Sooo, this may be a question that has no answer beyond, “because that’s how they made it,” but I was wondering why the Fang fighter has so few upgrade slots. In trying to build with them, I’ve found them fairly boring and homogenous. I’ve only actually flown one once, and it turns out Fearless Fenn still gets his *** kicked when you blank out on defense dice a couple times, so I never really got to see what they’re capable of. They seem REALLY expensive, points-wise, for such a fragile ship. Tell me about why it’s good.

Philosophy? Choose violence!

They're fragile, but they hit like a truck, especially Fenn Rau, who has a tendency to delete ships off the board, and they can actually be surprisingly durable thanks to concordia(and Fenn with his bonus defense dice at r1). Old Teroch's token denial is also very powerful, offensively and defensively.

The trick with them is always being at range 1 of opponent, or far away/out of arc. Their worst position is range 2. They're also particularly great against 2 primary opponents, you can fly Fenn Rau right at 2 primary joust formations and be pretty confident at survival, often coming out without a scratch. See: CIS droids.

Basically they're superb close quarters brawlers.

Fangs have few upgrade slots for game balance. Fenn Rau with Afterburners would be super busted, for example.

Fangs are cool because they make you play the game. There's no card combo that makes them easy, you just have to play well and get rewarded or punished accordingly. One of my favorite designs in 2.0 tbh.

No mod slot for balance. Giving Fenn Rau Shield or Stealth Device or Afterburners would be wicked strong.

57 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’ve only actually flown one once, and it turns out Fearless Fenn still gets his *** kicked when you blank out on defense dice a couple times, so I never really got to see what they’re capable of.

Just roll Evades and he's amazing.

But seriously, in my experience, a Fang is a ship you have to just *trust*. Arc dodge if you can, if not get into that Range 1 and believe in your dice and Concordia Faceoff. Fortune Favors the Bold. If you hate your dice, if you doubt them, they'll feel that nervousness and won't return your trust. Just gotta have faith.

//

More seriously, the Fang is a ship where skill starts to look like luck. Fly well, and you'll be in a position for your dice to carry you. Fly poorly, and your dice will betray you. That's been my own experience, at least. When I get outflown, when an opponent range controls me well, it'll feel like "oh, my dice were crap this game." But then I have to step back and remind myself that this is because I was defending at Range 2 more often, and not getting blocks and having un-tokened opponents attacking me at Range 1.

//

A Fang is a mood ship. It's got it's quirks, might not be for everyone. But when it clicks.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Sooo, this may be a question that has no answer beyond, “because that’s how they made it,” but I was wondering why the Fang fighter has so few upgrade slots. In trying to build with them, I’ve found them fairly boring and homogenous. I’ve only actually flown one once, and it turns out Fearless Fenn still gets his *** kicked when you blank out on defense dice a couple times, so I never really got to see what they’re capable of. They seem REALLY expensive, points-wise, for such a fragile ship. Tell me about why it’s good.

Fenn is one of like 2 high init ships in the game that does not escape card mitigate legitimate counter play options accessible to any ships playing against him.

Fangs and Fenn in particular are interesting precisely because they have a weakness. Fenn is also one of only a few i6 ships that is possibly costed correctly. Poe inhabits a similar space.

Alternatives include Afterburner Passives Vader, 7b Regen Obi, Soontir, or Boba who all basically fly themselves with the player along for the ride as a spectator. Vader becomes less interesting and requires substantially less thought and decision making as upgrades become available. His decision tree without passives and burners takes on a completely different look with every dial choice carrying more weight. Obi and Jedi as well are a ton more fun in their CLT Senseless Regenless variety than their 7b form.

Any perceived issue with Fenn’s quality is more about how busted other aces are especially in extended.

Core weaknesses that punish mistakes and reward an opponents successfully executed counter play strategy paired with reasonable point costs are a feature of interesting High Init pilots. These are not problems to be fixed with upgrades that remove the counter-play which makes them passably interactive in the first place. These are foundations of what every single i5- i6 ship and really any card in the game should look like.

Fenn butt and all sides face off is total bull vs 2 die attacks at R1.
the ship is an incredibly powerful piece.

and all that jazz hating on the other aces is utter bull. Surprise look who’s actually being used a lot: Fenn.

40 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

and all that jazz hating on the other aces is utter bull. Surprise look who’s actually being used a lot : Fenn.

Wedge Antillies: not in Hyperspace.

Vader with Afterburners: not in Hyperspace.

Quickdraw: not in Hyperspace.

Anakin: not in Hyperspace.

Soontir Fel: not in Hyperspace.

Sun Fac with Ensnare: 🤣 lol 🤣 but also... not in Hyperspace.

The great comedy of the situation is of course is the Fang shipping with Afterburners, a card it cannot equip except through the quickbuilds. At the start of Second Edition's release FFG realized -- too late in the process to change the expansion contents -- that Fangs with Afterburners or other exciting mod choices were big trouble in 2.0's new meta; they can be scary even without those options. So they removed the mod slot (and at first didn't adjust prices properly, so Fangs languished for a while). Same no-mods limit applies to a couple of other light ace ships like the RZ-1 A-Wing, which offers only a missile and talent slot and doesn't see near as much action. Fangs got the better deal thanks to their pilot ability; mixing that with double repositions or yet more defense is too much.

You can certainly justify it thematically as "It's a very precision-built ship that cannot be easily modded to include things like afterburners, a shield generator, etc" or "it needs to stay incredibly lightweight and responsive to maintain its capabilities", but that's unnecessary. X-Wing is a game of (attempted) balance, and when something's dangerous to that balance it gets thrown out regardless of canon. See: Entire History of Jumpmaster 5000 in X-Wing. 😄

Despite being limited to just a Torpedo and Talent slot, it's still seeing lots of use. At least, Fenn and Old Teroch are, and occasionally 4x Fearless Skull Squadron Pilot (I'm told it's fun and quite reliable once you know how to fly it).

And as pointed out above, the Fang (especially Fenn & Teroch) is a very balanced and delicate ship that must be flown very well; mistakes are very costly and it's usually buried by other ace choices in factions that have a wider selection of aces. Right now Fenn's doing fantastic because most of his harshest competitors are not playing in Hyperspace, or had their points raised. And the recent points balance and new hyperspace pool were pretty good to scum overall. That's a nice change after spending a long time banished from the meta "for the good of the realm".

4 hours ago, Wazat said:

See: Entire History of Jumpmaster 5000 in X-Wing. 😄

Despite being limited to just a Torpedo and Talent slot, it's still seeing lots of use. At least, Fenn and Old Teroch are, and occasionally 4x Fearless Skull Squadron Pilot (I'm told it's fun and quite reliable once you know how to fly it).

And now the jumpmaster has spent most of its 2.0 life languishing for past sins in another edition. At least Nom Lumb is kind of good in his own way.

I am a real fan of the 4x fearless Skull list. It’s pure fundamental xwing and it only has two triggers to remember (and both are similar in nature). Although I also really like 3x Fearless Skulls plus the aforementioned Nom Lumb with an ion cannon and Dengar gunner.

Fenn Rau is and always will be X-Wing's most dangerous ace. There is nobody more capable of hurting you at close range with such little risk, yet risking it all.

Fenn Rau is still my favorite pilot.

This ship is a lifestyle! Doesn't need anything else.

That aside, you need to really think about what you're doing with it. But that's what this game is all about. Do a single mistake and get murdered.

If you're interested I posted my experience (with Battlereports) flying FFF and Fenn+Guri lately.

Interesting stuff. Thanks all!

I guess I just had horrible luck with my Fearless Fenn in the one match I flew it in. Tokened up, in range for the Concordia Faceoff buff, ready to go, and it literally fired one very so-so attack, then got wrecked as I proceeded to roll almost entirely blanks on one shot, taking a Direct Hit and surviving on one hull, then getting mauled by a follow-up Range 2 attack and evaporating. But sometimes the dice just fail you. I’m sure I will be giving Fenn another go.

I haven’t delved into Hyperspace yet. Just starting out, my group decided that as we picked up expansions, we wanted every possible ship and upgrade to be playable, and while we’ve hit upon some good stuff, we haven’t yet found anything to be so badly busted that it’s unbeatable, or getting in the way of a good time. Eventually we may try it out, but for now we get to play everything.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

then getting mauled by a follow-up Range 2 attack and evaporating

This is what kills Fenn. If he's ever defending at range 2, he's in trouble. If he's looking at two r2 3-die attacks, he's as good as dead. He might take a beating at range 1, but he will often survive and deal much worse damage back. At range 2, though, he's weak and vulnerable.

When flying Fenn, you must recognise that he is expensive and dangerous, so your opponent will put a lot of effort into killing him. The trick is to anticipate what your opponent is going to do about Fenn. If they go for Fenn, run and bait them out of position so your other ships can destroy them. If they ignore Fenn, punish them.

5 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Interesting stuff. Thanks all!

I guess I just had horrible luck with my Fearless Fenn in the one match I flew it in.

This happens. For us average players, you will get games where Fenn does literally nothing and then dies. You can't always put him in the perfect place and will need some luck at times. At other times, he will solo the entire enemy fleet in consecutive turns. Boom or bust, baby!

Never run him without Fearless or Outmanouevre, never run him with more.

Unless you're an absolute boss, you want to put him in a squad where losing him early doesn't pull the rug out from under you. If he's carrying all the weight, you're gonna lose when the dice decide.

With other Fangs, that's much easier to do, the cost is so much more manageable. They make a great component that will either punish heavily or soak a lot of attention. Fast.

Balance of aggression is key. With practice, you'll learn to hang out at range before you pounce. Once in at R1, they're beast, but you have to carefully manage the stress and positional advantage. Your opponent can flick out to R2 and knock them off the board, if you haven't given yourself good follow up/disengage options. Can make for a solid early lead that then just evaporates.

Watch your approach angle, your lanes and following turn options. Boost/roll without focus for position, while out of range, to open them up. If you can then jump in to R1/block without repositioning, you should have a good time. Their options for a tight 2nd engage, or a flee to set up another semi-joust are strong.

With stress, 2 hard/3 straight, with a single repo, can be surprisingly limiting. Particularly around obstacles. This is almost always where the struggle comes.

This whole angle is what would make them kinda busted with access to Afterburners. It'd be easy to make those R1, stress free engages. 2 charges would be all it would take to zoom in, punch lights out, disengage, repeat, win.

All of that being said, how does one effectively FIGHT a fang fighter. I have a friend who uses one and it is killer. I can set up a b-wing with atps followedby autoblasters, and he rolls all evades. What strategies do yall have to deal with them (and players if fang fighters, what frustrates you most).

7 minutes ago, Redleader128 said:

All of that being said, how does one effectively FIGHT a fang fighter. I have a friend who uses one and it is killer. I can set up a b-wing with atps followedby autoblasters, and he rolls all evades. What strategies do yall have to deal with them (and players if fang fighters, what frustrates you most).

Bombs, Rigged Cargo Chute, double stress mechanics, auto damage, blocking them, range control, token stealing/removal, auto tractor.

Another neat idea - 5th Brother Inquisitor with Homing Missile. There are Jendon based lists around now which are basically ace/low HP ship killers.

24 minutes ago, Redleader128 said:

All of that being said, how does one effectively FIGHT a fang fighter. I have a friend who uses one and it is killer. I can set up a b-wing with atps followedby autoblasters, and he rolls all evades. What strategies do yall have to deal with them (and players if fang fighters, what frustrates you most).

Shoot them at Range 2, or Range 3 if you must. If you have a turret to shoot from side or rear, those are great, but list-building counters are "false" counters. Fangs rely on positioning for their dice mods, so out-position them. Without Concordia and Fearless, they're just rolling plain dice, and over time, they ought to blank out enough. In some ways, that's contradictory advice to how I told folks to fly fangs. I tell Fang players to trust their dice. I tell opponents of Fang players to trust that the Fangs dice will betray them.

But the heart of it is--and this is the most annoying and useless advice ever--just "fly better." Fangs aren't efficient ships without their free dice modifications, and they only get their free dice mods from being in the right place at the right time. Hit them when they're out of position. Attack sooner, before they can get into position. Delay attacking, so they over-commit and get caught out of position. There's no set rule, since it'll depend on the board.

1 hour ago, Redleader128 said:

All of that being said, how does one effectively FIGHT a fang fighter.

Basically with kill boxes and focus fire.

Fenn is slippery but he can't double reposition. That means if you can predict his maneuver accurately, you can identify a relatively small area of board space that he'll end up in. You want to position your ships to maximise arc coverage of that area, and try and set things up so that at least one of your better guns (3 dice primaries and/or someone with easy access to dice mods) gets a range 2 shot. If you can manage two shots you're living the dream.

Of course, to do this means some of your ships will go without shots and that you're ignoring the rest of the list; this is absolutely something that good players will capitalise on. But that's the reason Fenn is a good piece and has seen such success in Hyperspace. Not really much you can do about that.

Strategy beyond that basically comes down to the specifics of your own list, specifics of the rest of their list and identifying your win condition. Accept that you'll almost certainly lose at least one ship to the focus fire strategy above and then decide if that will lose you the rest of the game or not. Losing one of five Blue Squadron Escorts is almost certainly fine. Losing one of Braylen or Ten when you don't have the other may very well not be, for example.

And, as @funwok said, blocking. Blocking is, IMO, the easiest strategy to recommend whenever aces are involved and the hardest one to pull off consistently. A lot of good players are good at blocking, because they're good players, so they often forget that it takes a bit of nuance when suggesting it to newer players. But most importantly, the key to blocking is experience. You need to know the inside and out of your opponent's dial and actions. This was one of the biggest learning experiences when I first went to a club instead of just playing my friend. I basically only ever played Rebels, but even my experience playing against Empire wasn't enough, to say nothing of completely unfamiliar Scum, Resistance and Republic lists. I hadn't played with most of the ships myself, so I didn't know their dial. And no amount of saying "I can block his Boba Fett with my Arvel" was enough when he'd pull the 1 hard I kept forgetting he had, slide right past me and the nearest rock and still keep guns on with the rear arc.

If you want to ruin a Fang's day, play a few games with Fangs yourself. Once you've seen all the rock placements and blocking tactics that most frustrate you, you'll know how to play against them.

Like has been said very well already, disregarding list builds, positioning.

Key to that is not giving them an easy dive into R1 of all your ships, so don't rush your own approach and spread a little . Some Fang players will come to you very quickly. That can become very black and white, depending largely on deployment. Don't put yourself where obvious 5 straights and clean break aways are inevitable.

I mostly don't speed in. Reason being is that I want to ensure I get that dive with good options available, so unless you feed me an obvious area I can blast into, I'll wait until one opens.

If I'm starting my approach and not bailing out of one, I can only wait for so long. So the more I have to shimmy around at R3 and beyond, the more my options close up and the better it gets for the anti-Fang. I have to get R1, so on a cagey approach, I will end up with fewer good places to be, or I'll be on the run.

It'll be a key turn. The Fang dial, plus boost means they can make that dive from all sorts of angles and sometimes it just can't be avoided. If so, you need to make sure they have to use the linked action to get it. Ideally, you have obstacles or board edges around you that then limit their blue turns and disengages. They become very predictable at this point, much easier to block, avoid or killbox.

You do need to wary of how fast they can jump on you, you obviously don't want to be caught rolling no reds at them. So sometimes it is better to accept a wonky charge than mess up avoiding a perfect one. Like I said earlier, a 1st engage advantage can swiftly turn sour for them.

Its really just basic X Wing. Aiming to have more options than your opponent, for longer, so that you always have a better range of choices than they do. And keeping the faith.

Blocking is pretty much never bad, but I wouldn't put it as the top strategy, unless you're also taking Range 2 shots or non-front arc shots. One huge strength of a Fang is, if they're still at Range 1 Front Arc, they still get a tonne of dice mods while blocked. Fearless Fangs can easily come out ahead of other ships when in the parking lot.

3 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Blocking is pretty much never bad, but I wouldn't put it as the top strategy, unless you're also taking Range 2 shots or non-front arc shots. One huge strength of a Fang is, if they're still at Range 1 Front Arc, they still get a tonne of dice mods while blocked. Fearless Fangs can easily come out ahead of other ships when in the parking lot.

Absolutely. The Fearless Four is not actively wanting to smash into your front row, but they do not dislike it.

2 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

Absolutely. The Fearless Four is not actively wanting to smash into your front row, but they do not dislike it.

That's why it's such a fun list. The Fang is an ace-ship for impatient folks... You could do flanking and circle the drain and jockey for position for 30 minutes.

Or you can just go punch someone in the teeth.

To OPs point, I also find the reduced emphasis on list building to be kind of a double edged sword in 2.0. I'm glad that games aren't being won in list building to the same extent that they were particularly at the end of 1.0, but, as much as I love the fang, find it to be kind of boring to slot into my lists. Not that it isn't a great ship, it is, but there is only one slot worth of decision making required to add it to a list. Am I taking fearless or not? Maybe crackshot... There are other ships that suffer from this as well, but the fang is an old favorite so it hits particularly hard.

7 hours ago, urbanyeti said:

To OPs point, I also find the reduced emphasis on list building to be kind of a double edged sword in 2.0. I'm glad that games aren't being won in list building to the same extent that they were particularly at the end of 1.0, but, as much as I love the fang, find it to be kind of boring to slot into my lists. Not that it isn't a great ship, it is, but there is only one slot worth of decision making required to add it to a list. Am I taking fearless or not? Maybe crackshot... There are other ships that suffer from this as well, but the fang is an old favorite so it hits particularly hard.

It’s not like Fangs ever were more than one or two build types. In 1.0, Fenn always had autothrusters and either fearless, mindlink, or occasionally PTL.

Today, Fenn has crack shot, fearless, or outmaneuver. Not much different IMO, especially since he now has linked actions so ptl is out.

On 4/14/2020 at 1:05 PM, theBitterFig said:

That's why it's such a fun list. The Fang is an ace-ship for impatient folks... You could do flanking and circle the drain and jockey for position for 30 minutes.

Or you can just go punch someone in the teeth.

As a terminally impatient player, I approve of this message.