Rogue Squadron- Warthog Cluster

Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series, we will be looking at different squadrons you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We give you the squad, what expansion pack all of the upgrades come from and then give you the lowdown on how best to fly it. Strap in and get ready to fly.

All Wings Report In (Extended)

LAAT/i Gunship  “Warthog” (71 pts) (I3)

After you or a friendly non-limited ship at range 0-2 are destroyed during the Engagement Phase, that ship is not removed until the end of that phase. 

Fire Convergence: While a friendly ship performs a non-turret attack, if the defender is in your turret arc you may spend 1 charge token, if you do the attacker may reroll up to 2 results.

• Crew – C-3P0:
  • Adds Calculate
  • While you defend, if you are calculating, you may reroll 1 defense die. After you perform a Calculate action, gain 1 calculate token.
• Crew/Gunner – Wolfpack
  • After a friendly ship at range 0-3 defends, if the attacker is in your firing arc, the defender may gain 1 strain token to acquire a lock on the attacker.
• Missile – Cluster Missile
  • Charges: 4. Attack (Front Arc, 3, range 1-2)
  • Spend 1 Charge. After this attack, you may perform this attack as a bonus attack against a different target at range 0-1 of the defender, ignoring the Lock requirement.
• Modification – Synchronized Console: After you perform an attack, you may choose a friendly ship at range 1 or a friendly ship with the Synchronized Console upgrade at range 1-3 and spend a lock you have on the defender. If you do, the friendly ship you chose may acquire a lock on the defender.

4x V-19 Torrent “Blue Squadron Protector” (32 pts) (I3)

None

• Missile – Cluster Missile
  • Charges: 4. Attack (Front Arc, 3, range 1-2)
  • Spend 1 Charge. After this attack, you may perform this attack as a bonus attack against a different target at range 0-1 of the defender, ignoring the Lock requirement.
• Modification – Synchronized Console
  • After you perform an attack, you may choose a friendly ship at range 1 or a friendly ship with the Synchronized Console upgrade at range 1-3 and spend a lock you have on the defender. If you do, the friendly ship you chose may acquire a lock on the defender.
• Talent- Dedicated
  • While another friendly ship in your side arcs at range 0-2 defends, if it is limited or has the Dedicated upgrade and you are not strained, you may gain 1 strain token. If you do, the defender rerolls 1 of their blank results.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Warthog doesn’t like seeing his friends die. So he’ll yell at them to get up and keep fighting, at least until the end of the round. This makes him a perfect companion for a swarm that punches above its weight class. This list is all about squad tactics and synergy. Which is normally something that is dangerous to pursue as once something fails, it all falls apart. With Warthog, that failure will at least have to wait a round.

They are all I3’s so have a leg up on cheap generics but are still quite vulnerable to initiative kills. Against high initiative, once your enemy has fired on one of your ships, Wolfpack allows them to get a lock on the attacker. With Warthog’s turret arc turned sideways, he has 270degrees of coverage to trigger Wolfpack thanks to the Clusters covering the front arc. With that single Lock, the whole squad can fire missiles at that target and then again on a nearby target. These attacks won’t be heavily modified, as they will likely have one focus token to use on one of the attacks, but still, that’s upwards of ten attacks in a round.

With C-3P0, Warthog is surprisingly resilient. He also has the option to reinforce and allow the V-19’s to give him rerolls with Dedicated. He’ll still drop from concentrated fire but probably not for a round or two. Once your V-19’s have spent their missile charges and, hopefully, dished out more damage than Warthog has taken, his role isn’t as important.

Variations

If you’d rather go full swarm, you can switch to Gold Squadron, drop everything but Wolfpack and Synchronized Consoles, switch to Ion Missiles and get a fifth V-19 in the list.

C-3P0 could be changed out for Perceptive Co-Pilot as you can rely on Dedicated for rerolls instead. You also have one available point if you’d prefer Kit Fisto and the possibility of Evade tokens on you LAAT.