X-Wing Wave IV: Lets Look at the E-Wing
No snappy Star Wars pun in the title this time but that’s no reason not to review the upcoming E-Wing Expansion!
I can put it off no longer, I have written about the 2 ships I was most looking forward to in Wave 4, the Z-95 and the TIE Phantom leaving me with just the E-Wing and TIE Defender left. I decided to jump in to the E-Wing first as it’s the one that I am least excited about in this wave. (Way to start the review Kris, lets all stop reading now…)
OK, let me expand a little, its not that I am not excited about E-Wing, its just that the other stuff has more of an emotional attachment to me and the one thing in the E-Wing set I am most excited about leaves a slightly salty taste in my mouth, but more on Corran Horn later…
Starting with what you get, the ship it’s self fits nicely in to the space between the A-Wing and the X-Wing and it has the following Maneuvers open to it.
As you can see, the E-Wing is fast, more importantly it retains the option to go slow with the 1 ahead and its only Red Maneuvers are its K-Turns which unlike the A-Wing are at 3 and 4. The Loss of the Green 4 and 5’s when compared to the A-Wings is understandable and in honesty I lament to loss of Green Hard turns more. All in, I think the Dial comes out where you would expect for the points, ahead of the X-Wing but not quite on the level of the A-Wing so it will come down to the rest of the package to see if its worth it.
With that said I think the Ship has comes out well in all areas except Hull where the 2 points is on the low side, it’s action bar is good with the Rebel Standard of Focus and Target Lock and the addition of the Imperial Standard Barrel Roll and Evade.
In Addition to Corran and Etahn you get two generic pilots the Knave Squadron Pilot coming in at 27 Squad points for pilot skill 1 or the Bloodmoon Squadron Pilot coming in at 29 Squad points for pilot skill 3. Outside of taking an R2-D6 upgrade on a Bloodmoon your only access to an Elite Pilot Talents is through one of the named pilots though.
Etahn’s ability is extremely good against TIE swarms or Large ships as you only have to get them in his arch and within his range and then all other attackers can upgrade a single Hit to a Crit result, this really lets you pile pressure on to a single Large ship, or if you are against a Swarm and they are still in formation you should be able to cover a lot of them with his fire arch.
Corran on the other hand likes to do all the work himself, as disappointed as I am to see him in an E-Wing rather than his CorSec Green X-Wing I can forgive him when I read his card text. Being able to get that extra shot off in the End Phase can do a lot of work.
As you can see the E-Wings don’t come cheap though and looking at that Upgrade bar just invites you to pile more points in to them. Having the Astromech and Systems Upgrade options does open up some very good combos both defensively and offensively, and while I would have liked a missile option like the A-Wing/Z-95 it comes with the option for a rack of Torpedoes instead.
Card wise you get 2 new Astromech Droids, 1 Flechette Torpedoes, 1 Advanced Sensors system upgrade and the new Outmaneuver Elite Pilot Talent.
Both Astromech Droids interact with the Target Lock action, the standard R7 being a defensive option whilst R7-T1 is quite interesting in his versatility as although it reduces the range of your Target Lock from 3 down to 2 it does add a (situation) boost action to your ship for less points than an engine upgrade.
The Flechette Torpedoes, for those who have not seen them in the Rebel Transport expansion are a nice cheap Torpedo option that adds a little control in to a Squad with their ability to add stress to a target.
Outmaneuver, on the other hand makes you in to a quasi Wedge, reducing the evade dice by one is very good and gets even better on a ship that should be seeing use as a flanker.
A couple of the stand out combos if you want to pile the points in to your E-Wings are;
- R7 and Sensor Jammer/Fire-Control System, this allows you to spend a Target Lock defensively to force your opponent to re-roll his attack dice and if you go Sensor Jammer you can Down Grade 1 Hit to a Focus that can’t be re-rolled. Or if you go for the Fire-Control System it lets you maintain your Target Lock without wasting Actions.
- R2-F2, Stealth Device, Push The Limits and Advance Sensors. This combination comes in at a hefty 12 squad points but lets you Activate R2-F2, raising your Evade to 5 whilst the Stealth Device is still up and running, you can then use Push the Limit to perform a Second action and as you used your advanced sensors and did all of this before movement you can then perform the green maneuver you had pre-planned and immediately remove the stress token.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check out more of my ravings at The Dice Hate Me – Kris
