People have been worried about the X-Wing for a long time, and some are even more worried now that the T-70 has arrived. That got me thinking today about what my ideal change would be. There have been many proposed fixes, but I don't think I've seen one quite like what I am proposing here, so forgive me if I'm accidentally stealing or rehashing someone else's idea.
* Rogue Leader (title)
X-Wing only
At the start of the activation phase, choose a friendly X-Wing at range 1-3 that has no pilot ability. It has your pilot ability until the end of the round. You may not use your pilot ability this round.
Cost = (0-2?)
Why do I like this?
- It's simple.
- It's thematic (imagine the leader teaching a rookie advanced tactics).
- It doesn't take up the astromech slot.
- You only need one copy of it, so it could be easily proxied or tossed in an expansion that you only want one of.
- The general consensus seems to be that only the generics need help, and this does just that.
- It essentially turns all the generics into named pilots which I think is what sets the X-Wing apart from all other ships since it has more named pilots than any other ship.
- It's a different kind of buff than what we've seen before. It doesn't involve negative squad points, give the ship new upgrades, or change the way the ship itself works. The closest thing to it are the IG-88 pilots, but I think it's sufficiently different from even them.
However, there are a couple problems I'm not sure how to solve.
- I'm not sure if this should be allowed on the T-70 because that gives those ships access to all the old abilities which would further hurt the old generics. I'm not sure how to exclude the T-70 from the "X-Wing only" criteria.
- I don't like the "You may not use your pilot ability this round" limitation, but it was the only way I could avoid a broken Biggs loop. Perhaps also giving the chosen ship the same pilot skill as the leader (like a super swarm tactics) would help, or is that too much?