Rogue Review- Nantex Guide

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

Who was expecting this ship for the next Separatist one to be released? Anyone? There aren’t a ton of Separatist designs to choose from but there are still a few you could see coming out before this. Sheathipede shuttle for one, seeing how it’s already a model in X-wing. Droid Tri-fighter as it shows up in other Star Wars games. But here we are.

The Nantex enters the game as a truly unique style of ship; it’s the first ship with a Bullseye only primary weapon. It also comes with a weaker two attack mobile arc to help balance it some. Imagine trying to play with Bullseye only the whole game. If a ship ever gets a five dice attack it would need to be something like that.

But the Nantex weirdness doesn’t stop with the Bullseye primary. Natively, it can only perform Focus and Evade actions. That’s quite limiting at first glance. No reposition actions and no ability to rotate its mobile arc. The chassis makes up for all that though. After maneuvering you can give yourself a tractor token which allows you to barrel roll or boost straight. Then you can rotate your arc to anywhere but the rear. Plus your regular Focus or Evade action.

An important thing to remember when flying a Nantex is you can only give yourself the Tractor token if you rotate your arc. If you’re stressed, you can’t perform the action. If your mobile arc is already pointed where you want it to point, you can rotate it but if you can’t get your opponent into the new arc, there’s little point. 

Upgrading is another bit of weirdness. The only upgrades Nantex pilots can equip are Talents. Two in most cases. But nothing else. Which is odd considering it’s being released with Targeting Computers, a modification, which it can’t use. Fortunately, it comes with two unique Talents that give it a way to deal with tractoring itself and cause mayhem at the same time.

Ensnare allows you to transfer a tractor token to another ship in your mobile arc. Not just an enemy ship but any ship. This means you could transfer a tractor to a friendly ship to give it an end of activation boost/barrel roll.

Gravitic Deflection is another way to deal with those tractor tokens. Gravitic allows you reroll defense dice for every tractored ship in the arc. If you passed the tractor to an enemy, but not the one shooting you, you have full defense dice and a reroll. If you couldn’t Ensnare, then you at least get a defensive reroll because if you’re tractored and being shot, you’re definitely in the attack arc.

All of these things combine to make the Nantex one of the most unique ships in X-wing. They have the potential to alter the meta the way the TIE Phantom did due to this weirdness. People don’t know how to deal with them.

They start off at 34pts, which is in line with other low health, high agility ships, aka TIE Interceptor and TIE Striker. Though they only roll three attack dice in Bullseye. Ensnare is another 10pts. Sun Fac, the I6 ace with an awesome ability, is up to 54 and 78 if he has Ensnare. Is he worth 78pts? If you know how to fly him, the internet thinks he’ll dominate. Time will tell.

With the rules change that came out in September, Large and Medium base ships become the bane of Nantex. A ship is only Tractored if it has enough tokens (2 for Medium, 3 for Large). That means for all the various Nantex abilities that trigger against Tractored ships if you can’t three onto a large, it might as well have zero.

Red Five Standing By

The Nantex comes with four unique pilots and two generics. How do they stack up?

1. Sun Fac (I6)- While you perform a primary attack, if the defender is tractored, roll 1 additional attack die. 
   1. Extra attack dice are always good. Bullseye, range 1 against a tractor opponent is five dice.
   2. You’ll want to consider using the second Talent slot for Predator to give you a reroll as you can’t use that Targeting Computer that comes in your box.
   3. Don’t neglect your mobile arc though and consider attacking laterally. Tractor yourself and move sideways with a barrel roll. Use Ensnare to throw the tractor on another ship and move it sideways, preferably so that you’re no longer in arc. Then hit it from the side with four dice (2 + R1 bonus+ ability).
   4. Very expensive with Ensnare.
2. Chertek (I4) – While you perform a primary attack, if the defender is tractored, you may reroll up to 2 attack dice. 
   1. Free dice modification! The lower your initiative, the harder it is to pass that Tractor token off but I4 is still decent.
   2. At under 50pts with Ensnare, Chertek can be a great addition to any squadron.
3. Berwer Kret (I5)- After you perform an attack that hits, each friendly ship with Calculate on its action bar and a lock on the defender may perform a red  Calculate action. 
   1. Great support for a Vulture/Hyena swarm. At I5 you’ll shoot first and if you can hit, double mods for the swarm.  This is a great way to kill a big ship early.
      1. Note, passing your tractor token with Ensnare will reduce the defense dice that target rolls, increasing your odds of hitting to trigger your ability and increase the hit chance of every other ship in your squad. Even more support bonus.
   2. A full 22points cheaper than Sun Fac with Ensnare.  Even without Ensnare, he is worth considering just as squadron support.
4. Petranaki Arena Ace (I4)- None
   1. Your elite generic for the Nantex comes in at a respectable I4.
   2. Only one point cheaper than Chertex.
5. Gorgol (I2)- During the System Phase, you may gain 1 disarm token and choose a friendly ship at range 1-2. If you do, it gains 1 tractor token, then repairs 1 of its faceup Ship trait damage cards. 
   1. The ability to repair other ships is a new mechanic. This could become huge or, just as likely, be nothing but a gimmick.
   2. A secondary use is the ability to reposition an ally ship before it moves. Though, you’re giving up the chance to shoot for that and the ally is rolling less defense dice so use it sparingly.
   3. One of the only Nantex that might not care about Ensnare. Without it, it’s a cheap support ship and it’s not attacking those rounds anyways so doesn’t need to rotate its arc much.
6. Stalgasin Hive Guard (I3)- None
   1. If your goal is a 3 attack ship, the cheapest generic is kind of pricey at 34 points but is at least an I3. But the utility of these things is tractor shenanigans.
   2. Only a single Talent slot as compared to the others all having two.

All Wings Report In

What’s the ideal number of Nantx’s to buy? One to four. You fly a few of the pilots alone but to tractor big ships you’ll need a swarm of them. 

Tractor Train

• 3x Petranaki Arena Ace (Nantex)
  • Predator
  • Ensnare
• Chertex (Nantex)
  • Ensnare

All of these pilots are I4 allowing you to move them in any order.  The Aces only get rerolls in Bullseye but Chertex can hit anyone you’re passing tractor tokens too. He’ll be your opponents first target.

Accurate Vultures

• Berwer Kret (Nantex)
  • Ensnare
• 6x Trade Federation Drone (Vulture)
  • Energy Shell Charges

This won’t work for an alpha strike as it will be hard for the Vultures to get Locks for the first attack. But once they do, Berwer can give them Calculates allowing the six Energy Shell attacks to be double modded. Alternatively:

Sacrificial Bomber

• Berwer Kret (Nantex)
  • Ensnare
• DBS-404 (Hyena)
  • Advanced Proton Torpedoes
  • DRK-1 Probe Droid
  • Landing Struts
• 4x Trade Federation Drone (Vulture)
  • Energy Shell Charges
  • Grappling Struts

This is a similar idea but replaces two Vultures with DBS-404. He flies ahead and gets off a DRK-1 probe droid out so your Vultures can get a lock on that first round. Then he either fires some  six die Adv Proton Torpedoes or rams into the enemy formation for a strong range 0 attack. 

Because F You that’s Why

• 3x Techno Union Bomber (Hyena)
  • Proximity Mine/Conner Net
  • Discord Missiles
  • Landing Struts
• 2x Stalgasin Hive Guard (Nantex)
  • Ensnare

This isn’t competitive. It’s designed to do one thing and one thing only; annoy your opponent. Your goal is to flood the map with mines and Buzz Droid swarms. Tractor your opponent onto them. When they barrel roll off you tractor them right back on.  Let the objects do your killing for you. It’ll be fun to fly once. Then, if you’re successful and ever fly it again, you’re an asshole.

Separatist Aces

• Sun Fac (Nantex)
  • Ensnare
• Chertek (Nantex)
  • Ensnare
• General Grievous (Belbullab-22)
  • Outmaneuver
  • Impervium Plating
  • Soulless One

This list is about hitting hard. You use Sun Fac and Chertek to keep Grievous behind your primary target. That allows Grievous two rerolls, negates one defense from Outmaneuver and one from Tractor. Suddenly three agility becomes one. Sun Fac hits equally hard and Chertek gets good mods.  You also have a 13pt bid to ensure you go last. You could spend that 13pts for more talents on the two Nantex.