So once again I was lucky enough to get to test my luck on the Grand stage of the SWM scene and was once again came up short of making the top 8, but had a great time anyway. I had a really hard time deciding what I wanted to play in the championship this year and didn't settle on a squad until the night before. I almost played a very high activation version of the Durge, Cad, Asajj build but decided instead to not be a part of the Max activation race that seems to be driving the Meta lately and instead played a NR shooter squad which looked like this:

50 - Boba AFH
45 - Han Correllian Legend
28 - Mira of Nar shadda
23 - Gen. wedge antilles
21- Marn Heirogryph
18 - twilek BSV
9 - Dodonna
3 - MSE x 2

Round 1 I played against Tyler and his gungan swap with 5-6 artillerists and a couple of clones with flamethrowers, Dr. Evazan etc. I was worried right off because even with Dodonna the activation number was close to even and I knew that the swap could be devastating for me, but for whatever reason Tyler never seemed to be able to get off a good swap, and by popping in and out of cover with my GMA boba and Han I was able to slowly chew through his large number of activations and then chased down his commanders to collect a 3 point win and get off to a good start.

Round 2 I was paired with ATM salad (ettienne) and faced off against a very tough double swap boba squad that left me feeling raped as with ozzel he had me badly out activated and was pretty much able to kill my attackers at will at the end of the round due to the insane movement provided by his amanin scout and the double swap to then get boba back out of harms way before I could do anything. I thought going into the tourney that maybe Never Tell Me the Odds from Han might help in this matchup but badly misjudged that as I was so outactivated that he swapped in late round and then back out so at most I was killing a scrub if I won the init roll.

Round 3 I was paired up with AceAce (mike Giles) and his greivous wheelbike and Bx sniper team with the gennosian sonic cannon. He set the Sonic cannon up in gambit with forward positioning and so I needed to try to remove it but had to be cautious as he quickly brought his droids up into gambit as well and made it hard to pick things off with his bx spotter providing an energy sheild to most of them. I was able to kill a few of the droids but put boba in a bad position on the map (Theed Palace) and he was able to track him down on a gallop with the wheel bike and then finished him with a well positioned sniper and that was the beginning of the the end for me as I couldn't dig him out of gambit and he was able to advance his droids and blast me into defeat.

Round 4 I faced off with Urbanshmi and her Jedi squad featuring Cin Dralling, Serra Keto, Quinlan Vos, R2 astro, Foul moudama, and elite RC scorch. we played on Rhen Var as she won map roll and I chose to try ansd pin her jedi in a crossfire by advancing Han, Wedge, and my twilek up one side of the map and Boba and Mira up the other she went to gambit quickly with everyone and then chose to go after Han and Wedge as they were first to get in position as boba and Mira were killing a few scrubs that were straggling behind her main attackers. Early in round three I think, she moved Quinlan out to make attacks on Han, but Rolled a 1 on his first attack to triggger his internal strife which I thought would be a huge advantage for me, that is until her next turn when she based him with First Cin and then Serra to kill Quinlan before I even got to activate him for the first time and collect the 39 points for herself. however, the time it took her to kill quinlan was just enough for me to bring boba and Mira up and kill R2 and Scorch and set up to help Han and wedge in the next round. By moving marn and uggies and mice in between Han and wedge and her Jedi I was able to survive just long enough for my shooters to do their work and I would have to say that in this game Mira's rigged detonators and grenades 20 with overload were probably my MVP as she accounted for R2 and most of the damage on scorch and also put 40 on each of Lauras jedi which helped get around their soresu. and get me to 6 points with another 3 point win.

Round 5 I faced off with Bryan Hole (Darth Dracul) and his Imp. double swap but featuring Mira and Morrigan Corrde instead of Boba. Round 1 was mostly positioning and I was trying to run Boba and Mira up through the rooms along the side of the map instead of going through the gambit area like I did against ATM as I knew from playing him earlier that it was essential to get to the commanders if I even wanted to have a shot. As it turned out though, I caught a break when in round 2 Bryan failed to make his dominate save with the Imp. Governor and decided to swap Mira in to attack my Mira anyway, and then was left out in the open when I won init with Never Tell Me the Odds, which resulted in us basically killing off each others miras. After that though he never again failed his dominate saves and even though I tried to get to his backfield with Boba I just wasn't able to kill scrubs fast enough to work my way back there and boba went down to Morrigans suppressive fire taking away his evade. Han and Wedge did collect 5-6 rounds of gambit for me though before Morrigan killed them off as well and I managed to get the 1 point loss to end the day with a toal of 7 points. A little disappointing but if I had managed to win this game and just get to 100 points in one of my other losses I may have had a shot at the top 8.

All things considered I was happy with the way my day went, I had a couple of nearly unwinnable matchups versus the double swap and still managed to get a point out of one of those and probably could have played better against Giles seperatist squad but still had a great time and it was really nice to see everyone that was able to make it out.