Post by Paul Waters on Feb 24, 2014 8:05:23 GMT
With a few people interested in this game I thought I would start a thread to discuss ships, tactics and all things X-wing. Hopefully this will be usefull for both beginers and experienced players.
Tournament standard games are played on a 3x3 surface and each side is 100pts. This gives you a squadron of between 2 and 8 ships and typicaly is 3-4 ships for Rebels and 5-8 for Imperials.
So what should be your first purchase - the best value start is the box set as you get all the equipment to play and 2 TIE fighters and 1 Xwing. You can normally pick the box set up for around £25 and individual ship can be found for £10-£11 (I think they are £10.99 in Phantasia - support you local shop!) so you can see the box set gives you good value for money.
So what should your second purchase be - Another box set! for all of the same reasons above and from experience the extra set of dice and templates make the game much smoother to play.
Each ship can be used as different pilots and in the boxed set you get the following pilot cards.
Rebels - Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Red Squadron Piolt and a Rookie Pilot
Imperials - Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse, Night Beast, Black Squadron Pilot x 2, Obsidien Pilot x 2 and Academy Pilot x 2
you also get the following ship upgrade cards Proton Torpedoes, R2D2, R2F2, Determination and Marksman ship
You might think that the box set is imbalanced with 2 TIE fighters vs 1 Xwing but being out numbered is something the Rebels need to get used too as these are the go to ships for most lists. Its good to understand not only the manoevers available for your ship but those of your opponents as each ship type has a different selection. The following cards are fan made to show the basic ship stats and the options available on the maneuver dial.
X-wing
Pros - A solid all round ship with good fire power, it has an average evade but take take 5 hits including its shields
Cons - their in game cost, the max number you can field is 4 in a 100pts list and if you start taking named pilots and updgrades this quickly drops to 3!
Pilots - Rebel lists rely more on pilot synergy than the imperials and you get a good pair in Luke and Biggs. Luke skills allow him to automatically change 1 focus defence to an evade allowing you to use you focus in attacking. Biggs skill is very thematic as he takes Hits for other ships within range 1 of him. Yes he can die quicker because of this but this skill can be used to make the Imperials take shots at longer ranges and he makes sure you keeps your better pilots alive.
TIE fighter
Pros - The basic Acadamy pilot comes in at only 12 points and is the cheapest ship in the game. They can out manoever Xwings as they are faster and have tighter turns available.
Cons - With only 2 attach dice they can struggle to do damage indivdually and they can only take 3 hits.
Pilots - Unlike the rebels the majority of TIE named pilots have individual boosting skills and are less synergistic(is that even a word!). Other than testing them out early on I do not use any of the named pilots in the base set but this ist a bad thing as TIE's need weight of fire and its easy to get distracted by skill that work in specific situations.
When the game first started with these and the Wave 1 ships that I will discuss in the next post the Imperials seemed to have the advantage. Most tournaments ended with victorious Imperials because of the TIE swarm list. In comparing lists most people look at the total attack dice and the total hits it can take. The TIE swarm comes in with 8 ships so it is a 16A24D list. If you played a 3 Xwing list it came in at only 9A15D and 4 Xwings were 12A20D. This isnt an exact science as they goodies and skills for the Rebels can shift the balance but a skilled Imperial player keeping the TIES in formation using focused fire is a scary sight. The difficulty is keeping TIEs in formation but thats a discussion for another day!
Next up the wave 1 expansion ships.
Tournament standard games are played on a 3x3 surface and each side is 100pts. This gives you a squadron of between 2 and 8 ships and typicaly is 3-4 ships for Rebels and 5-8 for Imperials.
So what should be your first purchase - the best value start is the box set as you get all the equipment to play and 2 TIE fighters and 1 Xwing. You can normally pick the box set up for around £25 and individual ship can be found for £10-£11 (I think they are £10.99 in Phantasia - support you local shop!) so you can see the box set gives you good value for money.
So what should your second purchase be - Another box set! for all of the same reasons above and from experience the extra set of dice and templates make the game much smoother to play.
Each ship can be used as different pilots and in the boxed set you get the following pilot cards.
Rebels - Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Red Squadron Piolt and a Rookie Pilot
Imperials - Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse, Night Beast, Black Squadron Pilot x 2, Obsidien Pilot x 2 and Academy Pilot x 2
you also get the following ship upgrade cards Proton Torpedoes, R2D2, R2F2, Determination and Marksman ship
You might think that the box set is imbalanced with 2 TIE fighters vs 1 Xwing but being out numbered is something the Rebels need to get used too as these are the go to ships for most lists. Its good to understand not only the manoevers available for your ship but those of your opponents as each ship type has a different selection. The following cards are fan made to show the basic ship stats and the options available on the maneuver dial.
X-wing
Pros - A solid all round ship with good fire power, it has an average evade but take take 5 hits including its shields
Cons - their in game cost, the max number you can field is 4 in a 100pts list and if you start taking named pilots and updgrades this quickly drops to 3!
Pilots - Rebel lists rely more on pilot synergy than the imperials and you get a good pair in Luke and Biggs. Luke skills allow him to automatically change 1 focus defence to an evade allowing you to use you focus in attacking. Biggs skill is very thematic as he takes Hits for other ships within range 1 of him. Yes he can die quicker because of this but this skill can be used to make the Imperials take shots at longer ranges and he makes sure you keeps your better pilots alive.
TIE fighter
Pros - The basic Acadamy pilot comes in at only 12 points and is the cheapest ship in the game. They can out manoever Xwings as they are faster and have tighter turns available.
Cons - With only 2 attach dice they can struggle to do damage indivdually and they can only take 3 hits.
Pilots - Unlike the rebels the majority of TIE named pilots have individual boosting skills and are less synergistic(is that even a word!). Other than testing them out early on I do not use any of the named pilots in the base set but this ist a bad thing as TIE's need weight of fire and its easy to get distracted by skill that work in specific situations.
When the game first started with these and the Wave 1 ships that I will discuss in the next post the Imperials seemed to have the advantage. Most tournaments ended with victorious Imperials because of the TIE swarm list. In comparing lists most people look at the total attack dice and the total hits it can take. The TIE swarm comes in with 8 ships so it is a 16A24D list. If you played a 3 Xwing list it came in at only 9A15D and 4 Xwings were 12A20D. This isnt an exact science as they goodies and skills for the Rebels can shift the balance but a skilled Imperial player keeping the TIES in formation using focused fire is a scary sight. The difficulty is keeping TIEs in formation but thats a discussion for another day!
Next up the wave 1 expansion ships.