Rogue Squadron- Dengavura

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

JumpMaster 5000 “Dengar” (Punishing One Expansion) (53 pts) (PS 9)

Once per round after defending, if the attacker is inside your firing arc, you may perform an attack against that ship.

Title– Punishing One (Punishing One Expansion): Increase your primary weapon value by 1.
Elite Pilot Talent- Attanni Mindlink (Punishing One Expansion): Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one.
Modification- Countermeasures (Shadow Caster/YT-2400 Expansion)- At the start of the Combat phase, you may discard this card to increase your agility value by 1 until the end of the round. Then you may remove 1 enemy target lock from your ship.
Crew- Zuckuss (Mist Hunter Expansion): When attacking, you may receive any number of stress tokens to choose an equal number of defense dice. The defender must reroll those dice.
Illicit- Glitterstim (Kihraxz/Hound’s Tooth Expansion): At the start of the Combat phase, you may discard this card and receive 1 stress token. If you do, until the end of the round, when attacking or defending, you may change all of your results to or results.
Salvaged Astromech- Overclocked R4 (Punishing One Expansion)– During the Combat phase, when you spend a focus token, you may receive 1 stress token to assign 1 focus token to your ship.

JumpMaster 5000 “Tel Trevura” (Punishing One Expansion) (46 pts) (PS 7)

The first time you would be destroyed, instead cancel any remaining damage, discard all Damage cards, and deal 4 facedown Damage cards to this ship.

Elite Pilot Talent- Attanni Mindlink (Punishing One Expansion): Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one.
Modification- Hull Upgrade (Imperial Aces/Starviper Expansion)- Increase your hull value by 1.
Crew- K4 Security Droid (Most Wanted/Hound’s Tooth Expansion): After executing a green maneuver, you may acquire a target lock.
Salvaged Astromech- Unhinged Astromech (Most Wanted Expansion)– After executing a green maneuver, you may acquire a target lock.
Illicit- Feedback Array (IG-2000/Punishing One Expansions)- During the Combat phase, instead of performing any attacks, you may receive 1 ion token and suffer 1 damage to choose 1 enemy ship at Range 1. That ship suffers 1 damage
Torpedo- Proton Torpedo (Many Expansion): Attack (4, Range 2-3): Spend your target lock and discard this card to perform this attack. You may change 1 of your Focus results to a Critical results.
Torpedo- Extra Munitions (K-Wing/TIE Punisher): When you equip this card, place 1 ordnance token on each equipped Torpedo, Missile, and Bomb Upgrade card. When you are instructed to discard an Upgrade card, you may discard 1 ordnance token on that card instead.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Jumpmasters are all the rage these days. We’ve talked about the Wolf Pack before but another common build is “Dengaroo”; Dengar + Manaroo. That build is particularly effective because of Dengar’s ability to fire twice, Zuckuss making green dice even less effective and Manaroo and Overclocked R4 ensuring Dengar always has a Focus token. Manaroo usually has some torpedoes to give him some teeth as well.

Watching this list fly I came to the conclusion that the main benefit of Manaroo’s ability was getting Dengar a Focus token. Target locks are nice but sometimes Manaroo wants to keep his TL so he can fire his torpedo. Unfortunately, if he transfers the Focus he has to transfer everything. Now, it’s usually not a big deal because you want to preserve your torpedoes for after Dengar is dead and you’re cleaning up. JumpMasters native two dice attack is pretty weak.

But this got me thinking about the Focus. There are other ways to get a Focus token and it comes in this expansion; Attanni Mindlink. Instead of using Manaroo’s ability you can use any ship with an EPT slot and the ability to shed stress. This allows for the inclusion of Tel Trevura who is PS 7 and therefore would fire first in a mirror match. He is also much harder to kill as he gets to come back to life. One hull upgrade gives him two extra health for the price of one.

Dengar is going to be giving himself a lot of stress but fortunately Attanni Mindlink will only ever transfer one stress. Since the most common builds of Manaroo features Push the Limits having a stress every round isn’t unusual. With Unhinged Astromech he has nine choices for clearing his stress and does not have to turn left. Manaroo often has R5-P8 to discourage people shooting at him but the ability to go right when you need to clear stress is quite useful.

The main loss to Dengar over traditional Dengaroo builds is Lonewolf. Getting rerolls on every attack and every defense is nothing to sneeze at. That is probably this variations greatest weakness. Speaking of weaknesses, you will still be vulnerable to Palp Aces or most other Aces, though with Tel if the Ace is PS 7 or lower you have a better show at avoiding them than Manaroo does. Because of the lack of Lonewolf Dengar is also more vulnerable to swarms. Of course, because you lack Lonewolf you can also keep the two ships together instead of having Manaroo flying off by himself not shooting anybody.

With his torpedoes and Feedback Array, Tel is both a threat at range and up close. He can use Feedback Array with impunity as well (aside from not clearing your stress the round you are double ionned) as once he dies he still comes back to life with two more hull left.

Variations

The easiest variation for this list is playing with the torpedo set up. Advanced Protons instead of Protons are a reasonable choice as it increases your range 1 threat. Thanks to the K4 it likely you could end up with a TL and Focus in order to fire them at full effectiveness.

You could also still fly Manaroo with this same basic build. Then Manaroo could either pass the TL and Focus to Dengar, and then get a Focus back from Attanni, or just use Attanni to get Dengar a Focus and use the TL himself. The main benefit of Manaroo over Tel is that should Manaroo bump, he’ll still get a TL from the K4 droid and could give that to Dengar.