Event Roundup - UK Worlds Qualifier @ UKGE

The UK had it's first Worlds Qualifier in a while last weekend. The event was held at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham and attracted 46 competitors for the main event. Had the event not clashed with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, I am sure there would have been more in attendance. There was good attendance from the rest of Europe; with people coming in from the Netherlands, France and Germany.

In this article we will run through some of the stats at the tournament and take a look at the top lists.

Headline Stats

First up, let's take a look at the faction breakdown. With 46 participants we could expect there to be 11 or 12 of each faction. CIS and Rebels were not far off from this, but the Empire took the top spot with 16 competitors running an Empire list and only half of that running a GAR list.

Moving onto the Top 8 cut, our chart looks slightly different. GAR are completely absent from the top 8. 19% of Imperial lists and 20% of the CIS lists made it into the top 8 but a respectable 25% of the Rebel lists made it through to the Saturday. We might have hoped to see a Yoda or Anakin list making it through to the top 8. In fact the highest placed GAR list finished in 11th. It was a Yoda, Chewie, BARC, Wookiee list that went 3-1 on the Friday, played by Mike Rees.

Now let's move onto a breakdown of some of the units that were taken.

Taking a look at the activation breakdown, the average number of activations was 9.8, with 10 being the most common number of activations.

Activation count	Number of lists
7	1
8	3
9	11
10	22
11	6
12	2

CIS

You can't start looking at the CIS units without starting with the B1s. With only 4 B2 units taken across the 10 CIS lists, there were going to be a lot of B1s - 49 in fact!

B1 E-5C	7
B1 E-5s	17
B1 E-60R	2
B1 naked/other	23

Many of the 23 B1s in the other categories took an HQ uplink or Portable scanners, often to hand out those dodges to Magna Guard. The range 4 E-5s takes the day as the most popular CIS heavy, adding a lot of range 4 clout to the CIS gunlines.

Perhaps slightly surprisingly, there were only 9 Magna Guard units taken - all bar one of them taking the RPS-6 with the final one taking an Electro-whip. There were 12 Spiders on the table; 11 ions and 1 lonely flame spider. The famed ion spiders did not perform as may have been expected with their highest placing being 9th, just missing out on the top-8 cut.

Out of the named characters on the tables Kalani and the T-Series droid were the most common, with 4 for each of them. Saber/Force users were taken 5 times, which makes CIS the faction with the smallest Sabre/Force user number.

Kalani	4
Kraken	1
Super Tactical Droid	1
T-Series	4
Dooku	1
Grievous	2
Maul	2

Empire

The Empire had a good spread of different units. Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was the lack of Dewbacks, with only 7 appearing on the tables, all bar one of them running the T-21. Continuing the T-21 theme, Shores with T-21Bs were the most popular Corps unit with 20 of them on show, following closely by 19 Mortars and 16 Storms with the T-21. There was even sight of 3 Snows with a Flamer!

Other notable highlights include 2 LAATs and 3 Strike teams with the Saboteur. Perhaps as expected, a lot more Sniper Strikes were included, with 19 of them on the tables.

Commanders and Operatives had a good showing from the Empire, with the main notable absentees being Boba (perhaps this will change with the upcoming changes) and Veers (poor poor Veers!).

Bossk	3
Commander Vader	1
Iden Versio	3
Kallus	4
Krennic	5
Imperial Officer	3
Operative Vader	4
Palpatine	3

The big surprise is the weighting of the Vaders. Perhaps the UK's Empire players are trying to find the new Empire meta with the inclusion of Kallus in 4 lists. Out of all the Vaders, it was Commander Vader who made it the highest, finishing 6th, 3 places behind the top Imperial list which ran 5 vehicles!

In total there were 6 Speeder bikes and 2 AT-STs. IRG were light on the ground, with just 3 showing up - and not all paired with Palpatine!

Rebel

The Rebels had the biggest diversity of different units; ranging from 4 1.4 FD Laser Cannons to 6 AT-RTs to 3 Pathfinders and 3 Tauntauns.

Looking at the Corps choices of the Rebel players, most hedged their bets between 11 naked Rebel troopers and 11 DLT-20As on display (9 being the Situational, Captain varieties). There were a smattering of others on show including the MPL-57, Fleet Troopers and 7 CM-0 93 Veteran squads, all with their Mark II Blaster in tow.

More recent (but now old and less shiny) rebel favourites of the T-47, A-A5 and Wookiees were in shorter supply, with just 2 of each unit on the table. As you would expect from a rebel line up, heroes were aplenty, with Operative Luke topping the billing at 5 appearances.

Cassian	1
Chewbacca	3
Commander Luke	1
Han Solo	3
Jyn	1
K-2SO	1
Leia	2
Rebel Officer	5
Operative Luke	5
R2-D2	3
Sabine	4

The most common unit on show was the trusty Rebel sniper strike team, with 15 of them showing up.

GAR

Finally the Jedi heavy GAR lists. Out of the 8 lists being run, only 1 did not have 1 of the 4 Anakins or 3 Yodas. All 3 of the Yodas were accompanied by the little green man's Wookiee friend; Chewbacca. Padme showed up less than expected at just 3 appearances . Phase I Clone troopers made up all of the corps except for the appearance of 3 Phase II units. Some other notable inclusions are listed below.

Clone Commander	4
BARCs	7
Melee Wookiees with Bowcaster	4
Full ARCs	2
ARC Strike	2
Sabre Tank	1

Top-8 Lists

Coming out on top after 7 games was Andrew Terrell's (or AJST) CIS list.

With the Crit dodging Magnas receiving dodges from the portable scanner and keeping one from Vigilance, whilst also being protected by Dooku's Force Barrier, this was a group of electro-staff wielding droids to be scared of. There were times when Dooku looked like he might succumb to his dice-dependent tendency to flop, but there were others where his famed ability with his lightsaber shone through. None more so than in his match up against the Dodge spamming, Operative Luke list in the Quarter-final where he swept Luke aside with minimal fuss on his 'Full of Surprises' turn.

Losing in the final was Janne with another CIS list; this time Grievous.

The long range B1 gunline backing up the advancing Melee units proved to be a good combination over the weekend. The double copy of Vigilance allows the player to have the choice between keeping a dodge on Grievous or allowing both Magnas to start with 2 dodges after Retinue kicks in at the start of a turn. There was a good number of vehicles spread across all of the factions and so the Critical 1 from the E-5s guns will have come in handy at Range 4. A quick mention of the terrain here too, which was really good, gives these critical hitting B1s another head-start.

Coming in 3rd place was Geoff Porritt who ran half of the 10 vehicles on show in the Imperial lists. A really simple list relying on the heavy-hitting of the AT-STs and the fast paced flanking ability of the Speeder bikes. When piloted well (which Geoff did), this must be a scary list to face on the opposite side of the table.

Dave Grant finished in 4th with the highest ranked Rebel list. This is perhaps not your typical Rebel list, but is certainly able to deal with a number of different threats. With the ability to deal with Armour, Force users and long range threats, the list is capable of doing well, as shown by its 4th place finish.

It's not until 5th, where we find Olly Dier's Rebel Dodge spam that we find the first of the 'expected high finishers'. This list needs little introduction as it makes its way up the field flooded in critical smashing dodges supporting the advance of Jedi Luke. Had it not been for Luke's demise at the hands of Dooku's Makashi Mastery, I would not have been surprised to see this list go all the way.

Richard Colledge's Commander Vader list came in 6th. A strong gunline supported by Krennic allowed Vader to head into the opponent's lines confidently using Burst of Speed. This list fell in the quarter finals to Dave Grant's 'Rebel feast' list above, perhaps not surprising as half of the units in his list had Pierce.

Rounding off the top-8 are 1 more list each from the Rebels and the Imperials. Callum Southwood (cazman5) ran a updated Flyboys list from the past. The heroes were supported by some long range fire power from Snipers and Rebel Veterans. Oskar finished in 8th place with the only Operative Vader to make it into Day 2. Vader was backed up by a pair of IRG both equipped with the Electrostaff Guard.

All in all, it was a great event by all accounts and I am sure that with the recent 'May the 4th' bundles and the growing communities across the country, competitive play int he UK will go from strength to strength. You can find the full list and ladder information here: https://tabletop.to/amg-worlds-qualifer-uk-ukge/lists