The Six Ages of X-Wing: 1) Jurassic Park

Welcome to the first in a little series of blogs in which I'm going to run through three years of X-Wing metagame history.  

Many of you will know how enamoured I am with Meta-Wing, and as part of that I had been collecting the Top 20 pilots each month from Meta-Wing's ranking.  Over time I've also had my curiosity piqued and so look backwards at previous months, going all the way back to January 2015.  It's a long term top-level view of the X-Wing metagame that I've not really seen people discuss very often, and which I personally find pretty fascinating.

While these days we become obsessed with churning the metagame almost week-on-week, a view back over three years is a very different perspective and can tell us a lot about how we got to the place we're currently at.

In brief I think I can split a little over three years of X-Wing history into six 'ages', which are often very clearly delineated from each other as new expansions arrive and throw the game off into a new direction.  Those six ages are:

1. Jurassic Park
2. Twin Laser Palps 
3. Scouts
4. Veterans
5. Mindlink
6. Rebel Revenge

In the coming blogs I'm going to lead us on a whistle-stop tour through the last few years and how these epochs differed from each other.

Jurassic Park

The earliest period I've gone back to, what I call Jurassic Park covers the period in 2015 before Wave 7 including the arrival of Scum & Villainy as a faction in Wave 6.

And why call it Jurassic Park?  Well it was nearly titled 'The Land That Time Forgot' because for many players peering back this far through the mists of time will reveal that the metagame was almost unrecognisably different to the one that we play in today.  By way of illustration: here are the Top 20 pilots for the months of 2015 up to the release of Wave 7.

Obsidian Squadron TIE Fighters?  Captain Oicunn?  Whisper and Echo?  B-Wings and Z-95s?  What the hell was going on?!?!?

Welcome.  To Jurassic Park.

Even though they'd just been hit with a rules change that they gave up half MOV when damaged, large-based turrets were at the top of the X-Wing food chain.  Even though there was only three ships that fit the bill for this (YT-1300, YT-2400, VT-49 Decimator) there was typically five or six pilots from those ships appearing in the Top-20 each month.  

The turrets rode at the head of the metagame so strongly that it wasn't just the names we recognise now, like Han Solo, Dash Rendar and Rear Admiral Chiraneau that were at the top of the food chain.  Alongside them there was room for Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, Leebo, Eaden Vrill, Captain Oicunn and Commander Kenkirk too.  It didn't really matter too much what the pilot was - so long as they were in a large-based turreted ship they were going to be punching their weight.

These big guys most frequently worked alongside an ace pilot - Whisper or Echo on the Imperial side, Corran Horn on the Rebel side, as we can see in these examples...

The large based turret ships were already a heavy points investment to begin with and you commonly saw that investment protected by sinking even further points into a raft of upgrades.

• Rear Admiral Chiraneau - 46 + 18pts of Upgrades = 64pts 
• Han Solo - 46 + 17pts of Upgrades = 63pts 
• Captain Oicunn - 42+ 17pts of Upgrades = 59pts 
• Dash Rendar - 36 + 22pts of Upgrades = 58pts

When you've sunk 60-65% of your squad points into a single ship it's important that it delivers value for those points, and although they might start out in different places you tended to see very similar thought processes going into what was loaded on the ship - dice mods & engine upgrade were pretty much all anyone cared about!  That meant offensive dice mods like Predator/Lone Wolf, backed by Gunner or Luke Skywalker for pushing damage past those pesky aces and their defensive tokens.  On the defensive side it meant things like C-3PO, the original Millenium Falcon Evade title, Ysanne Isard or Rebel Captive.  And a lot of the time it meant Engine Upgrade to boost out of arc of enemy ships, which was why it was so important to have upgrades that worked without requiring an action to be spent on them.

Dash Rendar and the YT-2400 didn't have access to a lot of these tools, but it's worth taking a moment to look at just how Dash was being kitted out back in 2015.  It turns out that there was two clear routes to putting Dash onto the table, both of which are familiar to us now.

By far the most popular was Push The Limit with Engine Upgrade, using Dash's repositioning ability to keep his opponents at arms length.  A critical difference to modern versions of Dash, though, was that Kanan Jarrus was around yet so the YT-2400 was pinned to its limited green moves if it wanted to clear stress.  By comparison there was a cheaper version that ran Lone Wolf and no Engine Upgrade, living with Barrel Roll as its only reposition but able to call on the full might of the YT-2400's dial each turn.  Push The Limit was more popular, but if anything Lone Wolf was a little bit more successful, in part because it let you invest more points into a stronger wingman - in this example it was the difference between Corran Horn taking an Engine Upgrade or not.

And after Wave 6 brought Autothrusters into the game the aces of choice rapidly changed to those who could equip them.  With so many players using big turrets it made sense to fly an ace that had some protection against a turret, so you saw Soontir Fel and Jake Farell really taking over the top spots...

The truth is, though, that the large-based turrets were so popular in the metagame that it didn;t really matter too much what you paired them with.  While most people chose a high PS ace there were successful builds that simply managed to cram two of the large turrets into one squad, like Double Decimators or the 'Flying Pancakes' archetype that was various recipes of cutting corners to fit a YT-1300 and YT-2400 into 100pts, like this example...

These large based turrets were the dominant force in the metagame, and what else could prosper was determined, in large part, by whether they had the firepower or numbers to drag down one of these large lumbering beasts.

The main competition for the large turreted ships was swarms of cheap and efficient generic fighters.  In most cases this was the opposite end of the spectrum to the likes of Fat Han, with many squads eschewing upgrade cards entirely to maximise the raw number of red dice and hit points it could throw onto the table.  This worked pretty well against the big turrets in some ways - it would take Han several turns to chew through a B-Wing, and C-3PO can only add an evade to one attack, not five - but in other ways it was weak, as trying to keep those big turrets in the arc of multiple ships with lower pilot skill was... problemetic.

The low pilot skill jousters created their own little metagame way down at the opposite end of the field, as they jockeyed for the highest PS with each other, and this explains some of the more unexpected choices here.  From a modern perspective the Obsidian Squadron TIE Fighter is an anathema, and yet we find it the most popular TIE back in 2015.  The Obsidian Squadron TIE was part of a pilot skill food chain, preying on PS2 Blue Squadron Pilots and Bandit Squadron Pilots, who in turn preyed on PS1 Academy Pilots and Binayre Pirates.  Obsidian Squadron TIE had it's own predators as well, though, as the Tala Squadron Z-95 and Dagger Squadron B-Wing could trump it at PS4.

It was a different world, a different metagame, a different time.  Low pilot skill swarms like this were pushing right at the bleeding edge of raw cost efficiency that you could achieve in the game, and reaping their rewards.  And as well as fuelling their own dedicated swarms this was also really the last era where the concept of the 'mini-swarm' really made sense.

Trying to have their cake and eat at least some of it, you'd see fat turrets and a few cheap jousters, or an ace and a few cheap jousters.

There's one other squad that I want to highlight here, which is really a brand new efficient jousting squad made possible by Scum & Villainy.  It's worth the highlight not really so much because of how popular it was at the time but because of what it's about to become...

Twin laser Turret didn't exist yet, but there were still some brave fools running quad Y-Wings and using the BTL-A4 title with Ion Cannons.  Like I said, this early incarnation of Thug Life wasn't a big deal at the time, but it was the first sign of what was coming down the pipe in Wave 7...  

Three Pillars of X-Wing

A classic piece of X-Wing theory is that there's three pillars to the game: Jousters beat Turrets who beat Arc-Dodgers who beat Jousters.  I'm not sure how true that maxim is today as the game has become more complex, but back in Jurassic Park it's actually kind of staggering just how cleanly you can split the entire metagame into those three pots...

If you think I'm being pedantic and that I'm just trying to fit all these things into the three pots then I'll challenge back and say that, in modern X-Wing, there's many ships that wouldn't fit so neatly.  Would Lowhrick fit into any of these categories?  Or Norra Wexley?  Or Captain Rex, or Asajj Ventress, or Colonel Vessery, or arc-locked Rey...

I've not had to work hard to apply these three pillars to the 2015 metagame... because they WERE the 2015 metagame.

Scum & Villainy

And into this mass of large based turrets, aces and jousters was dropped the Scum & Villainy faction, with an initial wave of ships noticably absent of large based turrets, competent aces, or cheap effective jousters.  Good luck!

The only Scum archetype to really meaningfully stick during this period was Brobots, which kind of ploughed it's own furrow as an offshoot of running two aces alongside each other.  

Although they didn't fit cleanly into any of the three pillars the Brobots were able to carve out a niche as a frankenstein's monster of all the pieces that had been working for other squads during this era.  They combined impressive action economy and token defence thanks to Push The Limit and IG-88C's pilot ability, an equivalent to the Gunners that the fat turrets used in IG-88B's pilot ability, a slice of the large-based turret's raw hull points stacked behind the ace's green dice, a higher pilot skill than the swarms, and access to the hot new tool of Autothrusters to fight the turrets.  

They might not quite have fit the three pillars so cleanly but all the pieces that went into the Brobots had been proven strong in their own right in other squads.  As the rest of the scum faction struggled to make an impact the IGs were a beacon to anybody looking to use their new bounty hunter toys.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

So as we prepare to leave Jurassic Park behind and move onto the next age, what have we learned that's important to us in modern X-Wing?

Well, first of all I'd like to say that a lot of this is just setting the scene for what is to come.  We have to establish the players in our drama (Rebel, Imperial, Scum) and what they were like before events outside their control thrust them into motion.  In the actual Jurassic Park movie this is like the part where Sam Neill is scaring the kid with the Velociraptor claw, or the hapless worker is dragged into the raptor cage.

But, even so, there are things that we can learn here that matter today.  The first, particularly for players who've joined the game in the last two years, is a better understanding of where some of the complaints and nostalgia from older players come from.  If you've got that one guy in your playgroup who is constantly harping on about needing B-Wings to be good again, well the chances are that this is what he's dreaming of.  Don't worry, in a few years you'll be doing the same thing about wanting to put your Auzitucks and K-Wings back onto the table again.

It's also where, I think it's fair to say, the concept of the 'miniswarm' last really made any sort of sense.  That sort of 'I can half make an ace squad and half make a swarm squad, and it'll just work out in how I fly them on the table' bit of game theory was about to get left in the dust as X-Wing kicked up a gear.  Modern squads need strong plans and they usually need to commit fully to them but I think you can see in some of these squads above that it wasn't always so.  What you took to the table tended to matter less than what you did with them once they were there.

And that, in turn, is where a lot of the complaints about modern 'Combowing' come from.  Look how many squads were running with bare minimum upgrades or none at all.  Although I'm going to immediately call BS on that, because we've also seen just how much the large base turreted ships and their accompanying aces were deep into 'Combowing' territory already.  What's changed, I think, is that back here there was alternatives to 'Combowing' if you wanted to explore them, and if you just wanted to throw a naked swarm of B-Wings and Z-95s onto the table then you could fly them well and get results.

Today those sorts of upgrade-free experiences are much rarer.

So far, so negative.  But there's another bank of learnings to take away... although these dinosaurs may no longer rule the world they're not entirely extinct.  There are odd sightings here and there, and more importantly there are many strands of DNA that are being used to recreate them into the modern world.

We've talked about Dash Rendar and how there were two versions - Push The Limit and Lone Wolf - those builds consolidate into the Push The Limit version when Kanan Jarrus arrived to help Dash clear his stress.  For a long time Dash was superglued to his Push The Limit EPT, but when he was finally driven from the metagame is was the players with the longer memories who remembered the Lone Wolf version, and began working on bringing Dash back in a new form.  Similarly although many players scoffed when Leebo won the European Championships I'm sure George Dellapina (who bagged that title) will have been mindful that there had been times in the past when Leebo had been a perfectly decent option in place of Dash.

Gone.  But not forgotten.  

There are good reasons why most of these squads and builds disappeared from X-Wing tables.  But there were equally good reasons why they had once been dominant.  Smart players with long memories will occasionally pull on those strands to revive, re-engineer and re-envision what had gone before, ready for a new age.

Now you can too.

NEXT UP: Twin Laser Palps

Some Squads What I Wrote

Wow. 

November, huh?

That's a long time that's gone by since I last wrote a blog.  Almost 9 parsecs.  A long time.

Well, let's start back off slowly and I'll just share a few squads I've been playing with in all the time I've not been blogging, just to prove to myself I can actually still get round to sitting down and writing something...


Hibernation Sickness (Han's eyesight will return... in time)

This is a squad for the Original Trilogy format, which only allows ships that appear in Episodes IV-VI.  It's one of the more common alternate tournament formats and a favourite among a lot of old school X-Wing players who want to remember the the good old days of TIE Fighters and B-Wings without having to deal with the likes of Dengar, Asajj, Fenn Rau or the Ghost.

As thematic and as fun as the tournament format is, it also has one pretty major problem: Fat Han is an utter beating.  Basically the tournament format includes one of the most dominant squad lists the game has seen (a fully loaded Han Solo), but most of the things that have since kept him from dominating aren't allowed, so in many OT tournaments Han just runs wild.

This squad was shamelessly built with one key objective: beat Han.

Darth Vader & Soontir Fel are two classic Imperial Aces so their inclusion isn't too unusual, and the magic in the squad is in the TIE Bomber.  I can't remember precisely where I stole this bomber build from, but I'm going to go ahead and make a wild guess and say Duncan Howard won a Hyperspace Qualifier with it in his squad (it could be another player in another event... anyway, I saw it win something and shamelessly stole it).  

It's a FANTASTIC build for playing against a two-ship squad, especially one like Fat Han where the weighting in the opponent's squad is so heavily towards one of the two ships.  Kylo Ren lets you blind and debuff your opponent's main ship for large portions of the game, while Agent Kallus keeps your dice modded against them despite Kylo grabbing your actions.

The only other real piece of 'tech' in the squad was that I deliberately kept the bomber a cheap Scimitar so that I could take Homing Missiles on Vader and bring a bid.  I wanted to give Soontir a good chance of winning the bid against other PS9 pilots, and Homing Missile on Vader was likely to come in worthwhile against dodgy aces that my opponents brought.

And did it work?

I'm happy to report that it did!  I won the Original Trilogy tournament that I played in, and I completely ran rings around a Fat Han squad in the final.  Huzzah!

Wretched Hive

The Wretched Hive is my catch-all term for a family of scum squads that I've had fun trawling out from time to time over the last year or so.  It's intention is always the same - to feature janky combinations, odd control effects, and pilots or ships that you might not normally see played.

The reason it's been a theme I've constantly returned to is because:

1. it's a lot of fun to fly
2. it wins WAY more than you'd expect it to and constantly catches people out

The original Wretched Hive featured four copies of Attani Mindlink, before it was nerfed, but it laid down the template that has been followed ever since.

• Sarco Plank - Attani Mindlink, Pattern Analyser, Spacetug Tractor Array
• Serissu - Attani Mindlink, Heavy Scyk, Tractor Beam
• Palob Godalhi - Attani Mindlink, Ion Cannon Turret
• Concord Dawn Ace - Attani Mindlink, Concord Dawn Protector, Autothrusters

Two tractors beams, ion tokens from Palob, and stealing the opponent's tokens to boot.  The Concord Dawn Ace was in as the damage to actually remove opposing ships after the rest of the squad had finished toying with it.

On paper this is a janky pile, but I repeatedly found it just had so much annoying control that even strong squads would rapidly get tangled up and be unable to function.  Once the likes of Quickdraw or Fenn Rau got sucked into the spider's web their demise was just a matter of time!  Wretched Hive just had one critical problem: large ships.  Large ships make Tractor Beam and Ion Cannon sad and it was always an uphill struggle to take on the likes of Asajj and Dengar.

Would it have ever been good without four copies of Attani Mindlink powering it along?  Maybe not, and when Mindlink got nerfed to two copies per squad the Wretched Hive took a break.

I recently returned to the Wretched Hive format when I realised I'd never actually put a Kimogila onto the table.

Tractor tokens from Unkar Plutt... check.

Ion tokens from Inaldra... check.

Stealing opponent's stuff with Thweek... check.

Big gun on Dalan... check.

This modernised version of Wretched Hive reminded me how much fun I'd always had with it in the past, and I've had a couple of friends pick it up and come back with good results.  One put it onto the table against his store's best player only to be met with derision at some of the choices in the squad... then won 100-0.  Happy days!

And if you want to do it all a bit differently, maybe with a bit of Mindlink still there and some more green dice...

The spirit of the Wretched Hive lives on.  Wherever in the galaxy there is jank, wherever there is unloved pirates or luckless bounty hunters... there is a wretched hive waiting to be born.

Jump Jump Scump

This is my current project, which has gone through a few iterations to reach the form you see here...

  

It started out with somebody posting a version of the squad that was just three Contracted Scouts with Expertise, Rigged Cargo Chute and Anti-Pursuit Lasers.  I think it was posted mainly as a joke, but it triggered a memory in me of a similar squad that I blogged about when Attani Mindlink was just beginning to explode in popularity, so I wanted to give it a bit more of a chance.

I tinkered with the triple Expertise squad a bit over a few games but ultimately kept struggling to keep the three Scouts from getting in each other's way because they all wanted to be doing the same thing.  

Going back to the original Mindlink squad I saw that only two of his Jumpmasters were dedicated to bumping while the third brought a Torpedo threat, and that led me to swapping out the third Contracted Scout for a Scurrg bomber.  It immediately made all the difference in how the squad worked together on the table, and I've been enjoying it greatly.

A 4k huh?  Sorry about that...

Three ships, all tough, and a lot of hull and shield the opponent has to work through.  A lot of disruption and control effects, bumping and taking up space with Rigged Cargo Chutes and Cluster Mines, with all my ships able to S-Loop or T-Roll into position to sow destruction right in front of the enemy's advance.  Powerful offense in Harpoon Missiles, but also the added distraction factor of Boba Fett crew on the Jumpmaster, with my beloved A Score To Settle to help force the crits.

This squad was built from the ground up to be something I'd enjoy flying, and I've certainly succeeded in that, but there's always a little bit of me that still enjoys trying to build genuinely good squads.  I found one in that PS10 Rebel Alpha strike list I wrote about at the end of last year, and while I've not had that sort of success with this yet... yeah, I think it has potential, at least.

What's interesting is that this past weekend a semi-similar squad of triple Jumpmasters performed very well for Marcel Manzano when it took it into the Top-8 of a 100+ player Regional.  

Same squad?  No.  But not entirely unrelated, and that gives me added confidence that the good feels I'm getting from my list aren't entirely a figment of my imagination.  The humble Contracted Scout may have lost its torpedoes and droids, but it's still a phenomenally efficient package, especially given it has an EPT slot to play with.

There you go.  I can finish a blog after all.  See you again in, uh... July?  

"I need someone to show me my place in all this" - Wave 12 Ships: should you buy them, and what are they for?

The holiday season is upon us, and FFG are bringing us a bumper supply of presents as all five ships of the combined Wave 12 & 13 are hitting the stores on December 7th.

I won't update my buying guides until the ships have had a bit of time to settle in, but if you're wondering what the ships are going to be good for let me share my two cents.  Please bear in mind I've played as little of these ships as you have, but here are my best guesses...

Phantom II

The original Phantom shuttle has very rarely been seen without the Ghost as the main thing it brought to the table was the chance for a second round of attacks.  The Phantom II feels like they've tried to change that by giving you a shuttle that does more undocked than docked, and which you'd actually want to put on the table as a standalone ship.  There's some really interesting effects and upgrades in here; Maul and AP-5 give you some new ways of clearing stress, Chopper could be the new go-to mech for keeping a key ship alive, while Flight Assist Astromech promises to be a great boon to all the Rebel ships with a mech slot.

• Maul - very interesting
• Courier Droid - harmless buff to anything with an unused crew slot
• Chopper - probably not as good as people think, but a great option to have
• Flight Assist Astromech - potentially the best astromech in the game?

It's almost certainly worth grabbing one of these shuttles, and if that Flight Assist Astromech turns out to deliver on its potential you could be going in for quite a few more.  I've not really got any firm plans for the Phantom II itself, but there's a couple of squads sitting in my drafts waiting on those juicy juicy upgrade cards...

Dark Ghost

• Lothal Rebel - Advanced Sensors, Twin Laser Turret, Maul, Ezra Bridger, Ghost
• Zeb Orellios - Phantom
• Lowhhrick - Draw Their Fire, C-3PO, Chopper

So this is an interesting remix of the Kanan/Lowhhrick model (probably a little worse) and it highlights how Maul's stress removal can help you out.  This Ghost can take an Evade with Advanced Sensors, throw a 5k, hit you with the big main gun with Ezra's focus mod, clear the stress, spend the evade, hit you with TLT and mod that with Maul and Ezra again... then be stress-free at the end of the turn to do it all again!  

I really like how Maul can not just add damage but also open up a restricted dial by clearing stress.  Do you need Advanced Sensors?  Depends how many red moves you're planning on doing.  Possibly not, and that might free points up for Lowhhrick... FCS on the Ghost and Rey for Lowhhrick?  Could be.

Roooarrgh ur roo*

• Gold Squadron Y-Wing - Ion Cannon Turret, Flight-Assist Astromech, BTL-A4 Y-Wing
• Gold Squadron Y-Wing - Ion Cannon Turret, Flight-Assist Astromech, BTL-A4 Y-Wing
• Kashyyyk Defender - Tactician, Courier Droid
• Kashyyyk Defender - Tactician, Courier Droid

*Translation: "I've got a bad feeling about this"

The BTL-A4 title works very nicely with Flight-Assist Astromech as they both limit your turrets firing out of arc anyway.  This allows you to field four robust ships with control effects tacked on, and given how well the 3 & 4 Wookiee lists are doing at the moment I think this hybrid (Y-brid?) could be a genuinely strong squad.

Alpha-Class Star Wing

I've already written about the gunboat in detail so I won't repeat myself except to say that a month or so on my opinions haven't changed at all.  Definitely not bad, but I'm not sure it's top-notch tournament strong.

• Saturation Salvo - terrible
• Linked Batteries - good, but a big shame it's Small-Ship Only
• Jamming Beam - niche

A lot of players decided to buy the Gunboat years before it was even announced that FFG were making one, but if you're not in that group I'd be slow to jump on the Star Wing.  It's got a lot of options in how you build it that should be explored, but I've a feeling it's going to be a lot more awkward to use than a lot of people expect.

Since I wrote about the Gunboat a month or so ago I've refined my expected squad a little bit to add some more variety in the control effects it's bringing...

The Nu Day

• Nu Squadron Pilot - XG-1 Assault Configuration, Flechette Cannon, Harpoon Missile, Long Range Scanners
• Nu Squadron Pilot - XG-1 Assault Configuration, Flechette Cannon, Harpoon Missile, Long Range Scanners
• Nu Squadron Pilot - XG-1 Assault Configuration, Flechette Cannon, Ion Pulse Missile, Long Range Scanners
• Nu Squadron Pilot - XG-1 Assault Configuration, Ion Cannon, Tractor Beam, Cruise Missile, Long Range Scanners

Kimogila

A very self-contained expansion with little that crosses over to be good on other ships.  There is a good chance that only the top ace pilot Torani Kulda is going to be very strong, which is an argument for buying at least one copy of this expansion, but to be honest I don't think it's an essential buy.  

• Saturation Salvo - terrible
• Scrambler Missile - for funsies only
• R5-TK - almost deliberately terrible
• Contraband Cybernetics - fine, a nice option for those ships bringing Cikatro Vizago

If you're worried about five new ships hitting your wallet at once then the Kimogila could well be one to skip.  Torani Kulda threatens to do fantastic things with his Bullseye arc if you can get it on target but he feels a lot more like a Zuckuss than a Fenn Rau, both in terms of how he flies and how strong he's going to be.

He fits into an Attani-style squad, maybe, to replace Fenn?  But yeah, I'm struggling here...

Kuldatanni

• Torani Kulda - Veteran Instincts, Glitterstim, Unhinged Astromech, Enforcer 
• Asajj Ventress - Attani Mindlink, Latts Razzi
• Contracted Scout - Attani Mindlink, Intelligence Agent

Resistance Bomber

I think the Resistance Bomber is very cool, and Trajectory Simulator genuinely changes how people play bombs, but I'm not sure it's actually good. The Resistance Bomber is hampered by how much it's entirely dedicated to bombs, and not just bombs but primarily the ones you use on revealing the dial (so no Cluster Mines or Conner Net goodies).  After Miranda Doni and Captain Nym it's actually quite nice to have a Rebel bomber arrive that may just be average, though.

• Trajectory Simulator - unique bomb buff, very cool
• Advanced Optics - good on Poe Dameron

The Resistance Bomber is going to be an interesting ship to see on the table and Crimson Specialist in particular can threaten a huge amount of the table with his bombs.  I'll be picking one of these up but holding fire on going in for more than that - I mostly just want to give Trajectory Simulator a try on my TIE Punishers!

Han Yolo

• Crimson Specialist - Trajectory Simultor, Proton Bombs, Ordnance Soli, Deflective Plating
• Han Solo - Lone Wolf, C-3PO, Luke Skywalker, Millenium Falcon, Engine Upgrade

Of all the Bomber pilots I find Crimson Specialist's ability to put bombs all around him the most interesting, and I've combined him with another bit of thinking... 5pts for a Proton Bomb is a lot to pay, but 7pt for four Proton Bombs is a lot more attractive!  It's a brave man who wants to get too close to Crimson Specialist with this loadout, and that control over a large part of the board makes Han's job of evading enemies a lot easier because he knows there's large areas they won't want to follow him into.

Or if you really want to go all-in on the bombs...

The Big Bang Theory

• Crimson Specialist - Trajectory Simulator, Proton Bombs, Ordnance Soli, Deflective Plating
• Captain Nym - Veteran Instincts, Trajectory Simulator, Bomblet Generator, Twin Laser Turret
• Rebel Operative - Twin Laser Turret, Intelligence Agent

TIE Silencer

The flashiest and most obviously eye-catching of this Wave's ships, the TIE Silencer is a premium grade Starfighter that seems to come wrapped up with a premium grade points cost.  People are loving the potential of darting about at PS9 with Kylo Ren, and while I think the potential for that is a lot more exciting than the reality will be, you're definitely going to see a lot of these things on the table once they're released.

• Debris Gambit - flavourful, but naff
• Threat Tracker - very cool, although 3pts feels a bit much
• Advanced Optics - very good on Poe Dameron, not so hot anywhere else

Given it's premium cost (both in points and in actual real life money) I would need to be persuaded to pick up more than one of these things, but having a TIE Silencer in your arsenal seems like something that any self-respecting Imperial player would want to have.  It's going to sit right alongside other top ace options like Soontir, Vader, Quickdraw, Whisper etc.  God damn, but Kylo Ren is an expensive pilot, though.

While everyone else seems to be getting tied up in trying to turn Kylo into a 45pt super-Soontir, I think that's a red herring.  He doesn't have an Evade action, he doesn't have a 4th green dice, he doesn't have a free Focus token... even with 3 more hull he's massively more vulnerable than Soontir Fel so sitting that many points on him feels like a trap.  

I think Kylo Ren is best fielded as a knockabout jouster and you want to keep his cost down as much as possible...

I Will Settle What You Scored (Silencer Edition)

• Kylo Ren - A Score To Settle, First Order Vanguard, Collision Detector, Autothrusters
• Darth Vader - Veteran Instincts, TIE/x1, Advanced Targeting Computer, Engine Upgrade
• Omega Leader - Juke, Comm Relay

"Use your harpoons and tow cables!" - Introducing 'Triple-10s' the Rebel Alpha Strike

Guns For Hire is with us and along with the changes from the recent FAQ I'm not alone in noticing  the rise of the Scum alpha strike lists.  Former UK champion Jesper Hills took a break from terrorising us with Ion Brobots to trial Captain Nym and a couple of Deadeye Black Sun Aces,and Phil GC demonstrated the potency of his triple Kihraxz PS9 alpha strike in his recent blog.

It got me thinking a little bit about how I would respond to and counter such a squad, and that initially led me to think of the likes of Wes Janson and Poe Dameron's Black One title to try and throw off those target locks and dodge the dreaded Harpoon Missiles.  That initial first draft was looking pretty anaemic on offense though, and rapidly took on it's own alpha strike potential when I realised I could drop Poe to draft in Airen Cracken and Captain Nym alongside Wes Janson.

RAPID RESPONSE FORCE

Phil posted his blog on the Saturday, and by the Monday my alpha striking plans starting to form.

By Wednesday I'd realised that I could save a point by switching Wes Janson for Wedge Antilles and still throw my lasers around at PS10, and that this would make a big difference to Nym's loadout by letting him use Bomblet Generator.

Two days later, and on Friday the forum member Gilarius had joined in to say he'd played the same thing, and I should drop Extra Munitions from Nym for an Autoblaster Turret.  To my mind this was the missing piece of the jigsaw and this list started niggling away at me that it was probably quite good.  I had planned to play my Sabine Ghost alongside Miranda Doni but now this thing was trying to grab my attention.

My big worry was that if I wanted to play PS10 Rebel missiles... wasn't I better off just playing the PS11 Imperial missiles (Quickdraw, Vader, Inquisitor). I tried a bit of a head to head comparison:

• Inquisitor vs Airen Cracken - Inquisitor is better
• Darth Vader vs Wedge Antilles - Vader is better
• Quickdraw vs Captain Nym - Nym is probably better, but he's got a lot of work to do to make up for his weaker wingmen.

Did I really believe that Nym offered enough to mean that the Rebels could win games the Imperials might lose?  I'd played Rebel Nym for UK Nationals and really enjoyed it.  I understood Bomblet Generator and I knew his ability could be really good.  I definitely wasn't sure he was good enough to make up for flying him alongside a T-65 and a Z-95... but I started to believe it might be interesting enough to find out.

Saturday evening I hastily repainted one of my Z-95 Headhunters to match the blue and yellow colour scheme of Captain Nym, and Sunday morning I rocked up at Element Games in Stockport for their latest Taking The Sith tournament, ready to play my first ever game with this squad!

'Triple-10s'

• Airen Cracken - Veteran Instincts, Harpoon Missile, Guidance Chips (24)
• Wedge Antilles - Adaptability, BB-8, Plasma Torpedoes, Guidance Chips (34)
• Captain Nym - Veteran Instincts, Autoblaster Turret, Rey, Harpoon Missile, Bomblet Generator, Guidance Chips (42)

Round One: Adam Tudor - Rey & Lowhhrick

Rey and her furry compadre seem to be becoming quite a fixture in the post-FAQ meta and almost a third of the room was flying Falcons!  Adam had tweaked his build specifically to fend off a Harpoon Missile by adding C-3PO and the classic Evade title.  With 3PO, an Evade token and some help from Lowhhrick Rey only needed a bit of luck from her green dice to completely avoid a Harpoon shot.

It almost worked for Adam.  On the first Harpoon, at least.  The second Harpoon slammed him hard, though, then Wedge's torpedo followed up with another hammer blow.  Rey was wounded and died next turn to a range 1 volley of laser fire, then my ships dropped in behind Lowhhrick and quickly chased him down.

I bagged the win despite somehow managing to bump Wedge into his teammates three times in 5 turns!  A bit more carewas needed in flying the formation, it seemed.

100-0

Ordnance Used: 3 out of 3

Round Two: Glenn Coulthard - 4x Glitter/Harpoon Binayre Pirates & Contracted Scout (Tac Jammer, Rigged Cargo Chute)

This was a matchup I was very interested in.  My theory (boldly proclaimed off no actual play experience) was that Harpoon Missiles were so potent that firing a few of them early with high PS was better than having a lot of them at low PS.  Time to test the theory!

In actual fact I didn't fire a single torpedo or Missile all game.  The wildcard was the disruption his Scout could be as it tried to screen for his pirates so I set about destroying that with primary weapons to save my Harpoon splash damage for his Z-95 formation.  

By the time the Scout was dead it had all turned into a close-range furball, though, so Missiles weren't happening.  It turned into the first of many games where my raw primary weapon fire and dice mods would remove threats before they could fire and I just picked Glenns Zs off one by one.

100-34

Ordnance Used: 0 out of 3

Round Three: James Alexander - Rey & Miranda

From where we deployed I corralled James's ship to run across their back line and out the far corner, but then was waiting for them in the middle of the board when they finally emerged.

James had a big dilemma with Mirandas action, who had found herself out in front.  He could either focus with Recon Specialist and try to ride out my missiles strike or SLAM forward and hope to bump something.  He picked the SLAM but unfortunately it just left Miranda at range 1 of all my ships with no tokens and she melted in one round.

That was about the last thing James did wrong, though, and he really worked me with his excellent Rey piloting.  Wedge died and Airen lived only by a roll of double natural Evades!  

Fortunately Captain Nym kept chipping away with both main guns and turret, kept leaving bombs where Rey couldn't avoid them, and I finally sealed the win that had seemed like it should have been much more comfortable.

100-34

Ordnance Used: 1 out of 3

Poor Wedge had a bad day!

Round Four: Dean Richards - Dash & Miranda

I want to focus on two turns of this game because they highlight just how much this squad has tricks to play, and how much it's not just going all-in on landing the big alpha strike to win.

At first engagement Airen and Wedge found themselves just in range 3 of Dash but Nym was a hair's width out of range.  He had Countermeasures on Dash but I was able to sidestep that by taking Focus with Airen and Wedge, then giving Wedge his target lock in the combat phase thanks to the action Airen gave him.  Dash lost 4 shields, taking 2 shields off Wedge in return.

The next turn I looked at Dash's options - if he turned back away from me I could follow and hunt him down so I expected him to 3 bank and barrel roll, trying to get past on the flank and move behind me.  I dialled a 1 straight for Airen to keep his options open, a 1 bank on Wedge that I could flexibly use with BB8 to pressure either direction, and a 2 straight with Nym that I could barrel roll either way to track whichever side he went.

Dash did neither!  Instead he threw a 4 forward and barrel rolled to half a ship's base length in front of my firing line, looking to bump both Wedge and Nym.

It would have been a great play but I had shenanigans.  Airen's 1 forward gave him a range 1 shot at the back of Dash's base, Wedge used BB8 to bump into the back of Nym not into Dash, then Nym bumped Dash.  When Airen fired he passed an action to Nym, who barrel rolled off Dash.  Instead of bumping two ships the poor YT-2400 took range 1 shots from my whole team and exploded!

As her teammate vanished Miranda couldn't turn round and run away fast enough and Nym tagged her with a lethal Harpoon shot soon after.

100-0

Ordnance Used: 2 out of 3

 INTERMISSION

I keep coming back to that match because it shows just how much value there is in Airen Cracken's ability.  That combat phase action nullified Dash's Countermeasures one turn then unbumped Captain Nym the next. 

Little Airen Cracken probably added 5-6 damage to Dash with his seemingly-innocuous pilot ability!

BTW, do you know who Airen Cracken is?  I looked him up - he's only a bleedin' General!  

Although this is from the time of the Battle of Endor when they were clearly throwing around General titles for free in a box of cereal.  So anyway it turns out that General Cracken was the dude sitting behind General Calrissian in the Falcon's cockpit (which General Calrissian had borrowed from General Solo) as the fleet jumps to hyperspace. 

Cracken's not in the cockpit later in the actual battle because there's deleted footage of him and Lieutenant Blount running to man the Falcon's turrets. 

He's even got his own LEGO minifigure!

So now you know.  Let's get back to the action...

Round Five: Dan Slobodanian - Ketsu & Asajj

Dan and I were the only unbeaten 4-0 players and as such our place in the Top-4 cut was all but guaranteed.

Me: "I think I can just joust you"

Dan: "Everyone who tries to joust me just dies"

Me: "..."

Dan: "They die really quickly"

Me: "I really think I can joust you"

Dan: "Ok.  Either way it'll be a quick game!"

*** ten minutes later ****

Me: "I shouldn't have jousted you"

Ketsu bounced Wedge onto a rock and he died without hurling a single red dice.  In return I'd started to put the hurting on Ketsu, though, and it turned out that in hurling himself forwards to close range with Ketsu and avoid my missiles he he given his Shadowcasters little choice but to carry on around the corner right into Nym's bombs.  I knew that was what he had to do too, and Airen and Nym dropped in right behind.

Some hot red dice removed Ketsu on the next turn and dug me out of the hole I'd jumped into with my decision to joust, then Nym just sat behind Asajj and chipped away.  Dan had the classic Asajj problem of having to pick his arc while I could barrel roll into either one, then the sheer speed of the Shadowcaster meant he inevitably had to accelerate away to Harpoon Missile range and that ultimately ended the game.

100-58

Ordnance Used: 2 out of 3

Semi-Final: Mike Guina - Intensity Poe, Snap Shot Nien Nunb, M9-G8 Jess

The number of X-Wings on the table was making me very uncomfortable and it didn't look very much like an X-Wing game at all as there wasn't a single Jumpmaster in the top 4 cut!

I felt a bit sorry for Mike as this match was probably the most straight-forward of the day and my higher PS firepower just ripped his ships apart.  On the first round of firing Poe took a Harpoon Missile from Airen and a range 1 volley from Wedge and died, then on the next turn my ships all rounded on Nien Nunb and he exploded as Wedge bagged yet another kill.

And as for Jess... poor, poor Jess.  She survived for one more turn with a single hull remaining before finding herself with all three of my ships pointing at her, Nym's harpoon locked and loaded, and to make matters worse she was in range 1 of two of my bomblets when they detonated!  

The first bomblet did the job.  

100-0

Ordnance Used: 1 out of 3

Final: Dan Slobodanian - Ketsu & Assaj

I looked at Dan.  Dan looked at me.  We both looked at the clock.

"Split the prizes and go home?"

"Fine by me!"

With nobody else affected by the result we final salvoed for the official champion's title (my 8 red dice beat his 6 red dice) and then we both headed off into the night.  

I'd won our meeting in the Swiss but I'm not sure either of us knew what would happen in a rematch.  I was the only person who had beaten Dan that dayand I'm sure Dan would have fancied his chances if my red dice hadn't run as hot as they did in the Swiss.  But on the other hand I'd now learned not to mindlessly joust him heads-up so wouldn't just throw Wedge away this time.

Who would have won the rematch?  Who knows.  Maybe we'll save it for another time.

BOOM!

I don't think I've ever had anything quite like the experience I just had in playing this list for the day.  Bear in mind that I started out having never played this squad before and I managed to go unbeaten with it from a completely standing start.  Every round I was just falling more and more in love with the list, from self-bumping my formation all over the place against Adam at the start of the day to the clinical dismantling of Mike's X-Wings in my final game.

I thought it was going to be a one-dimensional alpha strike list with a bit of Captain Nym goodness tacked on, but I learned that it was so much more.  After beating Glenn and James with barely firing a missile I had learned that the list wasn't reliant on using the missiles as a crutch but it could dogfight and win games without them.  Then the next game when Airen Cracken used his tricks to avoid Dash's defenses and wipe the dreaded YT-2400 out I was convinced that I was playing something that was actually very good indeed.

I punted the engagement on purpose against Dan in the fifth round, throwing Wedge away. And won anwyay.  And then the way that the squad just dissected the X-Wings 100-0 in my semi-final... 

It's not just an alpha strike.  In fact the only round where I really got to deliver a classic multi-ordnance alpha strike was my first game against Rey.  The threat was always there, and responding to that threat always meant the opponent leaving himselves vulnerable in other ways, but it was a real eye-opener to me just how dogged and versatile this squad proved, and I won games in a variety of different ways.  

Over the time I've been playing I'd like to think I've developed a bit of a nose for when something is 'competitive enough to have fun playing it' or 'competitive enough to be seriously good'. 

I think this squad is good.  I think this squad is very good.  

I opened up with that comparison to PS11 Imperial alpha strike lists are trying to work out if this would be able to win games that would lose.  I'm now sure that the answer is an unequivocal 'yes!'...

• Inquisitor vs Airen Cracken - Inquisitor is better but it's closer than I thought
• Darth Vader vs Wedge Antilles - BB-8 Wedge is bettet
• Quickdraw vs Captain Nym - Nym is definitely better, and it's not even particularly close

That said, I'm pretty sure that if this ever did run into PS11 Imperials it would be a very tough match!  The Rebels hold the advantage against the wider field, but they'll have a tough time keeping Airen & Wedge on the table if the Imperials are firing their missiles first.

One thing I want to make clear, by the way.  I can't claim this squad as my own because although I arrived at the design myself there''s clearly a bunch of players who had already been there or thereabouts long before I ever started thinking of it (as I said up the top, it was Gilarius' existing experience with the squad that convinced me to give it a try).  I just have the advantage of having a blog and a big mouth to get the word out about it's awesomeness.

Z-95s and X-Wings that aren't Biggs.  Who knew???

Well, a few people already knew, clearly.  Now go out there and pew pew!