X Wing Report – Round Pegs, Square Holes

My initial thoughts for my next post was to describe a method of assessing your squad's strengths and comparing it to your opponent's. However, after creating this estimate I tried playing with it a few times and found that even once I had written down what I thought I should do, and my opponent would do, I inevitably didn't do that and went straight into a joust. Even though I often new I shouldn't do it.

The list I had been using was Han Solo in the Falcon and Wedge. While it does seem like a reasonable list on paper it could not stand up to the concentrated fire of three or more ships especially when they have ordnance. At least it could not stand up when I jousted straight for them... Many years ago there was an idea called Math Wing in XWing, It was conceived by an internet persona called Major Juggler and basically tried to explain what ships were a better deal for their points, if they jousted with any other ship. While it seems the assumption of the joust should be flawed in a game that is “all about manoeuvre”, the predictions turned out to be pretty accurate. A part of that may also have been that to do anything but joust takes a fair bit of in-game awareness. I still find myself often getting sucked into the joust.

So why fight it? Why fight the urge to just point your ships into the opposing sqn put your foot on the pedal and squeeze the trigger? If you read the official forum on the FFG site you will know that the average player (who posts) feels like ordnance is a good deal and the best way to make ordnance work is to get it on as high a pilot skill ship as possible. A part of the reason is that in 2.0 the designers have really tried to make 2 red dice ships viable by limiting the defence of ships. What this inadvertently (or perhaps obviously) has done is make 4 attack dice relatively more powerful. Luckily the ordnance will rarely have a lock and a focus (unless your name is Redline), so the target just has to dodge two hits and one crit, on average!! Also if you are a meta hunter, like myself, you will notice that currently the Rebels seems to be less powerful than the empire or scum, how will the rebellion ever survive...

So, the plan is to build a rebel list (I do like a challenge) based on ordnance that has a fighting chance against the the empire and scum.

197 /200 pts

Arvel Crynyd (39 pts) Intimidation

Wedge Antilles (64 pts) Elusive, Proton Torpedoes

Grey Squadron (41 pts) Proton Torpedoes

“Dutch” Vander (53 pts) Proton Torpedoes, R4 Astromech

Basically, three ships have proton torpedoes, one ship has PS6 (with a bit of an initiative bid) to keep the enemy aces guessing, Arvel with intimidation because it just seems so cool, and since Dutch can hand out locks at PS 4, I am hoping this will make the Grey Sqn more viable. Any way this list seems to fit my criteria of Initiative (PS) being important, and with three torpedoes at PS 4 or better. In the next post I will tell you how I made out...