#wave 9

12/1/16

The Special Forces TIE is something of a pariah among the wave 9 ships, and while I was initially impressed by the named pilots after playing against them early on in my return to the game, after playing with it in a few games (4 or 5) I sadly think that it’s current status may be deserved. I think joust-wise it’s a very solid ship relative to other efficient jousters in the game, but I think it’s suffering from something that is holding back a lot of other older ships that used to be competitive: it’s too generalized in a meta full of hyper specialized ships. It suffers from being average all around, its offense can’t really break through the hyper defensive ships, its defense can’t hold up against the hyper aggressive ships, and it’s not super cheap that it can easily fill a gap in a list as a blocker. The rear arc loses a lot of utility because 2-dice attacks just aren’t effective at all in this meta, and multiplying that by two with the title (sometimes) doesn’t really help since you can’t focus fire with both attacks. 

Some tips for building the SF

Keep it cheap - the SF has slightly less durability than a T-65 X-Wing with IA equipped. Try not to pump too many points into it. 33 points or less seems to be the sweet spot for me.  

Bring scarier endgame ships - A good way to keep your SF alive longer is to bring meaner and scarier ships with it that your opponent doesn't want to get stuck in the end game with like X7 Defenders, Carnor Jax, Omega Leader and Whisper. 

Stick to the named pilots - I think if you're going to fly the SF, the unique pilots are the way to go. 

Quickdraw

The ability to make multiple attacks in a single turn is quite powerful, and Quickdraw is fairly unique in being able to to attack during the activation phase, by using electronic baffle, possibly even before some ships have activated. While you can just wait for someone to attack you and trigger her ability, I've found that it's important to be able to control when the ability triggers, otherwise your opponent will only shoot at her on turns when she doesn't have any good attacks. Rage + Electronic Baffle is a great combo for Quickdraw, as Rage allows you to modify your dice over multiple attacks, and Baffle let’s you trigger Quickdraw’s ability when you want to and allows her to clear stress on the next turn, which is helped by MKII engines. All for a an affordable 32 points. 

The dream position for Quickdraw, only possible against large ships. I actually had this happen in a real life game once, like seeing a double-rainbow on a sunny day. 

The trick to using this build effectively is to be very conservative with when you choose to pop Rage and sacrifice a shield token. Usually I’ll only do it when I’m at range 1 of a target or can make 4 attacks, where I can get maximum value out of the re-rolls from Rage, or when Quickdraw is out of arc or my other ships are being targeted. Quickdraw is a strong early game ship, but ultimately her biggest drawback is that she’s really only ever going to use her ability once or twice, sometimes even never if your opponent’s got a really good blocking game. Again Quickdraw benefits from bringing ships that are really nasty in the mid to late game that will draw heat off of Quickdraw in the early game. 

Even with conservative play, Quickdraw usually ends up like this pretty quickly.

Backdraft

I was initially enamored with Quickdraw’s ability to attack during the activation phase, but I began to get frustrated with the expiration on Quickdraw’s ability that caused her to turn into a pumpkin after her shields were gone. Backdraft’s ability on the other hand have no time limit, and his greater consistency and longevity had a lot of potential to be even better than Quickdraw. It effectively turns that rear arc back into a real threat, even when he’s not at range 1. However, I couldn’t seem to find the right build that I liked. Other players were basically just slapping VI and FCS on him and calling it a build, but there wasn’t really enough synergy to elevate him above his base chassis. But with the release of HotR, I think we have the missing piece to make Backdraft into a really interesting ship.

With Pattern Analyzer and Collision Detector, Backdraft gains the ability to effectively ignore debris clouds for 2 points, aside from taking a stress at the end of his activation*. He can fly and barrel roll through them no problem, and doesn’t take damage from them. It also opens up his dial a lot more by giving him access to his red maneuvers without losing an action, specifically the 3-hard which is so useful on ships with a rear arc. 

Approaching at an angle, Backdraft ignores a nearby debris field to put himself into a spot where it’s very difficult for Poe to follow him without using a red maneuver.

A good tip that I’ve found when flying Backdraft is to approach your opponents ships at an angle, off center from them. This will make it easier on the following turn to use a hard turn and perhaps a barrel roll to bring your rear arc to bear while also making it harder for the opponent predict where you’re going to be. Place debris fields closer to the midline between both deployment zones so you can use them to cover your escape routes and make it harder for opponents to follow you. 

“Backdraft” 32

Predator 3

Collision Detector 0

Pattern Analyzer 2

Special Ops Training 0

“Whisper” 40

Veteran Instincts 1

Advanced Cloaking Device 4

Fire-Control System 2

Intelligence Agent 1

Omega Leader 26

Juke 2

Comm Relay 3

An example list featuring Backdraft. Note the presence of high priority targets that can punish opponents if they are ignored, thus taking the some heat off of Backdraft.

Final Thoughts

I think the TIE/SF would have done much better had it been given the crew slot that was cruelly denied to it by FFG. I think it's what is allowing the ARC-170 to succeed by being able to combo astromechs and crew while the SF is stuck with the much more limited options in system and tech. So many interesting combinations would have been possible, Tail Gunner with Backdraft, Tactician, Recon Specialist or Agent Kallus on Quickdraw, Advanced Sensors with Intelligence Agent, etc.  A better dial wouldn't have hurt either (red 3 hards and no 5 straight makes no sense for a ship whose speed impressed Poe). And maybe make the generics 1 point cheaper. No doubt FFG found the endless combinations afforded by a crew slot with systems and tech, especially with new releases, a bit daunting and felt they had to remove it, possibly to keep Imperial lists from gaining access to Rebel-like control elements. But there's little to be gained from lamenting hypothetical what-ifs.

10/24/16

This will be a small series of articles highlighting some of the stronger individual ship builds that Wave 9 brings to the table to keep in mind when building your lists. I’ve found Wave 9 is proving to be a bit perplexing for a lot of players, and I hope to shine a light on what can be done with the new ships in a competitive setting. These are not going to be speculative or hypothetical builds, they will all be based either on high performing lists on List Juggler or from lists that I encounter online or in tournaments, so you can know these have real world results behind them. 

The recent change to the FAQ stripping U-Boats of their integral Deadeye has many Rebel players rejoicing for the possible return of the stresshog Y-Wing (a gold squadron pilot that combined R3-A2 with the BTL/A4 title and TLT to put 2 stress tokens on any ship it attacked at range 2-3), one of the strongest control tools in the Rebel toolbox before Wave 8. However there may now be a legitimate challenger for the stresshog title in form of ARC-170 pilot Braylen Stramm.

Being the first ship capable of bringing astromechs and crew, the ARC-170 is able to create the same double-stress effect by combining R3-A2 with Gunner, so long as your first attack deals no damage. And remember, you're not required to add an extra attack die from the title, so if you care about piling on stress more than dealing damage, you can always roll 2 dice on your first attack and then roll the full 3 on the second. And because Gunner doesn’t specify that you have attack the same target, you can spread stress around multiple ships, just like the Y-Wing can. With Gunner and R3-A2, the ARChog® clocks in at 32 points, 6 points over the minimum for a Y-Wing stresshog. Let's take a look and see what we're getting for that 6 points, and if it's worth considering the ARC-170 over the Y-Wing for the job, based on what I've seen in actual games with it.

The Y-Wing only has a front firing arc and loses access to TLT at range 1, and thus its 2nd stress token and much of its damage potential.Thanks to its auxiliary firing arc and the use of its primary weapon and Gunner, the ARC-170 maintains effectiveness at range at range 1 and has triple the AOE of the Y-Wing stresshog.

The ARC-170 brings several large improvements to the table. The big one is a huge AOE increase, or area of effectiveness, over the Y-Wing thanks to that rear arc and still being effective at range 1. This effectively triples the ARC-170s AOE over the Y-Wing, as you can see above, making it much more flexible in its target selection. The next improvement is that the ARChog actually has action economy thanks to Braylen's ability for a 50% chance of removing a stress after executing any maneuver and the much better selection of green maneuvers on its dial. The ARC-170 also has built-in dice modification thanks to the title, and can upgrade Gunner to Luke Skywalker for more. Because it's doing 2 3-dice attacks with a modifier instead of 3 weak unmodified attacks, and can still attack at range 1, the ARC-170 actively contributes to your lists damage output, whereas the stresshog Y-Wing struggles to deal any damage with its unmodified 2 dice primary attacks and TLT volleys against any enemies with more than 1 agility. And of course, the ARChog gets 1 more hull than the Y-Wing, making it slightly more durable.

The Y-Wing and ARC-170 dials are nearly identical, but the much better selection of green banks combined with Braylen’s ability to shed stress means its much likely to regain access to its action bar after the first engagement. 

I have been very impressed with the ARChog every time I've played with it for all the reasons listed above. After playing with the Y-Wing stresshog a few times in the current meta, I think it's definitely starting to show its age and limitations, even without U-boats to threaten it. It struggles to contribute to a list's damage output because of how mediocre its attacks are, and it feels less durable than it used to in the current hyperbolic red dice arms race X-Wing seems to be caught in, while also struggling with the same problem it's always had of staying in the fight. I think the ARChog is a great ship to build a list around, and you can also reduce its point cost to 29 by downgrading Gunner to Tactician, still giving you access to a single stress out the front or back and double stress at range 2, with slightly less damage consistency against higher agility ships. It seems based on my own experiments and tournament results around the world that the best ships to bring with are Biggs (as always it seems) and a shield regen ship like Miranda, Poe or Norra Wexley, another ARC-170 ship worth mentioning for her ability to take R2-D2 and C-3PO. Here's the current iteration of my ARChog list if your looking for an example.

Braylen Stramm [R3-A2, Luke Skywalker, Alliance Overhaul] (34)

Poe Dameron (PS8 Version) [R2-D2, Sensor Cluster, Predator, Integrated Astromech] (40)

Biggs Darklighter [R4-D6, Integrated Astromech] (26)

Edit: Since posting this article, I’ve gotten some good feedback on this list that pointed out that a more offensively oriented ship than Poe would synergize better from the control elements provided by Biggs and Braylen. I agreed with that and thought about what else could work into this list, and I borrowed an element from Malaysian nationals 3rd place finisher Rodric:

Miranda Doni [Autoblaster Turret, Extra Munitions, Homing Missiles, Weapons Engineer , Long Range Scanners] (41)

Braylen Stramm [R3-A2, Gunner, Alliance Overhaul] (32) 

Biggs Darklighter [R4-D6, Integrated Astromech] (26) 

Talk about a red dice arms race, now there’s an upgrade in firepower! Long range scanners + weapons engineer lets Miranda peg two possible targets on turn 1 for her Homing missiles no matter what pilot skill they are, allowing her to take a focus on the turn of the engagement. Then she can use her ability to spend a shield and make a 5 dice attack with target lock and focus that ignores evade tokens, while safely hiding in Biggs’ protective bubble. Another good option to consider if you want a similar level of offense with slightly more staying power:

Lothal Rebel [Fire-Control System, Autoblaster Turret, Hera Syndulla] (40) 

For those curious about the nickname Stresshog, coined by FFG user Major Juggler, this is the A-10 “Warthog”, a slow, heavily armored American fighter with a powerful rapid-firing gatling cannon that entered service in the 1970s and still sees operational use today, and was initially looked down on by Air Force fighter pilots. Its characteristics, history and appearance bear a resemblance to the BTL Y-Wing, and in my opinion to the ARC-170 as well.

Pics from unboxing the Protectorate Starfighter.

Hey guys!

Recently I have participated NCS with The Challenge summer programme. Now we have to fun raise for Youngminds (charity) as part of our challenge.

For the sponsorship challenge, we are going on a 10K walk around our local area. We will be completing various challenges along our way (e.g. stand in a pose as a whole team with only 5 points of contact to the ground). We aim to raise as much sponsorship money as possible and spread the word about our team's charity.

Please help us reach our fundraising goal!!~ 

Wave 9 Assortment Released Fall 2012 Assortment includes: Robecca Steam, Venus McFlytrap, 2.0 Lagoona Blue and Rochelle Goyle

AKA: Basic, Signature

Availability: As of 7/26/2012, this assortment has not yet been released. Case contents are not 100% confirmed.

Interesting Notes:

This is the first assortment in the 'wave' system that many retailers/wholesalers follow that does not introduce any new characters.