The constant complaints I hear from rebel players usually fall upon a few of their ships that just fall a little flat.

Several of these ships suffer the same problem, that being a single pilot or upgrade is fantastic but every other build is awful.

I will be running down the list of Rebel ships that most people, myself included, would like to see fixed and why that is problematic for the meta.

The T65 Xwing:

This ship suffers from a lack of positioning actions and a lackluster dial. All its named pilots rock and that keeps it hard to buff the generics as not to flood the meta with wes, porkins, biggs, and wedge. Not to be redundant but the problem lies in Biggs, personally I love his ability and it is fun to work around with tight positioning on either side necessitated, but he is fantastic regardless. Any fix to the T65 also buffs biggs, and biggs won Hoth.

The E wing:

You know where this is going... Corran suffers the same fate as Biggs, being too good for his own ship. E wings are overcosted in general, but any change also buffs another hoth winner. I never see the need to field a knave squadron pilot because its just not worth the points. The E wing is a slightly worse defender in a lot of senses.

The Hwk:

This dual faction ship suffers from being overshadowed by y wings as turret carriers, and the inability for it to function without said turrets by itself. The Azituck will likely overtake it as a higher health crew carrier in the near future. The low health and agility means you can't bring it into support range without risking it, a problem the Azituck will not have and the U wing Does better.

The Y wing:

Why would you ever want to fly a y wing named pilot? Its dial isn't great at all, it takes stress easily. It relies on turrets and Torpedoes. Now TLT y wings are fantastic, but when have you seen a non TLT or stress boat Y wing fielded? Again, This one build setup makes it unappealing to vary loadouts at all. They also tried fixes on it and won't likely spend more time there.

The A wing:

I still think the A wing is a great ship that can be flown in essentially any format and be fun and usually viable, but others disagree. In that light, the A wing has had 2 fixes (Test Pilot and Refit) and a "sort of fix" with snap shot. I think that that ship will only see anything new if it appears in the last jedi, which judging by Mark Hamill sitting in an a-wing is likely.

Star wars is in fact a franchise built to make money. Therefore, why release packs for bad ships that are less iconic if we can make a pack based on the most recent movie. Rebels get screen time so they get the "protagonist expansion packs" and there is no time to release other stuff. Also, if they changed it, we would complain about that.

The X- and Y- should get treatment in a Battle of Scarif expansion pack; the A-Wing to get some more love as Phoenix Squadron repaint with an Epic Hammerhead, leaving E- and HWK to be a Veterans pack.

There. That's the packaging. I leave the actual revisions to the professionals

HotR IS Reb Vets. Guess no one gets what they want. ... except hopefully Scum with an Aces/Vets pack soon to "fix" the StarViper and the Khirxztihxzqqiuzxc

While I am in the camp of those who think other ships need help more right now, these are ships I would like see get a helping hand.

T-65: Agreed that Biggs is problematic. Also, with the T-70 around, you have to be careful about how you buff a t-65 without making the buff just better on the t-70, or just turn the t-65 into the t-70.

E-Wing: So, while Corran is a similar factor to Biggs, I do think he is more easily overcome. While Biggs basically just needs to be, Corran requires a pretty set list of upgrades to see use. One of the primary upgrades is r2-d2. If you make an E-Wing fix that uses the Astromech slot, you are boosting E-Wings without boosting the traditional Corran build. And if Corran manages to adapt to the new upgrade and reach similar heights as his old build, all the better.

The HWK: Special case here. While not seen as much as other ships, the HWK never truly fades away. It still occasionally appears in high level lists. It's pilot abilities are good support abilities, so it mainly just needs a way to survive better. For it, I think errating something more into the Moldy Crow title like they did with the Heavy Scyk title would be the simpler, easier solution. (Side note: I would love for FFG to go back and redo the HWK's dial because it is actually suppose to be fast, but that ship has sailed.)

Y-Wing: These guys have gotten a rough end of the stick to be sure, but have enough examples of decent performance that I feel they are low priority. Giving them something to make them better ordinance carriers would be nice and thematic.

A-Wing: The A-Wing always seems on the cusp of being dominant. Like the HWK, it keeps popping up near the top in odd lists. I would be interested in seeing a Phoenix Squadron pack to open up more options for it. Maybe one of them will stick.

A-wing needs a Phoenix squadron release. Include Hera, Hobbie, and Wedge Antilles as pilots and add a 'phoenix squadron' title that drops pilot skill by 1 and lowers cost by 1. This would give you the option of fielding 14 point (after chardaan refit) generics at PS 0 as amazing blockers. Both Hera and Wedge have great pilot abilities for the A-wing and would breath new life into the named pilot list.

19 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

A-Wing: The A-Wing always seems on the cusp of being dominant. Like the HWK, it keeps popping up near the top in odd lists. I would be interested in seeing a Phoenix Squadron pack to open up more options for it. Maybe one of them will stick.

Which probably means these ships are both excellently balanced: strong enough to be used frequently, not too strong to be overused. They have a niche, and they fill it well.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

Which probably means these ships are both excellently balanced: strong enough to be used frequently, not too strong to be overused.

That is one way to view the data.

27 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

A-wing needs a Phoenix squadron release. Include Hera, Hobbie, and Wedge Antilles as pilots and add a 'phoenix squadron' title that drops pilot skill by 1 and lowers cost by 1. This would give you the option of fielding 14 point (after chardaan refit) generics at PS 0 as amazing blockers. Both Hera and Wedge have great pilot abilities for the A-wing and would breath new life into the named pilot list.

Hera, Hobbie, and Wedges' abilities would be fantastic on the A wing as it has tons of greens and low attack value, making an all awing Squad hugely viable in my opinion.

Any update to the A-wing should include Shara Bey and L'ulo, including higher PS and an ability that makes sense for her character in an A-wing.

E's and X's: Biggs and Corran are horrible rationalizations for not updating these ships. I wish players would stop making these arguments.

The current FAQ clarification on Biggs balances him well enough; he isn't the plague he was a few waves back. He isn't the faction's crutch anymore. There are more Rebel lists doing fine without him than there are Rebel lists that need him.

Corran used to be the only ship in the game with a built-in double-tap. Now every faction has ships with this capablity. Compare Corran to Dengar and Quickdraw; Corran is the most expensive, has the fewest hit points, and is the only one that gives up attacking the following round.

Thoughts,

• Lets put the HWK aside for a second because its getting the Pulse shield and there is a lot of 1-2 crew that are amazing.
• I don't believe the A-wing needs any help at this time, because it has too many options to make it amazing, the Test Pilot title along with Refit give it an edge with the FAQ nerf there is a strong chance they will come back to the meta. (also with them being in Ep8 I think we will see a Resistance A-wing which will come out in wave 12 which drops at or a week before Ep8 in DEC (if FFG announcements a wave in Aug/Sept it will show up in DEC around Ep8 because of how long it takes to get out a new wave)
• The Y-wing has droids along with TLT both give it something special along with the title and scum upgrades that are not Ill will work with it.

This leads me to think we will see an E-wing/X-wing pack would be the best option because both ships need the most love and have not gotten goodies in a long time. Corran Horn and Biggs are good ships that has to be kept in mind because any buffs to them will swing in their favor, along with upgrades to T-65 need to be T-65 only or the T-70 will be buffed which because they share a droid spot still might happen.

X-wing options,

Title - Torps at a lower cost (-3) and you can use focus instead of target locks when shooting (ep 4 in the run)

Luke's X-wing Title which gives the X-wing a free Evade when you have a target lock or something to that effect . (ep 4 in the run)

Title - when a friendly ship at range 1 is destroyed give all tokens from that ship to this ships you do not discard tokens gained

Everyone keeps claiming that Biggs is the reason that the T-65 isn't "fixed" and I don't buy it. His special ability is he's a laser magnet. He dies early and usually pretty quick. As far as a "lackluster dial" goes that's not true either. The only thing missing is the hard 1 turn and the only red is the k turn. Not what I would call lackluster.

I think the problem is the ship itself. It was better than good when released. It's been surpassed by newer releases. As mentioned above, the named pilots have great abilities. What can you do to the X-wing to make it better and still have it an X-wing?

Give it the dial of a T-70? Maybe but now it's a weakened version of the T-70 with no native boost and one less shield. No problem you say just add a Title that grants it a "refit" with better engines and shielding. GREAT! Now you have a T-70 in a T-65 hull that probably costs more than a T-70. And it's not a T-65 anymore.

A title is probably the answer but even that is problematic. Squad Titles have been mentioned in other threads. X-wing specific upgrades and mods also has been bandied about. Again maybe . I don't think you can design something that keeps the named pilots on the sidelines and buffs the generics. To me that's bad design.

The designers may have something up their sleeves and it's probably specific to the T-65. It will make it better but I doubt you'll see a squad of them at Worlds.

Titles which give a buff dependent on having other ships with the same title could be the answer. So you could put it on named pilots, but you'd be incentivized to run a few generics as well so you can trigger the ability more reliably.

Red Squadron: Title: T-65 X-wing only: 1 point: When making a Primary Weapon attack, you may choose up to 2 other ships with the Red Squadron title who have the defender within range 1-3 and in their firing arc and who have not performed an attack yet this round. For each ship chosen in this way, you may roll 1 additional attack die. Each ship chosen suffers -1 to their primary weapon value for this combat phase.

Assault Retrofit: Title: Y-wing only: 0 points: Remove the Turret and Astromech slots and add a Cannon slot. Increase Primary weapon and Agility values by 1.

Scavenged Ion Thrusters: Modification: 3 points: Y-wing only: Treat all speed 2 maneuvers as Green maneuvers.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

The X- and Y- should get treatment in a Battle of Scarif expansion pack; the A-Wing to get some more love as Phoenix Squadron repaint with an Epic Hammerhead, leaving E- and HWK to be a Veterans pack.

There. That's the packaging.

This. ^

Would it be worth making a 0 point X-Wing only title that says;

"Resistance Salvage:

This card may only be equipped if your ship does not have a Tech slot in your upgrade bar

Your ship must equip a Tech upgrade, it receives a 2 point discount on the upgrade. After performing an attack your ship may perform a free boost action."

Would that make the T-65 too good?

1 hour ago, Stoneface said:

As far as a "lackluster dial" goes that's not true either. The only thing missing is the hard 1 turn and the only red is the k turn. Not what I would call lackluster.

My counter to this is the Y-wing. Why would a fiighter have the same maneuverability as the Y-wing? B-wing making a hard 1 (red) makes perfect sense for that ship. But the dial of an x-wing cannot out turn the dial of a Y-wing; that is what's wrong. (Though, everything you stated I agree with ?)

Also, the asteomechs are horrible. Outside of 3 or 4, the rest actually make any ship they are in worse.

Making the Y-wing more than a TLT carrier should not be all that hard. Turret ugrade, Y-wing only. And have it do whatever you like (-2 pts? extra munitions for free? Something else entirely?)

Buffing x-wings but not biggs is harder. I would probably be inclined to go in a direction that increases damage output but not survivability, and just live with the fact that Biggs will do a little extra damage the first 1 or 2 rounds of combat, before going bye bye.

As for an E-wing fix, see what SabineKey wrote...

Hwk and a-wing can wait their turn imho.

38 minutes ago, Ccwebb said:

My counter to this is the Y-wing. Why would a fiighter have the same maneuverability as the Y-wing? B-wing making a hard 1 (red) makes perfect sense for that ship. But the dial of an x-wing cannot out turn the dial of a Y-wing; that is what's wrong. (Though, everything you stated I agree with ?)

Also, the asteomechs are horrible. Outside of 3 or 4, the rest actually make any ship they are in worse.

This was one of the problems that the designers faced. (Dials) Remember, they are or were looking ahead further than just the next wave. The dials had to be different enough from ship to ship to be interesting. Somethings don't make sense. If the dials made sense, there would be very little difference between the dials of different fighters, assault ships, freighters and interceptors. That's the trade off, make the dials different and interesting or more "accurate" and less differentiated. That's why we have freighters with the agility of a fighter, better turning than some ships and better attack factors. Not accurate but in the realm of the game more interesting.

3 hours ago, Cubanboy said:

X-wing options,

Title - Torps at a lower cost (-3) and you can use focus instead of target locks when shooting (ep 4 in the run)

Luke's X-wing Title which gives the X-wing a free Evade when you have a target lock or something to that effect . (ep 4 in the run)

Title - when a friendly ship at range 1 is destroyed give all tokens from that ship to this ships you do not discard tokens gained

Deadeye... been around since the A-Wing came out, purpose being to enable the A-Wings (and others) to run ordinance more effectively. Putting it into a title card with reduced points cost torpedoes might encourage more people to run xwings, but you can still only fit 4 Rookies in a squad with protons. There are probably people that could fly that really well but there are probably more people that could butcher it, especially arc dodging lists an turrets....

"Red 5" Title... would have to be limited to Luke, much like Black One is for Poe but of itself it's not a bad idea. But it only makes one X-Wing slightly more appealing.

Two of the biggest issues as the game has progressed and evolved over the past 5 years are the addition of new maneuvers (sloops, T-rolls) which aren't applied to older ships for many reasons. Changes in the costing system being the second, for that I submit exhibit A, The Protectorate Starfighter and the Starviper. 5 points more expensive for the Viper which does have the 1 forward and banks, but doesn't have speed 5, as many greens, green hard turns, but does have 1 shield. Personally the Protectorate beats it hands down.

Punisher needs more help than any ship mentioned so far, but it's ugly so no one cares.

i guess the problem with all these ships is that the are not stupidly broken like the current combo of Sabine K-wings, and thus that makes them 'bad'. Stress wing/hobbie, Biggs (yeah I know), Stresshog, TLT Ys, Chihuahuas are just the most obvious builds that are rather decent, but I guess they aren't OP, so that makes them 'bad'. These ships have other builds and pilot synergies that can make wonderful and fun lists but they aren't 'competitive' since they can have one or two bad match ups and thus players don't want to run the risk of actually losing once during a tournament. Boo hoo.

The only rebel ship that is in true trouble is the E-wing because that thing has such high sticker shock that it should have been discounted ages ago. Except then Corran gets a boost and we just can't have that.

most ships pre-Wave 5 probably need some extra 'kick' due to the prevalence of new abilities and maneuvers and such that they missed out on the first and even second or third time they were released. A Campaign set with lots of goodies could take care of this and give use some wanted paint schemes like Pheonix A-wing, Partisan X-wing, and Scarif Y-wing as well as CANON pilots like Blue Leader, K-2SO (!), Hera and the rest in A-wings, Farlander in a Y-wing, Tiree and Pops, Soontir in an X-wing, you name it. Think of it as a Most Wanted for Rebels, but includes a sizable campaign with tons of missions and fun stuff. It could be called Renegades and Rogues and it wouldn't be just a bunch of cardboard.

and the same can be done with Scums and Imps giving some good reason to buy the set after the Cores plus another box. The material in the sets can be used with the ships included and can enhance other expansions like the U-wing, E-wing, ect.

Come on, it's so simple...if I can think of it, surely some marketing genius in FFG can too.

Here's an idea I've been toying with. Allows for triple X-wing brobots style lists without allowing double shield regen or triple stress bots

HWKs needs no fix, they have great pilots they just don't fit into every list.

Just to add to the original post.

What people don't really get about Corran is that he's 48 points. That's basically half the list. Not only is his power costed very steep, but also defines the whole list, as Rebels have no such pocket aces like FOs for 20-odd points each.

It's a 5 health small ship with 3 reds and no free Focuses nor Evades. It doesn't even get auto Thrusters, and forget green hard turns. It melts to focused fire just like anything else.

It can be scary, but is overcosted enough not to make any adjustments to E-wings suddenly cause it to become broken.

And HWKs are crap because their dial is even worse than Y-wings' one. Anything with repositioning and better PS is guaranteed to get into HWK's TLT donut hole. That, and it really makes it hard to keep them covered by other ships, with such a pathetic set of maneuvers.

Thing is I would like to see a Scum Aces first before we see a Rebel Veterans pack (an no, Most Wanted is not the Scum Aces pack any more than TFA core set 2 was the Rebel Imperial Aces 2).

For Rebels thing is we already got alternative paint and additional pilots for the X-wing (Rebel Transport), A-wing (Rebel Aces), B-wing (Rebel Aces) T-70 X-wing (HotR) and YT-1300 (HotR). So the X-wing already got its "fix" so to speak. E-wing and K-wings are still on top of the meta. But for most people they really aren't complaining about the ship not being at the top of the meta but rather that there is only one competitive build for those ships. Biggs is essentially the X-wing as much as the E-wing is Corran Horn.

For Rebel Veterans, it is a good question, some might say HotR is Rebel Veterans but I would say maybe U-wing and E-wing which could use some more pilots.

For X-wing I would like to see a Battle of Yavin campaign pack that includes a bunch of unique titles to include "leader" titles which allows for synergistic play (and make more Epic squadron formations besides the four IG-2000). May be there would be some better builds that will help the X-wing out without being just the Agro tank.

6 hours ago, Stoneface said:

Everyone keeps claiming that Biggs is the reason that the T-65 isn't "fixed" and I don't buy it. His special ability is he's a laser magnet. He dies early and usually pretty quick. As far as a "lackluster dial" goes that's not true either. The only thing missing is the hard 1 turn and the only red is the k turn. Not what I would call lackluster.

I think the problem is the ship itself. It was better than good when released. It's been surpassed by newer releases. As mentioned above, the named pilots have great abilities. What can you do to the X-wing to make it better and still have it an X-wing?

Give it the dial of a T-70? Maybe but now it's a weakened version of the T-70 with no native boost and one less shield. No problem you say just add a Title that grants it a "refit" with better engines and shielding. GREAT! Now you have a T-70 in a T-65 hull that probably costs more than a T-70. And it's not a T-65 anymore.

A title is probably the answer but even that is problematic. Squad Titles have been mentioned in other threads. X-wing specific upgrades and mods also has been bandied about. Again maybe . I don't think you can design something that keeps the named pilots on the sidelines and buffs the generics. To me that's bad design.

The designers may have something up their sleeves and it's probably specific to the T-65. It will make it better but I doubt you'll see a squad of them at Worlds.

Just give it an attack value of 4. X-wing only upgrade; charge whatever you need to to maintain game balance. This gives the t65 its own personality, doesn't break the game if it's costed appropriately, and seems like a pretty easy "fix". It also doesn't buff the x-wing defensively any more, so Biggs is less of an issue. Might be better as an astromech instead of a title.