So I've been watching Star Wars The Clone Wars lately (out of luck for real Star Wars movies recently, for my taste)...

And there's an episode where R2-D2 and C-3PO have to evacuate from a crippled battleship and not being able to secure an escape pod, R2 flies them away in a Y-wing.

So the simple yet brilliant design emerged thanks to the series. I could not resist the need to post it here.

R2-D2 or Whistler (we may do a poll if the idea catches attention).

Astromech upgrade

Game Text:

The ship equipped with this upgrade card loses it's pilot ability and has the initiative of 2.

Add 1 [Crew] icon.

This way, R2, Whistler or any other famous Astro of your choice, would become the de-facto pilot of the ship.

The "lose piot ability" clause is for making it only make sense fielding on a cheapest generic ship representing the bare vessel.

He would have no pilot ability and the Initiative of 2 to represent basic combat flight training and his focus on piloting and shooting only.

However single-seater craft would gain the Crew icon through this upgrade.

This would give X-Wings, Y-wings or E-wings access to cheap fun abilities for generics via Crew slot.

Kind of turn them half fighter-bomber, half support ship instead of calling for the clunky HWK.

Or improve their destructive ability or add some action economy (even though with low Initiative) through the same means.

Who likes the idea?

Comments? Was this worth sharing?

I like it soldier

I’ve thought about this myself, and it could be a lot of fun.

Instead of an upgrade, just make it a pilot with the Calculate action and the pilot ability "Lose your (astro) slot. Gain 1 (crew) slot. On a blue maneuver, you may take a weapon disabled token and spend a charge to recover 1 shield"

13 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Instead of an upgrade, just make it a pilot with the Calculate action and the pilot ability "Lose your (astro) slot. Gain 1 (crew) slot. On a blue maneuver, you may take a weapon disabled token and spend a charge to recover 1 shield"

If we're talking about designing this for Second Edition, we wouldn't have to bother printing that entirely for its ability, it would just have the appropriate upgrade slots listed via the app, leaving the ability text down to "On a blue maneuver, you may take a weapon disabled token and spend a charge to recover 1 shield" or another ability. This could be really cool though.