Championship A-Wing list

By Lordtwann, in X-Wing

Just won a local store championship with:

Prototype Pilot x4

Chardaan

Green squad x2

Charlatan

Predator

Twenty four people, and some really tough competition. Had one loss to a nasty TIE swarm in Swiss. Ended up facing him again in the final eight and pulled off a win. It was a super long day and tough matches. But A-Wings rule.

So yeah, respect the A-Wing.

Lol charlatan stupid auto correct

I lost twice to this list yesterday, once in Swiss and once at the final table. My opponent flew brilliantly and definitely deserved the championship. His opening setup was unorthodox but allowed for great flexibility and he was able to concentrate fire very well while also being able to peel away wounded A Wings. Congrats again! Sure we will play again soon.

Interesting... I've been trying to build some Awing lists as well. Did you face any phantoms?

I lost to a 5 procket list at our store championship. Came down to the last one too. Probably my favorite game ever played.

I lost to a 5 procket list at our store championship. Came down to the last one too. Probably my favorite game ever played.

It was a beautiful game, and came down to dice at the very end.

#GoPinkForNick

How often did Predator enter the equation against those A-Wing swarms?

How often did Predator enter the equation against those A-Wing swarms?

According to List Juggler, not at all. I will share, though, that I went 4-0 and made the top seed in another store championship (18 players) with a 4A+Luke list. Unfortunately, I lost on the last turn of the first round of the cut but beat a Fat Han + Vrill list that had predator 100-0 and also beat the eventual winning list (Admiral+Whisper) 100-0.

A-Wings are much better than I gave them credit even after the refit for and are, imo, the best blocker in the game (especially against phantoms) thanks to their their extra movement option and very good resiliency for what you pay.

So how does this work? Did you crash them together until they formed a turret?

I've faced them before, and once in the SC. I've gotten total kills against Phantoms in the past. The list I played against this past SC was Whisper/Chiraneau. I took out Chi-Chi, was able to do a bit of blocking and scattered to take it to time. The guy I played last night flew brilliantly and managed to give me the run around a bit but I was able to pull it off. Other Phantom lists I've played went much much better. The last time I flew against one in a tourney with this list it was almost a blowout, still had four ships left when I finished him off.

Predator for me ended up being a much better decision over PTL on the greens. It came into play quite a lot and made a huge difference. The decreased predictability helped a lot.

Glad to know others are having success with the a-wings. I know that where i play there have earned a great deal of respect despite their seemingly lacking stats. I call them the little ship that could ;)

Gratz on the fruits of your very fine labors!

The A-wing's a tanky little brute, it's just hard to get its point cost out of the more expensive ones without prot rockets

That said, there's not enough respect for Predator Gemmer on this board. That's 23 points of pure pain in the ass that basically counters Tie Swarms by himself :P

It's not just the four dice, people have to shoot at phantoms all the time, it's four dice and 23 points. People just hate the idea of pouring fire onto a this tiny 2-red-dice gnat, and boy oh boy does he thrive on that hate.

Edited by ficklegreendice

I'm glad the A-Wing is getting the recognition I think it deserves. I too won a SC with the little guys. Since SC 2014 I've tried to have them in my squads. I was so happy to have them in a winning squad.

I lost to a 5 procket list at our store championship. Came down to the last one too. Probably my favorite game ever played.

No offense, and you would probably even agree looking back on it. but you flew boba fett straight into 4 of the rockets, and the decimator straight into most of the ships as well. I would guess that the store champion with 6 awings capitalized on similar moves by the phantoms/decimators he played.

I could probably link 5 examples on youtube right now of people playing decimators and still jousting with them like it's wave 1. Use the board/asteroids to break up groups of 4-6 ships. Use your (not just YOU people in general i mean) higher PS. Use your turrets/extra firing arc/declocaks/ engine upgrades etc. People have got to stop feeding rebel swarms etc.

Gratz on the fruits of your very fine labors!

The A-wing's a tanky little brute, it's just hard to get its point cost out of the more expensive ones without prot rockets

That said, there's not enough respect for Predator Gemmer on this board. That's 23 points of pure pain in the ass that basically counters Tie Swarms by himself :P

It's not just the four dice, people have to shoot at phantoms all the time, it's four dice and 23 points. People just hate the idea of pouring fire onto a this tiny 2-red-dice gnat, and boy oh boy does he thrive on that hate.

Edited by Lordtwann

I lost to a 5 procket list at our store championship. Came down to the last one too. Probably my favorite game ever played.

No offense, and you would probably even agree looking back on it. but you flew boba fett straight into 4 of the rockets, and the decimator straight into most of the ships as well. I would guess that the store champion with 6 awings capitalized on similar moves by the phantoms/decimators he played.

I could probably link 5 examples on youtube right now of people playing decimators and still jousting with them like it's wave 1. Use the board/asteroids to break up groups of 4-6 ships. Use your (not just YOU people in general i mean) higher PS. Use your turrets/extra firing arc/declocaks/ engine upgrades etc. People have got to stop feeding rebel swarms etc.

YEP! Did a tournament yesterday, took the Admiral and the Colonel Vessery. Decimatlor had EU ended up flanking a Z swarm, really fun game, went to time but in the end 4 dead Z's no dead imps.

It took a few tournaments before people stopped jousting and started side-winding their turreted ships, and about one more before the few non-users started clustering all the asteroids on one side of the table to get them to do it again.

I think this is a really cool list. A lot of times it seems like I see A-wings in lists and they've got 1 or 2 as blockers or have a lot more points sunk in them. I think they're pretty cool as a swarm. Their firepower starts being a bigger contribution and they're tough for the points. Very cool that you brought this to a store championship.

Seriously.. How does this list beat phantoms with acd? Just Can't see it happening. What prevents them from just killing an awing each turn? They move last shoot first. Should be so easy to isolate one or two awings a turn.

Seriously.. How does this list beat phantoms with acd? Just Can't see it happening. What prevents them from just killing an awing each turn? They move last shoot first. Should be so easy to isolate one or two awings a turn.

The same way any other swarm does: blocking decloak locations and just plinking damage.

With a swarm, you try and herd Phantoms into specific locations. If you get a few shots on a Phantom a turn - even with 2 attack ships - you have a good chance of dropping one or two points of damage on it. A Phantom will die in 4 hits.

A-Wings are also very, very tough. They have 4 hits behind 3 dice.

A lot of people think A-Wings are worthless because of the two attack dice, but they've always been pretty amazing for me.

Yup

Phantom maneuverability is legit, but it is also highly over-represented on the forums. As long as we're dealing with linear de-cloaks, predicting where the phantom will end up is not nearly as difficult as pushing enough attacks through four greens.

It warms my heart to see an A-Wing win a championship, and extra warmth for the A-Wing swarm. Congrats!

Could you do a more detailed write up of some of your tough matches? I'm curious about how you took down some of the harder turrets and phantom lists you likely faced.

A-wings have fast become my favorite Rebel ship. Only small based ship they have with a white hard-1. That maneuver is probably the 2nd best in the game. It gets even better when you can boost off of it.

Seriously.. How does this list beat phantoms with acd? Just Can't see it happening. What prevents them from just killing an awing each turn? They move last shoot first. Should be so easy to isolate one or two awings a turn.

To oneshot an A-wing a phantom must roll four hits and the A-wing must blank out. It'd take a while to run the numbers on it but the probably of it happening isn't high and the probability of it happening six rounds in a row is very low.

The phantom has 24 points of health to chew through, all behind 3 agility with tokens. The phantom's got four agility but only four health.

Edited by TIE Pilot

To oneshot an A-wing a phantom must roll four hits and the A-wing must blank out.

People do seem to seriously overestimate the Phantom. Sure it has 4 defense dice, but who hasn't rolled 4 blanks before? Also with what 6 A-Wings, you can get a lot of attacks on target. If you avg .5 hits per attack, it still only takes 8 attacks to kill the Phantom.

A Phantom can't just decloak anywhere it wants, it is possible block it's decloak which prevents it from even shooting.

It is not impossible to predict where the phantom is likely to decloak and get a number of ships to have the phantom in their arc.

The odds of a Phantom one shooting anything in the rebel fleet, is actually not that high, even at range 1, you still have little chance of getting a one shot kill against even a Z-95. 5 dice + Focus vs even 2 agl is going to do 2.5 or so damage on avg.