Vader and elite Imperial pilots vs elite Rebels AAR

Brought X-wing down to the club so that David could take Darth Vader for a spin with my newly purchased Tie-Advanced. We both ran lists with elite pilots and maxed out our points into skills and equipment for the ships.

Imperial force:

TIE ADVANCED
- Darth Vader, swarm tactics and cluster missiles

TIE FIGHTERS
- Howlrunner, expert handling
- Black Squadron fighter, expert handling

TIE INTERCEPTOR
- Turr Phennir, elusiveness

Rebel Force:
X-WING
Wedge Antilles, R2-F2 astromech, Proton torpedo's

Y-WING
Gold Squadron pilot, R2-D2, Ion cannon turret, proton torpedo's

A-WING
Arvel Crynd, Homing missiles

To test out Vader we simply ran a regular dogfight. This started out very badly for the Rebels, as Darth Vader used swarm tactics to destroy the rebel A-wing pilot in the opening shots with the help of a nearby Tie-Fighter. This instantly put the rebels as a 4vs2 disadvantage. Still Wedge Antilles and the Y-wing blasting its Ion cannon and firing rockets managed to wear down the some of the enemy fighter, Wedge just ran out of luck as soon as he managed to destroy a Tie fighter (he was hit by critical damage drawing double damage cards in the return fire.

The lone Y-wing was now fighting a 3 vs 1 fight, but through sheer luck, Ion cannons and using its slow speed of all things it managed to evade the remaining Empire fighters and actually destroy everyone except for Darth Vader. Vader himself had trouble chasing the Y-wing as he kept bumping into it, the fight ended with Vader making a bad plotting decision which brought him off table - unable to turn fast enough to remain on it!

The fight ended as another "noob beats pro's" story, though for a change it was a newbie Y-wing pilot beating the Imperials rather than a newbie Tie-fighter pilot beating the rebels.

The battle proved how dangerous Vader can be, swarm tactics with such a high pilot rating can be devastating, and Vader/the Tie-Advanced being able to target lock and fire missiles is also a deadly change of dynamics in a X-wing battle.  I really look forward to playing another fight with Vader or any other Tie Advanced based pilot on the table.

X-wing: Tie Advanced expansion pack

The final Imperial fighter currently available (the Tie Bomber will be released later this year) is the Tie Advanced - the fighter which Darth Vader uses. The model itself is pretty cool but perhaps the main reason to buy it is to add additional flexibility and tactical options to your Imperial force. The Tie Advanced is so far the only Imperial ship with the ability to fire missiles and which comes with a shield generator.

Sadly this blister doesn't follow the generous amount of Pilot cards of the Tie Fighter/Tie Interceptor blister but comes instead with 4 pilots which is standard for the Rebel Alliance expansion packs. Fortunately though the spread of pilot skill is pretty good and allows you to both run it as a low level pilot as well as one of the two high level pilots who also happen to be named characters; Marek Steele and Darth Vader himself. And really, why would you run the Tie Advances if not for the ability to field Vader himself!

Both Vader and Steele have ridiculously good pilot abilities to begin with, and will become even better when upgraded with an elite pilot skill card. Hopefully these two rather expensive pilots with added gear will be interesting and tempting enough for the Imperial player to make them abandon the "Tie Swarm" and go for a more "elite strike force" theme on the list.

The blister also comes with two missile variants which you can upgrade your Tie Advanced with, and three Elite pilot cards of which "Squad leader" is unique to the Tie Advanced blister.

I really look forward to seeing how Vader impacts the game and list building, and overall it's nice to add a third ship option to the Imperial roster.

As for the paintjob it is quite OK, it seems a bit "sloppy" in places if you look at it close up, as if it suffered from the opposite problem that my Y-wings had - too much paint instead of too little. I must also say that the paintjob and paint on the Tie Advanced and the Tie Fighter which I bought in separate blisters seem to be slightly different (brighter with less ink perhaps?).

Below you can see the new Tie Fighter from last review and the Tie Advanced side by side for a size comparison between the fighters.

X-Wing: Tie Fighter expansion pack

This is perhaps the expansion pack players will have at the very end of their "to buy" list, considering you get Tie Fighters in the starting set. However just like with the X-wing expansion pack this Tie-Fighter comes with Pilot cards that are not featured in the starting set. You get 3 common pilots previously available, but also 3 named pilots of which 2 are Elite pilots that can be upgraded with pilot skills.

And all 3 new named pilots bring very good abilities to the table and should offer the Imperial player with a lot of interesting and tactical options. You only get two elite pilot skill cards, "Swarm tactics" and "Determination", of which "Swarm tactics" should prove extremely useful as it allows you the ship with this pilot upgrade to duplicate his pilot skill onto another friendly ship within range 1. This allows for boosting a crappy pilot and have him help you fire at weaker targets before the target can fire back. You could really make the most of this skill by using it with your very best pilot and upping the pilot skill of another named character with good abilities to coordinate a very powerful combo attack.

You also get the usual set of tokens and turn dial, the paintjob on the Tie Fighter model itself was also very good imo -so all in all a good investment even if it isn't in the top number of purchase options.

X-wing: 100 point senator shuttle escort AAR

A 100 point game using the scenario in the main rulebook where the Rebel Alliance is escorting a senator's shuttle and the Imperial player tries to destroy it.

The lists looked like this:

Rebel Alliance

2x Gold Squadron Y-wing with Ion cannons and R2 Astromechs
3x A-wing Prototype Pilots

Empire

Tie Interceptor
Turr Phennir with Marksmanship

Tie Fighters
Night Beast
Mauler Mithel with Elusiveness
2x Black Squadron Pilots with Elusiveness

This fight was a change of pace, David swapped the "Tie Swarm" for some high end elite pilots, while I was trying to fly a force with 5 poorly rated Rebel ships. We also played a scenario since I have found that just fighting over nothing to the death doesn't make for that exciting of a game and it also felt like the rebels got chewed up in these fight to the death games.

The list I ran in our game was a bit odd but I really wanted to try out 3 A-wings at the same time, with some Y-wing support. On the whole it worked quite well, but I think swapping something out for an X-wing to add some serious firepower would have helped as the Imperials were dodging shots like crazy, even when I focused on a single enemy fighter with 3 ships.

Both sides ended up having a bit of trouble moving around without bumping into other ships and asteroids, the Y-wings managed to score 2-3 Ion cannon hits and it was fun to watch those Imperials drift around but I realized it doesn't help much if you disable enemy fighters moving at them from the front - the return fire is nasty!

The battle ended a Rebel victory, though 2 ships were lost and the remaining ones were damaged. The Imperials were very close to destroying the senator shuttle but simply ran out of time as they had been held up by the rebel fighters as the shuttle moved closer and closer to the opposing table edge. In the end the shuttle had 4 hull points left and only 2 Tie Fighters were close enough to fire at it, 2 hits were scored and brought it down to 2 hull points but it slipped off the table at the start of the next turn.

Neither Imperial fighter had been destroyed, in fact only three ships had taken damage (1 damage each).