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Watch the very best of this year’s X-Wing World Championships

Top matches from the international event held in Minnesota

X-Wing World Championships 2016 gallery
Charlie Hall is Polygon’s tabletop editor. In 10-plus years as a journalist & photographer, he has covered simulation, strategy, and spacefaring games, as well as public policy.

Fantasy Flight Games’ World Championships event concluded over the weekend with some amazing tabletop play. Broadcast live on Twitch, the tournament crowned a new winner for Android: Netrunner, Star Wars: Imperial Assault and other FFG games. But perhaps the most-watched part of the tournament were the cut-throat games of Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures.

The X-Wing championships were an international affair, with the top eight slots filled with players from Asia and Europe.

The final game pitted Belgium’s Nand Torfs versus hometown favorite Kevin Leintz from Minnesota. Both were fielding very similar ships but with almost completely different loadouts. Torfs eventually came out on top after a surprise concession from Leintz.

You can watch the final game here starting at the 9-hour, 39-minute mark.

The real stars of the show were commentators Chris Beck and Alex Davy. Streaming back-to-back sessions all weekend long, they did a great job giving life to the drama going on at the table.

The climax of the entire broadcast was an absolutely wild qualifying match between Jeff Berling from Cincinnati, Ohio and Fernando De La Torre from Spain. The two went back and forth for nearly an hour, taking turns trading blows and squirming out of the way of vicious attacks.

It’s probably one of the best games of X-Wing I’ve ever seen. You can watch the entire match here starting at the 7-hour, 54-minute mark.

In addition to dozens of amazing games, the FFG Twitter account did a great job documenting the gorgeous custom-painted miniatures that players brought to show off at the table. We’ve gathered some of them together in the gallery below.