Rogue Review – Epic Wings

We talked a bit recently about the re-introduction of Huge ships to X-wing.  But this wasn’t the only big thing added to X-wing with the release of Epic. We also got epic scenarios and wings. We’ll cover the scenarios another time, so today we’re going to focus on Wings.

There are two types of Wings introduced:

Veteran Wing Leader

You are a wing leader. Your wingmates must be 2, 3, 4, or 5 other ships of your ship type.

While you defend, up to 2 of your wingmates in the attack arc may suffer 1  or  damage to cancel a matching result.

Agent of the Empire/First Order Elite

You are a wing leader. Your wingmates must be 2 or 3 TIE/fo fighters or TIE/sf fighters. (or TIE/ln for AOTE)

While you defend, up to 2 of your wingmates in the attack arc may suffer 1  or  damage to cancel a matching result.

So what is a wing leader? Forming a wing does a number of cool things:

• All the ships move on a single dial, the Wing Leader’s. That means they move at the Initiative of the Wing Leader. Your I6 Ace can pull along up to five low initiative ships with them.
• The Wing Leader gets to take actions as normal. That means they can boost/barrel roll to dodge arc/optimize position before the rest of the group gets pulled along with them. Their actions are limited but they can do the general ones that provide offensive or defensive tokens.
  • Note, that Rotate and Reload are NOT included in the available action types.  RZ-2 A-wings, turreted Y-Wings, TIE/sf, etc are all going to be limited to where ever their arc indicator is pointing at the start of the game as long as they’re in a formation.
• This movement provides all the firepower and benefit of a swarm without the headache of setting six dials and trying to maintain formation.
• The Wing Leader, often a high value ace, gets to pass damage around to other members. This gives the rest of the wing a Biggs effect. This often means your ace will be the last one standing.
• Each ship in the wing gets ID tokens and a color placement card. This helps identify them but also gives that very Star Wars effect of colored squadrons flying together. Unfortunately, the red wing does not use the ID numbers 1-6 so there is no Red 5 to stand by.

The first time I flew a wing it was like the heavens opening up. The ease of movement for the early stages of the game made the whole experience a simple endeavor. My son and I flew two comparable lists; a full wing of six, a corvette/raider with two ships docked. Despite each of us having nine ships, we only had to set two dials. This continued until we became engaged. By the time the wings had to dissolve due to clustered movement, many of the ships had died and we didn’t have to set that many more. It would be great to see some form of wings make their way to regular games just for this early game simplicity.

As I mentioned above, wings can be broken, voluntarily or involuntarily. The most likely cause is some kind of bump preventing the ships from being placed into formation. On a 6×3 game board playing with Huge ships you’ll likely have plenty of room and avoid that for awhile. But any games on 3×3 mats and more than one wing it will lead to chaos fast.

Wings can also be disrupted with ions and tractor tokens. The wings can be reformed but once they are disrupted that becomes difficult.  This puts some value on tractor or ion cannons mixed into epic lists just to cause havoc. Things like Quadjumpers that pass out tractor tokens during the Activation phase can really cause trouble. Throw one up to tractor the wing leader and suddenly the rest of the wing, which had no dials set, will all be going two straight and getting stressed.

A wing’s biggest flaw is price. The wing card itself is only two points but to fly a full squad of six ships means you’re paying 6x the cost of the ship. Aside from the two First Order and Empire exceptions mentioned above, wings are all the same ship. Six X-wings in a wing, for examples, is going to come out to be minimum of 248 points.

The stipulation that all ships in a wing have to be the same chassis is a good one. For a brief time I envisioned Cova Nell with Leia onboard, flopping around doing reverse maneuvers with five T-70’s escorting her. Course, then I remember A) all ships have to be the same type and B) she’d just reverse into her wingmate and break the formation. But even two X-wings, which wouldn’t cause reverse bumps would be shenanigans of maneuvers.

The only exemption to the ship chassis requirement is the Agent of the Empire and First Order Elite cards. These allow TIE fighters to fly escort on high value targets. These cards are limited to TIE Advanced (both types) and TIE Silencers as they are intended escorts for Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. But they open up the door to some shenanigans.

Black Squadron (254pts)

• Wing Leader- Darth Vader
  • Hate
  • Afterburners
  • Passive Sensors
  • Agent of the Empire
• Right Flank- Valen Rudor
• Left Flank- Nightbeast
• Rear Support- Iden Versio
• Right Support- Howlrunner
  • Swarm Tactics
• Left Support- Del Meeko

All of the efficiency of a TIE Swarm with Darth Vader to boot. This swarm will shoot early, get rerolls from Howlrunner, get defensive rerolls from Del Meeko, get boosted to stay alive from Iden and the two front ships have a chance to have focus/evade each round. You could drop Valen and Nightbeast if you wanted to save some points or make them Academy pilots.

Red Squadron (313pts)

• Wing Leader- Kullbee Sperado
  • Selfless
  • R2 Astromech
  • Veteran Wing Leader
• Right Flank- Red Squadron Veteran
  • Selfless
  • R2 Astromech
• Left Flank- Red Squadron Veteran
  • Selfless
  • R2 Astromech
• Rear Support- Biggs Darklighter
  • R2 Astromech
• Right Support- Garven Dreis
  • Selfless
  • R2 Astromech
• Left Support- Red Squadron Veteran
  • Selfless
  • R2 Astromech

Kullbee allows the formation to move with boost and barrel rolls at I4 but doesn’t lose a damage die in the process. Garven passes a focus around for some efficiency. And then, no matter who you shoot, damage is getting passed around. Shoot Biggs and any crits go to someone else. Shoot anyone else and Biggs pulls off some damage while crits go elsewhere. And shoot Kullbee and he’s just taking nothing. R2 astromechs give the whole wing the chance to run away for a round or two and recover those shields.

Goon Squadron (288pts)

• Wing Leader- Drea Renthal
  • Expert Handling
  • R4 Astromech
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner
  • Veteran Wing Leader
• Right Flank- Crymorah Goon
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner
• Left Flank- Crymorah Goon
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner
• Rear Support- Crymorah Goon
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner
• Right Support- Crymorah Goon
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner
• Left Support- Crymorah Goon
  • Dorsal Turret
  • Veteran Turret Gunner

Get in front of this thing and you’re eating twelve attacks, almost all with rerolls. That’s going to be a bad time.