Rogue Squadron – List Building Without 2pt Ships

The most recent point update saw a change to several factions with the removal of any 2 point ships; Rebel, Republic, First Order and effectively Scum since their only 2pointer blows itself up in three rounds. We’re not going to discuss the merits of any particular pilots costed at that value, but rather just what impact this has on what squadron configurations you can bring and still hit exactly 20 points.

Without access to any two pointers, factions have a maximum of 28 different squadron configurations. That seems like a good amount of options, but when we add access to just a single 2-point ship to a faction, the available squadron configurations goes up to 48! That’s 20 more option available when forming a squadron just with a single 2-point ship, a full 58% increase. If you can have as many 2’s as you want, your squad configuration choices goes up to 86 options.

What does this mean for you? The main impact is going to be felt when you are trying to build a squadron that has X pilot and Y pilot together.

Let’s say you wanted to fly some I6 pilots, Wedge Antilles (6) and Hera Syndulla (A-Wing) (5), together. You have the following options:

• 9 + 6 + 5
• 6 + 6 + 5 + 3
• 6 + 5 + 5 + 4
• 6 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 3

As there are no Rebel pilots that currently cost 9, you are left with three options to build out the rest of the squadron. Now, if you had access to a 2-pt pilot, how would this change?

• 7 + 6 + 5 + 2
• 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2

Two more options may not seem like a lot, but it is a 50% increase. It also gives you access to an entire new range of ships that cost 7. That’s several of the VCX pilots, the Gauntlet, and Chewbacca in the Falcon. Those are fairly beefy ships that could change the squad dynamic a lot.

Let’s try another example. Instead of specific pilots, you want to fly a specific number of ships. This is where the contrast get’s more stark. A squadron with four ships has options that go from 13 t0 20 and for five ships it goes from 6 to 14. Those are your sweet spot squad numbers.

Now, the real question, does this limitation impose an unfair limitation onto these factions? It can feel like that, especially if you had a squad configuration you were happy with. However, I don’t think it hurts any of these factions to a major extent. You do have fewer choices but that only impacts you the more ships you definitely want to take.

When we look at the question of what pilot is worth 2-pts in each faction the issue becomes murkier. On one hand, Resistance never made a big splash with their available 2-pt pilots. This suggests that the problem is less about having 2-pt pilots and more about some factions had 2-pt pilots that were too good at that cost. Or it might have had more to do with have two 2-pt pilots available, allowing you to take more ships, and why wouldn’t you always want more ships on the board?

AMG has expressed the intention to add pilots with fixed loadouts for a reduced cost. Whether this means their squad value is lower or they get more overall loadout value remains to be seen. But that does open the possibility of having some new pilot options costed lower, maybe even at 2 or 1 pt values but with reduced stats. That is unlikely, but possibly having alternative costs for pilots might alleviate some of the limitations.

Squadron Configurations with No 2-point Ships

(Assuming Standard Mode where the highest current cost pilot is 9)

• Three Ships- 7 Squads
  • 9 + 8 + 3
  • 9 + 7 + 4
  • 9 + 6 + 5
  • 8 + 8 + 4
  • 8 + 7 + 5
  • 8 + 6 + 6
  • 7 + 7 + 6
• Four Ships- 13 Squads
  • 9 + 5 + 3 + 3
  • 9 + 4 + 4 + 3
  • 8 + 6 + 3 + 3
  • 8 + 5 + 4 + 3
  • 8 + 4 + 4 + 4
  • 7 + 7 + 3 + 3
  • 7 + 6 + 4 + 3
  • 7 + 5 + 4 + 4
  • 7 + 5 + 5 + 3
  • 6 + 6 + 4 + 4
  • 6 + 6 + 5 + 3
  • 6 + 5 + 5 + 4
  • 5 + 5 + 5 + 5
• Five Ships- 6 Squads
  • 8 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
  • 7 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3
  • 6 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 3
  • 6 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 3
  • 5 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 3
  • 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4
• Six Ships- 2 Squads
  • 5 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
  • 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3
• Seven Ships- 0 Squads
• Eight Ships- 0 Squads

Squadron Configurations with a Single 2-point Ship

(Only new squadron options listed)

• Three Ships- 1 New Option (8 total)
  • 9 + 9 + 2
• Four Ships- 7 New Options (20 total)
  • 9 + 5 + 4 + 2
  • 8 + 7 + 3 + 2
  • 8 + 6 + 4 + 2
  • 8 + 5 + 5 + 2
  • 7 + 7 + 4 + 2
  • 7 + 6 + 5 + 2
  • 6 + 6 + 6 + 2
• Five Ships- 8 New Options (14 total)
  • 9 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2
  • 8 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 2
  • 7 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 2
  • 7 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 2
  • 6 + 6 + 3 + 3 + 2
  • 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2
  • 6 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 2
  • 5 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 2
• Six Ships- 2 New Options (4 total)
  • 6 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2
  • 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2
• Seven Ships- 1 New Option (1 total)
  • 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2
• Eight Ships- 0 Options

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