Star Wars X-Wing: TIE Punisher Unboxing
The Empire is ready to make that Bombing run – and it’s going to sting. Come take a look at the new game changer that is the TIE Punisher!
Hey BoLS Readers, AdamHarry here with a first look at the new TIE Punisher. We got REALLY lucky and were able to score an un-opened TIE Punisher after GenCon 2015. If you have been keeping up with our GenCon coverage you know that we were able to get the Hound’s Tooth, K-Wing & Kihraxz. The TIE Punisher had evaded us unfortunately… Until I was out our local X-Wing night and another player was trying to off-load a spare one. I was thrilled to be able to pick this one up and share it with the rest of you. So here it is:
TIE Punisher Expansion Pack
A beefier version of the TIE bomber, the TIE punisher built upon that starfighter’s success by adding shielding, a second bomb chute, and three additional ordnance pods, each equipped with a twin ion engine. It arrives to X-Wing™ as a devastating Imperial starship in the TIE Punisher Expansion Pack, accompanied by four ship cards and a punishing array of nine explosive upgrades, with which you can obliterate your enemies. In addition to boasting a slightly larger payload than the TIE bomber, the TIE punisher invites Imperial players to perfect their bombing skills by taking advantage of both its innate boost action and its ability to equip a system upgrade like Advanced Sensors. With Advanced Sensors, the TIE punisher can boost into position to drop a bomb right in front of an enemy fighter, and then it can immediately perform its maneuver to fly away.
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Let me just say this thing is a beast. I’m not kidding or being hyperbolic when write “this ship a game changer.” The upgrades that come with this ship are going to hit the meta hard. The Twin Ion Engines MK. II upgrade card is amazing for the Imperial players out there:
Suddenly ALL TIE chassis out there have access to an amazingly efficient way to dump stress without losing the maneuverability. It’s only a point. ONE! That is a steal of a card.
The two Unique Pilots “Redline” and “Deathrain” I’ve written about before. We’ve seen previews of them and man…they are going to be deadly. And I haven’t even gotten into the crazy bombing load-outs they can take either.
The Imperials also get access to Extra Munitions with the TIE Punisher and it’s another one of those amazingly point efficient cards. The more ordnance you take the better the this card pays off. If you really want to ensure you’re getting ALL of the bang-for-your-bombs you could pair it with Munitions Failsafe (although I think that’s a bit redundant). The fact that there isn’t a “Death Blossom” option that lets you dump all your payload at once is kind of a shame. It would be ridiculously over powered – but man that would be amazing!
I go over the rest of the contents in the video but if you’d like to read more information about the new TIE Punisher FFG has two really good articles you might want to read over. (I’ve already linked the other one above)
The TIE Punisher really does address many of the issues people had running “bombers” in their lists. This ship will bring the boom – and then some! Oh and did I mention that it’s a fairly maneuverable ship with 9 HP? Yeah.
I hope you non-Imperial players find some time to duck. It’s going to be TIE Swarm 2.0 – Get ready!
