Rogue Review- Xi Class Light Shuttle

Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series, we will be looking at the ships you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We’ll take a look at a chassis and what makes it unique along with some upgrades and squadron combos. Strap in and get ready to fly.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

First Order finally gets a cheaper crew carrier than the large and unwieldy Upsilon. For twenty points you lose five health, two attack die, one crew slot, one sensor slot, one cannon slot, a white coordinate but gain a defense die. The Upsilon starts looking like more of a value when put that way. However, for a support ship, you don’t necessarily need all that extra stuff. The Upsilon is a third of your list naked, while a Xi can take twelve points of upgrades and still only be a quarter of a list. Still, I’d argue the base Xi is over-costed.

Double crew and double tech give it some options. Unfortunately, there aren’t many great First Order crew. Agent Terex is good. Kylo, Pyre, Malarus, Snoke all have some fun abilities but also feel over-costed. Hux is decent in the right build but doesn’t work on the Xi unless you also pay for a Tactical Officer.

Double tech has never really stood out as a particularly valuable setup. At least on the ships that can do it, i. e. the two First Order shuttles. This is mainly due to the innate cost of the ship, and the cost of the techs. Advanced Optics and Automated Targeting Priority aren’t bad together.  Sensor Buoy and Biohexacrypt Codes has potential for the shuttle since it has a white jam. But how often will you get that free Lock from the sensor buoys?

Most of the Xi’s value comes from its pilot abilities. Hask, Terex, and Malarus all add something interesting to a squadron. They serve as force multipliers which is the role a support ship should play.

Red Five Standing By

The Xi-class shuttle comes out of box with three unique pilots and one generic.  They are all reasonably costed over the generic, only going up by a total of 5 points. How do these pilots compare?

1. Commander Malarus (I5)– While a friendly ship at range 0-2 performs a primary attack, if it has 1 or more blank results, that ship must gain 1 strain token to reroll 1 blank result, if able
   1. Dice rolls for an entire squad out to range 2 sounds amazing. It does have a downside. MUST is quite a powerful provision in an X-wing ability. Any friendly ship rolling a blank will give themselves a strain, even if they don’t want to reroll their blank.
   2. Still, squad support in a range 2 bubble off a medium base is quite strong. Especially since the times when you wouldn’t actually want to reroll that blank will be low.
   3. This only affects primary attacks, so keep that in mind if you were thinking about boosting a bunch of missiles.
2. Gideon Hask (I4)– While you or a friendly small ship at range 0-2 performs a primary attack against a damaged defender, if the attacker rolled 2 or fewer attack dice, it may gain 1 strain token to roll 1 additional attack die.
   1. Another range 2 ability off a medium base but it is a MAY. Your ships can decide not to use it if they are in a dicey position and don’t want to give up a defense die.
   2. Extra dice vs rerolls are mathematically debatable as to which is better. More dice up your damage potential and nothing precludes you from rerolling that extra die you gain if you already had a Lock.
   3. The clause about against a damaged defender is the main sticking point for Hask. Against many opponents, A-wings for example, you won’t get any extra dice until a ship is practically already dead. This limits the amount of a game in which Hask will play any role at all.
3. Agent Terex (I3)- Setup: After placing forces, choose any number of your equipped Illicit upgrades and equip them to friendly TIE/fo or TIE/sf fighters. Each ship can be assigned only 1 Illicit upgrade this way. End of Game: Return all Illicit upgrades to their original ships.
   1. Illicit upgrades for First Order ships? That opens up some jank.
   2. Oh, FO and SF ships only? No cloaking Kylo Ren. Damn.
   3. Because of the duplicate upgrade rules, you can’t equip three of the same thing to Terex to pass out to your squad. Each illicit upgrade must be different. You also have to follow the restrictions on the Illicit so you can’t take a Rigged Cargo Chute and pass it off because it requires Medium or Large base.
   4. That still leaves some jank to play with. Deadman’s Switch, Inertial Dampeners, Contraband Cybernetics, Feedback Array are all well priced for what they do.
   5. Terex’s main downside is his cost. 42 before equipping anything. Then if he’s passed off all the upgrades he’s a big points sink.
4. First Order Courier (I2)- None
   1. These guys aren’t much cheaper than the named pilots. Which doesn’t makes them very efficient by comparison. And generics are supposed to be the efficient ones.
   2. You’re better off paying a few more points for a good pilot ability than this guy.

All Wings Report In

What’s the ideal number of Xi-class shuttles to buy? One. You can fly up to five of them but they’re intended as support ships. They aren’t effective enough as a fighting ship to fly as a swarm.

Hask’s Hackers (Extended)

• Gideon Hask (Xi Shuttle)
  • Pattern Analyzer
  • Kylo Ren (Crew)
• TN-3465 (TIE FO)
• 4x Omega Squadron Ace (TIE FO)
  • Marksmanship

What’s the biggest weakness of Hask? The fact that your target must already be damaged in order to get the extra die. Enter Kylo Ren. Kylo shows someone the Dark Side. The first TIE to shoot either gets a natural crit, is the one with Bullseye to trigger Marksmanship, or uses TN-3465. This assigns the damage card from ISYTDS, even through shields, so that the target is now ‘damaged’. The rest of the squad rolls an extra die against it to rip it to shreds.

You can up your accuracy potential by getting rid of the weakest part of the crit potential, Marksmanship, and downgrade all the FO’s to Epsilon’s with Advanced Optics.

Malarus Seven (Hyperspace)

• Commander Malarus (Xi Shuttle)
• Epsilon Squadron Cadet (TIE FO)
• 5x Epsilon Squadron Cadet (TIE FO)
  • Automated Targeting Priority

This is a raw efficiency build. Seven ships. ATP gives all but one of them extra focus modification after ever miss. Malarus gives them blank modification. The TIE’s are I1’s so gaining a strain during their attack means almost nothing since most everything will already have attacked and they have an excellent dial for clearing it.

Kylo’s and Cyborgs (Hyperspace)

• Commander Malarus (Xi-Shuttle)
  • Agent Terex
• Kylo Ren (Silencer)
• Blackout (Silencer)
  • Snapshot

Malarus, unlike Hask, also works well with ships that have three die attacks, and he’s an I5 so maneuvers well with I5 aces. Going with aces means you can spare a few points to throw Agent Terex on Malarus, upping your ace support quite a bit. This means the shuttles providing blank rerolls and either calculates or jamming the enemy, which is double duty.

Illicit TIE (Extended)

• Quickdraw (TIE SF)
  • Special Forces Gunner
  • Deuterium Power Cells
  • Fire Control System
• Backdraft (TIE SF)
  • Special Forces Gunner
• Agen Terex (Xi Shuttle)
  • Tactical Officer
  • Cloaking Device
  • Inertial Dampeners
  • Deadman’s Switch
• TN-3465

This list is pure cheese. First Order with Illicits? Sure, that could be fun. Quickdraw damaging herself with Inertial Dampeners? Why not? TN-3465 modding an ally’s die and blowing himself up to damage nearby enemies. Excellent! Backdraft or the Xi-shuttle itself cloaking? Good times.