I’d say it’s worth having a Z. Blount can punch above his weight class, and sometimes you just need a cheap generic to fill out a list. Is it worth having three? Depends if you want to run lists with three Zs. With a faction like Empire or FO, I could see wanting to run massed hordes of TIEs; it makes sense thematically, and it’s supported by how the faction actually plays. But for the most part, I don’t see horde-Rebels becoming a thing unless you find that you really enjoy it. My buddy who plays Rebels recently bought into an A-swarm with Cluster Missiles, but he’s enjoyed flying As for a long time, and I was looking to get rid of mine. They’re decent enough little ships, but it’s easy to overbuy.

Reporting a successful trade with gentleman and scholar @urbanyeti

So I fire up YASB and what do I see: “Plasma Torpedoes are BETTER than Dee Yun” staring back at me ...wat

Sounds fun. I’ve got 3 bombers and a possible game time this weekend. List me, bro!!

E-wing for Resistance would be fun, though I would immediately regret divesting both of mine from 1.0! A repaint or resculpt would definitely make me feel less bad! They’re just in that weird pocket of stuff that would’ve made more sense pre-TFA and the nuking of Legends. I think it’d be great to spread them across more factions, but at least they’re somewhere.

I worry about Resistance’s long-term expandabity, and you’re kind of poking at why: they’re an unsanctioned paramilitary force existing on the fringes of a legitimate government. Yet they’re also one specific group, rather than the galaxy-and-era-spanning hodgepodge of Scum, or even the Rebellion, which had quite a while to build from grassroots in the ‘verse (and which has long been supported through expanded media). A lot seems to hinge on what Rise of Skywalker tells us about how broad their base of allies is across the galaxy. But right now, Resistance feels like it could end up representing an extremely thin slice of people, time, ships, and events. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong.

eBay is also a thing, though your point isn’t lost on me. I spent quite a while not flying my HWK because I couldn’t find a Moldy Crow card at a price I was willing to pay. But the thing is, I don’t see any card as a must-have along the lines of how things were in 1.0. Maybe Moldy Crow specifically is a bad example of what I mean, because there doesn’t seem like much of a reason to fly a HWK without it. But I feel like FFG has been broadly successful at making a huge swath of ships viable for a lot of play scenarios without making you chase the upgrade du jour. Yeah, I’m as keen as anyone to get my hands on some Autoblasters, but it’s not going to ruin my ability to play X faction just because I can’t spam Autoblaster carriers without taking out a second mortgage to buy all the Resistance Transports in sight. I can fly something else, because there are multiple somethings else that don’t suck. And even if Autoblasters or whatever turn out to be op plz nerf in the short run, FFG can, will, and has jacked up points to address issues. I might even argue that there’s a structural disincentive to chase the hot upgrades because we don’t really know what their future prices are going to look like. Better to buy 1 if you really want it, and just run a mixed/balanced list if you can live without it, because the future is always unknown.

I don’t care what anyone says, I like it. Part of the draw for FO as a faction is that they’ve continued to derive and evolve from Imperial designs. And that means TIEs and shuttles, people. It’s TIEs and shuttles all the way down.

Fair point. Is there any particular way to help elevate this to FFG’s attention?

I have 3, and I’m definitely looking for a good way to use em, so thank you. Now I just need DBM & Fuses to be in something other than just the Hyena...

I think the key is the phrase: “If a card ability references a ship’s revealed maneuver...” Fine as the distinction may be, R4 does not include the words “revealed maneuver,” and therefore is not explicitly referencing it. As per the rule’s phrasing, I think that means its timing window defaults to happening during the Reveal Dial and Execute Maneuver steps, as per the rest of the rules excerpt. Granted, I suspect R4’s text was written prior to FFG conceiving this new rule and its potential interactions. I think a quick FAQ entry would be great here. But as-written, I still don’t think R4 steps on her ability to benefit from revealing reds.

# B I N A Y R E P I R A T E S 👌🔥💯 More seriously though, I was recently dazzled by generic Firespray Bounty Hunters. I loved me some ‘Sprays back in 1.0, and now they’re even better. ARCs and Torrents are also joys to fly. Just wave those big ol’ beatsticks at anything that dares show up to challenge you. And I do hope I can get some good 2.0 value out of my Z-95s at some point... sadly, the crippling of Feedback Array has crippled what I used to like to do with ‘em.

I’m trying to make sure all my ships see table time in 2.0, else why have them? So for now, I’m trying to finish up getting all my Scum ships on the table at least once. I got back into X-Wing in April, and Scum was my #1 choice because I loved em in 1.0; I’ve played a bit of some other factions too, but I really want to finish off my Scum. I forget if I’m 2 or 3 lists away from checking them off entirely. After that, I think I need to fly 1 more Republic list before I can check them off, too; oh the joys of a smaller faction that I haven’t overbought into! Then I’ll either swing through the rest of my FO, or put my Resistance on the board for the first time. Then it’ll be a long, slow, but enjoyable trip through Empire. But as you can see, I have a collection that is much more in line with how much I wish I was playing, rather than how much I’m actually playing. At least I was smart enough to dump one faction I had ships for in 1.0 (Rebel) and just not get into another (Seps). But I’ve got the rest.

Tell me more!

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve never flown my Epic ships, and it’s way past time.

I’m excited. I own a Rebel Transport and a C-ROC that have never seen table time, and the ability to fly them in casual games is going to change that fast! A couple months ago I found a marked-down Gozanti at one of my local shops, but I couldn’t justify getting it because I already have two idle Epics. Last I checked, it’s still there. Might be time to pull the trigger...

My reading of it is that she can freely take advantage of R4 without losing the reds. She reveals the maneuver, executes it with reduced difficulty, but then still has the original maneuver as what she revealed.

Ahh, thank you. Devil’s advocate, though: doesn’t it actually mean that the base chassis is overpriced, rather than the upgrade necessarily being underpriced? I’m especially thinking of the HWK here, where it might never make sense to take one without the title because the chassis is pants. But if the base cost went down, then you could get to make a more meaningful choice about whether to run one with the title, or two without it (or just one naked one). Dengar might be the more dramatic example, though. The title is pretty cheap compared to him himself, but the effectiveness difference between 2-dice and 3-dice is so great that it’s an auto-include. But in that same example, it’s not like 2-dice Dengar would be very attractive unless his price went way down; the “choice” would then be to either take a desperately overpriced pilot, or take one plus an additional outlay of points for the title, or to just walk away. If his title goes up, I bet a lot of people will just walk away unless he becomes a lot cheaper. And that gets into the meta-effectiveness question, too; it provides some kind of a barometer for whether things are priced appropriately for their effectiveness.

I don’t follow. Why does this mean that the needed upgrades cost too little? After all, it’s not like Scum is tearing up the meta...

Yeah, now I’m wishing there was a trade-in program or something.

I’m not buying much this wave. I gave into temptation and bought an N-1 at B&N because it’s the ship I’ve always dreamed of flying in X-Wing. I’m also going to end up with a Resistance Transport because I traded some stuff to a buddy in exchange for him buying me one. But that’s all. Taking a step back, though, I feel like 2.0 is generally way better about making multiple list types viable without compelling us to chase every release. A couple things like Moldy Crow, 0-0-0, and BT-1 buck that trend. But even so, it’s possible to build decent enough lists that don’t use those. (Though you obviously want the Crow if you’re flying a HWK, and I have no doubt that Scum players will pony up for a new HWK when it gets rereleased.)

I wonder if this might be the key. The temptation is to overspend on them to try to maximize their tractor effect, or to bolt on some extra functionality to justify their cost. But maybe they’re best run as a suicide squad—get ‘em right in there and dare your opponent to start shooting. Since the weekend, I’ve also considered trying Feedback Array on them. Back in 1.0, I used to love running a list of 5x Z-95s with Feedback Arrays (seasoned to taste with a pocket ace of choice), but the range 0 requirement in 2.0 really kills it for me. Quads still might be able to make it work, though. And as an added bonus, the 1-straight-blue Ion Maneuver isn’t something the Quad could otherwise do... Or, maybe the answer is to ditch the generics? I could see Unkar + L3-37 + Deadman’s Switch working, as well as Zuvio + Proximity Mines + Contraband Cybernetics. Is there a good build for Sarco? Ooo, that’s nifty too...

Were you able to get good value out of the mines? And which pilot did you run? Constable Zuvio strikes me as the prime Prox candidate; it’s like adding guaranteed damage if you can set it up the turn before. I guess the two problems I see are that Quads get expensive fast as you start filling their slots, and you really want to be using their tractor array, otherwise why take them? Without the array, they seem somewhat comparable to Republic Torrents—but you’re paying for that dang array, which makes them a bit too expensive to be filler.

So the forum’s back working again? Nice! Finally got to try flying my Quadjumpers today. (I got one back in 1.0 and 2 more when their price tanked on Amazon.) What a rough experience, though! Looking for some help making these guys work. My opponent’s list is very much worth mentioning here: 5 A-wings, all with Cluster Missiles, most with Crack Shot, and two of those were Arvel and Jake with sundry other nasty add-ons. My opponent also won initiative, and therefore got to move & shoot first with his initiative 1 stuff. IMO this made for an extremely rough match-up, because he was able to set up excruciating blocks and massive parking lots, which played perfectly into his whole Cluster thing. On my end, I ran all three Quads with Pattern Analyzer. I also had Torkil in the Moldy Crow, and a Tac Officer L3-37. I think something that really worked against me was not being able to move first and set up blocks; I purposely went really low-I to try to get that. Guess next time I’ll bring a bigger bid! But I keep digressing. I’ve flown some bricks before, but the Quads had some surprising clunkiness that didn’t really sneak up on me until they were stressed. The turn when I stressed them was fine; I felt suitably clever that I could still get an action. But after that, I was shocked to realize how limited the Quad’s blues are! It was almost enough to make me wish I’d done something else like Primed Thrusters, or maybe Contraband Cybernetics with Jabba crammed on a YV-666. So I dunno. How do you guys like to load and fly your Quads? And what do you do if you run up against a bunch of weenies who manage to fly before them?

I suspect you’ll end up wanting a TIE Striker rather than an Interceptor if you’re looking for that kind of zippy/killy ship. It’s just got more tricks up its sleeve. It has more health behind slightly less agility—probably not a bad tradeoff given its strong pilot abilities. And the Adaptive Ailerons make it faster than its dial suggests, as well as harder to predict. I know; you’d think you want the Interceptor. But it’s like in the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons where Homer learns that instead of calling 911 for help in an emergency, the real number you want is 912.