Rogue Review- X-Wing Wave 4

A new wave is upon us! We also had a point change. Let’s take a look at what it brings to the game.

General Upgrades

• Angled Deflectors (Modification) (Variable by agility)
  • Adds White Reinforce. Removes 1 Shield. Small/Medium Base, requires 1 shield.
  • This is the first variable cost upgrade that works in reverse order, getting cheaper for higher agility pilots. Which is appropriate as Reinforce isn’t very good beyond agility 0 or 1.
  • Meta shifting? Some people think this will break the game and are bemoaning how broken this will be. It’s not. You lose a shield and gain a new action to take. Reinforce isn’t 1.0 broken, you’re still taking at least one damage each attack that hits. Most ships are better off with a shield upgrade. There is some potential for abuse with Resistance and Amilyn Holdo.
• Autoblasters (Cannon) (2pts)
  • Attack (2, Range 1-2): If the defender is in your Bullseye, roll 1 additional die. During the Neutralize Results step, if you are not in the defender’s Forward Arc, Critical results do not cancel results. 
  • This retains the unblockable damage from 1.0 but with more 2.0 restrictions. Only Crits and only out of front arc. Though the odds of rolling a crit are decent if you can get bullseye at range 1 since you’ll be rolling 4 dice. Pairs nicely with Marksmanship.
  • Meta shifting? Probably not.  Unless you get Bullseye they’re just a 2 dice attack with a 12.5% chance of being able to ignore evade results.
• Delayed Fuse (Modification) (1pt)
  • After you drop, launch or place a bomb or mine, you may place 1 fuse marker on that device.
  • Drop a bomb and keep it from detonating this round. Anyone can have Nym’s ability, at least for a round,
  • Meta shifting? This could be used to devastating effect. It could shift the way we all have to deal with devices. But I don’t think it will make bombs uber or anything.
• Diamon-Boron Missiles (Missile) (6pts)
  • Attack (3, range 2-3): Charges: 3. Spend 1 Charge. After this attack hits, you may spend 1 Charge. If you do, each ship at range 0-1 of the defender with agility equal to or less than the defender’s rolls 1 attack die and suffers 1 Hit/Crit damage for each matching result.
  • AOE missiles are back. But with typical 2.0 balance this time. To trigger the AOE it requires spending an extra charge and is only a 50/50 chance it will hit. And there’s agility restrictions. No shooting a Decimator and splashing damage onto the TIE escorts.
  • Meta shifting? Probably not. This has a place as a swarm counter, where all ships are going to have the same agility. Especially good against Vultures with their two agility. But it’ll never become Harpoon Missiles.
• Electro-Proton Bomb (Device) (14pts)
  • Charge: 1. During the System Phase, you may spend 1 Charge to drop an Electro-Proton Bomb with the 1 straight template. Then place 1 fuse marker on that device.  This card’s Charge cannot be recovered. At the end of the Activation Phase this device detonates. When this device detonates, each ship at range 0–2 rolls 4 attack dice. Each ship loses 1 shield for each blank result, gains 1 ion token for each Hit/Crit result, and gains 1 disarm token for each Focus result.
  • This bomb is rather ridiculous. It’s the first bomb with a range of 2. While it doesn’t have guaranteed damage, it will do something to everything it hits (unless they have no shields already).
  • Meta shifting?  Probably not. It only has one charge, is unique, can’t be reloaded, takes two bomb slots, has a fuse delay and costs 14pts. It could cause some trouble in the right hands but will require a fair amount of skill to pull off.
• Passive Sensors (Sensor) (3pts)
  • Charge: 1 (Reoccurring). Action: Spend 1 Charge. You can only perform this action in your Perform Action step. While your Charge is inactive, you cannot be coordinated. Before you engage, if your Charge is inactive, you may perform a Calculate or Lock action.
  • The answer to low Init ships getting Locks for their ordnance on the first engagement. Unfortunately, most heavy ordnance carriers (TIE Bombers, K-Wings, Hyena Bombers) don’t have sensor slots.
  • Ships that can’t Lock can now use this to Lock. Only means TIE Phantoms and Lambda’s currently but that could be a big deal. Phantoms can be scary and Passive Sensors is cheap. Lambda’s could use Director Krennic now with no need to take Tarkin.
  • Meta shifting? Maybe. Generic ordnance carriers (w/ Sensor slot) can make use of more ordnance. Ships without Lock can now Lock. These things could have an impact.
• Plasma Torpedo (Torpedo) (9pts)
  • Attack (3, range 2-3): Charge: 2. Spend 1 Charge. During the Neutralize Results step, Crit results are cancelled before Hit results. After the attack hits, the defender loses 1 shield.
  • It’s important to understand how this torp works. If it hits, the target loses a shield THEN damage is applied. That’s the opposite of 1.0. This makes the shield removal way better. Now, if you fire this at a ship with a single shield, you’re not wasting its ability.
  • Meta shifting? Eh, it’s a 9pt torpedo that could do four damage. But only against shielded targets and its only a 3 dice attack. Probably only useful on some 2 dice attack ships.

Republic

• Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter
  • My hottake is that it feels a little too expensive for a two attack, two agility, ship.
  • Padme and her Handmaidens could be trouble and Double Barrel Roll Anakin should be fun.
  • Four Bravo Squadron pilots with Proton Torpedoes and Passive Sensors could be a good alpha strike, if they can live long enough to fire their opening barrage. 
  • Meta shifting? Certainly. Republic choice of ships rose by 33%. That’s going to have an impact on their play.
• R2-A6 (Astromech) (6pts)
  • After you reveal your dial, you may set your dial to a maneuver of the same bearing of a speed 1 higher or lower.
  • Any Republic pilot with an astromech slot can almost gain TIE Advanced x1 pilot Ved Foslo’s ability. Important distinction though, Ved allows you to “execute” a maneuver, but R2-A6 allows you to “set your dial”. So no pulling off maneuvers that aren’t normally on your dial. 
  • Slap it on an ARC-170 with a Seasoned Navigator and you’re going wherever you want.
  • Meta shifting? No. It’s neat and works well in conjunction with Sense. But no gaining 1 or 3 sleep S-loops on an Aethersprite.
• R2-C4 (Astromech) (5pts)
  • While you perform an attack, you may spend 1 evade token to change 1 Focus result to a Hit result.
  • This is Purple Evade insurance. Aethersprites can take the purple evade and then if they don’t need it for defense, can still mod their attack.
  • N-1’s like this droid with their Full Throttle ability.
  • Meta shifting? No. Could be a good combo but hardly broken.
• Point Changes
  • Delta 7B went up but most of the Jedi went down. Net effect of most being cheaper.
  • Calibrated Laser Targeting got cut in half. Enough to make it good? In some cases but Delta 7B is still better.

Separatists

• Hyena Class Droid Bomber
  • This is the first ship that contains multiple pilots with different upgrade configurations.
  • Continues the trend of wonky maneuver dials. Hard 3’s but no banks? Red 1 banks? It’s so weird.
  • DBS-404 will be a fun suicide bomber at 30pts.
  • DBS-32C is pricey but makes a great coordinator for your droid swarms.
  • Meta shifting? Certainly. Separatists choice of ships rose by 33%. That’s going to have an impact on their play.
• TA-175 (Tactical Relay) (5pts)
  • After a friendly ship at range 0-3 with Calculate on its action bar is destroyed, each friendly ship at range 0-3 with Calculate in its action bar gains 1 calculate token.
  • Become flush with Calculate tokens. Great for droid swarms.
  • This is the reason you can only have one Tactical Relay upgrade in a squad. Kraken plus this guy would be nuts.
  • Meta shifting? No. It’s a boon for Vulture/Hyena swarms but Kraken is still a big competitor.
• Point Changes
  • Hate is a generic upgrade but it affects the Sith Infiltrator more than anything. It got a lot more expensive for Maul. Prohibitively so? Maybe.

Rebels

• Point Changes
  • Leia went up to a more balanced 6pts. I liked her at 2 but that made her a no brainer inclusion. At 6 she’s still really good.
  • Wedge, Cassian and the named B-Wing pilots all went up. And just as the new B-Wing model came out too.
  • YT-1300 lost its Illicit Slot at the same time that Inertial Dampeners and R2-D2 crew went up. Something needed to change with this combo but all of that was a bit much. Inertial Dampeners was not broken by itself. Just the combo with R2.

Imperials

• Point Changes
  • TIE Aggressor’s went down but all the turrets and barrage rockets went up. They’re still too expensive.
  • TIE Defenders continue to creep downward in price. Still can’t fly three though.  As long as they stay above that line I don’t think they’ll be overpowered.
  • TIE Phantoms went up in price and so did Juke. Four Sigma’s with Juke is forever in the past. You can still take four Sigma’s though.
  • Decimators came down in time for their rerelease. So did a bunch of the Imperial crew options. Will we see some more making an appearance? Moff Jerjerrod and Ciena Ree are both fun and haven’t really seen play.

Resistance

• Resistance Transport
  • Loaded with red maneuvers but can also stop and go backwards.
  • Kor Sella + Larma D’acy will combine to make this ship a great support ship.
  • All of the pilots make good use of their red dials. They are also going to love Pattern Analyzer.
  • Meta shifting? Potentially. Coordinate platforms are very useful.
• Resistance Transport Pod
  • BB-8 will be fun.
  • Vi Moradi is a good recon ship.
  • Squishy but cheap ship.
• Amilyn Holdo (Crew) (9pts)
  • Before you engage, you may choose another friendly ship at range 1-2. You may transfer to that ship 1 token of a type that ship does not have. That ship may transfer 1 token to you of a type you do not have.
  • Most obvious combo is throwing an R2 Astromech on a T-70 and pulling the Weapons Disabled token off. Better to let a T-70 fire than a two attack transport.
  • Also could be useful for clearing stress on ships. L’ulo shoots with three dice, Holdo passes a Focus and clears the stress before someone shoots at L’ulo and she gets her three agility.
  • Meta shifting? Maybe. This is one of those upgrades that could be crap or could be super broken.
• GA-197 (Crew) (8pts)
  • Charges: 5 (reoccurring) Setup: Before placing forces, you may spend 3-5 Charges. If you do, choose another friendly ship and assign the It’s the Resistance condition to it.
  • It’s the Resistance. Setup: Start in reserve. When you deploy, you are placed within range 1 of any table edge and beyond range 3 of any enemy ship. At the start of the round, if all of the friendly GA-97‘s  are active, you must deploy. Then remove this card. After the friendly GA-97 is destroyed, you must deploy. Then gain 1 disarm token and remove this card.
  • Han Solo YT-1300 with this guy plus one more ship means your deployment is all kinds of janky.
  • It’s interesting that you can time the deployment for 2 to 5 rounds into the game. But your opponent knows when you’re coming so can plan for it.
  • Meta shifting? Definitely not. This is a gimmick. Could be fun. But so is Resistance Han and Boba crew. We all know how much play they see.
• Kaydel Connix (Crew) (5pts)
  • After you reveal your dial, you may set your dial to a basic maneuver of the next higher speed. While you execute that maneuver, increase its difficulty.
  • A different version of Season Navigator. An important difference due to red maneuver limitation on Seasoned Navigator and the plethora of red maneuvers on Resistance crew carriers.
  • Meta shifting? Not really.
• Kor Sella (Crew) (6pts)
  • After you fully execute a blue maneuver, remove all of your stress tokens.
  • A more powerful version of the old Inspiring Recruit. Not nearly as cheap and not spammable.
  • There are several new pilots that can really soak up the stress.
  • Meta shifting? Potentially. Her plus Larma on a Rebel Transport is a pricey support ship but could be powerful.
• Larma D’Acy (Crew) (4pts)
  • While you have 2 or fewer stress tokens, you can perform Reinforce, Coordinate, and Jam actions, even while stressed. While you perform a white Reinforce, Coordinate, and Jam actions, if you are stressed, treat that action as red.
  • A good pairing for Kor Sella.
  • The Resistance Transport will love her as it can now stop or go backwards and still support the rest of the squad.
  • Meta shifting? Potentially. Her plus Kor on a Rebel Transport is a pricey support ship but could be powerful.
• Leia Organa (Crew) (19pts)
  • Force: 1. Adds Purple Coordinate. After a friendly ship reveals its dial, you may spend 1 Force. If you do, the chosen ship reduces the difficulty of that maneuver.
  • Bloody hell this is good. Reduce the difficulty of any maneuver, for any friendly ship, anywhere on the board. Give any ship infinite white K-turns.
  • Meta shifting? 19pts is hella expensive. Still worth it? Maybe. Leia could be used to great effect but she forces you to take a Falcon or a transport.
• PZ-4C0 (Crew) (6pts)
  • Adds Calculate. At the end of the Activation Phase, you may choose 1 friendly ship at range 1-2. If you do, transfer 1 calculate token to that ship. If your revealed maneuver is blue, you may transfer 1 focus token instead.
  • Finally gives a way for C-3P0 to coordinate at infinite range.
  • His ability itself if quite meh. On the same ship as C-3P0 he could let you coordinate, gain a free Calculate from C-3P0, and then pass that token along as well.
  • Meta shifting? No, not really.
• Point Changes
  • YT-1300 got a lot cheaper. They needed it because they were quite pricey given their dial, red actions, and fewer shields compared to the Rebel version.

First Order

• Point Changes
  • Most pilots got cheaper, except the Upsilon. But no new ships or upgrades.
  • Hux got quite a lot cheaper so expect him to make some appearances. Though, you still need an Upsilon so it’s almost a wash.

Scum

• Point Changes
  • Lots of small point changes to ships.
  • Drea went up by a lot. She is still quite potent.
  • Shadow Caster got cut in half which makes it very appealing.
  • IG-88’s inch downward. Triple squad or two with IG-88D on another ship could be a thing.
  • Jumpmasters gained Gunner. They still suck.