Texas Galactic Open – Win With “Dial 5-5-5”

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

Delta-7 Aethersprite “Obi-wan Kenobi” (Guardians of the Republic Expansion Pack) (76ts) (I5)

After a friendly ship at range 0-2 spends a focus token, you may spend 1 Force. If you do, that ship gains 1 focus token.

Fine-tuned Controls: After you fully execute a maneuver, you may spend 1 Force to perform a Boost or Barrel Roll action.

• Astromech- R2 Astromech (Wave 1): Charges: 2 After you reveal your dial, you may spend 1 Charge and gain 1 disarm token to recover 1 shield.
• Configuration- Delta 7B (Wave 3): Lose 1 Agility. Gain +2 Shields, +1 Attack.
• Modification- Spare Parts Canisters (Wave 3): Charges: 1.
  • Action: Spend 1 Charge to recover 1 charge on one of your equipped Astromech upgrades.
  • Action: Spend 1 Charge to drop 1 spare parts, then break all locks assigned to you.

Delta-7 Aethersprite “Plo Koon” (Guardians of the Republic Expansion Pack) (73ts) (I5)

At the start of the Engagement Phase, you may spend 1 Force and choose another friendly ship at range 0-2. If you do, you may transfer 1 green token to it or transfer one orange token from it to yourself.

Fine-tuned Controls: After you fully execute a maneuver, you may spend 1 Force to perform a Boost or Barrel Roll action.

• Astromech- R2 Astromech (Wave 1): Charges: 2 After you reveal your dial, you may spend 1 Charge and gain 1 disarm token to recover 1 shield.
• Configuration- Delta 7B (Wave 3): Lose 1 Agility. Gain +2 Shields, +1 Attack.
• Modification- Spare Parts Canisters (Wave 3): Charges: 1.
  • Action: Spend 1 Charge to recover 1 charge on one of your equipped Astromech upgrades.
  • Action: Spend 1 Charge to drop 1 spare parts, then break all locks assigned to you.

Naboo N-1 Royal Starfighter “Ric Olie” (N-1 Expansion Pack) (49ts) (I5)

While you defend or perform a primary attack, if the speed of your revealed maneuver is higher than the enemy ship’s, roll 1 additional die.

Full Throttle: After you fully execute a speed 3-5 maneuver, you may perform an Evade action.

• Astromech- R2 Astromech (Wave 1): Charges: 2 After you reveal your dial, you may spend 1 Charge and gain 1 disarm token to recover 1 shield.
• Talent- Daredevil (Wave 1): While you perform a white Boost action, you may treat it as red to use the 1 hard turn template instead.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

I took this list to the Texas Galactic Open this past weekend. I debated between this list, one that replaced Plo and most of the upgrades with two ARC-170’s and a Resistance list that’s all kinds of janky. But I just got into miniature painting and wanting to fly the N-1 and Aethersprite that I’d just done.  Turned out to be a good choice because I won. So, woohoo.

TxGo is a unique event featuring almost all of the competitive Star Wars games all crammed into one room. There’s X-wing, Armada, Legion and Destiny. Because of the combo of games, each event has limited availability. I faced off against 21 opponents in X-wing over four rounds and a cut to top four.

The list performed well. At 198, I didn’t have a huge bid but it ended up being enough that I decided initiative. It only actually mattered in one round. Most of my opponents were either below I5 or were Darth Vader and Soontir at I6. This allowed me to use the Jedi’s Fine-Tune Controls to their fullest to dance around my opponents ships. And boy was it necessary to stay alive. Six health defended by only two defense can melt really fast.

Regeneration comboed onto fast ships works exceedingly well. Once you take some shield damage, five forward and boost gets you safely out of many ships range. Then spend two to three rounds coming back around and it’s like you’re untouched. Hit and runs were the best tactic.

Plo Koon only ever used his ability once during the tournament. If you’re not building around it, it’s not very useful. Before the tournament, I figured I would try and regen with two ships, let Plo take the double weapons disabled and get off shots with the other ship. But if you’re regening, you’re running away and the list performed best when attacking from multiple angles, keeping Plo out of range. Obi-wan came up a few more times but, for the most part, with only two defense dice, he would have been just fine spending the Force to convert the Focus result rather than regain the Focus token.

Daredevil on N-1’s is great. Ric taking a three speed maneuver doesn’t get his ability to trigger as often as you’d like. But Ric blasting to the side at speed 5 and then daredeviling to get you in arc keeps him out of the line of fire and gets his ability to trigger. Really wish the N-1 had blue 4’s and 5’s though.

Round 1- Punisher?

To start off the tournament, I got to face off against a load of ordinance and a bomb chucking Punisher. This was one game where Spare Parts Canisters ability to break Locks came in handy. Poor Plo had been locked by every ship so he dumped the parts and avoided getting pummeled with ordinance.

Round 2- Vader, Whisper?, Palp

Round 3- Avenger, Upsilon (Cardinal), SF, Longshot  + All Fanatical

Round 4- Vader, Soontir?, Tempest?

Double I6’s were my biggest fear. My big is meaningless against them so there’s no easy mod arc dodging. But that makes it more fun. The Jedi’s maneuverability came in handy here. Especially compared to Vader’s clunky TIE Advanced.

This was the only other round I dropped spare parts. Broke a Vader lock and forced him to fly over the new debris field while doing a red. Double stressed Vader is a sad Vader.

Round 5 (Cut 1)- 4x TIE/SF (Missiles + Passive Sensors) + TIE/FO (Lt. Rivas)

For the first round of the cut, this fight was a challenge. Ships with two arcs, that can fire missiles from either end, is hell for arc dodgers. Especially in a swarm flown by a player who knows how to fan them out to provide maximum coverage. With Passive Sensors on all of the SF’s, he was free to pick whichever of my ships ended up in one of his arcs, Lock and then link to rotate his arc the needed direction. Getting into the blind spot on the sides is tough when you’re avoiding four of them.

Round 6- (Final)- Blue Sq. Pathfinder (Leia, Perceptive Copilot) +  Heff Tobber (Zeb, Lando) + Magva (Perceptive Copilot) + AP-5 (Jyn)

Houston sent only two players to the X-wing side of this event and we both ended up facing each other in the final game. Houston also won the Legion and Destiny portions.

In the first round of the cut, Jackson beat Keenan (who had beaten me in round 2). So now I was facing a guy who had beaten the guy who had beaten me. I had also been up since 5:30am, it was after 7pm and been playing X-Wing for 8hrs. I was not confident going in. Things started out looking bright though. Our first engagement saw Ric take a range 3 pot shot against AP-5 and managed to get him down to one health. We proceeded to dance around for a few turns before I made a mistake that should have cost me the game.

Jackson used his lists shenanigans to stop the U-wing convoy right in the middle of the board, getting focus + evade on all three of them. Heff was the only ship to move and he ended up right in Ric’s way, which resulted in a bump, giving him a Lock and still being able to fire thanks to Zeb. I knew this was coming. I could have bugged out, taken a round of not shooting, and maybe getting each ship shot by one of his. But I was foolish. Not only did I not disengage, but I also moved my ships in the wrong order. Obi-wan ended up bumping into Plo and was range one of two U-Wings. Obi-wan finished AP-5 off but then was nuked down to a single health. This is where regen saved me.

After this round, Plo spent several rounds bumping into one of the U-wings, but still getting shots on another. Obi-wan ran across the board and recovered to full shields, one hull. And Ric danced around with Daredevil. By all rights, Obi-wan should have died and then the other get whittled away. I slowly plucked at the U-wings until Obi-want got back into the fight and then was able to destroy two in one round, leaving him with one remaining.

It was tense battle and a fun tournament.

Variations

There were two points left in this list that I thought about using for Fire Control System on Ric. It would have come in handy a few times. But the bid is also nice. If you really want a strong bid, Spare Parts Canisters are optional. They do come in handy sometimes, for their effect or for extra regen. You could drop one of them or Darevil and go with no bid to add in Sense. That would be more handy against I6’s than having a bid.