I don't always play Rebels, but when I do, I play X-wings. I think they look cool and I think S-foils are interesting to use. I like the combination of a ship that hits hard, moves fast, and can take at least one hit before it goes down. The primary purpose of this post is to compare the offensive efficiency of three 5 ship Hyperspace squads centered on T65s.
With the drop in generic prices, and the removal of most ships from Hyperspace, now is a good time to look at heavy T65 lists.
The most obvious option is 5 Blue Escorts. 5 i2 X-wings, pretty much what it says on the tin. 5 well-rounded ships.
You can trade one X-wing for a support ship/pocket ace and some initiative in the form of Jake (4 Red Vets + Jake). Jake gives you some more frequent access to double mods, and the bump to i3 for the X-wings isn't insignificant.
A 3rd option is 4 X-wings and an A-wing blocker with Intimidation. You don't get the extra modification from Jake, but you can drop the offense of a singe target under certain situations.
Using the X-wing dice calculator ( http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/ ) I ran the numbers of these 3 squads against 2 "hard" targets, Boba Fett with Focus, 1 Force, and 1 reroll and 3 AGI with Focus and 2 Force, representing CLT Jedi, Vader, and Kylo. The most defensive targets were chosen because low defense targets rapidly start favoring massed attacks. Debuffs and extra mods are most significant against higher quality defenses, and such defenses are fairly common in competitive play.
Assumptions: All shots were assumed to be at Range 2 for the sake of simplicity. The 4X + Intimidation A-wing was assumed to have blocked the target with the A-wing, and therefore denied the target's Focus action for defense. 4X + Jake squad is assumed to have used Jake successfully to generate two Focus tokens for the X-wings, but not to have a shot himself (although his 2 dice unmodded shot is not likely to be significant against high defense targets).
Results: see table attached
Analysis: the real takeaway here, for me, is that Jake provides no net offensive gain. Optimal use of the extra mods is largely equivalent offense to just having an extra 3 dice shot, but it's harder to get, and your offense is more concentrated in lot fewer models so an arc dodged is more significant. Jake does provide a wide range of extra abilities compared to another X-wing. You get better initiative, he can act as an ace, and you can feed tokens on bombs or red moves. That offers a lot of flexibility. That is not accounted for in this analysis. As this analysis looks at what is essentially an "optimal" situation for the Jake squad, it is likely that the 5X list will have better average offense over the course of the game. Jake's responsiveness and the improved initiative of the list also likely means that most of the disadvantages afforded by Jake will be easier to use against lower initiative squads than higher initiative squads.
The 4X+Intimidation A-wing squad has the highest expected damage output by a wide margin. It's damage, however, is highly dependent on successfully blocking the target with the A-wing. Its offense will be strictly worse than the 5X list if the target has not been blocked. This is a strategy that requires good prediction of opponent's moves and commitment in the planning phase. Each player will have to make a judegment about how often the optimal situation will occur in games where it would matter.
Thanks for reading.
