I don't see much mention of him. What are people's opinions on him? Is he useable or a writeoff like Expose was before today? If he's workable, where is he worthwhile?

he looks good...

I haven't seen R2 crew used at all. 4 points AND a crew slot AND it might hurt you instead of help you. I just think there are better/cheaper crew cards out there.

That's what I was thinking: he keeps you at 1 shield but risks turning your hits into crits. Not sure that's worth 4 points and a crew slot. Not sure that's worth a crew slot.

He'd be great for keeping shields before getting damaged though...

It's a very narrow window of maximum usefulness.

It's thematic for certain of poor, overly enthusiastic R2, but I don't like the risk of getting a crit at the cost of restoring one shield.

I would say he could work nicely on a YT-1300. Particularly on Chewie. It has high hull so it can make several uses of R2 before getting taken out. Play your cards right and he could make you take several extra hits beyond your normal hit points.

very powerful on the Rebel Transport. In normal 100pt games though.... not too bad for protecting a HWK, but I'd rather recon spec or chewy crew over this thing. For 4pts I really am not feeling the ability's power, especially when compared to things like the astromech version of R2D2 or R5P9 even

Unfortunately they reversed the costs of R2 and 3PO. Given the existence of 3PO, R2 will always be second fiddle and he costs more. If the points had been switched so R2 was 3 points instead he would have been better. But then again he was designed mostly for epic play so was costed for that instead.

If you do a Google search for "R2D2 crew X-Wing" this thread comes up 4th in the list, right after a BGG thread and some wiki pages.

It's really interesting to note the reactions to R2 crew back in August. Fast forward 3 months and Paul Heaver has just utilized him in his 2014 World Championship winning list.

Obviously the little guy carries some risk but it's clear the benefits can be worth it. First if you have no shields but no damage cards there is no risk. Or if your damage cards are faceup already there is still no risk. Lastly, if you do have facedown damage cards 5/8ths of the time you won't roll a hit to trigger the damaging effect.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread but given the context I thought it was worthwhile bumping.

And congrats to Paul!

If you do a Google search for "R2D2 crew X-Wing" this thread comes up 4th in the list, right after a BGG thread and some wiki pages.

It's really interesting to note the reactions to R2 crew back in August. Fast forward 3 months and Paul Heaver has just utilized him in his 2014 World Championship winning list.

Obviously the little guy carries some risk but it's clear the benefits can be worth it. First if you have no shields but no damage cards there is no risk. Or if your damage cards are faceup already there is still no risk. Lastly, if you do have facedown damage cards 5/8ths of the time you won't roll a hit to trigger the damaging effect.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread but given the context I thought it was worthwhile bumping.

And congrats to Paul!

Obviously we don't know what happened in every one of Paul's 11 matches, but it's also worth noting that in the final, his Falcon didn't sustain enough damage for R2D2 crew to trigger.

Here's what happened when Paul played Ira in the top 4 at worlds and it will show just how good this card is.

Paul had Han + C3PO + R2-D2 + MF + Engine + Predator

Ira Had + C3PO + Gunner + MF + Engine + Predator

After about 20 mins of the game all the z95's are dead and Paul's Han has one shield and I can't remember where Ira was at but I think he lost his shields and had taken a damage maybe 2. Ira had init and would move and evade, and then Paul would move after and evade.

So Here's an example of one of their turns.

Ira shoots at Paul and does rolls 3 hits. Paul guesses 0 with C3PO and rolls 0, so he gets an evade and then spends his other evade and then loses a shield. Then Paul shoots Ira and gets 1 damage through. During the end phase R2-D2 repairs a shield. Sense Paul had no damage there's nothing that can be turned up. Now as long as the range is 2 or 3 Ira can Never deal damage to Paul. His only way to win is to last until the end and win on init. There is a chance but the end game is all in Paul's Favor here.

R2-D2 always seemed pretty good on a named HWK. If you've taken a hit, then you always have zero shields and will be triggering R2-D2. And it has enough agility that you'll often just be losing the 1 shield unless being completely focused down.

R2-D2 crew was in the Gencon 2014 Runner-Up's list (Jeff B). He was on Chewbacca and was apparently used heavily throughout the tournament to help get Jeff's list to the Top 2.

So he seems to be a nasty card in the right lists.

This card saved me big time last night in an epic match. It was also one of the best games I've ever played. The whole match kept swinging back and forth. I was winning, then I'm losing, then I'm winning, etc. It finally came down to my Chewie with r2d2, c3po, falcon title, and predator. I had 1 shield from r2 and one hull damage. He had a firespray with navigator and a seismic charge. It had no shields. He also had two academy pilots both at 1 hull.

Anyway, I attacked one of the damaged TIEs that was range 1 since it could attack me with 3 dice and I completely missed. He rolls all hits with everything! I negate 2 with c3po and an evade token and drop all the way down to 2 hull. I figured I was dead now for sure! I use r2 to get a shield and flip a crit over. All sharp turns are red, pretty annoying. Next round I kill a TIE. The firespray couldn't shoot me so it target locked. The other TIE knocks out my shield cuz I had focused instead of evaded. I use r2 and flip a 2 damage card, ugh! Next round I kill the other TIE. Firespray gets 3 hits without using the target lock. I negate 2 hits then after a long think I risked using r2. No crit, whew! Next round I get two crits through on the firspray, both are 2 damage! He rolls blanks, spends target lock and only gets one hit which I evaded. On the next round I roll three hits and he rolls one eyeball and the firespray goes down!

I took a couple pictures of the match. Here I'm rocking two transports, one for jammin' the other for slicin':

This is the round before his ships blasted Chewie down to two hull:

Jeff B was using R2-D2 heavily on the streamed match Friday and indeed it saved his bacon. Seems like the top players realized that R2 would be more useful than the traditional gunner on their Fat Falcon lists.

I think the R2-D2 and C3PO combo is a result of the Falcon heavy meta. The gunner/Luke is really beneficial against high agility targets but maybe superfluous against another Falcon. Paul Heaver played very well in the final, he got especially great mileage out of his Talas. I wonder if this list handles Phantoms in the hands of a lesser player. Jeff´s list (with R2D2 and C3PO) lost against Whisper and Soontir at Gencon. Paul Heaver´s list (with Han/VI/Luke) would probably have beaten the winning list in that tournament.

Aristotle — 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

I think this is a rather apt description of how R2-D2 Crew has become a viable card. On it's own the R2-D2 card is solid yet not amazing, the downside can hurt badly but it's a risk that can be mitigated somewhat.

But by adding the trifecta of MF title + C-3PO and R2-D2 Crew together you create an astonishing resilient combination to an already amazing ship.

As stated above in the semi between Paul and Ira, once it's down to 1 on 1 the opposing ship needs to land 4 hits per turn to get 1 damage to stick, all the while Hans rerolls and predator rerolls are firing back.

I must admit it would be fascinating to see what the meta would look like if the crew cards from the CR-90 were not standard playable.

He made it to Worlds.

Also, why isn't anyone running him with Roark, to stave off the Phantom Menace?

He is a shield upgrade that only works if you have no shields and takes up your crew slot. Now it works good as long as you have no damage cards that could possibly be flipped and that the bad thing that may happen is not a high probability of occurrence. But for 4 points you might just get a shield upgrade.

I have though of using R2-D2 for the B-wing E-3 card. But then again that would be 5 points.

He is a shield upgrade that

He's considerably more than a shield upgrade. On a high hull ship like the falcon he is likely going to be at least 4 shield upgrades.

On any given use, even with the worst case scenario that he flips up a direct hit all that happens is it cancels out that one use. Gain a point loose a point.

Yea the idea of falcons being even more fat/super really makes me sick to my stomach. I agree with the earlier poster who pondered what could have been if ALL the crew cards that came with the huge ships were huge ship only.

Except, that there are some very potent trade offs. If you use Artoo, you are likely losing out on Gunner or Kyle (I saw a few of him in the top squads, I think), which cuts down on your offense. The Falcon only has 2 crew slots. The choice you must make is whether you need the offense or defense. And really, all that defense isn't that great in the face of overwhelming firepower.

I think a lot of people initially thought the downside to R2 was a lot worse than it actually is, and constant shield regeneration on a big ship like the Falcon is a big deal. It's really strong.

from what i can tell, Paul Heavers winning list with R2D2 didnt need gunner as badly as some falcons do because...

1) he ran Predator which gives u 1-2 rerolls if u need them (2 versus a low PS ship)

2) he calculated correctly that the slight loss in firepower would be well worth the tradeoff for more durability versus other fat han lists (and B-Wing hvy lists for that matter that have huge firepower)

3) he is a double world champion and knows his stuff. with as much skill as he has, he wasnt really going to miss gunner anyway, right?