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https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/11/28/valuable-intel/








Couple of nice looking cards here. Inspiring recruit is probably the winner, and is a great counter to stress control. Baze is a noticably weaker, cheaper version of gunner, but may have use when combined with other cards like hotshot copilot and tactician. Bodhi (Crew) could be fun on a missile boat K-wing.

Ever wanted to field 4 Lambda shuttles? But you're a purist who only plays Rebels? Fret not, we heard your cries of despair. -FFG

Now you can field a Prototype pilot a-wing, rush him forward on the sidelines, use Bodhi (Patrick Swayze, I guess) to give target locks to your torpedo-run configured y-wings *and* you get brownie points for being Era-specific.

That is a really sick dial, including Zero K Turns.

Black Market Slicers and Stressbots have had its time to shine, Inspiring Recruit is now an auto-include in most lists with crew slots. At least Binayre Pirates with Slicers can still slice faster than their targets can clear and Asajj can slice before Aces. Actually, BMST has not been hit too badly, but Stressbot has been hit.

4-L0M Pilot with Inspiring Recruit can clear stress 50% faster, not like that's a big deal but...

Keep in mind Inspiring Recruit is once per round, and range limited. So while it is good, it's not going to change a lot of ships. Ships like Dengaroo will continue to not care about their 100th stress token, same with the Party Bus whose only actions were Focus and Target Lock anyway.

I overlooked the "Once Per Round" part or I interpreted it as "Once per round all ships that removed stress this turn remove more stress" or something like that. Woops

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
I overlooked the "Once Per Round" part or I interpreted it as "Once per round all ships that removed stress this turn remove more stress" or something like that. Woops

You could always use multiple inspiring recruits since it isn't limited, but is that really a good use for a shuttle?

Bodhi's pilot ability buffs every ship on the board. Low-PS ordnance carriers are going to love him.

Also comparing this to the lambda, this is way better for (aside from the generic pilots) equal or less cost and that's without the title involved, much better dial, much better pilot abilities, for the trade off of 2 health which can be easily be off set by the title's +1 agi. Just glad they don't have a palp (yet?).

Wonder how it will shift rebel regen around.

Keeyan Farlander with Rage and an Inspiring recruit followed around by another B-wing with Jan Oors.

Rage out, strip the stress for effective focus, gain an evade token, still have a focus token left for your evade die.

First impressions:

Generic + dial: a little better than expected, actually. 23 points is very competitive, and I wasn't expecting both the 1- and 2-speed banks to be green. Based on local playtesting of the imperial supershuttle, having the white 90* turns seriously reduces the "out of the fight after the first pass" problem that the lambda shuttle has. So we're left with a very efficient 3/2/4/4 stat line (or an emergency 0-k option) that can expect to contribute some decent jousting value. I won't say this is guaranteed to be a tournament standard, but it at least has the potential to do something.

Heff Tobbler: not impressed. PS 3 is arguably worse than PS 2 for a blocking ship, and with such a limited action bar (and FCS to get target locks already) getting a free action isn't all that impressive. You almost need to take upgrades that require actions to make it effective, but then you're adding points to a blocker and carrying dead weight if you can't get the free actions to use them effectively.

Bodhi Rook (pilot): now we're getting somewhere. The interesting thing is that he grants the buff just by being in your list. No range limits, no actions required, you just get to share target lock bubbles. Getting to lock on a turn where you're far away from the fight instead of wasting your action is a decent buff, but the real power is something like ordnance alpha strikes. Is it going to be a viable list? I don't know, but it's an interesting tool to play with.

Cassian Andor: great ability, plus an EPT. It's very, very easy to think of situations where you want to remove stress from a friendly ship: PTL, enemy stress control, etc. And this is a very reliable way to do it. If the u-wing in general turns out to be a viable option I think he's going to see play.

Bodhi Rook (crew): pretty underwhelming. Which ship really cares about being able to target lock from longer range and has a crew slot to spare? You don't get the build-around potential of the pilot version, so this seems to be a 1-point option for a reason.

Baze Malbus: also underwhelming. This is just a strictly worse version of gunner, except for a 2 point cost reduction. And losing the ability to force a ship to spend tokens against your first attack before following it up with a kill shot is a huge drop in effectiveness. Given the fact that ships which want gunner, even at 3 points, tend to be on the expensive side that 2 points is a fairly small reduction percentage-wise. Maybe there's a list where the points work out right for him, but I feel like this is a waste of a character.

Inspiring Recruit: clearly a meta counter to stress control. It's trash if you aren't playing against stress control, but extremely powerful if you are. Be confident in your reading of the meta (and your plan against common opponents) before taking this.

Cassian Andor (crew): very good. Intelligence agent is a good option at 1 point. For +1 point you add the ability to change your dial if your opponent did in fact pick the one maneuver that ruins your plan, which seems like a pretty good investment. If you like intelligence agent you like him.

Jyn "totally not Jan Ors" Erso: trap card. She's way too conditional and requires a bit of above-average luck/skill just to break even on your investment. Stay away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Graphite wrote:
Keeyan Farlander with Rage and an Inspiring recruit followed around by another B-wing with Jan Oors.

Rage out, strip the stress for effective focus, gain an evade token, still have a focus token left for your evade die.

The problem is that you're falling into the Farlander trap: putting a lot of points into a very fragile ship that is almost guaranteed to die. As much as I want the PC of X-Wing to be good, Farlander is unfortunately a pilot who was mediocre on release and has been treated very badly by power creep.

Also, you might want to read Jan's ability more carefully, you get the evade token instead of the focus token, not in addition to it. If you rage you can convert the focus token into an evade token (and get the re-rolls) and spend the stress to modify attack dice, but you won't have a focus token left for defense.

Nope, mis-read rage, not Jan. You're right, you won't have a defence focus.

Inspiring Recruit might make some stress heavy combos more viable. You could have Kyle Katarn feeding off something like Rage, for a 3x Focus and 3x Rerolls each turn, and you could even throw in Jan Ors to change one of those to an Evade. It could also potentially make way for Experimental Interface to combo with things like Daredevil, PTL and Expert Handling. You could even have something like Soontir Fel with Experimental Interface, which would allow him to Evade+Daredevil and get Get 2x Focus Tokens, or even Evade+Rage, and get 3x Focus and 3x Re-rolls. He'd lose a bit on defence per shot by dropping Autothrusters, but he'd be almost guaranteed three hits every shot, and still have Focus+Focus+Evade left over for defence.

Might also be some combos there with Electronic Baffle, assuming Discard and Remove are not different?

Inspiring recruit strikes me as a card that you want to add in anywhere that you have a couple of points and a crew slot available. For example, when running a Ghost build I rarely use the phantoms crew slot. Now I slap that in (Maybe on RAGE Ezra), and can consider detatching the phantom if struggling with stress control.

Also, Thinking that it will be a nice add on with the spacetug. Tug+Tractor+BMST+Recruit is only 19pt, and is extremely versatile.

Baze Malbus is great with Hot-Shot Co-Pilot, which is nice to force token-stripping on two targets.

If only HWKs had a title to take a total of 2 crew seats, which honestly they should if they can do little else but be a Taxi to the YV-666's Party Bus. 22 points to all but guarantee both abilities trigger would be nice.

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
Baze Malbus is great with Hot-Shot Co-Pilot, which is nice to force token-stripping on two targets.

But gunner can do that too, and also has the very powerful ability to fire twice at a single target to maximize damage. You lose a lot of power for a mere 2 point discount.

If only HWKs had a title to take a total of 2 crew seats, which honestly they should if they can do little else but be a Taxi to the YV-666's Party Bus. 22 points to all but guarantee both abilities trigger would be nice.

No, this would be a terrible ship. HSCP only applies to primary weapons, so you either have a 22 point ship which can never do any damage or an even more expensive ship that can only do damage if it ignores the 7 points (plus any title cost) you spent on crew. You can't spend 25% of your list on a ship which depends on having other ships alive to be useful.

Well, I was gonna say that Palp-Shuttle is the same thing, but at least he can deal damage in a fight.

My thinking was:
-Palpatine triggers once per turn to keep Soontir alive or get a crit on an attack.
-The HWK could strip two ships of their focus tokens, such as Focus-Heavy Soontir or Attani ships, and get comparative damage on the opponent's chances of rolling evades/hits.
+By reducing a player from 75-50% odds of getting hits on two ships or 50-33% odds of getting evades, you have effectively reduced the amount of damage your ships are taking by a decent amount as well as also increasing the amount of damage your ships are dealing.

But:
Doesn't work against target-locks, but focus is a heavily utilized action nonetheless.
Stripping Tokens for defense requires a Higher PS HWK which makes it too expensive to be worth it.

You are right that games are won by killing ships, which requires you to have ship that can kill, at least Stresshogs are dealing damage in the process.

It was fun to theory-craft it though.

Rook looks like a nice component for a bomber list. The fact that he's not that expensive in the grand scheme of things helps
Too, and he's a reasonably tough platform.

The imperial cheap bomber, the tie/sa, can take long ranged scanners, which whilst awkward is a free workaround for target locks on low ps ships. The closest equivalent, a missile headhunter or torpedo Y-wing, can't. I'm not sure how to use rook, but Im sure the use is there. I want to say either captured tie ashoka or heroes han might be good?

recruit & rage is a nice alternative to push the limit, slightly cheaper if you've got the right slots to support it. a tlt hwk, for example.

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
Well, I was gonna say that Palp-Shuttle is the same thing, but at least he can deal damage in a fight.

And Palpatine is also completely unconditional. Once per turn you change a die to anything you want, period. No range limit, no arc limit, no actions to spend, you just modify dice. This is why he's so powerful, other buff ships can get equal or better math for the point cost but only under ideal conditions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

locarno24 wrote:
I want to say either captured tie ashoka or heroes han might be good?

Captured TIE, if anything. Han is way too expensive to be viable for this. Rook + Han is already 71 points, leaving room for only a single additional ordnance carrier even if you take absolutely no upgrades on Han. Ashoka at least costs ~20 points, for a total of 45 plus whatever upgrades you put on Rook. 55 points is enough for three missile Talas plus a torpedo on Rook, which isn't a terrible alpha strike. It's not great, but it's not terrible.