Rogue Squadron-Pray to the Dice Gods

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 Interceptor “Carnor Jax” (Imperial Aces Expansion) (29 pts) (PS 8)

Enemy ships at Range 1 cannot perform focus or evade actions and cannot spend focus or evade tokens.

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.

TIE F/O “Omega Leader” (TIE F/O Expansion) (24 pts) (PS 8)

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

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.

TIE Fighter “Dark Curse” (Original Core) (16 pts) (PS 6)

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

None

TIE Fighter “Wampa” (Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion) (17 pts) (PS 4)

When attacking, you may cancel all die results. If you cancel a Critical result, deal 1 facedown Damage card to the defender.

Modification- Stealth Device (Slave 1/M3-A Expansions): Increase your agility value by 1. If you are hit by an attack, discard this card.

TIE Fighter “Chaser” (Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion) (14 pts) (PS 3)

When another friendly ship at Range 1 spends a focus token, assign a focus token to your ship.

None

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

With the preview articles for the Imperial Assault Carrier that came out recently, and the expansion’s upcoming release I started thinking about how to make use of these new fighters. I liked the interesting abilities coming with the new TIE fighters. One thing that struck me about them was how annoying some of these TIE’s might be to kill. And that spawned this list. Warning, it contains ships from two unreleased expansion sets so you won’t be flying it soon.

Now, this list probably won’t be tournament winning. It lacks some firepower with only five ships, most of them using two dice and despite having many tricks to make shooting them more difficult, they are all fragile craft. That said, it has a lot of potential to survive despite the odds and pull off unexpected wins due to the fact you’re making it incredibly difficult for your opponent to shoot you.

First, Carnor Jax wants to get in real close and keep your opponent from making use of his tokens. This protects the entire squad. There is little a Recon Spec ship hates more than Carnor. Meanwhile, Omega Leader and Dark Curse can make themselves entirely at the mercy of the Dice Gods as they can shut down their opponents’ ability to modify dice. Dark Curse’s ability affects anyone attacking him while Omega affects only a single target but affects his attack and defense. They can still be dropped with a natural three hit roll followed by three blank green dice but the odds are at least in their favor.

Wampa isn’t particularly hard to kill (that’s why he is the one who gets the Stealth Device) but his ability can be nasty. You have to rely on luck to roll a crit as you can’t generate your own (no EPT for Crackshot, Marksmanship, etc.) but the odds of a crit coming up naturally are higher than getting a hit against many opponents. Normally, firing from range three, through an asteroid, at Soontir Fel whose equipped with Stealth Device and Autothrusters would be about an impossible shot. But even the mere 23% of a crit coming up on Wampa’s dice are a significant improvement.

Finally, Chaser is the ship most likely to be left at the end of the game. His ability is useless when alone but it does make him annoying to target before hand. As long as he stays close to your other ships, he can hoard Focus tokens. The list works well with them all breaking formation but it should be easy to keep him within range one of at least one of your other ships.

Variations

There are a couple good variations you could do to this list. The first is simple and involves dropping Stealth Device from Wampa and giving Chaser a Targeting Computer. This gives you a one point initiative bid and allows Chaser to take a Target Lock while getting free Focus tokens from the rest of the squad. You could also change Wampa to Nightbeast, drop PTL from Omega Leader and then have two TIE’s that can have a TL and a Focus on their attack.

Another variation also involves dropping the Stealth Device and PTL from Omega Leader. Then you give him Comm Relay and Juke. He likes PTL so that he can always get a Target Lock and have another action available, but with Comm Relay you can save your Evade token round to round so you can just TL. Then Juke allows him to turn an evade to an eyeball and his ability prevents his opponent from turning it back into an evade. However, he wouldn’t have any ability to modify his own attacks, so I didn’t include it in the primary build.