Hi All,
On Saturday I attended my first tournament (and second set of games) with wave 2 models, and here are a few of my thoughts post event. First, here is the list I ran:
Lando Calrissian w/ Squad Leader, Millenium Falcon, Nien Nunb, Gunner
Rookie X-Wing w/ Proton Torpedoes
Prototype A-Wing w/ Homing Missles
We had an 8 man event (roughly half seemed to be kessel run winners that had been playing with their stuff for months). The other lists were:
Wedge, Garven, 2x X-Wings
Krassis w/ Concussion Missile, Merc Co-pilot, Seismic bomb, Heavy Laser Cannon, Howrunner w/ Squad Leader, Turr Phenir
Vader, Night Beast, 4x Academy Ties
Han, 2x A-Wing
Boba, Krassis
Wedge, Rookie, 2x Gold Squad w/ Ion Cannon
Soontir, Fel's Wrath, Turr Phenir, all with lots of upgrades
The event standings were pretty much as listed - I think I ended up 5th.
My first thought was, you could really tell who had played with and against the big ships before. In my 3 games, I played against the 3rd Place vader list (I understand he had played many games against the big ships), the 2nd place Krassis list (he had won his Firespray in an early Kessel run), and the 3 Interceptor list (he hadn't played wave 2 yet).
Overall, my list was only OK. The theory was to stack up extra activations from Lando onto the fighters and nail things with the missiles. It worked great with the A-Wing, not so well with the X-Wing. Lando really didn't need any actions on his own as he was plenty deadly with the gunner, though I rarely used both Nien Nunb and the Falcon Upgrade. Every game the A-Wing out performed the X-Wing - the homing missile one shotted either a tie or an interceptor in every game, while the proton torp didn't really do squat. I think a second A-Wing is in order instead of the X in this list - or I could potentialy squeeze in Wedge by dropping the missiles, but I'm not quite sure Lando is the right choice with Wedge.
Initial impressions are that nothing beats experience, especially with the big ships. I suspect it will take a long time to overcome the advantage the kessel run winners have over the people that just picked up wave 2 now. Other thoughts are that the Firespray is vastly superior to the Falcon when run by Krassis - it was consistantly landing 4 hits on whatever it shot at, and in the end, it single handedly destroyed my whole list. The falcon was done after 3 turns of shooting, and the smaller ships didn't even last that long. The swarm still seems viable, though I had lost both my fighters by the end of turn 2, so I'm not sure its a vaild test. Finally, I don't think you'll see many interceptor only lists, as even with stealth devices on all the ships, they just don't have the durability for low model counts.