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Aside from a solid block of HP with potentially 2 green dice, I'm just tempted to run it with a FCS and leave it at that.

Am I the only underwhelmed here, or is the ship meh?

You most certainly are not the only one, personally I dislike pretty much everything about it. The only upside for me is that it includes two inspiring recruits so I can pick one up cheap from some where else.

I don't understand what the design philosophy for the U-Wing was supposed to be beyond selling Rogue One merch.

Pretty much, yeah. The most interesting thing I have seen on it was taking it with Hera, and doing a stop maneuver to stay still forever and flip around. This idea was not good, but it was funny.

Honestly, the ship is pretty underwhelming to me.

I mean, it's a huge blocker... so it has that going for it. And you can keep Defenders in your sights easily.

The problem with the u-wing is that it's a decent jousting ship in a meta that is brutally punishing towards jousting lists. It has no action economy, no maneuverability, and no rule-breaking abilities. And with no (conventional) k-turn it's a jousting ship that can't even consistently stay in the fight.

So we had a tourney this week (the Q1 2017 thingy) and someone used this list:

Ezra Bridger (20)
Jyn Erso (2)
Experimental Interface (3)

Kanan Jarrus (38)
Fire-Control System (2)
Autoblaster Turret (2)
Recon Specialist (3)
Jan Ors (2)
Tactical Jammer (1)

Biggs Darklighter (25)
R4-D6 (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Total: 99

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

But he had trouble trouble piling on enough damage onto his enemies before losing Biggs. I figured maybe putting a solid-er wall between enemies and Biggs might help. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is Regionals-worthy. But maybe the ease of keeping those arcs trained on your enemy might help? I'm drawing a blank.

Kanan Jarrus (38)
Fire-Control System (2)
Recon Specialist (3)
Jan Ors (2)
Tactical Jammer (1)

Biggs Darklighter (25)
R4-D6 (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Blue Squadron Pathfinder (23)
Fire-Control System (2)
Jyn Erso (2)
Tactical Jammer (1)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
But he had trouble trouble piling on enough damage onto his enemies before losing Biggs. I figured maybe putting a solid-er wall between enemies and Biggs might help. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is Regionals-worthy. But maybe the ease of keeping those arcs trained on your enemy might help? I'm drawing a blank.

I think the issue here is that you (and he?) are looking at the shuttle as a legitimate third ship instead of a way to enable Kanan's rear arc and double TLT shots. The best way to run Kanan/Biggs is to keep the shuttle docked forever and put a TLT on Kanan, that gives you a lot better firepower than the shuttle or u-wing will deliver. The only loss is the u-wing's blocking ability, but I suspect you'll find that trying to run a large base ship in formation with an action-dependent list like Kanan/Biggs is going to be as much trouble for you as it is for your opponent.

He didn't even begin with the shuttle docked. It was... weird.