Hey guys. Is the extra points for xwings worth getting an extra attack dice to take out bombers and the extra health so the screen stays an extra round? Or should u just go with the awings and use points elsewhere and why. I just like the flexibility of those x wings

You got Jan for them?

Xwings dont really have extra dice when it comes to squad vs squad due to the counter 2 on Awings. (Counter is glorious with Torryn as well)

If you can position your As to engage the enemy and have Jan in the background but close enough to lend her braces, the As are easily far superior. Vastly. At least when Jan is around. Better range. Cheaper. More consistent ship damage.

I started running 4 As, 1 HWK, and Jan. It'd be 5 As and Jan if I had 5 As, but the HWK is close to an A. Absolute pain to deal with. And I started doing that because I found that even with the extra hull on Xs, Jan's braces get whittled down pretty quick and then they just start dropping anyways.

But it also depends if you're only taking this screen, or if you're taking something else with it. If one of your objectives is superior positions, then that is an instance where Xs would be better. Superior Positions definitely falls to the As. BCC? Xs. Toryn Farr-it's a toss up, but I'd prefer As.

It depends really on what you want to accomplish. Assuming you have no Jan of course, like me.

If you want to tear through the enemy fighter screen and then do some damage, X-Wings are better because they most likely gonna survive the engagement. if you want to defend your fleet then A-Wings are far superior because of their counter.

The speed of your fleet matters as well, if most of you fleet can chug along at speed four xwings are going to struggle to act as screens.

A

Something to remember is that A's don't have escort. With X's Jan is going to last a lot longer and do a lot more work.

Depends on what else you're bringing and what you want them to do.

I compare 6 A-wings to 3 X-wings + Jan. They're similar in price (the X-wings are a bit cheaper), but both are legitimate fighter screens.

The A-wings bring a more reliable defense. Their speed puts then exactly where you want them, and can threaten a much larger area. Counter means that even if they do get jumped, they always get at least one half shot off, which can often be a strong deterrent if you threaten counter-attacks or heavy ship based anti-squadron.

The X-wings are a little more limited in their ability to be where you want them, when you want them there. They are much, much more resilient once they get there, though, with 20% more hull AND Jan brace to chew through. So you're less likely to lose them, whereas the A-wings i pretty well expect to lose most or all of against any meaningful opposition. So, you could look at A-wings as more of ablative defense for your ships vs the sustained defense of the X-wings.

Then you have considerations based on other things like your fleet make-up. Flight Controllers favors A-wings. Jamming Fields favors X-wings. A fast fleet demands A-wings; a slow one can use X-wings. Yavaris prefers X-wings, as do any kind of bombers. BCC favors X-wings. A-wings provide a more reliable anti-ship capability, but X-wings might get lucky. 6 A-wings is 1 more deployment and 2 more squadron activations than 3+1 X-wings+Jan.

You can make the conversation much bigger if you start talking about mixing them, using large or smaller screens, using rogues, the costs of providing squadron activations for them, etc, but this gives you a pretty good baseline to work from.

Also, better players use A-wings.

A-wings are just too fast and too cheap, with the black battery die and counter, not to use as a screen.

X-wings are more suited for a squad-centric kind of fleet. You'd want Jamming Field, Toryn (A-wings like her too, but don't always stick close enough), Yavaris, etc. And other squadrons to Escort.

Good comments by all. One more thing to bear in mind is if you expect to be facing enemy aces with scatter, X's win out due to the increased likelihood of rolling an accuracy while getting a decent amount of damage through. Especially with flight controllers. A small consideration, but something to consider nevertheless.

I prefer A-wings. If your first goal is simply to lock and tie up squads so that your ships can kill, and only secondarily to attack enemy ships, then A-wings do that much better. X-wings can help you drop key enemy squads slightly faster, particularly if they are using Intel to avoid counter on the A-wing, but on the whole. You typically end up with an extra amount of squadron hull if you take the As versus Jan+Xs, and although Jan can extend the longevity of the individual X-wings, she is almost but not quite the price of 2 A-wings, which is to say that you really need to get her braces off meaningfully across multiple turns just to get the value of the points you paid in the first place.

if you expect to be facing enemy aces with scatter, X's win out due to the increased likelihood of rolling an accuracy while getting a decent amount of damage through

Depends. More squadrons with smaller attacks can make the acc irrelevant and just try to burn through the tokens. Of course, at that point it becomes completely critical to focus down the target squadron in one turn.

For a long time I was running 5-6 A-wings and 4-5 B-wings, with Flight Controllers. Depending on the matchup and positioning, if I was up against a scatter and rolled 1 damage/1 acc on my first attack, I would sometimes acc the brace instead of the scatter, in hopes of forcing them to burn it off on piddly attacks in case I got a good shot in later.