Rogue Squadron- A-Wing Squadrons

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 low down on how best to fly it. Strap in and get ready to fly…

All Wings Report In

Version 1

5x A-Wing “Green Squadron” (A-Wing/Rebel Aces Expansion) (20 pts)

None

Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansion): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.
Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.

Version 2

5x A-Wing “Prototype Pilot” (A-Wing/Rebel Aces Expansion) (20 pts)

None

Missile- Proton Rockets (Rebel Aces/YT-2400 Expansion)– Attack (Focus) 2 Die, Range 1: Discard this card to perform this attack. You may roll additional attack dice equal to your agility value, to a maximum of 3 additional dice.

Version 3

5x A-Wing “Prototype Pilot” (A-Wing/Rebel Aces Expansion) (17 pts)

None

Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.
Modification- Autothrusters (Starviper Expansion): When defending, if you are beyond Range 2 or outside the attacker’s firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an Evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon.

A-Wing “Prototype Pilot” (A-Wing/Rebel Aces Expansion) (15 pts)

None

Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.

Version 4

A-Wing “Tychu Celchu” (A-Wing Expansion) (32 pts)

You may perform actions even while you have stress tokens.

Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansion): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.
A-Wing Test Pilot/Elite Pilot Talent- Daredevil (TIE Interceptor Expansion): Action: Execute a white (hard right- 1) or (hard left 1) maneuver. Then, receive 1 stress token. Then, if you do not have the Boost action icon, roll 2 attack dice. Suffer any damage and any critical damage rolled.
Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.
Modification- Autothrusters (Starviper Expansion): When defending, if you are beyond Range 2 or outside the attacker’s firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an Evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon.

A-Wing “Jake Farrell” (Rebel Aces Expansion) (30 pts)

After you perform a focus action or are assigned a focus token, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll action.

Elite Pilot Talent- Predator (TIE Defender/Kihraxx Expansions): When attacking, you may reroll 1 attack die. If the defender’s pilot skill value is “2” or lower, you may instead reroll up to 2 attack dice.
A-Wing Test Pilot/Elite Pilot Talent- Outmaneuver (TIE Defender/E-Wing Expansion): When attacking a ship inside your firing arc, if you are not inside that ship’s firing arc, reduce its agility value by 1 (to a minimum of 0).
Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.
Modification- Autothrusters (Starviper Expansion): When defending, if you are beyond Range 2 or outside the attacker’s firing arc, you may change 1 of your blank results to an Evade result. You can equip this card only if you have the Boost action icon.

A-Wing “Gemmer Sojan” (Rebel Aces Expansion) (23 pts)

While you are at Range 1 of at least 1 enemy ship, increase your agility value by 1.

Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansion): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.
Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.

A-Wing “Prototype Squadron Pilot” (A-Wing/Rebel Aces Expansion) (15 pts)

None

Missile- Chardaan Refit (Rebel Aces Expansion)– This card has a negative squad point cost.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Today I’m starting a new series of lists. We’re going to begin looking at each individual ship in the X-wing Miniatures game line up and how they function together. We’ll make a couple squadrons made entirely out of this ship. First will be a squadron that includes no named pilots and one squadron that is heavily made up of named pilots. We may throw in 1-2 more squadrons if there are some other interesting builds to try.

A-Wings are some of the most slippery ships in X-Wing. They are fast, featuring all straight maneuvers being green plus the Boost action. They are maneuverable with the wonderful hard 1 turns and all 2-speed maneuvers being green. They have three agility and two shields/two hull giving them a lot more resilience than TIE Interceptors or Fighters. Over TIE’s they can carry missiles and therefore get the Target Lock action while still being able to Focus and Evade.

Their biggest drawback is the two attack ability. This makes them a little weak on offense compared to the Interceptor. Also only having Boost instead of Boost and Barrel Roll limits their repositioning ability. Both abilities are great but they really shine when you can pick the one that is most helpful in a given situation. That’s why Jake Farrell is such an awesome pilot.

Now, for the squadrons we’ve presented here. The first three are all variations on a central theme: swarms. The A-Wings lack firepower at two dice so they need to make up for this in numbers. Version 1 takes five Greens with Push, making a very elusive and slippery group. They are PS3 (pilot skill 3), so out of the danger zone for Predator, and high enough that they can make good use of their Boost to reposition around any PS 1-2 lists (almost any 4 ship Rebel list, TIE/Z-95 swarms, etc). With Push they Focus/Target Lock to ensure max damage or Focus/Evade for maximum defense. And their plethora of green maneuvers means they are not very limited in how they move to clear the stress.

Version 2 is a twist on this list in that it drops the Greens with Push to Prototypes with Proton Rockets. They lose a lot of late game flexibility in exchange for an early game alpha strike. If you can get all five ships into range one of your opponent before you lose a ship, you can do some serious damage. The nice thing about Proton Rockets is that while you need a Focus token to fire them you don’t have to spend it, allowing you to spend the Focus to modify the attack.

Version 3 stretches out the swarm idea to the max. It loses the Proton rockets in exchange for a sixth ship, giving five of them Autothrusters. This makes most of the squad much tougher for a turret ship to fight. It’s a fair trade losing that heavy alpha strike for a whole other ship. Getting into range 1 with PS 1 ships, and still all getting an action, can sometimes be difficult as everyone else will move after you. It’s easy to force a massive traffic jam but then they have no Focus tokens so the missiles are worthless.

For the final list, we start throwing in the elite pilots. These guys are really good to throw into a wide variety of mixed ship lists. But they start to suffer when you make up a squadron entirely out of A-Wings. Jake and Tycho can be big threats and Gemmer a real pain to kill. But without them supporting other ships with heavy guns they’re going to take awhile to do damage in return. This group is a lot of fun to fly for sure and Jake and Tycho can stay out of arc of quite a number of lists.

Conclusion

A-Wings are fun but fragile. Until Rebel Aces came out they were a little too expensive. But now an A-Wing swarm is a viable squadron and there are a couple variations for how you can put one together. The elite pilots are great but better as part of a mixed squadron than a full A-Wing group.