Rogue Squadron- Huge Ships Review

Huge ships are back! And with a X-wing 2.0 makeover. I’ve gotten a few games in with them so far and can say that they are a VAST improvement over the 1.0 version. Far less clunky. They feel like a natural growth over Large ships rather than something completely different. You still have to learn a few special rules for them but not as many. In no particular order, we’ll take a look at some of the changes.

Reoccurring- Shields and Energy

Removing the recover shields action and tying energy recovery to maneuvers goes a long way to cleaning up a huge ship’s turn. They need energy and they need to be able to regenerate shields. Otherwise they just a huge points sink. Taking the recover shield action and depleting your available energy always felt like a double whammy. Much like Force tokens, having that guaranteed energy/shields each round makes the ships a continual threat. Hit and run attacks are less effective because if you leave them alone for awhile they’ll recover.

Related, the special dial for tracking shields and energy is amazing. Anything to remove some of the tokens to keep track of. Honestly, with twenty hull on the Raider I wish it had another wheel to track hull damage. Then just use the cards for Crits.

Huge ship feel like ships

In 1.0, Huge ships had some very wonky rules. They had two ship cards, each with hull and shield values and actions. Each half had an action phase. But some actions affected the whole ship and some just the half. They had their weapons but all used the same token pool. It led to much confusion. But now, a ship is a ship. One card. One central point to measure arcs from. The turret indicators that go on the front and back pegs are the only potentially confusing thing. Their placement doesn’t affect where they can fire, as everything it related to the ships center line.  But you can get yourself messed up if you start the bowtie on the back peg lines up with the back side arc lines.

The next best change is each ship’s primary weapon. For one, they all have one now. You don’t need to pay to add one. Second, they are all regular primary weapons that work range 1-3 (or 4 if your a CR-90). No more getting inside range 3 and the huge ship being helpless. Now, you get close and it’s going to punch you for five dice.

Likewise, there are fewer special rules for the ship regarding actions and tokens. The biggest and best change is that they can FOCUS. God, that was a stupid rule in 1.0. But now it doesn’t matter. Huge ships can Focus, Calculate, Evade, Reinforce, etc. Now, Evades may not be very useful given the zero agility. But they still work just the same for huge ships as every other ship. Jam is also the same action on huge ships as it is on small ships.

There are some special rules you need to know but they’re straight forward. You can’t reposition (no boost, barrel roll, cloak, SLAM). They are affected by stress just like every other ship but stress gets eaten by energy first. They react just like every other ship to ion tokens, it just takes a lot more. Though I did kind of like that in 1.0 ions ate energy. That made sense given the lore of what ions are. But in 2.0 it’s a lot easier to deal out ion tokens than it is stress so that’s a balance issue.

Collisions are still a bit of a mess. Different things happen depending on who bumps who, what, and how. That can lead to some confusion and referencing the rule book. The devs took a page out of Armada for much of this and it works far more smoothly. Picking up smaller ships instead of destroying them is so much better. It always felt dumb to have a loaded up large ship get wiped out because it got too close to the big ship. Now, running over small ships is still a tactic, and for things like TIEs potentially effective, but least not an auto destroy.  How you replace moved smaller ships leads to fun tactical choices for both sides.

Weapons and Hardpoints

The next best change is each ship’s primary weapon. For one, they all have one now. You need not pay to add one to your GR-75’s and Gozanti’s. Second, they are all regular primary weapons that work range 1-3 (or 4 if you’re a CR-90). No more getting inside range 3 and the huge ship being helpless. Now, you get close and it will punch you for five dice.

The hardpoint upgrades all feel different and valuable. Because each ship has a regular primary attack the hardpoints can all have unique ranges and requirements. The absolute best is the Turbolaser. I’ve thought the game needed this kind of weapon. Its odds of hitting are average, and given the range of  3-5 meaning your target is rolling at least one die even if they were zero agility, maybe a bit lower. But then you get to add extra damage results for a devastating hit. That means you can make avoiding the shot easy for high agility ships but if they go get hit they’re toast. I wish the Heavy Laser Cannon had been done this way instead of the Bullseye arc route. Make it a two dice attack but if it hits add two hit results.

The targeting battery is another amazing upgrade that adds great action economy to the ship. Spend your actions getting focus/calculate/reinforce etc. Then fire the TB to get your Lock to use on your primary devastating attack. Or use it to get a second lock after spending one earlier. Very helpful for the Raider and its Ordnance Tubes.

Killer Crits

Critical hits can devastate a huge ship given that they’re almost always firing last. Planning to make short work of a ship that got into range 1 with your Point Defense Battery? One bad crit and there it goes. Damage Control teams are your friend here.

The bridge crit, which is hard to get, but can be devastating if you happened to invest in some Force sensitive crew. I just imagine Leia getting sucked out into space from that one.