X-Wing: The GR-75 Rebel Transport is Awesome!
We’ve all been waiting since GenCon to get details on those large Rebel ships. Here’s the details on the Rebel GR-75
The GR-75 Medium Transport
Designed for use within the game’s Cinematic Play and Epic Play formats, the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack contains one GR-75 transport miniature, one X-wing miniature with a variant paint scheme, seven ship cards, twenty-four upgrade cards, and all the maneuver dials, damage decks, tokens, and game pieces that you need to fly your transport and its escort fighter.
Additionally, a new maneuver template and new “energy” tokens ensure that your Rebel transport will assume a role in your Rebel fleet unlike any of the smaller starships that preceded it.
First unveiled as a prototype at Gen Con Indy 2013, the iconic GR-75 Rebel transport is most famous for its critical role in the Rebellion’s evacuation from Hoth. However, the GR-75’s role in the Rebellion’s efforts extended far beyond that pivotal conflict.
GR-75 transports were used mainly to transport supplies, equipment, or troops, but some were modified to serve as fuel tankers for long-range starfighter missions. Relatively inexpensive, the GR-75‘s hulls couldn’t be penetrated by Imperial sensors, and the Rebel Alliance often enhanced this feature by outfitting the starship with sensor jammers. Indeed, the Rebel Alliance made such common use of the GR-75 that it was often called the Rebel medium transport.
Now, the GR-75 enters X-Wing as the first huge starship and as the first starship without a primary weapon…
That’s right – the GR-75 has no primary weapon, but you’ll find that it more than makes up for this lack of firepower with the wealth of new actions and energy-based effects it introduces to the game.
What Is Energy?
When you field the GR-75, the expansion’s rules for energy provide you with a wide range of means to interact with other ships. The GR-75‘s maximum energy capacity is indicated by the purple number above its agility value, and new rules allow your transport to both gain energy and spend it to power a brand-new action and activate a host of new upgrades. Altogether, the tactical possibilities they afford make the GR-75 a uniquely rewarding X-Wing starship.
The GR-75 comes with four actions in its action bar:
The recover action allows the GR-75 to spend all its stored energy to regain a number of shields equal to the energy spent, possibly taking your transport from zero shields back to full.
The GR-75 is divided into two sections, fore and aft, and if you take the Reinforce action, you can reinforce one of those sections, adding an evade result to all defense results against attacks directed at that section until the end of the round.
The jam action allows the GR-75 to assign stress tokens to an enemy starship within Range 1–2 until that starship has a total of two stress tokens.
With its coordinate action, the GR-75 can grant a free action to any friendly ship within Range 1–2.
Though the recover action is the only one that explicitly calls for the use of energy, the Rebel Transport’s upgrade cards introduce other uses for energy that interact nicely with the ship’s other actions. You could use a Comms Booster to remove all stress from a friendly starfighter, assign it a focus token, and then give it a free action with the GR-75’s coordinate action with a Comms Booster. You could use the GR-75’s jam action to force stress tokens onto enemy starfighters before using Slicer Tools to deal them damage. Or you could reinforce your GR-75’s fore or aft section before using a Shield Projector to redirect an attack intended for a friendly starfighter. No matter how you outfit this huge ship, its energy-based effects will add all new dimensions to your X-Wing battles.
Flying Your Transport
The GR-75 comes with two bases, one large ship token that spans the bases, and a new maneuver template that better reflects the way this bulky vessel flies through space. The result is that your GR-75 will surge forward, drift, and yaw in a way that truly feels like it’s carrying its momentum forward through space and across your table.
It’s certainly not as nimble as a TIE fighter, but any TIE pilot who fails to get out of its way will be immediately destroyed by the collision!
The GR-75’s two bases aren’t just for show, either. Because the ship is divided into fore and aft sections, it comes with two damage decks, one for each section of the ship. The effects of damage upon the fore of your GR-75 aren’t the same as the effects of damage upon its aft, and you and your opponents will be able to explore all-new tactical considerations and strategies throughout any combat featuring a GR-75 transport.
WOW – just look at some of those cards and special abilities and thnk about how this simple unarmed transport will open up the game. Now think about what the REAL armed combat warships like the Corellian Corvette (and inevitable Imperial counterparts) will do to X-Wing. I can hardly wait.
Also lets not forget the unsung star of the set…
~Have fun folks!
