Rogue Squadron- Opportunistic Scum

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 Wing Report In

HWK-290 “Palob Godalhi” (HWK-290 Expansion & Most Wanted Expansion) (41 pts)

At the start of the Combat phase, you may remove 1 focus or evade token from an enemy ship at Range 1-2 and assign it to yourself.

Title– Moldy Crow (HWK-290 Expansion): During the End phase, do not remove unused focus tokens from your ship.
Crew- Recon Specialist (HWK-290/TIE Phantom Expansions): When you perform a focus action, assign 1 additional focus token to your ship.
Elite Pilot Talent- Opportunist (Imperial Aces Expansion): When attacking, if the defender does not have any focus or evade tokens, you may receive 1 stress token to roll 1 additional attack die. You cannot use this ability if you have any stress tokens.
Illicit- Hot Shot Blaster (IG-2000/Most Wanted Expansions): Attack (3, range 1-2): Discard this card to attack 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc).
Turret- Blaster Turret (HWK-290 Expansion)-Attack (3, Range 1-2): Spend 1 focus token to perform this attack against 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc).
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon.

KSE Firespray-31 “Kath Scarlet” (Slave 1 & Most wanted Expansion) (59 pts)

When attacking a ship inside your auxiliary firing arc, roll 1 additional attack die.

Crew- K4 Security Droid (Most Wanted Expansion): After executing a green maneuver, you may acquire a target lock.
Elite Pilot Talent- Opportunist (Imperial Aces Expansion): When attacking, if the defender does not have any focus or evade tokens, you may receive 1 stress token to roll 1 additional attack die. You cannot use this ability if you have any stress tokens.
Illicit- Hot Shot Blaster (IG-2000/Most Wanted Expansions): Attack (3, range 1-2): Discard this card to attack 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc).
Cannon- Heavy Laser Cannon (Lambda Shuttle/Slave-1/YT-2400 Expansions)-Attack (4, Range 2-3): Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your Crit results to Hit results.
Modification- Engine Upgrade (Millenium Falcon Expansion)- Your action bar gains the Boost action icon

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

First, let’s be clear, this is not a tournament winning squadron. Two ships, with one being a HWK just won’t survive long enough. That being said, this list can be hella fun to fly and can absolutely wreck people up if they don’t fly smart enough.

The impetus behind this list to finally make some use of Opportunist. It’s an EPT that sounds good in theory but fails in execution most of the time. It’s just too costly; 4pts, gives you a stress, and can only be activated under certain non-trivial conditions. Before Most Wanted, you really wanted Carnor Jax or Wes Janson in your squad to have any hope of getting to use it reliably. Palob fits that role for Sum and he does a much better job of it than the other two.

Being able to steal a focus/evade token from an enemy ship allows him to use Opportunist himself. Wes strips tokens nicely but after he attacks. Carnor prevents tokens from being spent or the action taken. But because of his high PS, he’ll often move into range to trigger his ability and lock a ship into having tokens that they can’t use, but they’re still there, preventing Opportunist from triggering. Palob just takes them and keeps them for himself.

So Palob can clear the road for Opportunist to trigger and between double focus from Recon Specialist and any he steals, he’s firing off his Blaster Turret at four die and able to modify them. With Moldy Crow, he can save a few up so that when the opportunity presents itself, he can Boost out of someones arc. It won’t be often since he’s PS5 and prefers taking a Focus action.

Pairing him up with Kath magnifies the chances to throw all of the red dice. If Kath can catch a target in her rear arc at range 1, she is rolling six die (3 main attack + 1 range bonus + her ability + Opportunist). That will hurt anyone. Plus, with the free target lock from the K4 droid (since she’s almost always taking green maneuvers to clear the stress from Opportunist) she can likely get hits on almost all of those dice. In that case, she’ll kill a TIE Fighter, Interceptor or Scyk in one shot, no matter what.

Now, this builds biggest weakness is the stress. Going against a Panic Attack list will shut this one down. Kath will still be able to survive for awhile, using the K4 droid for a free Target Lock even if she has a dozen stress on her. But Palob will get crushed pretty fast.

Likewise, swarms will also dole out the pain. Kath and Palob might be able to take out ship’s fast but likely only one per turn. Meanwhile, a HWK won’t survive sustained fire for very long. Arc Dodgers won’t be much of a worry though, as Firesprays are the bane of them now since Autorthrusters won’t trigger for that rear arc. Plus, Hot Shot Blaster is a good back up for both of them.

Variations

There are a lot of ways you could play with the central theme of this list (Palob with Opportunist). You could drop Kath for double Tansarii Veterans with HLC. They would be throwing five attacks and from two different ships. All being PS5 would be a maneuvering advantage. However, Scyk’s set up like that are the definition of glass cannon.

You could consider putting a K4 droid on Palob. With Moldy Crow and stealing tokens you can likely still store up some focus. But most players will just not bother focusing near him so you run the risk of running out of focus tokens should you even lose your action.

Switching out Palob’s Engine Upgrade for a Shield Upgrade is another good choice. He probably won’t Boost very often and gaining another shield HP can help a HWK a lot. Similarly, switching out the Hot Shot Blaster on both of them is a reasonable option, as there are lots of things you could do with 6pts. They are nice to have as the first time I played this list, someone managed to slip right into Kath’s blindspot with Soontir Fel on the first engagement. Thanks to Hotshot, he still got smacked around a little.