Rogue Squadron- Juke, Jam, and Draw

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

TIE Advanced “Darth Vader” (TIE Advanced Expansion) (35 pts) (PS 9)

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).
Elite Pilot Talent- Juke (TIE/sf Expansion): When attacking, if you have an evade token, you may change 1 of the defender’s Evade results into a Focus result.
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon/Hound’s Tooth Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.
System- Sensor Jammer (Lambda Shuttle Expansion): When defending, you may change 1 of the attacker’s Hit results into a Focus result. The attacker cannot reroll the die with the changed result.

TIE/sf “Quickdraw” (TIE/sf Expansion) (39 pts) (PS 9)

Once per round, when you lose a shield token, you may perform a primary weapon attack.

Elite Pilot Talent- Predator (TIE Defender/Kihraxz/Ghost 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.
Modification- Lightweight Frame (TIE Striker Expansion)- When defending, after rolling defense dice, if there are more attack dice than defense dice, roll 1 additional defense die.
You cannot equip this card if your agility value is “3” or higher.
Tech- Primed Thrusters (Heroes of the Resistance Expansion): Stress tokens do not prevent you from performing boost or barrel roll actions unless you have 3 or more stress tokens.
System- Sensor Jammer (Lambda Shuttle Expansion): When defending, you may change 1 of the attacker’s Hit results into a Focus result. The attacker cannot reroll the die with the changed result.
Title- Special Ops Training (TIE/sf Expansions)- When attacking with a primary weapon from your primary firing arc, you may roll 1 additional attack die. If you do not, you may perform an additional attack from your auxiliary firing arc.

TIE/fo “Omega Leader” (TIE/fo Expansion) (26 pts) (PS 8)

Enemy ships that you have locked cannot modify any dice when attacking you or defending against your attacks.

Elite Pilot Talent- Juke (TIE/fo Expansion): When attacking, if you have an evade token, you may change 1 of the defender’s Evade results into a Focus result.
Tech- Comm Relay (TIE/fo Expansion)- You cannot have more than 1 evade token. During the End phase, do not remove an unused evade token from your ship.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

This list focuses on one thing, being damn annoying to kill. The typical Darth Vader build involves Advanced Targeting Computer. An often overlooked alternative is Sensor Jammer. The ability to turn one attack die from a hit to a focus is very helpful in keeping Vader alive. TIE Advanced are notorious for being unusually squishy. But with Sensor Jammer they gain a little oomph. What really boosts this potential is combining Sensor Jammer with Juke. Both encourage your opponent to spend his focus tokens. But, aside from a few exceptions, most ships will only ever have one. And should they ever take a different action, or get stressed, then they are really hurting.

Darth Vader is the perfect ship to try and pull off this combo because of his inherent two actions. This allows him to Evade, so he can use Juke and mitigate an additional damage each round, as well as take another action. With both boost and barrel roll available to him he can either arc dodge or boost his attack potential with a focus or target lock.

Quickdraw would love to do the same thing. Unfortunately, the special forces TIE can’t evade. But they can take a lightweight frame with their Sensor Jammer. Now he’s at least rolling three green dice like the other TIEs. This can help limit him to only one shield lost each round so that he can trigger his ability as many times as possible. With Predator every attack he gets, a maximum of four a round, can all be modified at least some.

Omega Leader rounds it out as another good Juke carrier. His ability combines well with Juke to ensure that his target can’t change that focus result back to an evade. He’s notorious for being annoying to kill.

Of course, this list suffers from a lack of damage potential. All ships are natively two dice attacks and with only three on the board it could be a challenge to push damage through. Quickdraw helps in this matter since as long as he loses shields slowly he gets multiple attacks. This naturally makes him the primary target but as long as he can go down swinging the rest of your squad can last for a long time.

Variations

Vader’s Engine Upgrade is the easiest upgrade to play around with. It’s a nice one on Vader but also a lot of points. Giving it to Quickdraw instead has potential as it would allow him to better position himself to make use of both of his arcs, though this really wouldn’t be ideal. Vader wouldn’t mind a TIE mk II upgrade as another one of the Advanced’s weaknesses is clearing stress. Or you could just give Stealth Device to Vader so that he just never dies.