I think FFG has a number of different ways to enhance the Y-wing making it a more useful ship. Just getting them to act on it is the problem.

I successfully won with Garven Dreis (6) + Rookie (2) and Dutch (6) + Gold Squadron (2), both Y-Wing fielding ion turrets. The key to all of it was to fly it tightly packed in a box formation and select the most narrow corridor of asteroids I could find, that would be aggravating to my opponent. The formation was placed this way, using the pilot skill numbers:

X2 Y2

Y6 X6 (assuming my formation points upwards)

Everyone stayed well within range 1 to make sure the synergy abilities triggered off every time. Although in retrospect, I had never tested out the turning of this formation. The main problem is that if your square is tight, you won't be able to use Turn 3 in the front + turn 1 in the back, since none of those ships can turn 1. You're thus forced to break off with bank and turn, but the way I set this up with the diagonal alignment of similar ship is that I could be forced to use a turn 3 on a Y-Wing. I'm going to have to rethink how much space I want between the columns of this square formation to allow for later turning. Fortunately, the game was heavily in my favor before it was high time to break off from the straight line movement I had started with.

Should see if watto has the neccessary parts, is the Y wing broken?

Tried my first game of X-wing this weekend. I fielded three Y-wings versus (Dutch, Horton? and a gray squadron pilot, all with astromechs, ion cannnons and dutch and horton had a proton torpedoe). My opponent had 1 Tie interceptor, Slave-1, and an Academy Tie fighter. Lost horribly (I was trying to learn the game not win) as my tactical decisions were not that great either. However, I did dishout significant dmage to slave 1 and the Tie. Never got to fire a torp.

Tried my first game of X-wing this weekend. I fielded three Y-wings versus (Dutch, Horton? and a gray squadron pilot, all with astromechs, ion cannnons and dutch and horton had a proton torpedoe). My opponent had 1 Tie interceptor, Slave-1, and an Academy Tie fighter. Lost horribly (I was trying to learn the game not win) as my tactical decisions were not that great either. However, I did dishout significant dmage to slave 1 and the Tie. Never got to fire a torp.

Seems to me an easy fix would be to permit both the pilot to fire to the front, and the ion gunner to both fire in the same turn.

Has anyone tried that in their games?

If so, how did it work out?

Alternatively, then perhaps as suggested, the points for the ship and add-ons needs to be looked at again.

vagorin79 said:

That's the point pretty much…

NOW the Y-wing is a support ship and everyone does ignore it. because if they don't, the Falcon besides it will kill so much stuff its unbelievable.

I won a game with Lando, Garven and Dutch. i was against a Bounty Hunter, Fel's Wrath, Dark Curse and an Obsidian Squadron. I won't go into details but Garven caused a bloodbath pretty much doing 4 damage on the Bounty hunter twice after the falcon had lured out the evade tokens Then he killed the Obsidian and afte rthat the Fel'sWrath. So you can see my team comp was focused on supporting each other hardcore. i called it "Token Thanksgiving". It did very well against the Imperial squadron and it was not tailored against it, i had no idea what my enemy would play.

But even if Garven really killed everything and everyone while on top of that also making a range 3 3 dice dodge, my real game winner was Dutch Vander. The ion cannon was priceless. It first put a threatening token on the Bounty Hunter, then he ioned the obsidian squadron twice in a row, granting Garven a very easy kill with the target lock on top of focus. He also Ioned Fel's wrath twice after that, granting garven another easy kill. I had three turns getting hardly shot at because Dutch just aimed at Ties currently pointed in the wrong direction. And the Y-wing hardly got shot at since there were other threats.

Before wave 2 this would not have been possible, but now Garven and the Falcon took all the fire, and Dutch just plain won me the game… None of my ships took even a damage to the hull, and i lost 3 shields on the Y-wing just because at the end i deliberately flew through asteroids because i wanted to surprise Dark Curse XD

So i am very happy with Y-Wings right now, but still a blaster or laser turret like described further up would be a very nice addition, and i don't think it would be op at all. A gunner would also really be a realistic addition although i don't know if it would make a lot of sense…

I've read this thread with great interest, I'm a Rookie pilot only picked up the game about a month ago and myself and a friend are still coming to grips with tactics anf squadron builds vs point totals to get an even and balanced game. Our last encounter consisted of my Rebels 2 X-Wings (Garvin and a Red Squadron Pilot) and 2 Y-Wings (Horton and a Grey Squadron Pilot) vs 5 TIEs (included Nightbeast, Mauler Mithel and Backstabber and Winged Gundark) and A TIE Advanced (Darth Vader). My upgrades was torps for Horton and an Astromech for Garvin (sorry can't remember which one).

My friend sent the bulk of his forces, including Darth, against my y-Wings while the remainder went for the X-Wings. I expected the Y-Wings to be minced in short order but was surprised at how well they did, especially when the Grey Squadron pilot took out Darth Vader. Now I got lucky, my friend made some pilot errors and bounced off asteroids and other ships but still I kept both groups of ships seperate and flew them in close formation applying the Top Gun rule 'never leave your wingman' this little nugget of Y-Wings were slow, didn't hit hard but together with a gap in pilot skill kept giving an effective one-two punch to one TIE after another. The opposite of this was the fight with x-Wings where they and the TIE piroetted around each other and no one really got a good firing solution on any one, actually my friend out flew me on that side of the board.

Once I got a couple of TIEs out of the way things shifted pretty quick and in the end the only ship I lost was Horton's Y-Wing and we called in when the only TIE left was Winged Gundark.

Now I'm very, very new at this, and really haven't got fully to grips with everything and I'm still building my fleet however to me it's pretty obvious that ACM Aerial Combat Manoeuvers (best you can do on a flat board) are important to keep in mind. So although a rolling furball with lots of one one one ship fights looks cool in the movies that wingman gives you protection and more firepower. Also groups of two fighters of the same type can fly very easily together and so can focus their fire on one target which makes them a big threat so that may be the key to Y-Wings, don't fly them solo give them a wingman.

Just a thought.

I want to try that 4-Ship Gold squadron Ion cannon Y-Wing list again soon to see how it fares against a real opponent. It might do better than I'm expecting, but I'm not expecting miracles.

Y'know what else the Y-wing needs, though? A generic with an elite Talent. Nearly every other ship in the game sans the X-Wing has one, and putting one on a Y-Wing might help it's chances when fielding multiple ships.

I'm half tempted to make a laser cannon turret of my own to field in battles just to get the Y-Wing on the table. The schemes I've painted my Y-Wings are among the favorites I've done (And I confess a place in my heart for the Y-Wing), but I don't see a situation where I would take a Y-Wing over an X-Wing/A-Wing/YT-1300 in a competing list.

Yeah. Both the x-wing and the Y-wing need that.

haven't read all of the thread just the first few pages and the last one.

In my experience the Y-wing is one of the most powerfull ships in the game (at least for my play style), when playing with asteroids, it has the hit points and manuverability to evade a tie swarm tank hits and kill ships when coupled with the ion cannon turret it is just amazing.

I won the reginonal championships in my area last night with the following list….

Biggs Darklighter: r2d2

rookie X-wing: proton torps

Gold sqd y-wing: ion cannon

Gold sqd y-wing: ion cannon

played 4 rounds against,

wedge biggs and dutch with r2d2 (biggs), r5-k6(wedge), and 3 sheild upgrades

wedge and han with chewie upgrade r2d2 double expose and double sheild upgrades

soontir fel, dark curse, darth vader and obsidion sqd with push the limit (fel), concussion missile, stealth device (curse), (not sure of rremaning points)

back stabber and 7x academy pilot

each game the Y-wings were crucial to my victory, first game that 360 degree of fire is what kept me in the game second game they allowed me to force the falcon off the board, 3rd game they allowed me to kill Soontir who would of destroyed me without that 360 degree arc of fire and the final game they had the manuverability and hit points to come out on top in an asteroid furball against a tie swarm.

All that being said If a change was to be made to the Y-wing cards, I would say make each Y-wing 2points cheaper and increase the cost of the ion cannon turret by 2, this change might actually see a little bit more play of Y-wings without the ion cannon turret, but finishing on the same points with the turret I don't think there would be much of a change at all in the long run, and if the plan is for more ships in the future to run the turret, than this change might be unfeasble due to what they plan on releasing.

Mako13 said:

id be interested in seeing how this works too.

Art Vandelay said:

At a glance I'd say you'd have to add at least 4 points to the cost of an ion turret to keep it from being completly broken. At range one that's six dice and a potential four damage plus an ion token. Yes in practical terms that's unlikely it's still a marked increase in the y-wing's firepower. Add to that the fact that the second attack becomes more accurate if the same ship is attacked both times by virtue of the target might have already spent its focus and evade tokens.

There's also the issue of which attack gets overriden if the Y also has protons.

Granted I don't think the Y-wing needs fixing at all other than adding some new turret and torpedo options so I might be biased. But it is giving you a slightly less outright powerful but far more versitle cluster missile type effect every turn, so I think the +four cost is low balling it really.

The only thing I really think the Y needs is for Dutch and Horton to be elite pilots. Like it was mentioned earlier, it would also be nice to have a generic elite for Y and X wings.

The Y works fine, as is. The thing it "needs" really is just more playable options, so you can have a greater variety when using the Y-Wing. There is a lot of truth to the accusation that every Y in the game is running with an Ion turret. It would be nice to see some other builds from time to time.

When I asked, nobody seemed wild about double-torp Y-Wings, which is the other offensive strength of the Y-Wing to the turret. The 360 Ion cannon is the more dependable of the two choices because it's 360 and lands an Ion effect.

And unfortunately torps aren't as great against high-dodge TIE Fighters.

So yeah, more torpeo options or a way to change torpedo upgrades into missiles would be nice. Additional turrets that actually did more than one point of damage would be good too.

In service to making the Y-wings a little more customizable I’d like to run two homebrew upgrades by the community. The first is a lower damage but higher accuracy Torp to allow the Y-wing to fulfill it’s ordinance delivery role since the standard proton is fairly unpopular. The second is a low powered but extremely cheap alternate turret. It won’t do very much damage but it allows the Y to take potshots while it’s trying to bring it’s main guns to bear without the excessive cost of the ion.

Homing torpedo:

Type: torpedo

Cost: 4

Attack: 3

Range: 2-3

Text: Attack(Target lock)

Discard this card to use this attack. May change one focus to crit.

And

Light blaster turret:

Type: Turret

Cost: 1

Attack: 1

Range: 1-2

Text: Attack one ship (even a ship outside your firing arc.

Edit: Wouldn't torps be at their best against ties? Four attack and negateing range modifies means they're one of the few ways to tag them reliably at range three and the increased crit odds go best against something that doesn't have any shields.

So the only bonus you're giving to the homing torpedo is that you can use a target lock to enhance it?

Iunno, when I look at equipment items I'm not looking at range modifiers so much as I am wondering how the card can enhance the shot. Normal Protons make the weapon hit harder when it hits, but doesn't actually help the weapon hit in the firstplace. It's 4 Dice, but the TIE Fighter is rolling 3. You may enhance the shot with a target lock, but that doesn't gurantee that your re-roll will land a hit and it doesn't affect the die roll of the TIE you're attacking.

it might be worth a try. I haven't used Homing missiles the way they were intended yet and that might be brutal in itself.

For the alternate turret I think you need more attack. My problem with the Ion turret now is that it only does 1 point of damage. What I would want is something that could do 2-3 points of damage per attack, but needs to be balanced somehow. If it's a 1-2 range weapon I can see equipping these on to a Y-Wing formation and flying them together to cover one another, or charging TIE fighters to zoom past them and shoot them from behind.