Unconventional Warfare
A lot of things came out of AMG about X-wing this past week. First, the first new releases of products announced since the AMG take over will officially occur Friday. Though, there have been quite a few people who already got their packs last week. And directly from Asmodee no less.
Points for all the new pilots and upgrade officially dropped Monday (technically), which we’re told is to be the standard process going forward; the Monday before a release will feature a points update. The big talking point out of that reveal is the chunky cost for Darth Vader in a TIE Defender. 115 points for a single small ship is unprecedented. Especially with him being stripped of the Sensor slot. Is he worth that much? Meh. The internet is divided. Personally, I don’t think so. He needs to be costly for sure, as his ability is powerful and the TIE Defender is tough to kill. He’ll fill that niche roll here. At least his TIE Advanced role is still open if you want a triple I6 Imperial list.
A few of these points were revealed a few days early during AMG’s three-day set of streams. They revealed quite a few tidbits during those streams. The biggest surprise was that they did not reveal the next wave, which suggests it may be a long time before we see it. They did hint at the Razor Crest coming, though just some artwork no official announcement. While they didn’t announce the next wave, they did reveal the next release which is a Separatist/Scum Huge ship. This was truly unexpected, so nice to be surprised. Honestly, though, this is the first time I just have zero interest in an X-wing ship. I find it ugly and a bad fit for a spaceship combat game. But I don’t want to discourage anyone who is excited about it.
The big thing I want to discuss is their mini-event, Unconventional Warfare, which ran during their three-day stream marathon. The basic premise was for people to play games of X-wing, Armada and Legion using an alternative format. The format included special list building restrictions, that if you followed, unlocked special abilities your squad would gain. After playing a game, they asked you to fill out a survey. Based on the responses, the light or the darkside would win and it would affect some upcoming artwork AMG does.
A simple enough and fun idea. Given their streaming event ran Thursday through Saturday, it got off to an awkward start. With many people still working from home and not a lot of people playing in stores, the chance to get games in is limited. Many people use online methods of play, but it’s tricky to use those when following alternative rule formats they’ve not been programmed for. But that’s a minor issue, and future mini events will probably have more pre-warning so people can schedule time to play.
Regarding the ruleset itself, I like the concept. List building restrictions force you to try new things you might otherwise not. The perks themselves add in a new dynamic for how you want to build a list. Free Evades for flying over obstacles and enemy ships? It may be time to break out the Collision Detectors. No complaints here for the concept or goal of spicing up an X-wing game with new things to try.
The only real concern was the apparent disparity between the two perk trees. The Fighter Aces vastly outclassed Heavy Hitters in terms of abilities. Primarily, the Heavy Hitters abilities all had once per round limitations where Fighter Aces could be used by each ship in a squad at every opportunity. And I’m not sure why. Each set of Perks had powerful abilities but the Heavy Hitters wouldn’t have been game breaking to be used more than once a round. They just altered dice rolled; effectively they’re always getting shot at range 2. Beneficial but not game breaking I don’t think. It does encourage taking one large ship rather than multiple medium since only one ship per round will get to use the perks.
In a match pitting Fighter Aces vs Heavy Hitters it appears even worse. The second tier Perk allows Fighters to roll extra attack dice when the target is in Bullseye. This is much easier to do when your target is a medium or large ship. Two small aces get to range one of a large ship, they’ll probably get bullseye. The large ship can deny one of them the range one bonus, but not both, yet both the aces get a bonus die from bullseye. The two bonus attack dice in exchange for a face up damage card that Heavy Hitters get has power potential use here though, especially against the most squishy aces. Five to six attack dice is no joke if you have a Lock ready to reroll those blanks.
Will we see more alternative rule sets like this in the future? This could be fun. Every tournament a new way to build a list to keep power builds from dominating. If you want to get conspiratorial, you could wonder, is this a backdoor way to test out of future rule changes? Whichever rules are liked by the community the most get added to the game permanently? Probably not the actual plan but it wouldn’t be a bad mechanic. If some alt rule makes waves and just makes the game better, there’s no reason not to roll it in permanently.
