starter squads

By Grape Starburst, in X-Wing

I was thinking about making a pair of low point (<50) opposing squads that I could use to try and get other players interested in the game. Something along the line of 1 X-Wing and 1 Y-Wing vs. 1 TIE Advanced and 2 TIE Fighters. I know looking at the point costs I could make 50 point squads of Biggs and Horton Salm and have them face a Storm Squadron TIE Advanced, Black Squadron TIE, and Obsidian Squadron TIE, but with no game experience yet myself I don't know if those would be a fair matchup. The Rebel side in particular I'm kind of unsure of since my only Rebel ship right now is the X-Wing from the core set so even though I do have a single X-Wing and Y-Wing coming to me from a trade I haven't even seen thier cards yet. I'm open to changing things around, but my starting idea on it was to use non unique pilots for all 5 ships and then add in a minimum of upgrades/astromechs/secondary weapons if I had to just to get the points/relative squad strengths even.

I usually use 60 pts, set up right after the first round of combat with a bit of damage sprinkled around and a Crit that can be removed by an Action on Mauler.

Let the less experienced player use the Imperials

Darth Vader 29

-Swarm Tactics 2

Mauler Mithel 17

Academy Pilot 12

Rebels

Red Squadron 23

R2 Astromech 2

Proton Torpedo 4

Gold Squadron Y 18

R2-D2 4

Ion Cannon 5

Proton Torpedo 4

Did three demo's today at LGS using 24 point build…..its cheap and simple but gives good playability

Red Squadron X-wing w/R2 astromech vs. Academy Pilot TIE fighter x2

Also played one 50 points game….mini TIE swarm

Red Squadron X-wing w/R2-D2 astromech & Red Squadron X-wing vs.
Academy Pilot TIE fighter x2 & Obsidian Pilot TIE fighter x2

This was a really good game. It looked pretty bleak at the beginning with the base X-wing traded for a TIE. Took out another TIE but was mauled badly. R2-D2 saved the day multiple times re-gening shields and managed to pull it out.

Hope this Helps

BigDogg said:

Did three demo's today at LGS using 24 point build…..its cheap and simple but gives good playability

Red Squadron X-wing w/R2 astromech vs. Academy Pilot TIE fighter x2

Also played one 50 points game….mini TIE swarm

Red Squadron X-wing w/R2-D2 astromech & Red Squadron X-wing vs.
Academy Pilot TIE fighter x2 & Obsidian Pilot TIE fighter x2

This was a really good game. It looked pretty bleak at the beginning with the base X-wing traded for a TIE. Took out another TIE but was mauled badly. R2-D2 saved the day multiple times re-gening shields and managed to pull it out.

Hope this Helps

I like both of those. I still like the idea of a 2 on 3 battle to show all 4 ship types, but those 2 small squads are both nice and simple. I can almost do the first one now since all I need for that is the R2 droid which I'll have as soon as my Y-Wing gets here and in the meantime I can just look up what it does.

Completely agree with BigDogg. Keep it simple enough that a new player can keep track of everything that's going on without overwhelming them, but give them a couple of options to show the strategic depth.

I'm using:

rebels: rookie Xwing + torps

imperials: Academy TIE + Obsidian TIE

then depending on your number of players, just multiply it. eg. 4 players, so each person either gets the single Xwing or 2 TIEs