Which would you prefer?

List A (100pts):

Wedge (29)

Biggs (25)

Blue B-Wing with Heavy Laser Canon (29)

Prototype A-Wing (17)

Or

List B (99pts)

Wedge with PTL, R2, and Shield upgrade (37)

Biggs with Stealth Device and R2-F2 (31)

Blue B-Wing with Heavy Laser Canon and FCS (31)

I would rather play list two, I love having awesome pilots with a bunch of abilities. I can't say which one is better though.

List A. I'd rather have more ships and I'll tell ya why: On paper, smaller squads with lots of abilities look great (and might work great on the table too), but I put a lot of faith in maneuvering and improvising pincher tactics during play. The more ships I have, the more options I have to do that.

List A. I'd rather have more ships and I'll tell ya why: On paper, smaller squads with lots of abilities look great (and might work great on the table too), but I put a lot of faith in maneuvering and improvising pincher tactics during play. The more ships I have, the more options I have to do that.

4 basic ships vs. 3 souped up ones - I'd take 4

While list B has some appeal it just lacks the firepower that list A has. To compare:

Wedge: PTL may give him the ability to lock & focus his attack and the shield makes him a little harder to take down but in exchange for that his maneuvers become a little more predictable and his value has increased more than 25%.

Biggs: Ok, he may be harder to hit if he spends his action to gain another defense die and hasn't been hit yet. At issue, when he does get hit there goes one upgrade and if he want to use any other action that means he's not using the droid.

B-Wing: FCS will be great, if you keep shooting at the same opponent. The issue here is that if you're focusing the fire from this and Wedge and possibly even Biggs the target you'd lock may not be around to shoot at for long.

A-Wing: Oh, guess there is no comparison here. It may not roll a lot of attack dice but your opponent will still need to shoot at it sometime. It will be about as hard to hit as the souped up Biggs and takes more hits than Wedge gains with the shield boost. Consider how many dice you're likely to re-roll using Target Locks and you may look at the A-Wings attack as those "rerolls".

The unspoken drawback to four ships is that it may be a little bit harder to maneuver them but then the extra ship can let you attack from more angles if desired.

IMO

- add PTL+Engine Upgrade to Wedge and he'll survive longer than with Biggs at his side as with his high initiative will be able to stay away from firimg arcs

- add Engine Upgrade to B and stick Advanced sensors and it will be less predictable and survive longer. I like Ions on them more than HLC because it's cheaper and can be helpful in order to prepare a target for receiving missiles

- upgrade to a Green and stick PTL+ Homin missiles on it. Give him the mission to destroy your opponents best ship