Rogue Review- Fireball

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

Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

Before we get into this, I have a confession to make. I haven’t watched more than a few Resistance episodes. I tried. I wanted to like it. But, Kaz…uh. So anyways. This review will remain untainted by the show. What does the Fireball bring to X-wing the game? If nothing else, it truly feels unique.

Starting at a low 26pts (for now), the Fireball is tied for the cheapest Resistance ship. As it has six potential upgrade slots, this ship gives you a lot of options to play around with. That’s a blessing and a curse. Options are good but you can also easily over-equip it.

The astromech slot should be an easy decision. R5 right? Most of the time. Starting the game damaged kind of sucks. And you’re going to be tempted to flip crits a lot.  Maybe R1-J5 (aka Bucket) to help you repair cards despite stress. Bucket also works as insurance against those pesky Direct Hits, as after you deal yourself the second damage card, you repair it, and then you can repair it right off the ship. Finally, R4 astromechs always have some appeal.

The illicit slot has a couple good choice. Coaxium Hyperfuel is tailor made for this ship. Coaxium gets around a lot of the limitations of the SLAM action. First, you can SLAM after a bump which is nice when you get blocked. Second, some of the best maneuvers this ship has are red. SLAMing after a 3-hard or T-roll can lead to unexpected locations. Course, if you want to shoot afterward then you’re exposing two cards which could ruin your day.

Beyond Coaxium, Contraband Cybernetics allows you to double T-roll or hard 3 into a T-roll, allowing you to move laterally across the board in a most unexpected way. Course, should you do that, you’re going to be double stressed. But without doing added damage to yourself. Of course, you can only do it once. Additionally, Deadman’s Switch is always a fun choice. SLAM in close and then expose a killing crit to turn your Fireball into…well…a Fireball.

The missile slot seems like an odd choice for the ship, seeing as it does not natively have the Lock action. But two Modification slots gives you the option to increase your potential firepower. Of course, this feels a bit like a trap as it is a 3pt tax on all of your missiles since you need to buy Targeting Computer. There are ways to get around that using wingmen that share Locks but synergy lists are risky.

Overall, the unique aspect of the Fireball is how effectively it uses SLAM. K-wings, Starwings and Black One have previously shown how SLAM can turn the tide in games. We already mentioned how Coaxium alters you SLAMs but the chassis ability itself plays a bigger role. Removing the Disarm you gain from SLAMing gives you a reason to SLAM more. Hopping behind your enemy gives you the advantage.

The ship’s title, Kaz’s Fireball, helps in shutting down the biggest drawback of the ship; that starting damage card. With the ability to choose which card you start with, you can prepare for what’s going to happen when you expose it after SLAMing. Even if there are no good crits, knowledge is power.

Red Five Standing By

The Fireball comes out of the box with three unique pilots and only one generic. Though if you’re not flying an A-wing or X-wing that’s standard practice for the Resistance. How do these pilots compare?

1. R1-J5 (I1)- Before you expose 1 of your damage cards, you may look at your facedown damage cards, choose 1 and expose that card instead. 
   1. Choice! R1-J5 gives you choices when you go to flip your cards. This makes him a perfect ship to pair with the title. Pick a card you can live with flipping repeatedly (and that can be flipped back over).
   2. Kor Sella fits right into that crew slot you get with this pilot. If you can get the crit that gives you double stress, you can use your ability to flip it repeatedly (as it self repairs). Then Kor Sella lets you clear all the stress you gained. Of course, this is a pilot crit, which means you can’t start the game with it using the title.
   3. Novice Technician finally has a place to be useful. Using that ability, you can repair the worst ship crits and when you roll that hit, use R1-J5’s ability to flip over a safer crit instead.
   4. At I1, R1-J5 is your best Fireball blocker.
2. Colossus Station Mechanic (I2)- None
   1. Cheap, cheap, cheap! Mechanics fill in a gap the Resistance had; a cheap, spammable generic. You can take seven of them with lots of room for upgrades.
   2. Deadman’s Switch, Coaxium Hyperfuel, Contraband Cybernetics, R4 Astromechs are all two point upgrades. Equip all of them with one in a swarm or mix and match to taste.
   3. I2 isn’t as good as I1 for blocking but still does the job most of the time. It also gives you firing advantage over I1 swarms which are common.
3. Kaz (I4)- While you defend or perform a primary attack, if the enemy ship’s initiative is higher than the number of damage cards you have, you may roll 1 additional die. 
   1. You’ll almost definitely want an R5 Astromech on Kaz. That way you can start the game with a bonus die against everything except an already damaged Null.
   2. Ironically, when you’re planning to do this, you probably don’t want to waste points on equipping the title bearing his name.
   3. This ability is interesting in that, unless you take a Hull Upgrade, you’ll always have it against an I6.  Kaz is made to survive aces.
   4. You pay a premium for this ability, as Kaz is 7pts more expensive than Yaeger who’s an I5. But then, bonus dice are amazing.
   5. Spare parts canister is worth considering. Recover the R5 charge you had to burn at the start of the game. With SLAM he’ll be able to run away and make use of those charges later to keep his ability alive as long as possible.
4. Jarek Yeager (I5)- While you have 2 or fewer stress tokens, if you are damaged, you can execute red basic maneuvers even while stressed. If you are critically damaged, you can execute red advanced maneuvers even while stressed. 
   
   1. Yeager continues two Resistance traditions. First, he’s a relatively low cost I5. Him plus the three I5 A-wing’s allow you enough points that if the Resistance can get just one more comparably priced pilot, you can finally fly five I5’s. Yay?
   2. Second, his ability allows him to ignore stress in certain cases. With Coaxium, he can can SLAM all day. Red maneuver, SLAM into a red maneuver. This makes him very slippery.
   3. It will require a fair bit of work to make that pay off though.

All Wings Report In

What’s the ideal number of Fireballs to buy? That’s a hard one to answer. You could go all in and get seven of them for a swarm. But just one of them in a list mixed with the Resistance’s other shenanigans works well too. 

Farmer’s Fireballs aka Rose’s Mechanics (Hyperspace)

• Kazuda Xiono (Fireball)
  • R5 Astromech
• Rose Tycho (Transport Pod)
• 5x Colossus Station Mechanic (Fireball)

Taken from Fly Better’s Ryan Farmer, this list is a slippery swarm that aims for overwhelming force. Kaz is there to take care of aces, Rose has great accuracy, the Mechanics have a lot of health can are hard to pin down.

Explosion w/ Wings (Hyperspace)

• 6x Colossus Station Mechanic (Fireball)
  • Deadman’s Switch
• Vi Moradi (Transport Pod)
  • Informant

This list is all about spreading yourself out, throwing one ship in as bait and then rocketing away if they don’t blow him up and eat the Deadman’s damage. Vi provides you with some intel about where to SLAM your Fireballs in order to get blocks or be in range for Deadman’s.

Chewie’s Fireballs (Extended)

• Chewbacca (Scavenged YT-1300)
  • Rey
  • Heroic
  • Perceptive Co-Pilot
  • Rey’s Millennium Falcon
• 4x Colossus Station Mechanic (Fireball)
  • Deadman’s Switch

This is a slight variation on the other list. This time, you have fewer Fireballs but when they blow up, Chewbacca gets to perform a bonus action and bonus attack. Just don’t let more than one Fireball blow up a round.

What Stress? (Extended)

• Jarek Yeager (Fireball)
  • R1-J5
  • Coaxium Hyperfuel
  • Heroic
  • Advanced SLAM
• Nien Numb (T-70 X-Wing)
  • Heroic
  • Integrated S-foils
  • Pattern Analyzer
  • Black One
• Greer Sonnel (RZ-2 A-Wing)
  • Heroic
  • Daredevil
  • Pattern Analyzer
• Pammich Neero Goode (Transport)
  • Korr Sella
  • Larma D’Acy
  • R4 Astromech

This is a weird hodge-podge of a list. Each pilot in here has something that allows them to just not care about stress. Yeager’s dial remains open to him and can SLAM and then repair damage cards despite stress. Nien Numb is good at shedding the stress before he ever gets any. Greer can always rotate her arc to have a shot no matter how much stress she has. And with Daredevil and Pattern Analyzer she has a lot of options on where she ends up.  Pammich, like Yaeger, can keep taking red maneuvers despite stress. Larma lets her continue to take actions to coordinate the others and Korr Sella helps her shed the accumulated stress.

Ace Hunters (Hyperspace0

• Kazuda Xiono (Fireball)
  • R5 Astromech
  • Contraband Cybernetics
  • Advanced SLAM
  • Heroic
• Poe Dameron (T-70 X-Wing)
  • Black One
  • Heroic
  • R4 Astromech
  • Integrated S-foils
• R1-J5 (Fireball)
  • Informant
  • Advanced SLAM
  • Coaxium Hyperfuel
• Vi Moradi (Transport Pod)
  • Kaydel Connix
  • Primed Thrusters

This list wants to hunt down Aces. You have Poe at I6 doing usual Poe shenanigans. Kaz is backing him up, hitting harder and more defensive against aces until the very end. With Contraband Cybernetics, he has one turn of real funky SLAMs just like Poe has one turn of effective SLAM.

Meanwhile, Vi and R1-J5 allow you to not care about your lack of a bid. They are revealing your target’s maneuvers and then have options to help them ensure bumps. Vi can change her maneuver speed with Kaydel and then possibly barrel roll for final placement. R1-J5 can SLAM as needed whereever he needs to go to cause the most trouble.