Summer Star Wars Updates

Last week saw a lot of updates coming out of Fantasy Flight Games. First the points update on Tuesday and then the GenCon reports at the end of the week. While we’ll mostly talk about X-wing, I will take a moment to squee about the official announcement of Clone Wars content for Armada. The prequels were never my favorite trilogy but I did love the aesthetic and the cartoon has seen the era grow on me.

X-Wing Points Update

There were far more changes than I originally expected in this update. Given that nothing new was added and the tournament season was cut short many assumed we would get only small tweaks. And for the most part, that’s true. But there are a few things worth highlighting.

Large Ships

Large ship saw a huge decrease across the board.  There was a general consensus that large ships were overpriced in 2.0. The loss of the 360 turret and the rise of good swarms make them vulnerable. This update brought some significant changes.

• You can now get four Scum Falcons each with 9pts of upgrades. Fly Better highlighted some fun ways to fly four of these and now there’s more points to play with
• Dash has come down 15pts from start of 2.0. Is he playable now?
• VTG up to 12 in small ships holy cow. But down to 7 on big ships which makes it worth considering. For several ships, you can add in VTG and the ships costs about the same as it did pre-change. Still not Hyperspace legal though.
• Ezra costs the same on a small base as VTG. He finally has a purpose?
• Agile Gunner at only 5 is finally a consideration. You telegraph your maneuver when you use it but there are plenty of times when you know you’re going to need to rotate next round and also want to have an action.

Republic and Separatist

These two factions had the most significant changes overall. Republic aces hurt. Mace, Plo, Obi-wan and Ric all up. Ric up by a punishing and significant three points. He was good but not that good. Delta 7B also went up for these pilots but did come down for the generic Jedi, as Battle Meditation. Will that be a thing? Y-wing Anakin came down as did Oddball across the board. He’s still not going to happen. The Torrent named pilots all came down, some significantly. Most of them were added to Hyperspace, but not the Gold. Which gives you a reason to consider the others.

Meanwhile, the Separatist saw the Drones came up in price a little. It’s only one point but you fly these guys in swarms so it’s effectively a 4-7 point increase. The poor Nantex is still worth less with Ensnare now costing more than a drone on any pilot. The base pilots came down some but without ensnare they’re a worthlessly broken ship. Despite the mass price drives for large ships, O-66 was the only Sith Infiltrator to go down.

Other Pilots and Upgrades

• Four generic Silencers is now a possibility
• Duchess is now the most expensive Striker. Sad
• Zizi went up 1pt but that was the only A-wing change and not surprising. Poe came down which is unexpected
• Dorsal turret added to hyperspace and very cheap now at 2
• Ion missiles getting spammable at 3. Still kind of suck. Cluster down to 4
• All torps but proton came down
• Crackshot up to two points. Good? Maybe. It’s great to use, but partly because it’s cheap. Twice the price?
• Passive sensors now scales up for I5 and 6 but got cheaper for the others. Which is a good change as it was supposed to be used by those low Init ships.

X-Wing New Releases

We’ve all been jonesing for X-wing news and releases and we’re about to get our fix. Superfast release rate. 9 packs coming in three months. Ouch my wallet. This doesn’t cover everything that has leaked though. Everyone still wants to know about the Phoenix pack.

• September
  • Xi, Gunship, LAAT
  • These had been announced months ago but we only got a little bit new information.
  • Yoda crew! He’s situationally useful. The Eta-2 will have a lot of chances to benefit but not many other will. He is the first crew with two Force, which ain’t nothing. Which means he can coordinate and still have a Force available. We haven’t seen much Palpatine and I expect Yoda to cost even more though. Maybe the LAAT will prove a better crew carrier than the ARC’s.
  • The Gunships sideslip maneuver looks cool. Though, because you have to telegraph it the turn before it may suffer as the 1.0 U-wing did. At least you have some options in which direction, which type of maneuver and can still go straight/stop instead. The 180 arc also helps. The Networked Aim (You cannot spend your locks to reroll attack dice. While you perform an attack, you may reroll a number of attack dice up to the number of friendly locks on the defender.) ship ability is free FCS that can get better with each friendly lock.
  • Not much about the Xi itself but Agent Terex looks awesome as a crew (and the Xi should be a helluva lot cheaper as a carrier for him than a Upsilon). Free calculates for three rounds then he flips and can potentially jam out to range 3. Very foul to fight.
• October
  • Heralds of Hope and TIE Brute
  • Tells us something about what to expect from future ace packs. Probably three ships. Likely alterative pilot abilities. This one has alt Poe and Snap and possibly more. But does come with new pilots and upgrades too.
  • Even more RZ-2 A-Wings. I had a review of the RZ-2 all prepped but I put it off till we know more about these new pilots. It does add an A-wing only talent that will be interesting design space.
  • TIE Brute is medium base which was unexpected. It will function like a hybrid between a TIE/sf and a RZ-2. It has a single rotating forward/rear arc but can equip cannons that fire them out the back.
  • Begins the process of adding TIE specific upgrades into the mix. Only one we know about is the Ion Limiter Override which allows them to barrel roll after a red maneuver with the potential for strain or ion. Some more likely coming with the V-wing given its ship ability.
• November
  • Trifighter, Jango,  V-Wing, Eta-2
  • Eta-2! Been looking forward to this ship.
    • Two attack front but three attack in bullseye. Which is better, CLT Aethersprite or Eta-2?
    • Hyper ring will be an interesting mechanic. Especially being compatible with multiple types of ships. And it’s intended for epic play, not tournament which is nice to see design effort devoted toward.
    • Purple maneuvers have come to the game. Turn around unstressed but lose a Force. A good trade off over stress. The purple Lock is more questionable. You want to Lock with Jedi, because the Force can be your focus. Balance I guess. These ships will like Yoda nearby.
  • Jango brings lots of crew to the Separatists
    • Hondo is perfect wild card. Can jam and coordinate at range 1-3 at the cost of needing to do both to the same opponent. If you pick a stressed enemy, coordinating is useless so jam is free.
  • Trifighter is the Interceptor equivalent, 3/3/3 stats but without the double reposition. But it does boost and barrel roll with link, though to two different actions.
  • V-Wing looks weird. I mean that in all possible ways.
    • The mechanic to use TIE upgrades will depend on what kind of TIE upgrades we get from this and the TIE Brute. The one revealed, Ion Limiter, will suck on this ship because its A) a Talent B) allows you to barrel roll after a red maneuver C) V-wing has a red barrel roll. So you can barrel roll after a red and end up with two stress and ioned. Hope it was worth it.
    • Oddball is, yet again, a pilot. Yay…

Armada

Clone Wars is here! They are coming the form of two new starter packs, one for each faction. $100 price tag is tough but at least you get a half flyable fleet in one pack, rather than a quarter like the original core. First expansion wave comes soon after in Q1 2021 so you won’t have to wait long to field a true full Clone Wars fleet.  Though, you have to wonder, why not just release them all at once? You can’t put a full fleet on the board

The new card pack will function sort of like Armada 2.0. Not as major of a change as X-wing had, but they are taking the time to reassess everything and coming out with a new rules document.  Odd that they didn’t take the step to remove points from the cards given this reprint and the talk of some kind of app. But then, the X-wing app sucked so don’t hold your breath there.  Armada has never suffered from the same need for point adjustments that X-Wing has though we’ll never know what that might have been like.

RPG

Edge studios had a talk and Star Wars has nothing official coming for the RPG line but also nothing denied. So they’re telling us there’s a chance.