Hello everyone. I like X Wing a lot, and my hubby says I fly my ships very well (almost never crash into asteroids, etc), BUT I stink at making builds. He beats me ALL THE TIME and I'm sick of it!!! I want to destroy him!!! ...I mean, his squad . Anyway, here is one that I thought was pretty good, but it got demolished when we played last night:

YV-666 - Marolo Eval

- Mangler Cannon

- Dengar (bc the dice gods hate me)

- Mercenary Copilot

- Outlaw Tech

Kirahxz Fighter - Talonbane Cobra

- Predator (bc dice gods hate me)

Z95-Headhunter - Binayre Pirate x2

It's 100 points total. He had a Rebel build with an E-wing and K-wing who each had a shield-regenerating capability (I think the K-wing had a pilot with something like, Roll one less attack die and gain one shield, and the E-wing had R2D2, who regens shields with green moves).

I appreciate all your time and help guys! Thank you!

Looks like a pretty decent list for casual play, but If your husband is making tournament-style lists and constantly winning, you may need to do the same.

Browse posts talking about the current META or look at some Tournament session reports that people are posting about. If you see any of the lists that people are having success with in a tournament, and they fit your play style & collection, you might want to give that a try. With so many possible combinations of ship lists, a decent, competitive list is the best way to go.

Another option (since it's a casual game, and not everyone wants to spend time building tournament lists when they just want to have fun) is to introduce a handicap of some sort. Even a small handicap can make a big difference in some situations:

- You get extra points to spend on a squad

- He gets fewer points for a squad

- You get to peek at his completed list before you start building yours

- You get to pick and toss out one of his upgrades before starting

- He may not build a list that includes certain upgrades that are the bane of you game

- Your ships get an extra shield

- You get to decide to "switch sides" and play his list while he plays yours before you start a game (just don't sabotage each other!)

- You always get to choose asteroid placement, initiative decisions, etc.

- You may to use 1 ship/pilot from a different faction in your lists

- At the start of the game, he must draw a face up damage card and assign it to a ship of his choice.

With all the things you could tweak, there are lots of handicap options, but there are a few ideas.

I wish I had something to offer other then welcome and hello.

Hello and welcome!

If you've got the hang of flying big ships without hitting the rocks, well done. (Trust me, I can say from experience that takes most people a while!).

Well, aside from generic threats to rip his arms off* if you're known for that sort of thing, there are a few tweaks we can suggest. I'd assume from the description that the K-wing pilot is Miranda Doni (as noted, you can either 'pay' a shield to get an extra attack die, or else 'buy' a shield by firing with one less die), and if paired with R2-D2 and on his own, the E-wing is probably Corran Horn (who can fire twice in one turn at the expense of not shooting the turn after).

Regenerating shields is a fairly standard trick with rebels - especially on ships with Boost or SLAM (I'll lay a decent wager that the E-wing had an engine upgrade). Essentially, fly into range, smack something about, then break contact with whoever got shot up and spend time recovering shields whilst the other one fights, then come back in with the first and trade places, and so on.

It's a nasty trick. If this is the standard squad you face - or at least the standard tactic - then alpha striking the [swearword of choice] out of one ship is the ideal counter - you can't recover shields if you're dust bunnies.

Blocking is also a good trick, another key part of piloting, and worth learning if no-one's shown or mentioned it. Essentially, if you've got a lower pilot skill, and can place a ship where your opponent is trying to move to, they can't complete their move and (more importantly) get no action.

Which, if that action was going to be barrel roll, boost or SLAM, is a big deal as they can't use actions to move after you then retroactively shift their position to be juuuuust outside your arc of fire and then smugly declare what a brilliant pilot they are**.

I guess List building is around strategies. What is a unit for, and how does it interact with other things in your squad. As a rule you should have a plan (not necessarily a good plan) for dealing with each of the following:

• A big ship or a pack of heavy fighters (like B-wings or Y-wings) with 0-1 green dice and many, many hit points (many attacks are good, the actual number or red dice less important)
• A swarm of small fighters (Z-95s, scyks, TIE fighters and TIE/fos)with 2-3 green dice and 3-4 hit points each (you ideally want attacks at 3-4 attack dice, preferably 4 or else 3 with both target lock and focus. There are few shields so criticals tend to be good).
• An ace who can move faster than you and boost/barrel roll/SLAM/decloak for serious ability to shift from the maneuver on his or her dial. Expect agility 3-4 and probably other stuff too like shield regeneration, autothrusters, or many, many tokens. (killing them isn't so much of a problem as pinning them in place whilst you do it - blocking their initial move, putting stress tokens on them or putting ion tokens on them - or both - then dog-piling them with your entire squad - is generally the way to go)

Looking at the squad you used:

Z95-Headhunter - Binayre Pirate x2

Headhunters are nice for spare warm bodies - don't expect great things from them but you can't ignore a pair of fighters, no matter how cheap and lightly armed they are. Against something low agility like a K-wing, they can still inflict damage quite quickly.

They're nice at blocking, at shooting stuff up at medium-to-short range. They can be missile boats but get expensive (ish) if you build them that way. Missiles, Glitterstim and Guidance Chips are a nice mix

If I wanted to keep them cheap but a bit more tactical, Feedback Array is a nice trick - you can fly into an inconvenient position and zap someone at range 1 outside your arc or even if they bumped you.

Kirahxz Fighter - Talonbane Cobra

- Predator (bc dice gods hate me)

The Khirahxz is a nice medium fighter, fairly close to an X-wing. Which actually means it's fairly fragile for it points - it's not flimsy (like a 3-hit point TIE interceptor) but it's still only got 5 hit points and more importantly only got 2 green dice to protect them with. When paired with the pretty high cost and lethality of Talonbane Cobra, that makes him both a priority target to kill and a fairly easy one to kill.

As a result, you either need to use his high PS9 to outfly potential attackers (an engine upgrade is good) or else accept that he's gonna get one good shot then get killed horribly in the face and build him as a disposable asset.

Fortunately, scum do one-shot upgrades really well. Crack Shot is cheap and lethally effective for one shot. Glitterstim givs you unlimited focus for one turn for a pittance of points. Stealth Device gives you +1 agility until you're hit - combined with the extra green dice for range 3 and the extra extra green dice for being Talonbane Cobra and he's got a nigh untouchable 5 green dice for the opening shots. It'll fail at close range, but by then you should be at range 1, deliverying a Glitterstimm/Crack Shot/Target Lock 5 attack dice shot on someone who will not be there once you're done. If he gets killed the turn after, who the hell cares?

YV-666 - Marolo Eval

- Mangler Cannon

- Dengar (bc the dice gods hate me)

- Mercenary Copilot

- Outlaw Tech

A YV-666 is a nice mobile bunker. Moralo's ability to fire his cannon through a 180' arc makes him amazing, and much more effective than a fairly low pilot skill would suggest.

The things I'd pick on are the crew - firstly the mercenary co-pilot. With only a 3-dice attack, you're not going to reliably land that many hits. You've already got one 'free crit', and with a guy with a cannon, no-one's going to want to hang at long range if they can avoid it anyway. Secondly, Dengar gives you multiple rerolls against unique pilots. With only three dice, you don't really need them. I'm not saying he's bad (he isn't) but you'd get even more mileage out of him with a heavy laser cannon's 4 dice.

Dropping the co-pilot leaves you only 1 point short of a heavy laser cannon instead of the mangler. Yes, you don't land criticals, but the thing is that criticals aren't that big a deal; unless you have abilities which trigger off them, most of the time I'd rather take the extra point of 'normal' damage. Especially when facing ships with shields (which ignore criticals) and get them back (so you need to do more damage in a short space of time).

The outlaw tech isn't bad - it gives you a focus when doing hard manoeuvre (like the 'stop') but when packing a wide-arc cannon, did you actually need to manoeuvre that hard? You've got a white hard turn, so can put the cannon's arc behind your starting position fairly easily.

Alternatively, you can drop one Z-95, which frees up quite a lot of points but does leave you a warm body short..

• Binyare Pilot - Feedback Array
• Talonbane Cobra - Crack Shot, Homing Missile, Glitterstimm, Stealth Device
• Moralo Eval - Heavy Laser Cannon, Dengar, Outlaw Tech

* Let the Wife win....

** Astute observers will detect I have standing issues with people who use a PS11 Darth Vader or similar and then act like this.

I like X Wing a lot, and my hubby ... beats me ALL THE TIME

P.S. Kudos for sticking with it! Many people just give up when they lose a couple games in a row. I'm glad you're still enjoying it!

I hope Magnus Grendel's response was helpful. I think the only thing he didn't touch on was how to perform ritual sacrifices to appease the dice gods that seem to hate you. I have noticed that some players put their dice back in the box and use new ones if they're constantly rolling poorly. Time outs work for toddlers, why not dice? They'll learn...

Again, Kudos! And welcome to the forums!

I hope Magnus Grendel's response was helpful. I think the only thing he didn't touch on was how to perform ritual sacrifices to appease the dice gods that seem to hate you. I have noticed that some players put their dice back in the box and use new ones if they're constantly rolling poorly. Time outs work for toddlers, why not dice? They'll learn...

There is no reasoning with the Octahedrons Of Inevitable Betrayal.

One option is to try and make your bigger ships more useful. I despise Merc. Cop. And Outlaw Tech has limited use in your list. You can drop the second Pirate, and instead go with the following as an option.

YV-666: Moralo Eval, Mangler Cannon, Dengar, Tactician, K4-Security Droid and Engine Upgrade - 50

Kihraxz Fighter: Talonbane Cobra, Predator, Gliterstim and Engine Upgrade - 37
Z-95 HH: Black Sun Soldier.

This list better utilizes the strengths of the pilots you have but it drops you to 3 ships.

Another possible build is this:
YV-666: Moralo Eval, Mangler Cannon, Dengar, 4-LOM - 42
Y-Wing: Synd. Thug, Twin Laser Turret and R4 Aggromech – 26
Z-95 HH: Bin. Pirate, Cluster Missiles, Guidance Chips – 16
Z-95 HH: Bin. Pirate, Cluster Missiles, Guidance Chips – 16

Good luck!

Rather than Eval, you might try Latts Razzi in the YV - maybe keep Dengar, but swap the other two crew for Weapons Engineer to maintain the 2nd target lock. Her ability paired with Talonbane means he could conceivably be throwing 5 red dice at a suddenly 0-agility K-wing.

My wife has been waiting to use the following versus my rebels (still waiting on the YV-666 to arrive):

Guri (StarViper) with Virago Title, Autothrusters and Sensor Jammer

Latts Razzi (YV-666) with Weapons Engineer and K4 Security Droid

Binayre Pirate (Z-95 Headhunter) x 2

Double target locks from green maneuvers for Latts Razzi and use one to help Guri (one of the nice things of them being the same PS).

I'll let you know how it goes versus my Rebel and Imperial lists.

My buddy has had some recent success with this list:

Bossk (48)

YV-666 (35), Veteran Instincts (1), “Mangler” Cannon (4), K4 Security Droid (3), Boba Fett (1), Engine Upgrade (4)

Syndicate Thug (26) x 2

Y-Wing (18), Twin Laser Turret (6), R4 Agromech (2)

Recently dropping Boba for 4.Lom

Hello and welcome!

If you've got the hang of flying big ships without hitting the rocks, well done. (Trust me, I can say from experience that takes most people a while!).

Well, aside from generic threats to rip his arms off* if you're known for that sort of thing, there are a few tweaks we can suggest. I'd assume from the description that the K-wing pilot is Miranda Doni (as noted, you can either 'pay' a shield to get an extra attack die, or else 'buy' a shield by firing with one less die), and if paired with R2-D2 and on his own, the E-wing is probably Corran Horn (who can fire twice in one turn at the expense of not shooting the turn after).

Regenerating shields is a fairly standard trick with rebels - especially on ships with Boost or SLAM (I'll lay a decent wager that the E-wing had an engine upgrade). Essentially, fly into range, smack something about, then break contact with whoever got shot up and spend time recovering shields whilst the other one fights, then come back in with the first and trade places, and so on.

It's a nasty trick. If this is the standard squad you face - or at least the standard tactic - then alpha striking the [swearword of choice] out of one ship is the ideal counter - you can't recover shields if you're dust bunnies.

Blocking is also a good trick, another key part of piloting, and worth learning if no-one's shown or mentioned it. Essentially, if you've got a lower pilot skill, and can place a ship where your opponent is trying to move to, they can't complete their move and (more importantly) get no action.

Which, if that action was going to be barrel roll, boost or SLAM, is a big deal as they can't use actions to move after you then retroactively shift their position to be juuuuust outside your arc of fire and then smugly declare what a brilliant pilot they are**.

I guess List building is around strategies. What is a unit for, and how does it interact with other things in your squad. As a rule you should have a plan (not necessarily a good plan) for dealing with each of the following:

• A big ship or a pack of heavy fighters (like B-wings or Y-wings) with 0-1 green dice and many, many hit points (many attacks are good, the actual number or red dice less important)
• A swarm of small fighters (Z-95s, scyks, TIE fighters and TIE/fos)with 2-3 green dice and 3-4 hit points each (you ideally want attacks at 3-4 attack dice, preferably 4 or else 3 with both target lock and focus. There are few shields so criticals tend to be good).
• An ace who can move faster than you and boost/barrel roll/SLAM/decloak for serious ability to shift from the maneuver on his or her dial. Expect agility 3-4 and probably other stuff too like shield regeneration, autothrusters, or many, many tokens. (killing them isn't so much of a problem as pinning them in place whilst you do it - blocking their initial move, putting stress tokens on them or putting ion tokens on them - or both - then dog-piling them with your entire squad - is generally the way to go)

Looking at the squad you used:

Z95-Headhunter - Binayre Pirate x2

Headhunters are nice for spare warm bodies - don't expect great things from them but you can't ignore a pair of fighters, no matter how cheap and lightly armed they are. Against something low agility like a K-wing, they can still inflict damage quite quickly.

They're nice at blocking, at shooting stuff up at medium-to-short range. They can be missile boats but get expensive (ish) if you build them that way. Missiles, Glitterstim and Guidance Chips are a nice mix

If I wanted to keep them cheap but a bit more tactical, Feedback Array is a nice trick - you can fly into an inconvenient position and zap someone at range 1 outside your arc or even if they bumped you.

Kirahxz Fighter - Talonbane Cobra

- Predator (bc dice gods hate me)

The Khirahxz is a nice medium fighter, fairly close to an X-wing. Which actually means it's fairly fragile for it points - it's not flimsy (like a 3-hit point TIE interceptor) but it's still only got 5 hit points and more importantly only got 2 green dice to protect them with. When paired with the pretty high cost and lethality of Talonbane Cobra, that makes him both a priority target to kill and a fairly easy one to kill.

As a result, you either need to use his high PS9 to outfly potential attackers (an engine upgrade is good) or else accept that he's gonna get one good shot then get killed horribly in the face and build him as a disposable asset.

Fortunately, scum do one-shot upgrades really well. Crack Shot is cheap and lethally effective for one shot. Glitterstim givs you unlimited focus for one turn for a pittance of points. Stealth Device gives you +1 agility until you're hit - combined with the extra green dice for range 3 and the extra extra green dice for being Talonbane Cobra and he's got a nigh untouchable 5 green dice for the opening shots. It'll fail at close range, but by then you should be at range 1, deliverying a Glitterstimm/Crack Shot/Target Lock 5 attack dice shot on someone who will not be there once you're done. If he gets killed the turn after, who the hell cares?

YV-666 - Marolo Eval

- Mangler Cannon

- Dengar (bc the dice gods hate me)

- Mercenary Copilot

- Outlaw Tech

A YV-666 is a nice mobile bunker. Moralo's ability to fire his cannon through a 180' arc makes him amazing, and much more effective than a fairly low pilot skill would suggest.

The things I'd pick on are the crew - firstly the mercenary co-pilot. With only a 3-dice attack, you're not going to reliably land that many hits. You've already got one 'free crit', and with a guy with a cannon, no-one's going to want to hang at long range if they can avoid it anyway. Secondly, Dengar gives you multiple rerolls against unique pilots. With only three dice, you don't really need them. I'm not saying he's bad (he isn't) but you'd get even more mileage out of him with a heavy laser cannon's 4 dice.

Dropping the co-pilot leaves you only 1 point short of a heavy laser cannon instead of the mangler. Yes, you don't land criticals, but the thing is that criticals aren't that big a deal; unless you have abilities which trigger off them, most of the time I'd rather take the extra point of 'normal' damage. Especially when facing ships with shields (which ignore criticals) and get them back (so you need to do more damage in a short space of time).

The outlaw tech isn't bad - it gives you a focus when doing hard manoeuvre (like the 'stop') but when packing a wide-arc cannon, did you actually need to manoeuvre that hard? You've got a white hard turn, so can put the cannon's arc behind your starting position fairly easily.

Alternatively, you can drop one Z-95, which frees up quite a lot of points but does leave you a warm body short..

• Binyare Pilot - Feedback Array
• Talonbane Cobra - Crack Shot, Homing Missile, Glitterstimm, Stealth Device
• Moralo Eval - Heavy Laser Cannon, Dengar, Outlaw Tech

* Let the Wife win....

** Astute observers will detect I have standing issues with people who use a PS11 Darth Vader or similar and then act like this.

uhm, i have to say......

this post...right here.....

the most informative and well written and thought out forum post...in all of forums, in all of genres...in all of history.

just...........WOW.