Rogue Squadron- Battle of the Archeon Nebula

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.

Inspired by the Star Wars- Rebels episode “Secret Cargo” these two lists are set up to simulate the sides in the battle.

All Wings Report In – Rebel Forces

VCX-100 “Hera Syndulla” (Ghost Expansion) (44 pts) (PS 7)

When you reveal a green or red maneuver, you may rotate your dial to another maneuver of the same difficulty.

Crew- Chopper (Ghost Expansion): You may perform actions even while you are stressed. After you perform an action while you are stressed, suffer 1 damage.
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.
Turret- Autoblaster Turret (Most Wanted Expansion): Attack (2, range 1): Attack 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc). Your Hit results cannot be canceled by defense dice. The defender may cancel Crit results before Hit results.
System– Collision Detectors (Special Forces TIE Expansion): When performing a boost, barrel roll, or decloak, your ship and maneuver template can overlap obstacles. When rolling for obstacle damage, ignore all results.

Y-Wing “Dutch Vander” (Y-Wing Expansion) (31 pts) (PS 6)

After acquiring a target lock, choose another friendly ship at Range 1-2. The chosen ship may immediately acquire a target lock.

Astromech- R7-T1 (E-Wing Expansion): Action: Choose an enemy ship at Range 1-2. If you are inside that ship’s firing arc, you may acquire a target lock on that ship. Then, you may perform a free boost action.
Turret– Ion Turret (Y-Wing/HWK-290 Expansions): Attack (3, range 1-2): Attack 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc). If this attack hits the target ship, the ship suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results.
Title- BTL-A4 (Most Wanted Expansion): You cannot attack ships outside your firing arc. After you perform a primary weapon attack, you may immediately perform an attack with a secondary weapon.

Y-Wing “Gold Squadron” (Y-Wing Expansion) (25 pts) (PS 2)

None

Astromech- R3-A2 (Rebel Transport): When you declare the target of your attack, if the defender is inside your firing arc, you may receive one stress token to cause the defender to receive one stress token.
Turret– Ion Turret (Y-Wing/HWK-290 Expansions): Attack (3, range 1-2): Attack 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc). If this attack hits the target ship, the ship suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results.
Title- BTL-A4 (Most Wanted Expansion): You cannot attack ships outside your firing arc. After you perform a primary weapon attack, you may immediately perform an attack with a secondary weapon.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Finding the balance between matching the ships as depicted on screen and ships that don’t completely suck is not simple. For one, there is no Ezra Y-Wing pilot as his ability would work great in a stresshog. Hera is also hard to do cheap enough to fit two other ships without just being worthless.

If you stick with the theme of the battle from the episode, the Rebels racing into a dangerous nebula to escape, it starts to come together. Throw some big debris fields down and Hera can race into them without fear of taking damage, thanks to ignoring obstacles crits from Collision Detectors. Chopper gives her an action if she really needs it and Inspiring Recruit (taking the role of Mon Mothma) helps her clear any double stress she builds up. There weren’t enough points for TLT and Ghost probably technically has a Dorsal Turret, but it’s pretty worthless so Autoblaster feels acceptable.

The Y-Wings were harder. I debated proton torpedoes since they do use them on the capital ships, but since this fight mostly takes place in the nebula, I decided I could skip them. The Ion Turrets were not optional since they play a crucial role in the episode. I debated BTL-A4 or not. The Y-Wings never appear to fire anywhere but in front of them so I ended up using the title, even though that does hamstring them a bit. R7-T1 helps Dutch get some repositioning while still taking his target locks. Though it might be best to instead take your spare point and replace both astromechs with R2’s and throw on Vectored Thrusters. Because the opposing Interceptors also have Autothrusters it would also not be unreasonable to drop the BTL-A4 title.

All Wings Report In- Imperial Forces

TIE Defender “Maarek Steele” (Imperial Veterans Expansion) (46 pts) (PS 7)

When your attack deals a faceup Damage card to the defender, instead draw 3 Damage cards, choose 1 to deal, and discard the others.

Elite Pilot Talent- Ruthlessness (VT-49 Decimator Expansion): After you perform an attack that hits, you must choose 1 other ship at Range 1 of the defender (other than yourself). That ship suffers 1 damage.
Cannon- Heavy Laser Cannon (Slave-1/YT-2400/Lambda Shuttle Expansion): Attack (4, range 2-3): Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your Crit results to Hit results.
Modification– TIE Mk II (TIE Punisher Expansion): You may treat all bank maneuvers as green maneuvers.

2x TIE Interceptor “Saber Squadron” (TIE Interceptor Expansion) (26 pts) (PS 4)

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.
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.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Picking the pilot for the TIE Defender was a big question. The guy named on screen isn’t a pilot in the game but he is most definitely an elite named pilot. Maarek ended up feeling right. Especially paired with Ruthlessness. You won’t use his ability much, especially with HLC, but he is on par with Hera for pilot skill. Speaking of HLC, it was another non-optional upgrade as it’s stated clearly the Defender is equipped with heavy cannons. Plus, it rules out using either title which would have made the Imperial force a bit too tough compared to the non-optimal nature of the Rebel forces.

All of that said you could switch out Maarek for Vessery, or just a Royal Guard, giving Hera the PS advantage, and change the Interceptors’ Autothrusters to Targeting Computer so they can give Vessery his free target lock. The two interceptors are just filler and Saber Squadron works perfectly here. They are high enough to get an EPT but low enough to still be overshadowed by Dutch and Hera.