If you're a New Zealand SWM enthusiast, then there's a good chance you have already heard about the awesome-ness that is HaweraCon, but for our International readers, I thought it'd be a little bit o' fun to let you know what's happening down south.

Although Save11 doesn't cover the whole of NZ in terms of SWM play, we are one of the biggest groups and thus far the only one that I know of that is running Vsets, buying the new maps, and playing SWMGPA rules. We have about 20-25 folk on our books and two major regions within our number. We try run little tournaments and regional leagues but our two big events in the calendar are March's LowerHuttaCon (won by Sharron this year) and October/November's HaweraCon (won last year by theHutts).

Anyhoo - tomorrow (our Saturday) is HaweraCon (held in Hawera, NZ - your challenge is to look it up on the map!) which is currently our only 150pt event on our roster and will be contested this year by 10 keen folk from across the North Island of NZ. Its a 5-round semi-swiss event followed by a final. Seeing as we run Vset characters, we'll have the R&R characters in full representation - I'll be sure to let y'all know how it goes!

We also run a 3-2-1 scoring system in all our games, which we use as part of our complex ranking system, but gives us a relatively accurate look at where we sit in relation to each other, even as we straddle a handful of different regions! I mention the 3-2-1 scoring system as it was discussed in the SHNN last week. We run the standard 3-2 system, but award a point for the loser reaching half the score (it'll be for reaching 75pts at HaweraCon). I'll post up the results if folk would like to see how it worked at the Tourney.

Going forward, we'll continue to run our internal events, but looking ahead, we are trying to locate SWM players around the country with the view of running a New Zealand Regional next year in April! I am already aware of a large group in Wellington (still playing pre-Masters of the Force era) and have linked up with some possible spots of activity NZ-wide.

Anyhoo, kudos to the SWM community for keeping this game alive. Mauri ora, mauri mate - may the Force be with y'all...
kez

I'm sure Kezzamachine will chime in sometime with stats and rankings from HaweraCon 2011, but he asked me to do a writeup as well. It's a four hour drive from Lower Hutt, where a lot of our playgroup lives, to Hawera, so we only had some of our Hutt players there, and we were missing luminaries like Sharron, our number one ranked player going into the tournament, and Savage_Rancor. We have one big annual 200 point tournament each year, and one big 150 point one, and this was the 150 point one.

I was actually fortunate that I had to chance to defend my title; we're blessed with a ten week old baby who sleeps really consistently at night, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to go. After some playtesting with my wife the night before, I changed my mind from running a Bastila/Jaq Rand/Dash squad to giving the new Windu a run. Rex was just nailing everyone in playtesting, and Mace is a bunch of fun to play. My full squad was:
65: Mace Windu, Legacy of the Light Side
33: Captain Rex
27: Ferus Olin
9: R2-D2 Astromech Droid
9: Ugnaughts * 3
6: Mouse Droids * 2

We had 10 players, with 5 rounds of Swiss, then a final. This is how it went down for me:

Round 1 - vs Sith
I started off against one of the weaker squads in the field. A newish player chucked together a bunch of random v-set Sith, including the Leviathan, Traya, and Bandon. He only had five activations, and no door control (!), so it was pretty easy to get a couple of rounds of free attacks off before he even engaged, and I won without even losing a piece. I'm still trying to convince him that the Sith Leviathan isn't a good piece, but at least he knows to bring some door control next time. This was the only game where I won map roll, and the only game where my opponent didn't run Dash.

Round 2 - vs Republic
I played almost a mirror match - the other player had Dash instead of Rex, and no doombot. He out-activated me, but he had to chop his Mace though some mouse droids to get to my Mace. After he bought his Ferus adjacent to protect Mace, my doombot towed my Mace to take out his Ferus. Next round my Ferus survived three hits from his Mace, only taking 40 damage, then next round my Mace took his one down, so I had all my three attackers in good shape against his Dash. Ferus was adjacent to R2 at that point, so went Dash hunting, while Rex and Mace cleaned up the fodder. Playing against an unboosted Dash in almost every game, I was finding that he's just not that much of a threat against Mace - he needs 16 to hit an activated Mace in cover, and Mace normally has enough force points to try and deflect anything that gets through his high defence.

Round 3 - vs Republic
I played the third Mace squad in the tournament - this one had Dash and Rex as support. On Rattatak Arena, Dash and Rex ended up both on the arena floor, trying to snipe Mace through the gaps in the rock. They were only two squares apart from each other, so R2 was able to tow Mace, Mace ran 8 squares with a force point, then got enough crits and flurries to finish them both off in a single activation. From there it was his Mace vs Ferus, Mace, and Rex, so they cleaned him up without too much fuss.

Round 4 - vs New Republic
This was easily the closest match I had, against a New Republic squad with Jacen, Jaina, and Dash. I forgot that Jacen had lightning, so I had R2 and Rex hiding behind Windu. Jacen got a lightning off on R2, Rex, and Mace, then Jaina finished off Rex. From there, Mace, with some help from Ferus, somehow managed to fight through Dash, Jaina, and Jacen, finally finishing off Jacen with 10HP remaining. The game ended with Dodonna trying to snipe the last 10 HP off Mace, then creatively trying to kill my last Ugnaught; he needed a nine to hit. At this point he had a Camaasi and R7 in the turbo lift in Gambit, and was ahead on points, so if Dodonna had succeded in killing the Ugnaught he would have won. But the Ugnaught survived, and I got a completely undeserved win where I was outplayed but managed to still snatch victory.

Round 5 - vs Old Republic
I ended up playing against the exact team that I was thinking of running; Old Republic with Bastila, Rand, a JBM, and Dash. I gambled by sending R2 and Mace after Atton Rand, who was the biggest threat to Mace - Mace obliged with a crit on his second attack, and although Atton made the avoid defeat save, he failed it on the flurry. With the biggest hitter gone, it was relatively straightforward for Rex, Mace, and Ferus to finish off the rest, although he did take down my doombot, which made it the second closest game of pool play.

Final - vs New Republic
I had to replay the toughest matchup of pool play. This time, Jaina charged in and put 60 on my Rex. On a won initiative, she took out Rex and Doombot, but problematically for her, she took 80 points of AoOs from Mace getting to Rex, so she had to retreat back to gambit. This time, I based Jacen with Mace so he couldn't lightning me, plus I also remembered to force absorb parry rerolls on crits. Dash and Jacen took down Ferus, but the game ended with a full health Mace finishing off Dash and Jaina.

In conclusion, I do think that Mace is very strong at 150, and the build I used was an efficient use of him, plus I had a pretty good day with the dice - he wasn't rolling wall-to-wall crits, but he generally got one when I really wanted it. The squad with Dodonna, Jacen, and Jaina caused him some problems by outactivating him, lightning him, parrying some of his attacks, and using Jaina's speed to nail Rex, but apart from that he cruised through pool play easily. The New Republic matchups were the only games where I lost any of my three attackers. There are plenty of counters to him, like direct damage, a black and blue squad that outactivates him then uses force bubble to block his ripostes, Vong, Seperatist droids that are immune to crits, or a Mon Mothma death shot squad, but I didn't play any of those in the weekend and perhaps some of them are less feasible at 150. He's really strong against a conventional 150 point squad - a couple of jedi with shooter support.