I was never a big fan of the Star Wars universe.
Naturally I knew it existed, but there were other tabletop games that occupied my attention and loyalty.
So how did I wing up commanding a squadron of X-Wings?
Some way you get sucked into any other tabletop miniature game.
Friends show you the cool looking models, you play a few games and get hooked, and before you know it you are committed with the miniatures.
It’s a dangerous if not predictable formula.
Games at the club were seldom one-on-one as we had some many players in the game. With dozens and dozens of star-fighters and some capital ships on the table in the big games certain types of players began to get a reputation at the club.
I was known as the pilot who stayed on target.
When my squadron was given order, given a target we aggressively went after it.
My success was because I was not reckless.
Although it was just a game, for me it was a bit more with a hidden dimension. It was a chance to step outside of space and time, and put myself in that situation. To step back from the table and look at the landscape of the game and project.
What did those ships represent?
Pilots.
People.
Most players would expend their ships like tokens, anything to make them look good on the table, and that certainly was one way to play the game.
Few pilots flew like me.
Kwoon was one of them.
I quickly noticed him since he was at that first inaugural game we all played at the club as part of the league, tracking how many ships a pilot shot down over the series of games each week, and if the player as a pilot got shot down, the tally got reset to zero.
Kwoon piloted a TIE fighter under the call sign ZORO, and I piloted an X-Wing under the call sign VAGABOND.
As our names climbed on the leaderboard it was clear he was going to be the one I eventually faced one-on-one at some point.
ZORO had skill at the flight stick, one of the best pilots at the club, and that certainly was a factor. To be able to approach him and not get vaporized on the first pass I would have to be as equal or better at my own flying.
But there was something else going on.
While it was a game of skill and stats, there was also the variable of the dice, which simulated the fog of war. You could influence the probability of the dice, but never really control them.
What this means is that while one could win a series of games on skill, there was also a bit of luck involved.
You could do everything right and still roll a series of misses on the dice.
As ZORO’s kill count grew each week, it seemed he was immune from the dice, and as much as I wanted to confront him on the tabletop, the timing was still not right.
To confront him would lead to him having first hand experience at how I fly. Maybe he was ready for that, maybe he wasn’t, but I needed to unlock just how he was doing it each week.
It was in a sea of statistics and post-game analysis that by chance I noticed the discrepancy.
ANGEL had been shot down, one of the most cool and analytic guys in the game.
Shot down by ZORO.
In the debrief with ANGEL I finally realized how he was doing it.
ZORO would watch his opponents over a series of game, learn how they few, what that style of play was and then he would engage them using the same style of play.
This would often lead to a stalemate of sorts in the game, while the other players were racking up kills and climbing the leader-board.
Out of impatience the opposing player would break the style that worked for them, what they were good at, trying something different and unfamiliar, effectively reverting them to a rookie.
At that point they were no match for ZORO.
He matched the temperament until they broke the patter they were familiar with and got taken to unfamiliar territory.
Armed with a plan of what to do, it was at that point I got promoted in the game and put in command of a CR90 Corvette.
I never got to fly again against ZORO and test my observation, and I never told anybody else on the team.
I had his unlock, and best to keep that hidden for now, as it was inevitable that I would face him again in some alternate tabletop game.
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