've been playing for an hour and we're only on turn three. This is unacceptable because at that point the judge can say, okay guys, hurry it up a bit, but you're only going to get one or two more turns in at that point. And the damage is done. So you need to call it out in like the first 15 minutes of the round. If you feel like your opponent's slow playing you, um, there is a counterpoint to that. The pace of play is a legitimate strategy.
00:50:08
Speaker
like slowing your pace of play a little bit to try and make sure that your opponent doesn't get three more turns, but gets two. Because on three more turns, they easily win, where on two, you've still got a chance of victory. But then there's the counterpoint of that, and that's table style. That's you trying to make sure you get the number of turns in that you need to win. So without rushing your opponent past triggers and stuff. So yeah, from an organizer's perspective, it's tough, as you say, Nick, absolutely.
00:50:34
Speaker
If people don't tell you until after the game, there's literally nothing you can do about it. So you need to call it out when it can still be addressed. That's what judges are for. I think there's just a lot of factors that vary into it. So there's the list that you've brought, the list that your opponent's brought, which obviously can be very different. If you've got four ships and they've got six, they are probably going to take more time than you do.
00:50:58
Speaker
and there's also the scenarios themselves where I think the exact same pace of play on one might feel like it is slow play compared to another and then there's also things like reputation that can happen that you might have heard a player is a slow player and that immediately then colors your opinion
00:51:16
Speaker
of what you see. So I think it can be really tricky. I think 2.5 in general discourages it just because of the objectives. You have to be getting your ships into positions to make them count, and you need to do that fairly quickly. So I think people get through turns a little bit quicker than they did before. But there's also the nature of just how many upgrades and triggers there are now. That slows things down.
00:51:41
Speaker
That's what people slow play. It's just that you've got system-based triggers and you've got to go through them and then road. Heaven forbid commandos. Heaven forbid the slow-play mechanic of the century, Mandalorian commandos. Oh my goodness. What a tactic. Oh, I felt like they could be using the resistance. That'd be great. Oh, God.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah. I agree with all of that. I agree with both of you guys are saying absolutely. It's relative for sure. And there's a lot of factors. Go ahead, Matt. Yeah. Well, I don't know for me. So the one thing I always prepare myself for because I play a lot of more of online is that I always sort of say in my head, if I'm going, when I'm playing in real life, it is a million times slower. Like I online, I'm seeing like, you know, seven, eight, nine turns in real life. I always kind of prep myself for about, like about six. Like I see obviously a huge difference.
00:52:29
Speaker
Obviously, you know, for the obvious reasons, with the setup and the mechanics and things you do and you can do in the online play. I personally like, I wouldn't, I've never seen or I wouldn't believe a witness any, you know, slow play. The random timer, I think is a good thing. I think that's really, really helped because you don't have that whole scenario of, oh, this is going to be the last turn or it might be the last turn. I think that's stopped a lot of people doing that sort of
00:52:57
Speaker
Okay. This is the final turn. I know it's going to be because that timer is going to run out at that time. Um, I think that's definitely helped like for sure. A little bit. Um, would I ever call it out? I don't know. I think that I, I don't, I don't think it's the confrontation is so different. I just, I hate confrontation. Yeah. I've just feel awkward. I've, I, what I tend to do is if I have set my dials, I will just tend just to sit down and just, you know,
00:53:22
Speaker
just say absolutely, so nothing, which is unusual for me, but I think it's like a very clear sign to sort of say like, you know, I'm waiting for you. Um, but I'm, I would say where I'm bad is that I'll do a move or something. And then sometimes I'm like longer when I need to decide sort of what I want to do or yeah, I don't, I kind of don't think that's all far ahead. Um, but like I said, it's experiences people, it's list numbers, it's choices, it's bumps, it's bombs. It's there is such a,
00:53:53
Speaker
That's what you were saying. It's an obvious choice, right? There's a huge potential, isn't there? But I think the way that is constructed these days is you want to engage. You want to be getting objectives at a random time. I feel like I'm seeing it less if I'm being totally honest. Yeah. And for everybody listening, watching, whatever, my opinion, I think it all boils down to, this is easy for me to frame it this way at least, is are you getting six plus rounds in?
00:54:19
Speaker
The answer is yes in your games. You should in most cases, I can't say every time, but in most cases you should be able to walk away satisfied that you played a long enough game. Seven rounds is ideal. I think if you can get more than that, that's gravy. That's great. We both have been playing pretty quickly. Anything less than six is a little suspect to me, especially in like, depending on the scenario, but like chance engagement or assault where you just kind of move around and just score points at the end off the cuff.
00:54:46
Speaker
shouldn't take so long. It shouldn't take, you know, shouldn't be five rounds or less, but six or seven, I think is a sweet spot that we've seen the average games go to these days. That's the way I look at it, at least hard. I'm flying a seven ship swarm and getting beyond five or getting beyond five, as I'm sure. No, but getting beyond five or six rounds is tough and it's not
00:55:13
Speaker
just my thought processes. It's my opponent having to process. He's got seven ships. Now I need to think about where those are going to be. So the planning stage takes longer for everybody, not just me. But yeah, no, I mean, when AMG said 12 rounds, I think everybody went, OK, yeah, some of our games have gone to 12 rounds. But that was when you had two ships playing against two ships, or three ships playing against three ships. But occasionally, games went to 12 rounds. But now it's like, no, not anymore. Not anymore.
00:55:43
Speaker
No, I think my game was 11. And that was unusual. I played Crispy 11 rounds once. That was cool. It was three shipless versus three shipless, but we were fast still. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, my last question for you guys is we'll start with you, Rich. What is what are your future plans for the Sith Takers and for the rest of you, Matt and Tom, what are your plans for your X-Wing journey moving forward?
00:56:12
Speaker
My next plan is I'm going to AdeptiCom, whatever, next week. So I'm doing that. Then I've already started the process of planning next year. Sith, take her open. So whatever's going on with X-Wing, this time next year or in the next 12 months, we are going to be having an event in Manchester the first weekend of February. So if you're fancy coming over for it, you've got a year-ish
00:56:41
Speaker
to sort out your flights of competition and whatnot. But yeah, it would be cool if people could come. Tickets will be going for sale a few weeks after Adapticon finishes. Basically, we'll let worlds finish before we throw the tickets up. And yeah, as I said, whatever state the game is in, going to play a little bit casual after Adapticon because I've been turning the try hard screw for so long in preparation for getting over to the one big American event I'll have ever done since I've played X-Wing.
00:57:11
Speaker
Um, I'm really looking forward to it, but yeah, I'm gonna, um, ease back and play a few more, um, less tryhardy things, uh, maybe some 10 point format, maybe a bit of extended bit of this bit of that. So, um, yeah, and then see what the competitive season for next year holds. Hopefully we'll get some announcements in the next month or so. Hopefully. Matt. Um, yeah, so I'm not going to Worlds, um, but I will be there in spirit with Tom. So I will be.
00:57:40
Speaker
I'm always in private messages. Private messages, sliding into his DMs, kind of like whittling in forward. Yeah, so I'm looking obviously very excited about everyone going to Worlds. For me, it's NCX for me at the moment, really, XVT. I don't know. Honestly, I would love to do very well or win maybe like an online league or something. That would be like my next sort of
00:58:05
Speaker
sort of thing that I'd probably like to do. But yeah, right now, I mean, just right now, I think it's just the world's coming up. It's just hoping and praying that things are gonna be announced and we're gonna sort of see some things sort of, you know, like a bright future ahead really. So yeah, I know, absolutely everything crossed here. So I love the game and I just really want to continue. I'm knowing this if Take Her Open is gonna be on,
00:58:35
Speaker
That's brilliant. And I know there's a couple of things going on. So I'll be just starting to think about that. Yeah. And, you know, if there's another world, I mean, really I'd want to start be thinking, yeah, it would be nice to be able to, to maybe, you know, potentially get a ticket and go to that. So that is my plans. Awesome. And Tom.
00:58:54
Speaker
Obviously, world is a big thing because we're now only essentially a week and a half away or whatever from flying, which is scary, which will really be the list I took to the city program with looking at a few tweaks, just one upgrade that didn't do much doing things like that. And then the regionals that are happening in the UK every six months starting in July, the first one's actually in my hometown. So I think it's great. So Steel City are licking their lips at that one.
00:59:24
Speaker
But I think the thing post world is I've already got my post world list set, which is just something that I think with a bit of practice could be good, but it's just completely stupid. Like it has Pondo and Babu in it. And it's just something that I want to like just slam on a table and just play that exclusively for like three months and see if I can push something that's just stupidly off meta and make it work.
00:59:49
Speaker
Awesome. Hey, I mean, these are some loaded plans, but I'm on board with all of it. The British are coming. The British are coming. My goodness gracious.
00:59:57
Speaker
I'm looking forward to having you guys back in our next league as well. I assume I will. I'll have you all back. Rich, if you ever want a much more casual place to play some online X-wing, our discord is really great for that. So just just sounds good. Sounds good. As long as I'm willing to play at four o'clock in the morning, right? Well, we'll work with you a little bit. Well, we're really all a little bit. Yeah. Jeez, you guys in your time zones. Oh, my goodness. Three a.m. Game time. Yeah, exactly. You should have more respect for the country that invented time.
01:00:27
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah, we threw tea in the harbor. It's funny because I drink tea more than I drink coffee, so I think I'm more so adapting to your guys' ways, honestly. But I'm keeping my teeth somewhat clean at the moment, so that's another stereotype.
01:00:47
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Sorry, I had to get that one in there. It's funny stuff. All right. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me today. And for all of those who listened with us early on Patreon, joined us on YouTube and, of course, for the podcast, Xwing reaches all parts of the world and the Sith Takers do an excellent job providing us that coverage across the pond. Please check out the Sith Takers podcast and the Firecast Focus Twitch channel where they cover live events like the Sith Taker Open.
01:01:13
Speaker
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01:01:35
Speaker
Be sure to follow us on Twitch to catch us live, catch edited content on YouTube, like us on Facebook, yada, yada, yada, and join us on Discord. And thank you to our patrons for making this possible. You can learn about how to become our biggest supporter in the description as well. Cannot do it without you. All right. We're going to sign off, gentlemen. Let's make this as awkward as possible. My name is Nicholas. The British are coming, Sperry. My name is Rich.
01:02:03
Speaker
Polly, I can't think of a funny moniker. There's a lot, but you're good. Okay. Who's next? Which you're making as awkward as possible. Okay, my name is Matt Coggins. Again, I can't think of anything clever. Nick really sprung that on us, so that's not fair.
01:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, you should have seen their faces. I mean, you guys did see their faces watching. But I said that the tea thing, they were really shocked by that one. It's like I just insulted their ancestry deliberately. It was just so such a twisted thing to say. We all immediately smiled with our perfect teeth as well. That was the thing. Your teeth look good. That's the thing. That's the thing. They use Crest. They use Crest. Tell me what to say goodbye. And I'm Tom, the man who loves Ray, Monogenatoire, Fieldsend.
01:02:56
Speaker
Tom Minajay Tawfield's in. I love it. As long as that cut's still in there. That's not ridiculous.
01:03:02
Speaker
Well, people will be like, Tom, he's the guy that likes the menage a trois. That's what you'd be known for. That's the one. Menage a trois. Unhinged. Unhinged. An editor's note. Tom was referring to a fabricated and fantasized menage a trois with the use of Rey as a pilot in the game of Exway. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, gentlemen, for doing this. And I will catch you all very soon. See you guys at Worlds. Bye. Bye.