X-Wing: Who is Biggs Darklighter?
Who is Biggs Darklighter and why does he keep getting blown-up? Lets find out!
Hi BoLS Readers, it’s AdamHarry back again with some more Star Wars fun. Well, fun for everyone else besides Biggs Darklighter. But I’ll get to that… let me back-up a bit. Over the past few days I’ve been wanting to build a pure X-Wing list – what I mean is I’ve looked at the Y-Wings, the B-Wings and even A-wings but I’ve skipped the X-Wing. This was a huge oversight on my part. I mean the name of the game is X-Wing! What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t, so to rectify this I have been doing some research on the all powerful X-Wing.
I wanted to see what popular builds were being used and why. I wanted to drink from the fire-hose of knowledge and learn everything I could about the star fighter. And the one thing I learned was that Biggs Darklighter was EVERYWHERE. Seriously, he was the cornerstone to every* list. So what’s the big deal with Biggs – wasn’t he just a bit character that showed up for like 2 lines and then died? Oh how wrong I was…
Biggs: The Beginning
As I surfed the web looking up X-Wing related material I eventually stumbled upon the wookiehole (wikihole but for Star Wars) involving Biggs. Turns out he was almost a major player. Biggs was a childhood friend of Luke. They had a lot of history and a healthy rivalry that helped to push both Luke and Biggs to become better pilots and friends.
It’s very clear that their constant “one-upmanship” helped to forge Luke into person we meet in A New Hope for better or worse. I would recommend checking out the full article as it’s a fun read. It was also obvious that originally Lucas had planned to have Biggs have a much larger role. Why else would there be so much backstory? I mean – they even filmed a bunch of deleted scenes. In fact around the same time I started researching X-wing builds I came across this movie as well:
Blast it Biggs Where Are You? – It’s a short documentary on Biggs with the original actor providing a lot of insight on the process. If you like you can even watch an extended cut by supporting the director Jamie Benning on his patreon page. If you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. But back to my point which is that Biggs was almost as important as any of the other main characters. Almost…
Biggs: The End
As anyone who’s seen the original Star Wars knows, (spoilers) Biggs gets killed by Vader in the Death Star trench run. It’s a death that happens quick and not much screen time is devoted to it – but if you think about it, knowing what we know now with all the history and deleted scenes, it should have been a huge deal to Luke. But it wasn’t, was it?
Maybe Luke was just super focused on the mission. Maybe this death of a childhood friend was just another acceptable loss, like all those many bothans that were killed off camera. Maybe Luke was concerned with his own safety. But at this point, it’s really just one more tally on the “I hate Darth Vader” board. The Empire has now taken his family, his home, and his best friend away from Luke. When he fires those proton torpedoes, you know there has to be a part of him that is thinking payback time.
Biggs: Legacy of Sacrifice
All this to bring us back to my X-Wing list. Biggs and Wedge’s mission when they enter the trench is to cover Luke so he can make that shot. They knew the risks going in and they were at peace with their duty. Thinking back to that and looking at Biggs Darklighter’s card is X-Wing its easy to see why he has the ability he does.
Biggs is the guy you want on your side when the chips are down and you’re outnumbered. He’s the guy that takes the hit for his friends. He takes home the unattractive one. He jumps on that grenade and he smiles through his ‘stache while he does it. He is Biggs Darklighter, the Ultimate Wingman.
His ability is also really, really powerful. It’s dictates the opponents options because it forces the Imperials to fire on him. This can allow the Rebel to do a few things like spread the fire among their squad or you could throw Biggs to the wolves and let him meat shield it up for the round. Keeping your heavy hitters alive for one more turn could be that pivotal move where your Y-wings get to use it’s focus for shooting instead of dodging. For 25 points it’s no wonder Biggs popped up in every* list I found.
Biggs: The List
In the spirit of Biggs, I decided to put together a classic list. I went with the Rebel Trench Runners.
Trench Runners Total: 99 points
- Biggs Darklighter (31)
- R2-F2
- Stealth Device
- Wedge Antillies (33)
- R2 Astromech Droid
- Predator
- Luke Skywalker (35)
- R2-D2
- Marksmenship
I wanted to include R2-D2 and couldn’t decide if I wanted him with Luke or Biggs. I opted for Luke because it’s more thematic. Biggs is now rolling 3 defense dice with stealth device and for his action he can get an extra agility every round. Luke is now even tougher to kill and his marksmanship ability allows him to really put the hurt on people. Finally we have Wedge who is also a murderball in his own right. The R2 unit is there to remove stress an allow him to get in better position to take shots. And Wedge shooting at you with Predator is no joke. Could it be more optimized? Probably. I’m a point shy and I feel like there are tweaks I could do to make it more effective. But I love the theme of this list.
If you have any suggestions for a pure X-Wing list leave them in the comments below. What do you think? What are some of your favorite ships to pair-up with Biggs? AdamHarry, OUT!
*Biggs was not in every X-Wing list. But he probably should have been.
