Hi folks,

After getting a couple of games under my belt I can't seems to find a reason to bring Xwings. Why do you bring them?

The challenges I find are:

There is nothing "worth" escorting. Usually you want a cheap, durable ship to escort / protect an expensive / fragile ship. The Xwing is 2.6 points / hp, while the awing is 2.75, and Bwing is 2.8. The Ywing is a wonderful 1.67. Compare this to the advanced at 2.4 and the Interceptor at 3.67! It's no wonder we see Advanceds escorting squints.

The battery armament expected damage compares to the awing, which costs 2 points less.

The most powerful use of Xwings I have seen is not purely as a solo escort, but rather the move into a combat, and engage only 1 or 2 of the squadrons. This is then repeated at the other edge of the combat. In the end, it allows the X-wing controler to focus all there attacks on a few ships, while forcing their opponent to split up their attacks, doing a couple damage, but not killing any Xwing.

on a Hyperspace Assault I had an x wing escorting my 2 B-wings on Yavaris that jumped in behind my opponent's Victory class SD - he had fighters waiting at the jump point but because the B-wings had an escort they still had enough health left at the end of the sortie to present an aggressive and viable threat. In the end they took out the VSD

The A Wing, and X Wing battery armament are not functionally the same.

X Wings are bombers. That makes them quite a bit better against ships. A Wings aren't terrible, but not as good.

The A Wing, and X Wing battery armament are not functionally the same.

X Wings are bombers. That makes them quite a bit better against ships. A Wings aren't terrible, but not as good.

Statistically they do the exact same amount of damage. The only difference is Bomber. If you are attacking shields with an A wing, or an X Wing they do the same damage. On average 0.75 damage each attack.

I still use x-wings because you can just pretend escort doesn't exist

the only ship worth escorting are B-wings, which I havn't used yet

I use X-wings for As for higher damage potential (double hit and devastating crits) and especially for 4 blue dice making it far more likely to one shot ties (especially with FC) and power through character defense tokens (Esp scatter). Counter + 3 dice outputs more damage but more slowly and the one health difference is massive (the difference between one and none? literally everything).

I run 6 of them with Gallant Haven, and while they're in the bubble they will win against everything (including FC + howlrunner 6-dice interceptors)

the X-wings are line breakers (and they absolutely crap on tie advance i.t.o value). A-wings are swarmy bastards that'll tie down an opponent's squadron assets and then go on to do very decent support damage against cap ships.

The Wedge + Dutch combo is also quite fun, spendy yet crunchy. Throwing 6 dice at something that already suffered one is pretty much going to kill anything short of a tie bomber.

The A Wing, and X Wing battery armament are not functionally the same.

X Wings are bombers. That makes them quite a bit better against ships. A Wings aren't terrible, but not as good.

Statistically they do the exact same amount of damage. The only difference is Bomber. If you are attacking shields with an A wing, or an X Wing they do the same damage. On average 0.75 damage each attack.

The A Wing, and X Wing battery armament are not functionally the same.

X Wings are bombers. That makes them quite a bit better against ships. A Wings aren't terrible, but not as good.

Statistically they do the exact same amount of damage. The only difference is Bomber. If you are attacking shields with an A wing, or an X Wing they do the same damage. On average 0.75 damage each attack.

Not quite. They hit the same percent of the time. But the X-Wing gets a double hit icon for slightly higher average damage. It is "better" against ships. Just not murderously so.

not "better" just better (not murderously so, but better)

crits are incredible in Armada, and the ability to inflict them does give bomber ships a significant edge against non-bombers. Not to suggest the A-wing is a slouch, but the increased ability to one and done ties and inflict higher potential damage (including crits, not just higher #s) are what give the X its edge over the A (which has its cheaper price and hilarious speed)

The A Wing, and X Wing battery armament are not functionally the same.

X Wings are bombers. That makes them quite a bit better against ships. A Wings aren't terrible, but not as good.

Statistically they do the exact same amount of damage. The only difference is Bomber. If you are attacking shields with an A wing, or an X Wing they do the same damage. On average 0.75 damage each attack.

Not quite. They hit the same percent of the time. But the X-Wing gets a double hit icon for slightly higher average damage. It is "better" against ships. Just not murderously so.

not "better" just better (not murderously so, but better)

crits are incredible in Armada, and the ability to inflict them does give bomber ships a significant edge against non-bombers. Not to suggest the A-wing is a slouch, but the increased ability to one and done ties and inflict higher potential damage (including crits, not just higher #s) are what give the X its edge over the A (which has its cheaper price and hilarious speed)

It's not cut and dry. But Bomber on X-Wings isn't as good as Bomber on Y or B-Wings.

Personally I have found that once the shields go down the ship tends to follow very shortly.

Its my opinion that xwings are the squadrons in the game. They wreck fighters amd can bring significant damage to a ship once you have fghter superiority.

Wedge and Dutch are phenominal together. Luke is also great thanks to thr double brace.

Not quite. They hit the same percent of the time. But the X-Wing gets a double hit icon for slightly higher average damage. It is "better" against ships. Just not murderously so.

The double is factored in. The red die has two blanks and one precision (leaving 5 hits with one double) and the black has two blanks, four hits and two crit-hits. This gives the X-Wing a chance of 5/8 doing at least one damage and 1/8 of doing two damage (for 50% chance of 1 damage and a 12.5% chance of doing two damage, multiplying the chance with the damage and adding up leaves us with: 75% for damage, with a likeliness of 62.5% of doing at least one damage, 12.5% for two damage). The A-Wing has a 6/8 chance of dealing one damage, that's 75% for damage and a likeliness of 75% for at least one damage, 0% for more than one.

This leaves the A-Wing to be more reliable than the X-Wing with the same average damage vs. shields, but the X-Wing has the better damage vs. unshielded ships, as it can inflict crits.

Squadrons normally get absolutely no benefit out of a crit result. It doesn't even count as 1 damage. It simply is not there. The X-Wing does get to use its crit result, being a bomber. So the hit/crit side on the black die is a single hit for A-Wings, and 2 hits with a crit effect for the X-Wings.

Using black dice the damage output of an X-Wing is higher than an A-Wing.

Squadrons normally get absolutely no benefit out of a crit result. It doesn't even count as 1 damage. It simply is not there. The X-Wing does get to use its crit result, being a bomber. So the hit/crit side on the black die is a single hit for A-Wings, and 2 hits with a crit effect for the X-Wings.

Using black dice the damage output of an X-Wing is higher than an A-Wing.

Personally I have found that once the shields go down the ship tends to follow very shortly.

pretty much this

you're getting, at most, 6 engineering points on a VSD for 3 shields. IF the X-wings don't plow through that or just overlap to another side, then the capital ship red dice will just hit a vulnerable side.

also sure, I'd take 2 damage over a crit most times, but you can't really choose and you're more likely to roll a crit But that's okay, crits are devastating and quite a few of them can end up dealing 2 damage or even more by forcing your opponent's hand.

X-wings are good in a balanced squadron build. Trust me, you want ties shooting at escort when you have a build that revolves around your squadron. I would rather lose an X-Wing over a B-wing or a y-wing, then have an A-Wing that might survive once. And that's not to factor in if they are flying Soontir, Mauler and an advance with escort. Now your A-Wing is dead and you only had one ship fire at you.

You don't need a lot of X-Wing's, but I'd keep at least 2 in my back pocket for when you really need them.

I absolutely love it when my opponent spends precious rounds killing my Y wings. It takes forever to chew threw 6 hull (~12 blue dice). In the time it takes a tie fighter to kill the ywing, they could have done ~1.5 damage to my capital ship ( 3 attacks, giving it 4 dice an attack).

And typically, once they do finally kill the Ywing, the battle has moved so far away that the surviving tie is a non-factor for the rest of the game.

Btw can you tell I love Y Wings?

Good hull, better at 1 shotting fighters than any alliance fighter, high upside vs ships.

Don't squadrons with BOMBER use their hits and crits to reduce shields? (without resolving the crit effect)

The rules say it's considered damage.

One key is that it's much more likely for a 4-dice ship to one-shot a 3HP TIE Fighter/Interceptor than a 3 dice ship.

X-Wing's escort is pretty much useless, but having an OK antiship attack and the most antifighter of any rebel is why you take them.

A-Wings IMO are equal, just lighter. One less dice, counter is a more useful ability, and very similar bombing ability (.75 damage is still .75 damage per die). But speed 5 is amazingly useful to actually get the attacks you want to get, or butcher TIEs.

I'm a balanced squadron kind of guy. My A-wings engage TIEs to lock them down, while my X & Ys attack ships. Eventually the A dies, hopefully after taking down a TIE or two and weakening a few others, and then my X needs to be chewed through before my Ys. With luck, my A-wing ties up the TIEs until their ship moves out of command range, and the TIEs are using their own activation to chase my bombers down.

I will say this in support of Escort, do you want TIEs shooting a generic X-wing, or your named Bombers?

Squadrons normally get absolutely no benefit out of a crit result. It doesn't even count as 1 damage. It simply is not there. The X-Wing does get to use its crit result, being a bomber. So the hit/crit side on the black die is a single hit for A-Wings, and 2 hits with a crit effect for the X-Wings.

Using black dice the damage output of an X-Wing is higher than an A-Wing.

Named pilots are essentially a different ship. We're discussing generic 13 point X-Wings. They get red dice.

My mistake. I haven't played a generic X-Wing in a long time (between trying new stuff and playing Imperials), and even then I rarely got to attack ships. You are right in assuming I was thinking of Luke.

Don't squadrons with BOMBER use their hits and crits to reduce shields? (without resolving the crit effect)

The rules say it's considered damage.

Yes they do. Normally, a crit deals 1 damage and gets to resolve a critical effect. Bombers get to use critical like normal, so they are still hitting the shields with them.

If A-wings had Escort as well as Counter they would better represent what they actually were designed to do but they might be overpowered for Armada.