Fire the Ion CannonPreview the Upcoming Y-Wing (TM) Expansion Pack
“This is Gold Leader. We’re starting our attack run.”
–Star Wars: A New Hope
In recent X-Wing™ previews, we’ve revealed ship cards and upgrades from the X-Wing™ Expansion Pack and the TIE Fighter™ Expansion Pack. Together with the expansion’s detailed starfighters, these additions allow you to build whole squads and customize your play experience.
In a later preview, we’ll look more closely at some of the options and strategies available to those players who choose to take advantage of advanced squad building, but first we’ll continue to review the first wave of single fighter expansions.
Today, we look at another mainstay of the Rebel fleet, the versatile and durable Y-wing!
The Y-Wing™ Expansion PackThe versatile and reliable BTL-A4 Y-wing was the Rebellion’s primary starfighter until the arrival of the T-65 X-wing, and long after it was scheduled to be phased out, its speed, durability, and weapon options helped it remain a staple of the Rebel fleet.
The Y-Wing Expansion Pack contains one detailed Y-wing miniature, its maneuver dial, four ship cards, five upgrade cards, and all requisite tokens. These give you everything you need to bring the Y-wing into your games of X-Wing, as well as a wide range of options for balancing your piloting skill and the tactical advantages and potency of your upgrades.
In the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, Y-wings start play with three shield tokens and a hull value of five, making them easily the most rugged of the starfighters available upon the game’s initial launch. However, the Y-wing’s primary advantage may be its ability to equip an ion cannon, which it can use to temporarily shut down an enemy starfighter’s systems. While the ion cannon doesn’t do much damage on its own, it can leave a TIE vulnerable to coordinated X-wing fire.
This tactical weapon is definitely one of the highlights among the new upgrade cards the Y-Wing Expansion Pack introduces, and the expansion includes a reference card and token that allow you to bring this technology immediately into battle.
The Ion Cannon Turret upgrade card and reference card.For five squad points, an ion cannon is a fantastic tool to help disable your opponent’s starfighters. It can only target enemy ships within range one to two, but it can target any enemy ship within that range, even one outside of its firing arc. Yes, the ion cannon turret can target anything within a 360-degree arc. This adds greatly to the weapon’s “effective” range and helps turn the tables on your foes. Normally, your opponent will want to surround your fighters and get in behind them at close range, but a Y-wing with an ion cannon is never a helpless target.
Then, once you hit an enemy starfighter with your ion cannon, you cripple that ship for one round, and it drifts slowly through space until its systems come back online. In game terms, this means that a starfighter struck by an ion cannon cannot assign a maneuver during its next planning phase. Instead, it must drift across the table as though it had been assigned a white \" 1\" maneuver. So after you hit a starfighter with your ion cannon, you’ll know precisely where it’s going to end up after its next activation phase, and you can coordinate your attacks against it in the subsequent combat phase.
Often, players will likely swoop in for the kill with their X-wings, since those starfighters pack more firepower, but some players may opt to build their squads solely around Y-wings, taking advantage of the starfighter’s ability to fire proton torpedoes. In fact, players can outfit the Y-wing with as many as two proton torpedoes, and a crack shot like Horton Salm can make certain that every shot counts.
Keep your eyes open for more information about the Y-wing and other starfighters from Star Wars: X-Wing as we get close to the game’s release at Gen Con Indy. Next up? A look at the TIE Advanced™ Expansion Pack!
Elite Pilots and Advanced TacticsPreview the Upcoming TIE Advanced (TM) Expansion Pack
“Stay in attack formation!”
–Darth Vader, Star Wars: A New HopeWe’re quickly closing in on the release of Star Wars: X-Wing™ Miniatures Game! Thursday morning, August 16th, at Gen Con Indy 2012, the game’s first starfighters are going to drop out of hyperspace to engage in fast-paced dogfights. We’ll have the Core Set and the first four single fighter expansions available at our booth in the exhibition hall from the moment the convention begins until they sell out. We’re also going to run demos all weekend, and players will have the opportunity on Friday morning to participate in the world’s first X-Wing tournament.
In earlier previews, we’ve explored the wide range of options that the X-Wing™ Expansion Pack, TIE Fighter™ Expansion Pack, and Y-Wing™ Expansion Pack add to the game. Now, we turn our attention to the fourth and final single fighter expansion arriving with the game’s initial wave of releases, the TIE Advanced™ Expansion Pack.
It’s likely you already know that this expansion will give you the opportunity to command Darth Vader, but there’s a lot more to the TIE Advanced than just the Empire’s most fearsome pilot…
The TIE Advanced™ Expansion PackThe TIE Advanced improves upon the TIE/In design by adding shielding, better weapons systems, curved solar panels, and a hyperdrive. However, the extra costs limit production, and only the best Imperial pilots get to fly a TIE Advanced.
The TIE Advanced Expansion Pack contains one sculpted TIE Advanced miniature, its maneuver dial, all requisite tokens, five upgrade cards, and four ship cards, including two Imperial aces: the aforementioned Darth Vader and the daring Maarek Stele.
These pilots, and the expansion’s two other TIE Advanced pilots, benefit from the same range of actions as TIE fighter pilots, but they also gain the ability to acquire a target lock. Accordingly, the TIE Advanced costs more squad points in X-Wing than the TIE/In, and players building squads with one or more of these fighters must sacrifice some of their standard swarm tactics. In return, though, they gain more than just an extra icon on the action bar; they also gain durability from deflector shields, and they can equip missiles that allow them to strike with extra lethality.
With three agility and two deflector shields, the TIE Advanced offers pilots the means to maneuver through heated battles and emerge unscathed. This can make the starfighter an excellent lynchpin in an Imperial strategy, especially if that strategy involves tactics based around the actions afforded by an elite pilot talent.
Whether you intend to make use of Swarm Tactics, slip out of target locks with Expert Handling, or have your Squad Leader increase the efficiency of your other pilots, both Darth Vader and Maarek Stele are capable of using elite pilot talent upgrades, and the TIE Advanced’s increased resilience helps you retain their talents throughout the fight.
The talents of an elite pilot in a TIE Advanced afford your squad a wide range of tactical options.Meanwhile, you’ll be able to equip your TIE Advanced with either Concussion Missiles or Cluster Missiles. Both of these upgrades come with the expansion, and they allow you to supplement your starfighter’s base attack value of “2” with a timely and deadly secondary attack. Concussion missiles can fire against enemy starfighters within range two to three, and allow you both to roll four attack dice and count any one miss as a hit. On the other hand, the Cluster Missiles upgrade is better suited to Imperial squads focused on combat at close ranges. They fire at range one to two for three attack dice, and then they allow you to make a second attack roll of three additional dice. Outfitted with such powerful weaponry, the TIE Advanced is a devastating war machine.
Concussion and cluster missiles greatly enhance your attack options.You can look forward to commanding this deadly Imperial starfighter soon! X-Wing arrives at Gen Con Indy next week.
But we’re not going to sit idle while you wait! We still have more previews planned. In the next couple days, we’ll present you the game’s rules and tournament rules, and we’ll take a look at squad building and some of the ways players might approach the construction of a 100-point tournament-ready squadron!
