Getting into X-wing right now could possibly be a little daunting, with it's 45-ish expansions in circulation. This, I imagine, would be especially true if one desires to enter tournaments with a reasonably competative list. As a way of hopefully providing some ideas for the next purchase I wanted to list expansion that are self contained, or nearly self contained. In a sense one could say all ships with strong naked generics (suchs as Tie fighters, Z-95s or B-wings) are self-contained. That is however not the focus of this post. To quilify the ship should benefit from the upgrades in the expansion pack. If other upgrades are necessary for a strong build, they should be easy to obtain - preferably from the core set.
Imperial:
1. Tie/FO - Omega Leader + Juke, Comm Relay. A meta staple out of the box. Juke + Comm also works well on the other named pilots.
2. Imperial Veterans - Any defender + x7 title and crackshot. Vessery + Tie/D, crackshot and Tractor beam. Tomax Bren + cracksot is also okayish.
3. Lambda Class Shuttle - Omicron Group Pilot + Darth Vader
Almost self contained:
4. Phantom - Echo + Advanced Cloaking Device, Recon Specialist, Fire Control System (or Whisper w/o Recon). Needs Veteran Instincts (Slave 1, Millenium Falcon, Shadow Caster, Sabine's Tie)
Rebel:
1. K-wing - Miranda, TLT (possibly adv. SLAM)
2. YT 2400, Dash does some pretty good work with Lone Wolf, Title, Heavy Laser Cannon and Leebo.
Almost self contained:
3. Ghost expansion - lots of good builds out of the box. But the really strong ones tend to include some card that is not inluded, be it fire control system, TLT och autoblaster. turret (but I may well be wrong here)
4. Arc 170 - Tail gunner and vectored thrusters are great on the arc, but Norra probably needs PTL and r2d2 to be competative. (r2d2 is core set, and you probably already have a copy of push the limit, if not, it's a card you will be locking to get your hands on anyway).
Scum:
No self contained competative expansion as far as I can see
Almost self contined:
Hound's tooth - Lots of good synergy between ship, pilots and upgrdes. But there are some better options than the included upgrades, especially on the crew side.
Mist hunter - Either Zuckuss or 4-Lom with the other one as crew, title and tractor beam is solid. Adaptability would however not be my go-to pick for an EPT on either. If you are looking to bring a system upgrade and/or an illicit, you will likely be looking at something else aside from what's included in the expansion.
Kihraxz - While built with Crach shot and stim is probably as good as it gets, its not an especially good ship..
Are there any other ones? Also does the Ghost have a competative build right out of the box?
cheers