So while I am a "buy every expansion" kind of guy, I almost exclusively play Empire. Occasionally I will fly a Scum list, but I find it more challenging and therefore more fun and fulfilling to fly Empire. I never use my Rebels. A lot of people at my FLGS play Rebels and Scum so I do get a chance to play against those factions. I've been playing the game since Wave 1, when my brother and I decided to go in halves to collect each release, with him "owning" the Rebels and myself "owning" the Empire, but he has since traded me all his Xwing stuff for 40k stuff(who really needs 10,000 pts of Ultramarines that I never use anymore anyway) so now I own it all and have, of course, bought all the Scum ships. Even though they are now "100% mine", six months have past and I still never play my Rebels. That all being said, I recently decided to actually use 2/3 of the ships I own. So I decided to play with my Rebels. I instantly decided the best way to do that would be to use some "under performing" and "not points efficient" and "severely lacking" T65 Xwings. Therefore, my list would have at least 3 T65s and it would not have Biggs. After about 10 mins of deliberation, and deciding that I wanted a "historical" list, this is what I came up with.

Garven Dreis + R2 Astromech + Integrated Astromech

Luke Skywalker + Expertise + R2-D2 + Vectored Thrusters

Wedge Antilles + Veteran Instincts + R5-P9 + Vectored Thrusters

The idea was that every turn Wedge and Luke would try to barrel roll out of arc if possible and TL if not possible and use their innate/EPT abilities to help them shoot better(Wedge's -1 agility ability and Expertise on Luke) and Garven would focus and stay close to Wedge and pass him his focus so Wedge could Regen with his Droid. A very basic plan and I didn't think I would do well, but I wanted a change, so what the heck, let's do it. I played 3 games last night. 2 against guys I've played many times each and once against a guy I just met last night. Here's what happened.

Game 1- versus my buddy Mike who plays exclusively Scum

Mike almost always runs a double aces(Fenn and Talonbane) Mindlinked list with one or two small ships also with Mindlinked, so that is what I was expecting to face. Instead, Mike plunks down a naked Dengar, Bossk, and a low PS Lancer. That's over 30 hit points to chew threw. I was not very happy. So I tried to make a fairly dense asteroid field in the middle of the board and hoped I could fly ships I've never really flown before through them better that he could large bases. My strategy worked. After drawing him into the asteroid field, I manager to block Dengar on a few different rocks for a few turns and then blast him away. The Lancer did an unusual kturn that left it's arc facing the wrong way and I was able to burn it down. And finally, I was able to out fly Bossk and get behind him with Luke. Bye, bye Bossk. First game 100-0. MVP: Luke What I would have changed: Garvin - I felt he didn't directly affect the game as much as another pilot may have. Not much offense and not enough defense to warrant his enclussion.

Game 2 - versus my buddy Cory who usually flies Empire and his dial Phantom list with escort beat me the last time we played.

I wasn't surprised to see Echo in Cory's list. In fact I would have been surprised not to. He uses him all the time and he's good with him. Echo had Kallus on board as well as VI and Advanced Cloaking device. He also had Omega Leader and Soontir Fel with all their normal fixings. Well since his list was 100 points like mine we rolled for initiative. I won. I chose to move first, shoot first. I once again put a rather dense asteroid field and decided to fly through them. He came up one side with all of his ships, kturned, and went straight back towards his deployment zone in an attempt to get me to commit and fly through the rocks. I obliged him and rocketed in and through the rocks. On turn 3 or 4, I set up a kill box with a wide range of arcs to catch Echo as he tried to decloak and move within the asteroid field. But since he didn't know where Wedge would end up, he chose to barrel roll around a rock and out of Luke's firing arc. Unfortunately for Echo, I had done a 4 straight and then used my own barrel roll to get a range one shot on the uncloaked Echo with Wedge. Roll the dice, 3 natural hits and 1 crit. His now 1 evade dice rolled an evade. 2 hits and a crit. Hits to shields. Crit - Can't shoot at your next opportunity. Echo cannot shoot and cannot recloak with Advanced Cloaking device. Womp womp womp. Garvin shoots at him and finishes him off. Omega leader plunks away at Garvin taking all his shields and Soontir Fel fires at Luke and takes a shield, but the wind is out of my opponent's sails. He flys Fell all around the board while Wegde and Luke chase him, before finally making a huge mistake and flys him into a position that leaves him with no move next turn and Feel flys off the board. OL has been shooting up Garvin, but with one hull left, I soon away, while re-engaging with Luke and Wedge. He can't keep both of them TL'd and while it does take me forever to kill OL, I finally do. Second game: 100-0. MVP:Wedge and Luke. What would I change: Once again Garvin. He just feels really underpowered and doesn't contribute much.

Game 3- versus a guy named Brister, who I just met that night and said that he had only played a handful of games. He had a core set, Imperial Veterans and a few other Empire ships.

He was running Ryad with Tie/D with Ion Cannon, a Delta with Tie/D with Ion Cannon, a Black Squadron Tie fighter with crackshot, and an Academy Pilot. I figured it worked the first two games, so I once again made a dense asteroid field and counted on my (hopefully) better/more experienced flying ability over a new player to get an advantage. I flew through the the rocks. I am not used to flying against Tie/Ds. They hit like a truck and quickly were Ionising and shooting my Xwings to pieces, and I ended up losing Garvin pretty quick, but not before I focused down Ryad. Then the Delta was able to Ion Luke and then Kturn behind him. It was a pivotal moment in the game. If the Delta could continue to Ion Luke, he could ride him until he died. I got a little bit of luck at the right time and I was able to evade his two hits with his second Ion attack. Next turn I Kturned with Luke and was able to focus down the Delta with Luke and Wedge before he could shoot again. At this point it was two Rebel Aces who were pretty banged up against two untouched low PS Ties. After some dancing around I managed to kill the Black Squad pilot and knock one hull off the Academy at the cost of Wedge and Luke down to one hull. By this time though, R2D2 had Luke back to full shields and we settled in to a Kturn dance that I was sure to win due to higher PS, more hit points and Expertise. It actually took several turns, but I pulled it out and won. Third game: 100-62. MVP: Luke Thing I would have changed: my strategy of flying through the rocks was a mistake in this game.

Take aways:

Luke with R2D2 and Vectored Thrusters and Expertise is so much fun to fly and a very good use of 38 points as long as you control the engagement and don't allow yourself to be focused down. If you can hit hard, then run away a bit and Regen some shields, you're golden.

The Xwing is not as bad as everyone says. That said it does feel a little underpowered in the current state of the game. The main issue I see is the dial isn't that great. It has no 1 hard turn and only 3 greens. If I had faced stress control, it would have been a totally different night. A T65 title take makes their dial better in some way is how I would "fix" them.

Anyway, I had a couple of fun games and used some of my ships.

TL;DR. I played 3 games with 3 T65 Xwings(Luke, Wedge, and Garvin) and went 3-0. I never have really played them before and never play Rebels. I was just wondering if the T65 Xwing is as bad as everyone says. It's not horrible, but it does feel a little underpowered. The real issue to me is the dial is sorely lacking when compared to new dials. Give them a title that gives them a boost/barrel roll and more greens and you'd be in business.

Thanks for the recap! I love flying X-Wings but I'll have to give your Luke build a try!

Nice report. I agree: flying the T65 is not hopeless. I still wonder how you could beat Dengar, Bossk and the Lancer though.

27 minutes ago, Schu81 said:

Nice report. I agree: flying the T65 is not hopeless. I still wonder how you could beat Dengar, Bossk and the Lancer though.

In reality, it all came down to flying. We set up in opposite corners and both sort of came through the dense asteriod field. In order to dodge a rock, my friend had to make a less than optimal move which allowed me to get all my ships into his Lancer's flank. He had of course moved his mobile arc to shoot at me, but didn't do any damage and I knocked off a shield or two. Then he made a bad Ktutn that not only allowed me to stay in his flank because I went 1 ahead plus a barrel roll with my aces, but stressed him, an also kept his mobile firing arc away from my ships and was able to focus the Lancer down. I managed to dodge the shot from Dengar with minimal damage and the Range 3 shot from Boss missed entirely. Next turn is when I began drawing him into the rocks, then causing bumps with Garvin to keep Dengar on asteroids for two turns caused damage to Dengar, but more importantly made Dengar unable to shoot, so I could risk getting into range 1 and allowed me to fire Luke and Wedge both at range 1 for both turns and take him out. And once that happened it was just zoom past Bossk and then stay behind him and plink away till he died.

3 hours ago, Mackaywarrior said:

Thanks for the recap! I love flying X-Wings but I'll have to give your Luke build a try!

That Luke was pretty good. I almost always could Barrel Roll because of Expertise and his defense ability.

I'm going to try 5 rookies with R2 astromechs with IA for the off season Vassal league. (Rookies are 19 points).

If nothing else, there's a lot of dice coming someone's way!

Nice recap and good on you for the friendly two finger salute to the T65 naysayers!

On 6/4/2017 at 10:51 AM, BlodVargarna said:

I'm going to try 5 rookies with R2 astromechs with IA for the off season Vassal league. (Rookies are 19 points).

If nothing else, there's a lot of dice coming someone's way!

Clearly, your rookies are better than everyone elses - they cost 21pts!

You need to read the content of the comments before commenting on them. The off-season league has revised point values. 19 for Rookies.

18 minutes ago, BlodVargarna said:

You need to read the content of the comments before commenting on them. The off-season league has revised point values. 19 for Rookies.

Ahhh, noted, I don't play on Vassal

It's always refreshing to hear something like this. I will forward your build to a friend of mine who's playing Rebels, he's been trying to make T-65s work and he's struggling a bit, which kinda bums me out because a) I want him to have fun with his iconic ships and b) Garvin is a badass.

I have been doing pretty well with T-65s for the last year now. My only regret is not flying them in last season's regionals. I would have had even more fun than I already had. Oh well. I'm glad to see people are finally waking up to the fact that these things kick ***.

Ha! Nice builds I use the same 3 when I throw in X-Wings! I had the same issue with Garven and have swapped him out for Wes Janson (comes with the Rebel Transport) with basically the same build as your Garven with VI (I run with higher squad point limits though). He attacks first and I can strip whatever I'd like off a target! Makes them a bit softer to hit with the rest of my ships. Another alternative I run with is Tycho with PTL, Wired, Autothrusters, Chardaan Refit, and Test Pilot. He'll never do as much damage as an X-Wing, BUT he's a pain in the *** to hit If I have the points, I swap out Wired for Outmaneuver.

Garven is good, but not ideal with higher PS pilots - and especially not with Luke/Expertise, who essentially never needs actual focus tokens.

Wes will always be useful - his ability is so **** flexible, from taking away focus tokens/evade tokens to help kill an ace, to 'disarming' an alpha strike's target lock before it can fire. Hotshot co-pilot is a thing for a good reason, and having one baked into a (potentially PS10) snubfighter as a pilot ability is **** nice.

I'll keep beating on this drum, 65's are better than people think!

I'll say it again as well, I came second in a Q1 tournie with the following list:

Braylen with R2-A2, Gunner , VT and title

Rookie with R2 and IA x 3

Really enjoy flying it, it's nice and straight forward with a little bit of shenanigans.

I'll be flying this again in a 40th anniversary tournie in July, looking at swapping out VT so I can upgrade gunner to Luke.

Primary weapon 3 is nothing to scoff at. Classic Xwing is still a good ship. I agree that a title would make it better. Perhaps something like the Scum are getting, where you can add 1-3 mods to it.

15 hours ago, DampfGecko said:

It's always refreshing to hear something like this. I will forward your build to a friend of mine who's playing Rebels, he's been trying to make T-65s work and he's struggling a bit, which kinda bums me out because a) I want him to have fun with his iconic ships and b) Garvin is a badass.

Just remind your friend, that Xwings work best if you don't fly right up and get focused down. Luke's idea of going in full throttle, doesn't translate into Xwing Miniatures. Hang back, come in at an angle, and use VT as much as possible to dodge arcs with Luke and Wedge.

6 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Garven is good, but not ideal with higher PS pilots - and especially not with Luke/Expertise, who essentially never needs actual focus tokens.

Yeah I knew about Garvin being less than ideal for passing focus to Higher PS, especially Luke, but my idea was to always pass to Wedge to regen a shield with his Astromech.

3 minutes ago, JJFDVORAK said:

Just remind your friend, that Xwings work best if you don't fly right up and get focused down. Luke's idea of going in full throttle, doesn't translate into Xwing Miniatures. Hang back, come in at an angle, and use VT as much as possible to dodge arcs with Luke and Wedge.

Yeah, the "flying right up" part tends to be the problem. I'm doing a sort of flight school thing with him right now and the list above is a great balance between providing options and teaching necessities- while still being very fun to fly. Also, one can evidently become very skilled at flying it- as an Imperial player, I always dig a challenge that looks like it straight up escaped Yavin

2 hours ago, Superstrength79 said:

Primary weapon 3 is nothing to scoff at. Classic Xwing is still a good ship. I agree that a title would make it better. Perhaps something like the Scum are getting, where you can add 1-3 mods to it.

I think a title that gives them boost and/or barrel roll(either by allowing them more mods so they can get IA and VT or EU and giving them a reduction on points for mods or just plain adds barrel roll to their action bar) is really what is needed. The other problem is the Xwing dial only has 3 greens on it's dial. A title that gave it more greens would also be nice.

Dial was probably kept tight since all we see Xwings doing in the movie is flying straight down that path to the exhaust port. Nothing fancy and usually going in a straight line. Maybe a new droid that turns certain moves into greens and also the title that beefs the action bar?

5 hours ago, Superstrength79 said:

Dial was probably kept tight since all we see Xwings doing in the movie is flying straight down that path to the exhaust port. Nothing fancy and usually going in a straight line.

Not true after Rogue One and I'm guessing soon to be Rebels

5 hours ago, Superstrength79 said:

Maybea new droid that turns certain moves into greens and also the title that beefs the action bar?

This is exactly what I was thinking. In a perfect world, we would get a title that makes more of your dial green, and let's you take a Droid with IA and gives you access to VT or EU for a discount. So effectively, more greens and two mods for a discount with one being IA and the other either VT or EU.

7 minutes ago, JJFDVORAK said:

Not true after Rogue One and I'm guessing soon to be Rebels

The X Wing in this game obviously predates the Rogue One movie.

7 minutes ago, Joe Censored said:

The X Wing in this game obviously predates the Rogue One movie.

Of course. I'm just saying that at this point, we have seen several canon sources showing the Xwing to be quite maneuverable. And before this game came out, there were many EU sources that showed that. That is why people have been wondering why the Xwing dial isn't great for a long time.

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That is why people have been wondering why the Xwing dial isn't great for a long time

Because it was literally one of the first two ships created, unfortunately. FFG probably had the wave 1 ships ready to go as a group, so all they new was "needs to be better than a Y-wing and worse than a TIE fighter".

The lack of greens is fine - because R2 Astromech is a thing. If you look at the X-wing expansion pack and the Y-wing pack that came out simultaneously, in fact, you got Expert Handling (adding a barrel roll ability) and R2 Astromech - which combined made Wedge handle a just as well as the TIE fighters available at the same time.

Of course, the game's power creep has moved on so far since then - now, a ship which doesn't have talon rolls or segnor's loops and a 'free' reposition of some kind is considered unmanouvrable.

The thing is, the X-wing is a lot closer to good than a lot of people give it credit for. A T-65 with R2 Astromech and Vectored Thrusters is a **** tasty little ship; it just pays too many points for what it does, and lacks the X-wing specific 'extra health' card of Integrated Astromech, which effectively makes it more expensive still. But it's too expensive , not bad .

The other problem is that simply giving the ship cheap access to vectored thrusters or engine upgrade isn't that amazing. Generic pilots with access to reposition actions rarely use them - because they can't use them reactively, and a bad shot with a token is generally as effective as a good shot without one (or vice versa if defending). Cards which give you 'free' repositions (adaptive ailerons, BB-8, cloaking device, sabine) on the other hand, are useful, even at lower pilot skill.

To be honest, my personal view is that the T-65 really wants a treatment like the Khiraxz Vaksai title. Not identical - I don't like duplicating card effects - but similar. The best way to draw 'clear water' between the T-65 and T-70 is to make the T-65 cheaper - you don't need to make the T-65 much cheaper to drop it into the 'heavy swarm' category like the striker, khiraxz, heavy scyk, etc where you can pack 5 generics in a squad.

The T-70 is tougher (extra shield) and faster (speed 3 straight greens, boost, talon roll and access to primed thrusters). I don't think there's anything wrong with its points cost. But the T65 costs that touch too much, such that often run out of useful slots before points - you can easily spend points on torpedoes, for example, but without extra munitions and guidance chips they're a so-so investment....but do you really want to give up integrated astromech?

I think the Vaksai is the biggest indicator of what people should be looking at in power; the Khiraxz is the closest 'brother' to the X-wing in game - similar dial (with a slight speed down on turns and up on straights), same total hits, similar stats, and a pretty comparable top pilot.