Rogue Squadron- AP-4X- Or How X-Wings (finally) won a Store Championship

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

4x T-65 X-Wing “Cavern Angel Zealout” (Saw’s Renegade Expansion) (21 pts) (PS 1)

None.

Astromech- Flight Assist Astromech (Phantom II/Saw’s Renegade’s Expansions): You cannot attack ships outside your firing arc. After you execute a maneuver, if you did not overlap a ship or obstacle and there are no enemy ships inside your firing arc at Range 1-3, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll action.
Elite Pilot Talent- Crack Shot (Kihraxz/Hound’s Tooth/Saw’s Renegade/Imperial Veterans Expansion): Small ship only. When attacking a ship inside your firing arc, at the start of the “Compare Results” step, you may discard this card to cancel 1 of the defender’s Evade results.
Modification- Integrated Astromech (Saw’s Renegades/T-70 X-Wing/Heroes of the Resistance Expansions): X-Wing Only When you are dealt a Damage card, you may discard 1 of your Upgrade cards to discard that Damage card.
Modification- Servomotor S-foils (Saw’s Renegades Expansion): X-Wing Only
- Side A (Attack): Your action bar gains Barrel Roll . If you are not stressed, when you reveal a 3 Turn maneuver, you may treat it as a red 3 Tallon Roll in the same direction. At the start of the Activation phase, you may flip this card.
- Side B (Closed): Reduce your primary attack value by 1. Your action bar gains Boost. Treat your 2 Bbanks as green. At the start of the Activation phase, you may flip this card.
Torpedo- Renegade Refit (Saw’s Renegades Expansion)- T-65 or U-Wing Only You can equip up to two different Modification upgrades. The squad point cost of each of your equipped upgrades is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0).

Sheathipede “AP-5” (Phantom II Expansion) (16 pts) (PS 1)

When you perform the coordinate action, after you choose a friendly ship and before it performs a free action, you may receive 2 stress tokens to remove 1 stress token from it.

Crew- Inspiring Recruit (U-Wing Expansion): Once per round, when a friendly ship at Range 1-2 removes a stress token, it may remove 1 additional stress token.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

It’s finally happened, X-wings are good. I took this list to a local 25 person store championship this past weekend and brought home the plaque…oh wait…I mean useless plastic card. Though, given I won with four Cavern Angel Zealots its at least kind of thematic.

Four X-Wings with Crack Shot and Flight Assist Astromech are a beast. They are fast moving into the initial engagement and have good potential for escaping or setting up blocks. They can hit like a truck with four times three attack dice and the ability to just negate four evades per game. With Integrated, they are also effectively six health ships which can take some time to chew through.

AP-5 was the secret weapon though. Giving one ship two actions a round was helpful against jam and just general effectiveness. But he really shined against Strezra. Two stress on my X-wing? I’ll just coordinate, clear a stress with AP-5, clear the second with Inspiring Recruit and now that X-wing is clear to do whatever it wants on its turn.

My day almost collapsed in the first game though. I haven’t played a tournament of X-wing since April or maybe even March due to familial obligations. So when I set up against Nym/Torani/Jostero I didn’t even consider the launched bomb from Nym. Between the bomb, Jostero’s attack and the regular engagement, I lost an X-wing and shields and more from two others. Fortunately, Nym also got wholloped and came out with one health left. From there, thanks in large part to FAA, I was able to disengage, avoid more bombs and come back in to finish him off.

In round two I faced Rey and Red Ace flown by Jonah. Rey can hit hard, strong potential to wipe out an X-wing in one turn, so this one could have gone south at the whim of the dice gods. Fortunately, I split my X-wings up and managed to perform a pincer around Red Ace and wipe him out while I still had all my ships. That guy in the end game with just a few ships left would be annoying. Rey took out some X-wings but not face enough.

Round three brought me up against my friend Erik flying Ryad/Vader/Scarif Base Pilot. Vader had the Prototype. Now, it has happened that I have faced Erik in round three in quite a number of tournaments. We’re about 50/50 on success against each other. It really sucks when it happens at a Regional level and one of us is knocking another Houstonian out of the running. But I pulled off a win with this one, Vader got nuked by Crack Shot and Ryad just couldn’t seem to escape from the one X-wing I had tailing her until the rest were able to rejoin.

The fourth round was against Chris, who I also ended up facing in the first round of the cut. He likes to fly eccentric lists and they are usually quite effective. He had Rex/Roark/Wes/Ezra which has a lot of tools going for it. Fortunately, AP-5 neutered Strezra and since I was going for quantity over quality of dice, Wes wasn’t as effective as he should have been. Roark’s ability had no function against PS1. And poor Rex just had bad die rolls, dropping in a single attack in both games. I felt bad, if I had flown any of the other lists I had been considering this would have been a frustrating list to fight.

My final game, before the cut and of the night was against Vermeil/Feroph/Inquisitor flown by the venerable Gerry Russell. This was a pretty sick set up of ships (list as I remember it). In truth, I only won the first game because Ailerons forced a bad choice on Gerry and he ended up flying off the board with a full health Feroph. I had lost two X-wings really fast. It took far to many rounds of me to kill Vermeil and The Inquisitor absolutely refused to take any damage. If Feroph hadn’t flown off there was no way I win that.

Fortunately, in our second game, I don’t have any hesitation about the results. I took a better approach vector and did not get an X-wing nuked in the first engagement. That allowed me to chew through the ships, slowly, but effectively. AP-5 was a great help in allowing some X’s to take K-turns/T-rolls back to back using his stress clear ability.

Overall, seven rounds and seven victories. While I did find it frustrating that the tournament had a cut despite there only being one undefeated after five rounds, which resulted in having to play two guys twice, it was nice coming out with a legitimate victory against Gerry in the end. He’s a good player and it sucks to win due to a silly mistake.

Variations

There are a couple of variations of four X-wings. You could make them Rookies or lose FAA and bump AP-5 up to Strezra. Another guy flew this variation and didn’t have as a good of a day. But he had won a store championship with it the day before so it’s still effective. You could also switch out Inspiring Recruit for something else or an astromech but the combo is just too good in this set up I wouldn’t recommend it.