Birds-of-Prey Custom Expansion Pack

By Bullox, in X-Wing Painting and Modification

Hello all. I’m flattered by the positive response I have gotten to my Firefly Expansion Pack. I mentioned in that other post that my 3 favorite ships in all of Sci-Fi’dom are the Millennium Falcon, Serenity from Firefly and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey. X-wing already has the Millennium Falcon of course. I posted my Firefly Epic Expansion Pack in the other post. So I’m going to push my luck a bit and post my Birds-of-Prey Expansion Pack.

The Expansion Pack includes a large base Bird-of-Prey class Corsair and small base Bird-of-Prey class fighters. This isn’t really a franchise cross-over since I make no mention of Star Fleet or Klingons or anything. I just like the ship.

Here are some pics of the Expansion Pack and close-ups of the 4 Corsair pilots and 5 fighter pilots. And an action shot – General Cade and mercenary ruffians taking on Han Solo and rookie x-wings (shown for scale).

Thanks for looking. (And I hope this does not offend anyone).

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And here are some clearer pics of the pilot cards.

Also, a photon torpedo upgrade (might be OP), large base decloak rule card, and the dials for the two ships (corsair on top).

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I'm guessing the small ones are from the Star Trek version of X-wing, what is the bigger one from?

1 hour ago, RuusMarev said:

I'm guessing the small ones are from the Star Trek version of X-wing, what is the bigger one from?

The small ones are actually micro machines. The large one is from a company called Eaglemoss.

Nice. Really want that big one, lol

On 3/26/2017 at 5:45 PM, RuusMarev said:

Nice. Really want that big one, lol

I could have gone even bigger - Epic.

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Sound and light version?

On 3/29/2017 at 3:49 PM, RuusMarev said:

Sound and light version?

Actually, I do have that one too but the one pictured is the old AMT/ERTL model.

This is a little Bat Rep for a test run I made with my Birds-of-Prey ships.

General Cade (PS5) Bird-of-Prey Corsair (42)

Expertise (4), FCS (2), Photon Torpedoes (4), Extra Munitions (2), Munitions Failsafe (1)

2x Veteran Mercenary (PS4) Bird-of-Prey Fighter (23)

PTL (3), Pattern Analyzer (2), Autothrusters (2)

115 points total.

Chewbacca (PS5) YT1300 (42)

Evade title (1), C3PO (3), Gunner (5), EU (4)

2x Red Squad Vet (PS4) T70 Xwing (26)

PTL (3), Pattern Analyzer (2), Autothrusters (2)

121 115 points total (let’s pretend T70 Xwings are overpriced by 3)

I did a simple randomization for setup which ended up looking like this:

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The initial engagement occurred on round two and was pretty much a face to face joust. One BoP/f and one Xwing were taken down to one hull each. The beginning of round three made me think the BoPs were going to win quickly. S-loop maneuvers allowed them to perfectly outflank the Xwings.

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However, Chewie took out the wounded BoP/f before it could fire. The other BoP/f took out the wounded Xwing. After that there were several rounds of cat and mouse with each side taking shots. Finally around round 9 the BoP/f takes out the second Xwing …

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Chewie takes out the second BoP/f the next round. And then about two rounds later Chewie takes down the Corsair finishing the game having lost only one shield and two hull points.

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A couple of comments:

The PTL+PA+green maneuver combo is great. I think my biggest mistake with General Cade was that I left him cloaked the whole time and depended too much on his ability to fire torpedoes while cloaked. That was very limiting. There were a few times he had a Rebel ship in his sights but couldn’t take the shot because he didn’t have a TL on that ship.

It was pretty fun and didn’t really feel out of balance.

Rematch – Chewie vs General Cade. I wanted to try a different configuration for General Cade:

General Cade (PS5) Bird-of-Prey Corsair (42)

Predator (3), FCS (2), Photon Torpedoes (4), Extra Munitions (2), EU (4), Glitterstim (2)

59 points total.

Chewbacca (PS5) YT1300 (42)

Evade title (1), Expertise (4), C3PO (3), Gunner (5), EU (4)

59 points total

Same setup as original match.

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The initial exchange occurred on round two with General Cade losing 2 shields and Chewie losing 2 hull to photon torpedoes.

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About eight rounds later Chewie scores the final hit – 3 hits and a crit take out all 4 of the Corsairs hull. Chewie survived with 2 shields and 5 hull remaining.

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I also wanted to try out the Bird-of-Prey fighter aces against some Imperial aces in a standard 100/6 match up.

Ronin (PS8) Bird-of-Prey Fighter (28); PTL (3), Pattern Analyzer (2)

Ace Gladiator (PS7) Bird-of-Prey Fighter (27); PTL (3), Primed Thrusters (1), Vectored Thrusters (2)

Bruiser (PS6) Bird-of-Prey Fighter (26); PTL (3), Pattern Analyzer (2), Autothrusters (2)

Vs

Omega Leader; Juke, Comm Relay, SD

Inquisitor; PTL, title, Autothrusters, prockets

Countess Ryad; PTL, x7/title, MkII

I still used the same mat setup but did a simple randomization for the ship placements which ended up looking like this:

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The initial engagement was a round two face-to-face joust. Omega Leader went down and Bruiser was left hanging on by a thread (he went down the next round).

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A few rounds later Ace Gladiator went down leaving Ronin alone, damaged and on the run.

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He didn’t last much longer. Ryad only lost 2 shields and Inq only lost 1 shield.

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The Imps kept the pressure up so hard that the BoP fighters didn’t get to exploit the PTL+PA+green move as much in this match as they did in the original match.

I dont know if its an error or what, but none of the pictures are showing up as links or attachments.

8 hours ago, Zeoinx said:

I dont know if its an error or what, but none of the pictures are showing up as links or attachments.

Strange. Are they not showing up for other folks? They are Imgur links and seem to be showing up fine for me.

56 minutes ago, Bullox said:

Strange. Are they not showing up for other folks? They are Imgur links and seem to be showing up fine for me.

Fine for me, but I've been following since early posts...maybe if it's first time reading, or your cache is cleared, there's now some kind of permissions issue ??? :unsure:

Edited by ianmiddy

weird, I came on now and it works fine

Sometimes when I'm on my ipad, 1 or 2 random images won't load but they always show up when I'm on my desktop. Good times!

This is awesome, some cool abilities especially the ones that work well with the stealth an aspect that was under-utilised with the Tie Phantom, if they have more synergy with their stealth ability then they could be true terrors. Also I feel that the proton torpedoes should have a "if the enemy has no shields roll one additional dice" as from what started I've seen (admittedly not much) they are pretty effective one shieldless vehicles.

13 hours ago, Quadjumper King said:

This is awesome, some cool abilities especially the ones that work well with the stealth an aspect that was under-utilised with the Tie Phantom, if they have more synergy with their stealth ability then they could be true terrors. Also I feel that the proton torpedoes should have a "if the enemy has no shields roll one additional dice" as from what started I've seen (admittedly not much) they are pretty effective one shieldless vehicles.

Thanks Quad. With respect to the photon torpedoes, I've seen that there are many variations but one feature that caught my attention was that some of them have frequency modulated shielding that could essentially allow them to pass through a target ship's shields. That's where I came up with the cancel results and deal damage cards idea. Basically shields are useless against them. Ironically, that makes them especially dangerous to the these Bird-of-Prey ships since they are comparatively shield rich and hull poor.

this kinda belongs in the "StarTrek instead of StarWars" thread in the offtopic lol (purely because relevance to the topic not being literal)

I really wish this was a thing. In a good way, not the abysmal piece of crap that is Attack Wing.

Love the ideas and abilities.

Edited by Vineheart01

Gnarly! You should start a hotac campaign that allows this sort of thing or incorporates it somehow into the missions!

4 minutes ago, Refugeanoth said:

Gnarly! You should start a hotac campaign that allows this sort of thing or incorporates it somehow into the missions!

Funny you should say that. We just started the Battlestar Gozanti/Pallas campaign and I'm thinking that when we do the mission that unlocks the YT-1300 combat refit I may ask my buddies if they would mind if I flew my Corsair instead.

6 minutes ago, Bullox said:

Funny you should say that. We just started the Battlestar Gozanti/Pallas campaign and I'm thinking that when we do the mission that unlocks the YT-1300 combat refit I may ask my buddies if they would mind if I flew my Corsair instead.

Definitely! The nicest thing about hotac is that it can accommodate basically anything as long as you're constantly adjusting the enemies to scale up and remain threatening.

kinda curious if i could do this with federation ships. Not sure where i'd get the models though, decent startrek models are oddly hard to find unless theyre huge.

Yeah, if you're interested in Star Trek ships they are huge - 100s of meters. The models would have to be 1+ feet long to be remotely to scale (see pic in post #6). The only way I'm getting away with this is I'm ignoring source material (Star Trek) and making up my own ship. I just like the Bird of Prey a lot so I completely made up my own "Corsair" just so I could use this model. In X-Wing scale this ship would be about 25 meters long with a 35 meter wingspan.

14 hours ago, Bullox said:

Thanks Quad. With respect to the photon torpedoes, I've seen that there are many variations but one feature that caught my attention was that some of them have frequency modulated shielding that could essentially allow them to pass through a target ship's shields. That's where I came up with the cancel results and deal damage cards idea. Basically shields are useless against them. Ironically, that makes them especially dangerous to the these Bird-of-Prey ships since they are comparatively shield rich and hull poor.

Good point, I can see at being an interesting attribute of the game, it didn't even occur to me when I was reading the card that they bypassed shields. Using these in HOTAC would be pretty neat, I'd want to come up against these as opponent as well but that brings up a plethora of issues (namely creating an AI/Set card that determines how they should act). I'm not sure if this exists in Star Trek but would you consider an upgrade card with something like "expanded cloaking" in which small based ships within range one gain one agility dice at range 2-3. This would allow the corsair to support its allies. In regards to federation ships I would kill for an epic scale enterprise with the classic crew or even the next generation ship and crew. Anyway this is an awesome expansion and if it existed I would have purchased this.