I'veseen a few videos of battles where the Imperial player appears to barrelroll forward, could be wrong though. Is this a legal move? I would have thought that a barrel roll would only be to the left or right of the final position after moving. Like I said I might be totally wrong on both fronts but I thought I'd clarify this.

You are correct in your thinking, a forward barrel roll is completely wrong.

You can move foward. When you barrel roll you place the 1 template on the side of your ship. You can however place the 1 straight movement at the front of your ship and at the completion of the barrel roll the back of your ship aligned with the front of the ship before you barrel rolled.

Are you sure they're not boosting?

Yes, the question is a bit vague.

It could be confusion with Boosting, which gives a 1-straight/bank move.

Alternately, a barrel roll maneuver *can* give the using ship some forward (or backward) distance while executing the action, because the template may be positioned to move from the front of the side to the back of the side, essentially moving the ship forward by half about half a base distance.

I thought it was wrong myself, but the example in the rulebook shows them doing just that.

Sorry I should have put up an example

See thegame cast this game

Towards the end the Imperial player barrel rolls Vader to get out of range, not firing arc but range of one of the Y-Wings. If it's in the rules then fine but to my way of thinking a forward roll is more of a tumble than a barrel roll, that's me being a picky acrobatics nut I guess.

Kemmster said:

You mean at 0:58:42 when Vader performs Turn Right 2?

If you look at the manuever closer, Vader is actually moving sideways to the left(front of the base to the front of the base), He does not actually move farward at all.