In my dream world, FFG keeps XWM fresh by adding 2 new factions: The New Republic and the Imperial Remnant from the SW EU. Just to kick it around, I'm going to make it my pet project, hopefully with a little help from y'all.

Presenting the Imperial Remnant Faction for X-Wing!!

Similar to the New Republic, the faction will launch with a card pack allowing you to use your existing XWM as brand new variants for the New Republic. The following ships are "recyclable:"

The TIE/ln. Icons never die, they just get new cards!!

The TIE Interceptor: Maybe I can make it just a little less useless:

The A-9 Vigilance Interceptor: It's really an Imperial ship, stolen by the New Republic. Featuring the first dual faction release that is used on both sides of the war!!

And finally introducing the TIE Hunter and the TIE Avenger. Since it's a new faction, there's plenty of design space to toss these around.

But wait, I'm not FFG so I can spoil the ENTIRE FACTION!

You'll also be able to fly the Skipray Blastboat, I-7 Howlrunner, Chiss Clawcraft, Scimitar Assault Bomber and an IPV 1 Patrol Craft.

I intend to make cards/pilots for everything, just as a way to pass my non-table-X-Wing-hours. Comments, critiques, and contributions welcome!

TIE/rpt Raptor:

If I start here, there is no place to go but up. Introducing one of the dumbest designs in the EU, the TIE/rpt. Since I really didn't take the ship seriously, I started making a silly dial featuring Brownian Motion as inspiration, and then realized that the dial could actually make this ship interesting on the table. Ne'ertheless, I stayed silly with the pilot names and designs.

I don't think Gara works, because doesn't she choose her target at I2?

You need to have her nominate a target at the start of the Engagement Phase first.

11 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Gara was never really an Imperial pilot.

She'd never flown anything until she trained to be an X-Wing pilot while undercover, and by the time she's 'found out', she's basically already defected and only goes back to Zsinj to undermine him. She pretty much only flies one mission for him, and the whole time she's using depowered lasers to send transmission to the New Republic instead of attack them.

If you want an actual Remnant Interceptor pilot who was on the side of the Imperials, but had a history of spying and flew with Wedge Antilles then I'd go with Erisi Dlarit.

Also, this ability doesn't work. If you want to change what initiative a pilot engages at, you have to do it before they engage. As you've written, Gara is I2. She engages at her Initiative. She attacks. Her ability then triggers and lets her engage at the target's initiative, which doesn't make sense because she's already engaged.

Try:

"At the start of the Engagement Phase, you may choose 1 enemy ship in your [front arc]. If you do, you may engage at the chosen ships' Initiative this round."

11 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I feel like you're missing a major opportunity here to take advantage of the Raptor's major quirk that sets it apart.

The TIE Raptor was originally a droid piloted ship that was paired with a piloted TIE Interceptor and would mirror their movements exactly.

I think that's the perfect opportunity to give the Empire some droid pilots, and to bring in a ship ability that reflects this pairing (similar to Networked Droid Calculations). Maybe something like:

"Droid Wingman: Friendly ships at range 0-2 with "TIE" in their ship name may spend your calculate tokens as if they were theirs. After a friendly TIE Raptor Starfighter performs a [barrel roll] or [boost] action, if they are at range 0-2 you may perform the same action."

Give them calculate instead of focus, evade into red calculate and I'd probably give them boost as well (they're meant to be faster and more maneuverable than standard TIEs). Maybe make it a red boost. Engine Upgrade could do with another ship to be worth using on.

Also, for the record that dial goes beyond silly into downright potentially broken.

White stop and white reverse is insane. This would not be fun to fly against. Ever.

Gara's pilot ability doesn't even begin to work. Maybe with time travel it would?

2 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Gara's pilot ability doesn't even begin to work. Maybe with time travel it would?

As worded, it doesn't. I think it could work with more precise wording. Another way to do it might be, "At the start of the engagement phase, choose an enemy ship in your firing arc. You may engage at that ship's Initiative this round."

I really like the idea of the raptors being all droids with calculate, and the ability of other friendly Ties to use their tokens as their own. Maybe include a new pilot talent or modification for imperial small base ships. “gains coordinate, may only be used to coordinate tie raptors. When you coordinate, you may coordinate up to two friendly raptors”

7 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

Gara was never really an Imperial pilot.

She'd never flown anything until she trained to be an X-Wing pilot while undercover, and by the time she's 'found out', she's basically already defected and only goes back to Zsinj to undermine him. She pretty much only flies one mission for him, and the whole time she's using depowered lasers to send transmission to the New Republic instead of attack them.

If you want an actual Remnant Interceptor pilot who was on the side of the Imperials, but had a history of spying and flew with Wedge Antilles then I'd go with Erisi Dlarit.

Named Imperials are hard to come by, so I guess I just went with the first one I found.

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Try:

"At the start of the Engagement Phase, you may choose 1 enemy ship in your [front arc]. If you do, you may engage at the chosen ships' Initiative this round."

Perfect. I think I need to remember the "At the start of the Engagement Phase" descriptor more often.

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Also, for the record that dial goes beyond silly into downright potentially broken.

White stop and white reverse is insane. This would not be fun to fly against. Ever.

Hmm. I can't think this is more goofy than droids that can hop on rocks and sit there. Other than white stop and reverse, I thought it was kind of a lame dial. . .

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I feel like you're missing a major opportunity here to take advantage of the Raptor's major quirk that sets it apart.

The TIE Raptor was originally a droid piloted ship that was paired with a piloted TIE Interceptor and would mirror their movements exactly.

I think that's the perfect opportunity to give the Empire some droid pilots, and to bring in a ship ability that reflects this pairing (similar to Networked Droid Calculations). Maybe something like:

"Droid Wingman: Friendly ships at range 0-2 with "TIE" in their ship name may spend your calculate tokens as if they were theirs. After a friendly TIE Raptor Starfighter performs a [barrel roll] or [boost] action, if they are at range 0-2 you may perform the same action."

Give them calculate instead of focus, evade into red calculate and I'd probably give them boost as well (they're meant to be faster and more maneuverable than standard TIEs). Maybe make it a red boost. Engine Upgrade could do with another ship to be worth using on.

Yeah, somehow I missed that bit of lore.

2 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

I really like the idea of the raptors being all droids with calculate, and the ability of other friendly Ties to use their tokens as their own. Maybe include a new pilot talent or modification for imperial small base ships. “gains coordinate, may only be used to coordinate tie raptors. When you coordinate, you may coordinate up to two friendly raptors”

I also have the TIE/D Automated to fill a role, so there is an All Droid ship coming up.

Actually, given this:

The TIE Raptor was originally a droid piloted ship that was paired with a piloted TIE Interceptor and would mirror their movements exactly.

I'm inclined to design the first starfighter that MUST function within the confines of a Wing. . .

(Epic abilities have been ported over to Standard before . . .)

Back to the drawing board on this one!!

Thank you for all the input, corrections, and inspiration!

TIE/D Automated:

Alright, this is my craziest idea yet: the ultimate swarmer. This ship doesn't even get pilot options: it's one thing, all the time (or is it??}:

And here's the fix for Gara aka Erisi.

Some interesting options here..

4 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

TIE/D Automated:

Alright, this is my craziest idea yet: the ultimate swarmer. This ship doesn't even get pilot options: it's one thing, all the time (or is it??}:

The ability does not work as intended: "when attacking" will be, when you already have counted to initiative 0.

It needs to be more like:

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During the Engagement Phase, treat your Initiative as 0+ the number of other TIE/D Automated ships at Range 0-1.

11 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

TIE/D Automated:

Alright, this is my craziest idea yet: the ultimate swarmer. This ship doesn't even get pilot options: it's one thing, all the time (or is it??}:

And here's the fix for Gara aka Erisi.

Thinking on Ersi/Gara more, I think the choice should be only at the engagement step (meaning maybe the "may" in the second sentence shouldn't be there). I guess a situation where you would choose to engage at 2 instead of whatever other initiative you've picked would be very rare (I can't think of one at the moment). Maybe it doesn't matter.

And like @Singulativ , I also was going to point out that the droid brain doesn't work as is. I was going to suggest a "At the start of the engagement phase" wording again, but the idea that the ship's initiative could change during the engagement phase is kind of interesting. Using their wording rather than mine, say you've got 5 of them in formation at the start of the engagement phase. An I6 on the other side destroys one of them, which means now your droids are I4. If the other squad brought an I5 as well, they could then potentially knock the droids down to I3. Whether you want it set for the entire engagement phase once, or dynamic throughout the phase would indicate which way to go with it.

4 hours ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

And like @Singulativ , I also was going to point out that the droid brain doesn't work as is. I was going to suggest a "At the start of the engagement phase" wording again, but the idea that the ship's initiative could change during the engagement phase is kind of interesting. Using their wording rather than mine, say you've got 5 of them in formation at the start of the engagement phase. An I6 on the other side destroys one of them, which means now your droids are I4. If the other squad brought an I5 as well, they could then potentially knock the droids down to I3. Whether you want it set for the entire engagement phase once, or dynamic throughout the phase would indicate which way to go with it.

This is the intention. Obviously, playtesting would help, which I freely admit I'm not doing.

One last consideration is this: Should this ship be allowed to be, for example, IN 8 (!!) for a swarm?? Or should it cap at some sufficiently high IN??

Make it "During the Engagement Phase" instead of "When Attacking," and I think it works fine.

It maxes out at Initiative 7 when attacking (since it doesn't count itself, and you can only fly 8 anyways) and attacking at Initiative 7 already exists in the game. So I don't think it's worth the text space to restrict it.

Also, on the droid fighters, wouldn't ion damage do MORE to them than to regular ships?

5 hours ago, LTuser said:

Also, on the droid fighters, wouldn't ion damage do MORE to them than to regular ships?

A lot of us thought that would be the case and yet the Separatist droid fighters are largely unaffected. Only real downside being that as they can't take the focus action, they can't take any actions after removing their ion.

6 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

This is the intention. Obviously, playtesting would help, which I freely admit I'm not doing.

One last consideration is this: Should this ship be allowed to be, for example, IN 8 (!!) for a swarm?? Or should it cap at some sufficiently high IN??

5 hours ago, mwhylings said:

Make it "During the Engagement Phase" instead of "When Attacking," and I think it works fine.

It maxes out at Initiative 7 when attacking (since it doesn't count itself, and you can only fly 8 anyways) and attacking at Initiative 7 already exists in the game. So I don't think it's worth the text space to restrict it.

I agree here. I7 only until your formation is broken or one of the ships is destroyed is reasonable. Especially with the weak attack and health.

The final fix. Also, I should be specifying friendly TIE/Ds, so fixed that too:

Anyway in epic these are what we call a **** joust.

hey why does this just sound like all the ships you wnt the empire to add but are unrealstic

i mean just call it :

Cool Ships and Pilots That should be add to the empire or rebels

Edit: The new republic is just slighty better resitance

The TIE/rpt re-do, as inspired by @GuacCousteau and @ScummyRebel.

The lore specifies Squints, but it could easily be worded to include other ships.

3 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

The TIE/rpt re-do, as inspired by @GuacCousteau and @ScummyRebel.

The lore specifies Squints, but it could easily be worded to include other ships.

Those do not look like 3 attack capable ships.

3 hours ago, KCDodger said:

Those do not look like 3 attack capable ships.

Nor do I know where they hide a missile. (And no one called me out on forgetting the Lock, action, either }.

I had them at 2, but then the lore said they were armed like the Squints they accompanied. I could easily be talked into going back to 2 attack.

4 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Nor do I know where they hide a missile. (And no one called me out on forgetting the Lock, action, either }.

I had them at 2, but then the lore said they were armed like the Squints they accompanied. I could easily be talked into going back to 2 attack.

Lore also says the HWK-290 is 29 meters. But it isn't.

2 attack, your dial is good. No missiles.

On 2/23/2020 at 6:50 PM, Darth Meanie said:

Nice card design!