Increasing your mobility in X-Wing will cost you a premium in points. Any ship that has a superior dial or increased mobility options like boost or barrel roll pays for it in points. A good example is the A-Wing compared to the Z-95. Both ships have almost identical jousting stats, but the Prototype Pilot pays extra over the Bandit for its superior dial and boost action. Another great example is the Lambda in comparison to a B-Wing. The Omicron Group Pilot is 1 point cheaper then a Blue Squadron Pilot, while having 2 extra hull then a B-Wing and otherwise identical stats. The B-Wing is paying that extra 1 point and giving up 2 hull points (worth around 2 points each) so it can have a k-turn, white hard turns, and the Barrel Roll action. This is what makes action economy so important in X-Wing, as it often has the ability to increase both your mobility and your jousting power for a single investment.
That means that the more mobility you put into your list, the less raw jousting power you will be able to afford, which I define as the total atk/def/hull/shields in a list, aka mass. This also means that when 2 lists fight each other, one will be more mobile, and one will be more massive, depending on which ships and upgrades were bought. Identifying which is which and understanding how to play to the strengths and weaknesses of each is important. Sometimes the difference between the mass and mobility of two opposing lists will be very slight, in which case the approach you take will matter less than exercising good fundamentals like focus fire. But in games where the difference is significant, understanding how to play to your list’s strengths can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Mass
A list with more mass is, in general going to have a higher combination of red dice, green dice, Hull, and Shields. More massive lists tend to have more ships, but the number of models on the table is less important than their overall stats. A more massive squad wants to fight a war of attrition, trading resources 1-for-1 with the opponent by exchanging salvos. The more massive list wants to play a game of battleship, trading shots 1-for-1, because the more massive list has started the game with more ships on their side of the table.
Being the squad with significantly more mass means you should be favored in a head-to-head fight with a more mobile squad, which means you probably want to joust and fly in a formation. In recent times, many players will tell you that you should never joust and flying in formation is passe, and while they have good reasons for saying this, it is not a universal rule to always avoid jousting, and it is highly dependent on the list you are playing as well as the opponent's. If your list is significantly more massive than your opponent’s, then the odds should be stacked in your favor in a joust. For lists that rely on superior mass, there isn’t really a good alternative to jousting, as splitting up your ships will risk compromising the mass that makes your list strong.
If your list is more massive and less mobile then your opponent’s, then you will want to lessen the importance of your opponent’s mobility as much as you can by keeping your ships together where they can support one another, and make it more difficult for your opponent to use their mobility to isolate one group of your ships from the others.
This is why the wave 1 meta was so joust heavy, for all you fellow old-timers, because the TIE swarm was massive and therefore wanted to joust, while the X-Wing and Y-Wing weren’t mobile enough to avoid a joust. Wave 2 helped a lot with the introduction of the TIE Interceptor and Engine Upgrade, although Wave 3 was a bit of a step backward towards jousting with the introduction of the B-Wing and Lambda Shuttle.
Examples of lists that are typically more massive than they are mobile:
- TIE Swarm
- BBBBZ
- Panic Attack
- 4x BTL/A4 Y-Wings
Mobility
The more mobile list inversely needs to avoid jousting. The more mobile player needs to instead look for opportunities to deny shots from part of the opponent’s list while maintaining all of his shots. By preventing some (or all) of our opponent’s ships from shooting us each turn while maintaining our own attacks, we reduce the opponent’s advantage of having greater mass. We can accomplish this with our greater mobility by either approaching from multiple oblique angles and arc-dodging our opponent if we have a Pilot Skill advantage, or by using what is called a refused flank tactic. A refused flank tactic is executed by getting your opponent to split up their forces and then quickly rushing in to attack the group that is closest to you by using your ships’ superior speed before the other group can respond and offer support. Thus you are able to pit your whole squad against a fraction of the enemy’s during a single turn, using your superior mobility to give you the local numerical advantage over your opponent.
Against an opponent that has more mass than you that refuses to split up their forces, you may have to employ some guile to lure them into splitting up or going in the wrong direction. Bait and switch tactics can work well to get your opponent to send their ships at your ship that is retreating while your other ships attack the opponent’s flank. I’ve touched on some of this in a previous article, and I plan to go into more detail about how you can do this with your opening moves in the future.
I personally prefer lists that are more mobile and less reliant on jousting, as more mobile lists give me more opportunities to outplay my opponent rather than relying on dice. That’s not to say that more massive lists don’t require skill or don’t give opportunities to outplay the opponent, they do, but they are also less flexible and more vulnerable to the effects of rolling exceptionally poorly in the early rounds. A more mobile list, when played well, can often avert the consequences of rolling poorly by making the dice rolls more one-sided.
Examples of ships that are typically more mobile than massive:
- Anything with Push the Limit and Barrel Roll + Boost
- Fat Turrets with Engine Upgrade (low attack dice per points makes them poor at jousting)
Know your Role
While the examples given are good indicators of where you might fall on the mass v mobility scale, it’s not always going to be set in stone. For example, let’s say you’re playing Soontir Fel with a mini-swarm (Howlrunner + 4 TIEs) against an opponent with Fat Lone Wolf Chewie (Lone Wolf, C-3PO, MF, Engine Upgrade) and Super Corran (PTL, R2-D2, FCS, Engine Upgrade). Soontir Fel is typically going to be a more mobile ship, but comparing the lists, the imperial list on a whole has less mobility and more mass then the rebel list.
If I was the rebel player, my main strategic goal would be to isolate Soontir from the TIES early by rushing up the field at him and use Chewie to block his movements while Corran lit him up. The imperial player may want to prevent this by keeping Soontir close to the mini-swarm rather than splitting up from them, possibly even joining their formation and combining his firepower with the swarm and Howlrunner’s ability to help take down Chewie as fast as possible so he can start arc-dodging Corran. Soontir actually isn’t terrible at jousting against 2-ship builds as long as he is armored up with 3 tokens.
Note also that determining mass v mobility is not just about counting ships. If we were to take that same Imperial list and compare it to BBBBZ, even though the Imperials have 1 more ship total, the overall mass of BBBBZ’s hit points and firepower outweighs the Imperials, and so the Imperials are going to need to use their superior mobility to beat the BBBBZ list.
And if you notice that your list seems to have less mass AND less mobility than your opponent’s, that might be a sign that your list is not efficient enough and you may need to take it back to the drawing board.
Knowing if you are the more massive or more mobile squad will help better guide how you approach an engagement. If you are the more massive squad, you need to do everything in your power to bring all of your guns to bear each turn. If you are the more mobile squad, you need to use your mobility to prevent your opponent from utilizing all of their forces each turn.
Please post your thoughts on the subject, and if you want to read more articles like this, please check out my blog linked here and in my sig.
You can read the original 40k article that I adapted this concept from many years ago here. This hidden gem has a lot of great articles about game theory in general that can be applied to most games.