Named Pilots- Captain Jonus

This post regarding Named Pilots is part of a larger article regarding Wave 3 listbuilding- the rest of the posts in this series will be available in the coming weeks. For more info, click the "List Building Resources" tab at the top of the page or simply click here.

Captain Jonus (22)
Card Text: When another friendly ship at Range 1 attacks with a secondary weapon, it may reroll up to 2 Attack dice.
Usage in game: His name is Jonus, and he's carryin' the wheel. Well, that and anybody else in your list sporting a secondary weapon probably.
Breakdown: Hey, hey, hey. Hey guys. Remember back like a year ago when everybody was sporting TIE Swarms with Howlrunner? Remember that? Because she like gave everybody a reroll on their primary? Remember?

Ok, kinda same thing here, but it's with secondaries and two dice. Awesome, huh? 

One slight difference in that line of thinking is Howlie was a pretty respectable PS 8, where Jonus is clocking in at 6, which isn't bad or anything, don't get me wrong, but you do have to focus a little more on who's going when with him than you did with Howlrunner. 

Similarities do abound though, namely in that he can take Elite Pilot Skills and the fact that his own ability doesn't work on him.

As for the Elite Pilot Skills, if you've loaded up on wingmen with secondary weapons and plan on running a swarm or something similar, you can bet that Jonus is going to be a priority target for your opponent. Take a look at stuff that helps to keep him alive. Push The Limit is always a nice option to have up your sleeve in virtually any situation (especially if you've got Yorr [YOOORRRR!!!] floating around somewhere close by), or stuff like Elusiveness or Expert Handling.

If instead you're opting more for opportunistic fly-bys, lending the extra re-rolls to say, a Firespray with an Ion Cannon and upgrades tooled-up for close to medium range combat, maybe lean a little more towards offense or flexibility. Marksmanship works nicely with warhead loadouts as would something like Deadeye where you're putting more of a priority on getting near a ship with big guns you want to really hurt something bad rather than lining up a good target for Jonus.

All that said, I think there's something to be said for just going with the flow here and making Jonus something of a support craft for a couple of TIE Bomber wingmen. Dig this list I just made on Yet Another-

That's not terrible, if you ask me. It's tough to prioritize as an opponent because the stuff you likely want to ignore (the Scimitar Bombers) can put a pretty good hurt on you, while the guy you really want to go after (Jonus), is going to be protected by the rest of the list. I went ahead and stuck some warheads on Jonus largely because I wasn't sure how to spend those last four points. Your mileage of course, will vary but hopefully you can kinda see where I'm going with this. Heck, you could always stick a Shield Upgrade on him just for grins. If you're curious, I stuck the TIEs in there largely because there's not enough points to make a 5 Bomber list with Jonus and four other Bombers with some sort of missile or torpedo. 

I do think that Night Beast and Backstabber would do well to keep folks on the other side of the table honest though, so they're not like total window dressing or whatever. I like them in this role because they're good enough named pilots they're tough to deal with and fairly self-sufficient, but not so expensive they make for an easy target priority decision for your opponent- those two combined are still only worth 32 points and we know how important it is to get 33 points, right? 

Wave 3- Initial Imperial Impressions

Ok, so I wanted to try out the new Imperial stuff as clinically as I could, and that generally means for me not indulging in the named pilots or a bunch of upgrades and stuff. I also wanted to get all three of my shiny, new Wave 3 Imperial models into the mix ASAP so creating a balls to the wall, super-efficient list wasn't a high priority for me. I didn't want the game to be a cakewalk for my opponent (Sean) by any means, but I wanted to spend some time with the ships in their most basic and generic form so I could see what aspects of them worked and didn't work for me and my own particular playstyle. That in mind, I selected the following as my 100 point dogfight list: 

Krassis Trelix w/ Ion Cannon (39 points)

Omicron Group Pilot (21 points)

Scimitar Squadron Pilot w/ Proton Torpedoes (20 points)

Scimitar Squadron Pilot w/ Cluster Missiles (20 points)

First, I was kind of surprised I could fit both a Firespray and the Shuttle into a 100 point list along with a couple of other ships. Admittedly, I have things pretty stripped down, and there's no Pilot Skill above 5 in the list, but that's a lot of hull and shields between those two ships. 

Sean was running a Chewie Falcon with a bunch of upgrades, a Jan Ors HWK-290, and a Rookie X-Wing, for what it's worth. Like me he wasn't the most competitive list ever, but with that tooled up Falcon, it was no slouch either. 

Movement- 

I was pleasantly surprised with the maneuvers available to the TIE Bombers. I never really found myself spinning the dials desperately looking for a maneuver that would ultimately prove nowhere to be found. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm normally a Rebel player, so I'm maybe biased towards movement options that don't involve the TIE Fighter or TIE Interceptor movement dials. In other words, die-hard Imperial players may hate the TIE Bomber movement dial, but I had no problem with it whatsoever. I even had the opportunity to try out that speed 5 K-Turn a couple of times which actually worked fairly well at bypassing the almost inevitable ship pile-ups to came up.

The Shuttle was quite the opposite to the TIE Bomber. I knew once the point totals starting leaking out that the Shuttle would have a pretty rotten movement dial and I won't lie to you- it's pretty rough. I'd not tooled my Shuttle specifically for long-range duty in this game (and by that I mean I didn't take a range 3 Secondary Weapon System like a Heavy Laser Cannon), so I tried to fly it around a bit and get it into the action. The big base and high attack value helps to mitigate the limited maneuver options, but overall I did find myself looking for more maneuvers and feeling pretty limited as to what I had available. For one, there's just not that many moves on the dial to start with (12 total), and for two, nearly half of them (5) are red. Now, there again- there are ways to mitigate this through both playstyle and upgrades, but just be aware of what you're getting into here. 

Firepower-

As you'd expect, once you've fired off your ordnance loads, the TIE Bomber has the usual drawbacks of the standard TIE with few of the advantages. Of course, the 2 Attack is standard across most TIE variants, and the Bomber is no different in this regard. 

That said, it's kind of not as bad as I thought it might be. For 20 points (again, recall I took the very cheapest TIE Bombers available along with two flavors of the 4 point warheads), you're likely rolling 4 dice at Range 3, then following up with a couple of dice the next turn. That's not terrible for 20 points. I don't know if you guys regularly fly against Chewie Falcons, but in my opinion, they're probably the toughest ship to kill in the game because a Chewie Falcon is effectively all shields and no hull. The only way to take one down is to just pump tons of shots into it (there's a joke about sorority girls I could make there, but I'm going to hold back- you're welcome).

I managed to whittle it down to a single hull point at the very end, while destroying the HWK and taking the shields off the Rookie. I still lost of course, but all in all, I was impressed with the firepower the Bomber brings to the table for a relatively cheap price. I will say, as many pileups as we had, I do wish I'd have found the points for a Seismic Charge or a Proton Bomb. I was never that crazy about using Bombs on a Firespray, but I can completely see their use on a Bomber, especially after they've emptied their tubes. 

The Shuttle stock has an Attack 3, which of course is nothing to disregard especially since the big base makes it so much easier to get into Range 1. Using the Shuttle as I did- to engage rather than hang back and lob shots in, and at such a low Pilot Skill, I really should have looked into an Anti-Pursuit Laser. I think one could get ships to collide into that big base fairly routinely and for only a couple of points, it would have been worth it a time or two in the match. Overall, I don't have any complaints about the Shuttle's guns- stock or available as upgrades. 

Model Quality-
As with the rest of the X-Wing ships, overall quality is good for pre-paints and I was impressed with the details on both ships. The Shuttle seems a little small when you're looking at it in the box with it's wings folded up, but once you get it out on the table with the wings out, you definitely get the idea that it couldn't be any larger and still really work on a big base.

I'm not sure of the reason, be it thick paint, whatever they use to seal these models, warped or flashy parts, but I got pretty nervous trying to fully drop the wings on my shuttle. If you simply must rotate the wings into their movie canon position, be prepared from some cracking and popping sounds. I managed to get mine into position, but I felt like I was going to snap something off the model at any moment. I just tried to be careful and apply even pressure along the length of the plastic on the wing that slots into the body of the hull. Other than that, and now that I've folded and unfolded the wings a few times it's going much more smoothly now, I've got no complaints. It's a nice looking model and while I have no idea about the scale on this one, it fits in nicely on the table with the other big ships (as you can see in the pics).

The Bomber is actually quite a bit bigger than what I expected. Again- I'm not a canon guy to the point where I can tell you how big stuff is supposed to be, but I just kind of assumed the Bomber with its bent solar panels and all, would be about the same size as a double-wide Advanced. It's not- the Bomber is bigger. Not a ton, mind you, but it is bigger, and if you've played with TIE Advanceds much in the past, you'll notice it right off the bat. The Bomber is also that darker, bluish-grey like the Interceptor rather than the lighter grey-white like the TIE Fighters and TIE Advanced. There's a good amount of detailing on the model, and on mine at least, the wash isn't quite so out of control the way it was on some of the Wave 1 and 2 stuff. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Overall- 
The ships are more or less what I expected. The Shuttle's dial is actually tougher to use than I thought it would be. In a list with other ships that can close with the enemy, a Shuttle would do just fine floating about your backline acting like a gunship. I could see it operating in a way similar to those Kath Scarlet/ Trelix lists that were popular for awhile there in Wave 2- stick a Shuttle with an HLC in backl and sick four or five TIE Fighters of various flavors on your opponent and you've got the foundation of a pretty solid list. I'm sure there are other ideas that make better use of the named pilots and various upgrades, but that's the initial reaction I have to seeing the capabilities of the no-name Shuttle. And really, against a decent opponent, it really is fairly balanced points-wise with the awesome guns and high durability balanced out by the limited maneuver dial. If you play against people who won't exploit poor maneuvering, you'll hear cries of undercosted, but against folks who've been playing for awhile, it'll seem pretty balanced for what it is.

The two ideas that occurred to me while using the Bomber were 1) You could make a list of just Bombers and Captain Jonus and it probably wouldn't be terrible against most Rebel lists that include a Falcon, and 2) If you were looking for a newer, fresher take on a TIE Swarm, you could trade out a few of them for Bombers with some warheads to taste and have a pretty nasty little list. And for goodness' sake- don't discount Cluster Missiles. They're great against ships with only 1 Defense- you know, like Falcons. They, much like Proton Torpedoes,  OH MY GOD, I FINALLY GOT YOU, YOU PIECE OF CRAP. Good Lord y'all, I have been flat out accosted by this housefly for like the last 20 minutes I've been editing this article and I just caught that bitch Mr. Miyagi style. Well, I mean, I didn't have chopsticks, but I did grab his ass right out of the air with my hand. Suck on that, fool. Ok, where was I? Oh yeah- Proton Torpedoes got a bad rap in Wave 1 that managed to stick for the most part even after the big ships came out. Now that we have more and varied ships, some of those rarely taken options are becoming more apparent in their use, assuming you can get old prejudices out of your head. Speaking of which, I do fully intend to go back and update those older Wave 1 and Wave 2 listbuilding articles at some point. Who the hell knows when, but I'll do it here at some point. 

While you can, and some certainly will, run multiple Shuttle lists, I could see picking up a third TIE Bomber before a second Shuttle, extra copies of all those cool upgrade cards notwithstanding. I tell ya though, I think a lot of other people have the same idea as some of the big online miniatures retailers are already sold out of the TIE Bombers, so if you're going to grab a couple of extras, assuming your FLGS is already sold out, I'd do it sooner rather than later.

Wave 3 Previews: The Moves and Grooves of the Wave 3 Ships!

Yeah, I don't know. Found it on the Gencon site just now. 

I'm working a split shift this week and next week at the plant (11:30 am until 9:00pm) and as I was killing a few minutes in the driveway while my wife got our barky-ass dachshunds hidden away back in our bedroom in an attempt to prevent them from waking up the kiddos when I opened the garage door, I checked my email and found that longtime reader Shane had emailed me to say the maneuver dials had been leaked for the Wave 3 ships at Gencon today. 

First, I came close to heading to Gencon this year. It's just right up the road from me, but ultimately, I had enough vacation days left to either hit Gencon or attend the USMNT v Mexico World Cup Qualifier in Columbus next month. Lest you think poorly of me dear readers, a thousand apologies, but I opted for the WCQ. In addition to being your Blogmaster General and a reluctant hipster, I'm also a member of both the USSSC and an American Outlaw (if any of y'all are going too, drop me an email and we'll meet up at the tailgate or something). Being one of the relatively lucky few to score not only 4 tickets to this sold out match, but tickets in the American Outlaws section... well, there's just no way I could pass that up.  

I figured people would leak all the Wave 3 info one way or another anyway, but it still would have been cool to attend and cover for the site. Maybe next year as it's not a World Cup year. :) 

Right on, enough blabbing- here's the skinny on the maneuver dials from the Wave 3 ships (and if you'd like to talk more about them than just my little comments section, Team Covenant and BoardGameGeek both have the info posted up. 

A user on BGG made some sweet visual templates, but as I'm always particularly careful about not jacking people's images and stuff, I'm not using them, so bear with me as I describe them to you. Figured I'd mention them though if you want to see them. 

I think the ship I was most curious about was the Lambda what with it's seemingly ridiculous low cost, so let's look over her moves- 

At Speed 3- Red Left Bank, White Straight, Red Right Bank
At Speed 2- Red Left Turn, White Left Bank, White Straight, White Right Bank, Red Right Turn
At Speed 1- Green Left Bank, Green Straight, Green Right Bank
At Speed 0 (not a typo)- Red Stationary

So this thing's got less moves than a white accountant in a disco. The whole stationary thing has everybody all a twitter tonight, as you might expect. Apparently the rules for remaining stationary are discussed in the little pamphlet thing that comes with the Lambda. I have no idea what they are at the moment (aside from the obvious, of course), but I'm sure someone will drop some science about it in the comments before too long. I wonder how much of this seemingly limited dial gets made slightly better by the fact that it's a big base? No K-Turn, but again, I think that's not that big of a deal. Y'all likely know my stance on the K-Turn, but in short, you probably don't rely on it a ton to begin with if you're past your first couple of months playing X-Wing Miniatures (or you've got some list cooked up that benefits from Stress), so I still think the Lambda is pretty nasty. 

Next up? How about the ship I forgot to write about (well, not really- truth is I left the Chromebook out in the car night before last when I was going to write about it and was too lazy to go and get it out after everyone went to bed- I'll cover it this Monday; I promise), the B-Wing? 

At Speed 4- Red Straight
At Speed 3- Red Left Bank, White Straight, Red Right Bank
At Speed 2- White Left Turn, White Left Bank, Green Straight, White Right Bank, White Right Turn, Red K-Turn
At Speed 1- Red Left Turn, White Left Bank, Green Straight, White Right Bank, White Right Turn

So if a Falcon and a Y-Wing had a kid, it'd be a B-Wing, more or less. More green moves than a Y-Wing, but less moves overall. The K-Turn at speed 2 is slightly eyebrow raising. Overall, for movement options while not taking into account colors (red, white, green) the dial is very similar to the YT-1300. Kind of the opposite of the way I feel about the Lambda though- I think without the big base and 360 degree turret of the YT, the B-Wing might be tougher to fly right off the bat than you might think. Of course, if you've got it penciled in for backline duty, it kinda doesn't matter so much, does it? 

Next on the list, the TIE Bomber- 

At Speed 5- Red K-Turn (Huh?)
At Speed 4- White Straight
At Speed 3- White Left Turn, White Left Bank, Green Straight, White Right Bank, White Right Turn
At Speed 2- Red Left Turn, Green Left Bank, Green Straight, Green Right Bank, Red Right Turn
At Speed 1- White Left Bank, Green Straight, White Right Bank

I have no idea what to make of the K-Turn at 5 with no corresponding straight move. Don't even ask. That said, the fact that you can green move straight at speeds 1, 2, or 3 as well as bank left or right at speed 2 gives you a lot of functionality for losing that speed 5 K-Turn Stress Token, so if you do enjoy the K-Turn, you ought to be able to make fairly good use of it in a Bomber. I still think the TIE Bomber will be the belle of the Wave 3 ball. 

Lastly, the ship some random guy on BoLS got offended over because I labeled it "Most Likely To Be Slightly Underwhelming", the HWK-290- 

At Speed 4- Red Straight
At Speed 3- Red Left Bank, White Straight, Red Right Bank
At Speed 2- White Left Turn, White Left Bank, Green Straight, White Right Bank, White Right Turn
At Speed 1- Green Left Bank, Green Straight, Green Right Bank

If my math is right (big if there- as we've discussed in the past, the maths are not exactly my strong suite), the HWK is tied with the Lambda for fewest moves of any ship in the game (12 total). Also like the Lambda, no K-Turn available. Skimming the threads on both Team Covenant and BGG before writing this, I read people talking about how the HWK is effective out to Range 3 (I guess in terms of pilot card text and that blaster turret) as kind of a way to make up for the rotten dial. Again, maybe I'm completely missing something obvious to everybody else, but I'm just not feelin' this ship on any level. Oh sure, I'll probably buy one because I'm a big dork like that, but I just don't see the viability of this ship in any kind of remotely competitive setting. Don't take my word for it, play around with it when it comes out, I'll do the same, and maybe we'll figure out what I'm missing here. I mean, the Y-Wing has a (somewhat debatably, but not very)  better movement dial than this thing. You ever use a Y-Wing and think to yourself, "Good Lord, this thing has just got moves for days and one too many Attack dice!"? Yeah, me neither. 

So there it is, y'all. At this point, there's not much left we don't know, and I'm sure by the end of the weekend, the rest of the proverbial beans will have been spilled (if they haven't already). I made this joke already in my reply to him, but allow me to say, Danke Shane for giving me the heads-up that the dial info had leaked. 

I know, that's a terrible joke and you're likely rolling your eyes, but hey- it's me. :) 

Wave 3 Preview- TIE Bomber

As a few of y'all pointed out to me via email, FFG has posted another preview of Wave 3 stuff, this time mainly focusing on the B-Wing and TIE Bomber. Personally, I was kinda stoked they finally chose to open up about the Bomber as we'd really not had a whole lot of info regarding it up to this point. 

As I've basically had nothing to talk about since like, oh, May-ish, and I gotta get another article written after this, I'm just going to talk about the Bomber today.  As is the case with most Imperial starfighters, we've got two common pilots and two named pilots. 

So if you were wondering, the cheapest dedicated missile boat in the game so far comes in at 16 points for the base model. 6 Hull is pretty solid, but as I've discussed on here before, sticking a critical on a ship is a good way to negate at least some of its effectiveness, and TIE Bombers will be no different in that regard. Longtime readers will have heard this one before, but taking stuff to help you inflict criticals, be that a Secondary Weapon System like Proton Torpedoes, or pilots who are more likely to do a crit like Maarek aren't all that effective for their points against small ships- it's the big ships with all those hull points where those guys earn their keep. Well, the Bomber is going to fall into that category too because while it's a little ship, it has a lot of hull and no shields, so if you know your opponent is going to be fielding a few, you should bring some crit infliction just like you would if you knew he was going to be rocking a big base ship. 

Playing as one of the common TIE Bombers, and likely firing pretty late in the combat phase, I think the idea would be to finish off somebody who was already dinged for their shields earlier in the round. Seems relatively obvious, I know, but I don't see many people roll torpedoes or missiles on low PS ships anymore. Back in Wave 1? Sure- you'd see folks roll Rookies with PTs, but now? Maybe that's just my own meta and experiences, but being as how the Bomber can't really be one-shotted with that high hull value and your opponent isn't likely to spend that first round having multiple ships fire on a relatively low cost ship like a Bomber, they are going to be pretty likely to get at least one round of their own warheads out of the tubes before anything particularly bad happens to them. Might not be a strategy you can rely on long term, but I'd bet you could catch a few people with their pants down the first month or so Wave 3 hits the bricks. 

So the age old question- missiles or torpedoes? I think it depends on what the rest of your list looks like. If you don't have a lot of ability to inflict crits, throw torps on your bombers, and missiles if you're just needing to score a lot of hits. How many I think is also very contextual to the rest of your list. As I've mentioned before, I cut my teeth in miniatures gaming with a Space Marine 40k army, but I really came into my own as a Guard player which means I'm loathe to load down one of these ships with a ton of missiles and/ or torpedoes. That said, once those warheads are away, you're not going to accomplish a whole lot with 2 Attack and 2 Defend, so a case can definitely made for telling me to go take a flying leap with that line of thinking. Not having seen the maneuver dials for the TIE Bomber I can't say that with 100% certainty, but I'm still comfortable making the statement as I'd guess the Bomber has a wheel somewhere between an X-Wing and a Y-Wing, likely trending more towards the Y. My advice? Take one set of warheads for sure, then if you've got 4 or 5 points left to burn after picking the rest of your ships, throw another set on some lucky pilot. 

The named pilots for the Bombers are Major Rhymer and Captain Jonus. 

His name is Jonus.... he's carryin' the wheel

Awright, so 22 points for a PS 6 Bomber with one hell of a special ability. Sounds great to me. Once again- if you haven't already realized, like I said over on BoLS last week, the TIE Bomber is going to be the sell out ship of Wave 3, y'all. Remember how tough it was to get an Interceptor back in April? The Bomber's gonna be the same way. 

One apparent application is to stick him with a ton of other Bombers and watch the hits roll in. TIE Swarm players gotta be lickin' their chops over this guy because he's more or less Howlrunner for Secondary Weapon Systems and then some. That said, if you've got the points to fly Trelix or Kath Scarlet along side this dude? Boy oh boy, somebody's in for a hurtin'. Oh, did I mention he can also take an Elite Pilot Skill? Jonus gonna be carryin' more than just the wheel in a lot of Imperial lists. Believe 'dat. 

The other named pilot guy is sure to become my favorite X-Wing Miniatures pilot bar none. Yeah, maybe even in front of Turd Ferguson. 

In case you hadn't picked up on it before following the links in my posts, I dig a lot of different kinds of music, but like most folks, there's some music I dig more than others. One of those I dig more than others is anything by Public Enemy. The fact that this dude is named Major Rhymer and Chuck D has often described himself as the Hard Rhymer, expect to hear two things from me when I roll the Major- 

1) A whole lotta whiteboy doing Public Enemy lines, 

2) The various and sundry other nicknames for Chuck D, eg., "Ok, the rhyme animal, the young cannibal, D, public enemy number one is going to attack Green Squadron Pilot..."

Opportunities for rappin' aside, D ain't a bad ship. At 26 points he's not exactly cheap, but his card text virtually assures the ability of using any Secondary at any range. Sure, you're not going to get an extra die if you get into Range 1, but you do get to fire torps or what have you, which is of course, generally not the case.

This is one time I'd break my rule of not putting a bunch of points into a single ship- if you're looking for something to change up that small quantity, elite pilot Imperial list you've been messing around with during Wave 2 and are slightly bored with, I think the Hard Rhymer would be fun to sub in. Deck him out with some warheads of your choosing, stick an Elite Pilot Skill on there (Marksmanship could be fun, for sure) if you're feelin' froggy and you've got the points and force your opponent to make that hard choice- do I try to go after Turr Phennir, Vader, or MistaChuck? Trelix, Backstabber, Mauler Mithel, or the guy who's blowin' up the 90's but started tickin' in '86? You catchin' my drift? 

So for the TL;DR crowd who wandered over here from BoLS and have no appreciation for my flow, TIE Bomber good- buy one. Actually buy several. 

And remember folks, TL;DR really only works on messageboards- you clicked on the article, knucklehead. It ain't like I've got super-important, earth-shattering information you need to know before the apocalypse hits or I hid some amazing nugget of truth you just can't live without in the last line or whatever. You think it's too long? Stop readin' it, dipshit. Ain't nobody keepin' you from hittin' the back button.