July 2020 Points Changes - Empire & First Order

JULY POINTS UPDATE 

Some X-Wing news at last... hurrah!

Over the next few blogs I'm going to look at how I expect the July points changes will play out for the various factions.  What changes, what doesn't, what hot new movers we can expect to see and what old stalwarts may leave us.  Today I'm going to look at Empire and First Order but I think before I launch in it would be helpful to set a little overall context of how I'm viewing the points changes as whole.

Broadly speaking I think these points changes will make only small changes to what we see doing well in tournaments.  I think there's some big discounts on unpopular ships that will move them the bottom of the pile up towards the middle of the pack, but in the top half of the metagame I don't see many significant hits to move top ships down and I don't see many significant reductions to move average ships up into the top.

Before the points I would have laid out the factions in three tiers like so, and at the moment I can't see any particular reasons why they won't continue to sit in this order for the next six months.  With that said, let's take a look at our first two factions....

GALACTIC EMPIRE

Let's start off with the big question: how are Imperial Aces looking?

Honestly, I think they're looking really good.  There are a couple of points increases to absorb and Whisper in particular got a well-deserved points hike, but there's still plenty of aces with plenty of choices and plenty of bid for me to be confident that Imperial Aces are going nowhere (though Whisper possibly becomes much less common as you pretty much have to choose between him and Vader).

• Darth Vader: 0 points increase, will just switch back to FCS from Passive Sensors
• Grand Inquisitor: 0 points increase
• Soontir Fel: 1 point increase
• Duchess: 3 points increase
• Whisper: 5 points increase 

Those are your main aces pool to draw from although there are a few small drops in secondary ace picks like Major Vynder, Rexler Brath or Redline.  I can't see them pushing their way into mainline aces choices, though, and tbh I think you'll see 90% of aces running Vader/Soontir/Inquisitor which was already a popular and successful squad (the two I6 was becoming the go-to to beat Boba & Dengar) and only goes up by 1pt in this pass.

How are the rest of the Empire looking?  Well all the other successful Imperial squads are intact - nothing in either the Decimator or Reaper Sloane Swarm variants got a points increase, and although Inquisitors go up to 36pts their Passive Sensors came down to 2pts and it all nets off so the Jendon/Inquisitor squads are basically unchanged too.

So if there's something that you liked in Empire you've been given the thumbs up by FFG to carry on using it.  But what are the new options made available to us by points drops?

Baron of the Empire is really strong at 28 points and it leapfrogs the Phoenix Squadron A-Wing past the break point where you can bring 7 of them in a squad.  Perhaps the closest thing we've seen to date would be FOcho, but you're trading one body out of the swarm to give all your ships a linked Focus-Reposition action.  That's not a bad deal at all and I think it's going to be a top squad.

Named TIE Defenders came down a bit too, but I think it's probably not enough and I think Vessery and Ryad both needed to drop below 80pts like Rexler did.  They're getting closer to where they should be but I find it hard to spend that many points on 3 red dice - you're just not getting the damage output you really need to make any headway into the top squads.

SUMMARY

Overall I think the Empire can be really happy with this points update.  They were in an incredibly strong position beforehand and to get away with the whole points pass by only really taking a meaningful hit on Whisper is incredible (I can't believe Grand Inquisitor was allowed to stay at 52).  Imperial Aces, Admiral Sloane and Colonel Jendon all remain really powerful and proven routes to victory and they're going nowhere for another six months.  They're all strong and well-rounded squad that should be well positioned for dealing with any new metagame upstarts trying to seize control.

If anything, the disappointment is more that things haven't been shaken up a bit more and there's so little reason to try anything new because all the old ways still work fine.

FIRST ORDER

The First Order have been close to breaking through for a while now.  The way I think about the faction is that they've probably more A-Tier pilots than anybody else but it's arguable that they don't really have a single pilot who is 'S-Tier' in the way that Scum has Boba, the Empire has its aces or the Separatists have their droid swarms.  Kylo comes closest to that and is knocking on the door of S-Tier but I'd put him just slightly below the really best pilots, in much the same way Luke is just that little cut below for the Rebels.

Because of this the First Order can have a bewildering array of squad archetypes that seem to just pop up seemingly at random to produce a good tournament result here or there - one week it will be Triple Silencers, the next week it will be FOcho, the next week it will Kylo & Vonreg, then a week later a bunch of TIE/sfs.  It's a faction with so many viable underdog squads who are good enough to upset the odds against better opponents now and then, but also not good enough to keep doing it consistently.

Does that change in this round of points changes?  The short answer is that I don't think it does, although the First Order certainly does get a bit of help here and there.

The main points changes land in the TIE/ba archetype, which all come down a bit:

• Major Vonreg: -2 points
• Holo: -1 point
• Ember: -4 points
• First Order Provocateur: -4 points

All four of these pilots were pretty good but just a bit too expensive and all these points drops are welcome, though I'm especially excited about the First Order Provocateur (we'll get to him in a minute).  With Imperial Aces being pruned back slightly in this points change I think the balance shifts to be a little more even between Imperial and First Order aces.  Vonreg is a natural foil for Kylo Ren, hunting the Initiative 6 targets who will hunt Kylo, and then it's just a matter of finding the right ship or ships to round out the squad and I'll be trying both Quickdraw and an Upsilon Shuttle in that role.

The First Order Provocateur (or FOP to his friends) is a ship that I think has been flying under the radar and a whopping -4pts price cut could be just what was required to push these guys right to the top of the pecking order.  Regular readers will remember that the FOP came out of my generic efficiency analysis surprisingly strongly, especially when you take the counterintuitive decision to Strain them and get a Target Lock for maximum damage.  It turns out that Strain doesn't hurt you as much as you'd think and the FOP is a real machine gun of a ship!  A few of us have already been exploring squads like '3x FOP & Quickdraw' or '3x FOP & Outmaneuver Avenger' but with this massive price cut I think there's an obvious first stop for the FOP...

The other ship in First Order to get a really significant price cut was the Seinar-Jaemus Engineer (SJE) in the I1 TIE Silencer, which had a really decent -3pts taken off, dropping them below the break point where you can play four of them.  Make no bones about it, people will try and play four SJEs.  It won't be good but people will try.  Even at 48pts I think the SJE represents a really poor amount of damage output and while they'll be really whizzy and annoying to grind down I don't think they're actually going to achieve very much in their time on the table.  If you want to play four Silencers you should probably still be playing four StarVipers instead!

Picking up some sideways price cuts are the TIE/sf, either through cheaper Special Forces Gunner or cheaper Passive Sensors and missiles.  I'm just not a fan of the TIE/sf in the current metagame because it doesn't have 3 Agility, and these welcome discounts don't really change that for me.  I think the TIE/sf swarms will continue to hang around roughly where they are now in the metagame.

I also really like Captain Phasma in her TIE/sf, but I feel like that's another story for another time!

SUMMARY

The First Order were looking for something genuinely S-Tier to put them up with the big boys and I don't think this change has given them that.  But even if they're still not quite at the top I think the gap is definitely closing and the First Order are still underdogs but I think they're going to overturn those odds a bit more often than they used to.    

And just as importantly it's a good and fun time to be a First Order player.  All the ships are good and from a creative squadbuilding point of view it's actually nice to not have a couple of overpowered pieces that everything has to hinge off.  With the Xi shuttle just around the corner I can definitely see myself enjoying the next six months in this faction!