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Trevor “Bombay” Betts: Hi Mason! Thanks for taking the time after the tournament to talk with us. We just have a few questions for you today. How did you prepare for this tournament?

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Mason “Locked Out” Tanner: Well, with the release of Wave 9 I really wanted to try out the new ships. As you know I’m die-hard Rebels, unless it’s a TR8R tournament and then I run Guri, that’s just how I roll. So I wanted to use the new Rebel ship, the ARC-170, and I didn’t really care what else was in my list. I really wanted the ARC.

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Trevor: You can tell with the HWK.

 

Mason: Yeah, I put a HWK in my list, what the hell am I doing?

 

Brian “Blue Angel” Bugaj: And a crappy a** y-wing and a crappy a** Z-95

 

Mason: I really wanted that ARC-170. So I thought to myself, who is the most interesting pilot? And I thought Nora Wexley. The reason I chose Nora is because if you have a target lock on somebody you can spend that and add an extra focus to your result. So my thought process was since I have a lot of green maneuvers, so why not put Push the Limit on her and continue to get the target lock and focus. I would have that target lock and focus each turn and I also took vectored thrusters in case if I needed to reposition since there were so many asteroids. I would have that combination and keep pulling that off every turn. I also thought since I’m doing green maneuvers, why not take R2-D2? With all of that and Alliance Overhaul and Tail Gunner, that brings her up to 40 points. Which is pretty much most of my list. Another thing I wanted to do was the Seismic Torpedoes, so I was looking at trying to fit Nora in with some Pilot Skill 2 Rookie X-wings and Seismic Torpedoes and R2 Astromech with a Z-95. But I wasn’t able to fit both torpedoes and Thread Tracers on the Z-95. So I didn’t go with that and I thought what would be really annoying other than that with a bunch of rocks on the mat? Ion right? I figured alright a Y-Wing is pretty beefy and can roll up to the front line, so I put an Ion Turret on that with R2 Astromech, then I came to the HWK. Now normally people don’t fly HWK’s because they don’t have a very good reputation. I mean Brian fly’s them because he can make them work.

 

Trevor: I don’t know about that.

 

Brian: I can make it work half the time.

 

Mason: He makes it work Trevor. Have some respect for the man! So I figured well, I can put an Ion Turret on that too. Now I have two more points to work with and can now use a Seismic Torpedo or put a crew on the HWK. I went with the crew and chose Jan Ors, so if one of these ships happened to get low on health and near death, I can give them that little bit of a defensive boost. It actually saved me in two rounds today where I was able to get off at the end of the match with the HWK having one hull left. Once against Brian and once against Mitch. Then doing that I was able to get a Z-95 with Thread Tracer.

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Trevor: What was your toughest match up then?

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Mason: My toughest match up was definitely the same as the last tournament. That Ghost, Kanan Jarrus, with the TLT and had Zeb docked with Biggs and Tactical Jammer. That list is not easy to deal with there’s a lot of hull to chew threw and there’s not a lot of room for error. It came towards the end of the match and I almost lost. He deployed the shuttle against my ARC and he had the Ghost ready to make TLT shots and together could had finished up my ARC. The only reason I was able to beat him was that I gave him a critical hit and was Direct which finished off his Ghost.