Rogue Squadron- Battle of Yavin- Imperial Forces

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

In this special Rebellion week edition of Rogue Squadron we’re going to look at two Epic level (300 point) squadrons; the two sides in the Battle for Yavin. Following our earlier look at the Rebels we now present the Imperial Black Squadron.

TIE Advanced “Darth Vader” (TIE Advanced Expansion) (42 pts)

During your “Perform Action” step, you may perform 2 actions.

Title– TIE/x1 (Imperial Raider Expansion): Your upgrade bar gains the upgrade icon. If you equip an upgrade, its squad point cost is reduced by 4 (to a minimum of 0).
System- Advanced Targeting Computer (Imperial Raider Expansion): When attacking with your primary weapon, if you have a target lock on the defender, you may add 1 Critical result to your roll. If you do, you cannot spend target locks during this attack.
Elite Pilot Talent- Predator (TIE Defender/Kihraxz Expansion): 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.
Missile- Homing Missile (A-Wing/Slave-1 Expansion): Attack (target lock) (Range 2-3, 4 Att): Discard this card to perform this attack. The defender cannot spend evade tokens during this attack.
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

TIE Fighter “Mauler Mithel” (Core Expansion) (24 pts)

When attacking at Range 1, roll 1 additional attack die.

Elite Pilot Talent– Outmaneuver (E-Wing/TIE Defender 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).
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

TIE Fighter “Dark Curse” (Core Expansion) (20 pts)

When defending, ships attacking you cannot spend focus tokens or reroll attack dice.

Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

TIE Fighter “Backstabber” (TIE Fighter Expansion) (20 pts)

When attacking from outside the defender’s firing arc, roll 1 additional attack die.

Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

9x TIE Fighter “Black Squadron” (Core/TIE Fighter Expansion) (21 pts)

None

Elite Pilot Talent– Outmaneuver (E-Wing/TIE Defender 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).
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Like the Rebel’s Yavin squadron, the rules for this one were simple: follow canon as closely as possible while staying within the rules for an Epic game. One particular rule hurt this build the most, that you are only allowed to have a max of 12 of a particular type of ship. When the only thing you see on screen are TIE Fighters and Vader’s single TIE Advanced that can make hitting 300pts kind of difficult. As it is, we are still 5pts under. But we’ll call that an initiative bid…

Vader was fairly easy to equip, especially when I bent the rules slightly to allow the unreleased TIE Advanced upgrade cards from the Imperial Raider. It will be out soon anyways. Vader will be a tough ship to deal with as he can dance around the board at PS9 with boost and barrel roll. He’ll want to make a target lock and leave it in place so he can trigger Advanced Targeting computer, using Predator to get some rerolls.

The rest of Black Squadron I also opted to equip with Engine Upgrades. After all, I needed to spend points and they are the most expensive, and arguable best, modification there is. What EPT to give them was a big question. Opportunist would eat up more points, which could be good. But it might have made them too powerful. If they were to get into Range 1, which with EU is easy, and being a lower PS than most of the Rebel forces, they would likely get to use it. 9x four die attacks would tear through X-wings.

Besides, Outmaneuver seemed more iconic. The X-wings suffer from poor maneuverability. When a TIE got on their tail, they were in trouble. So the TIE’s all want to try and get behind the X-wings. With so many you can easily fly them in four formations of 3, each led by one of the named TIE pilots. The Rebels won’t be able to keep all of the TIE’s in their arcs.