Star Wars X-Wing: World Champ Chimes In On Boba Fett
X-Wing World Champ Paul Heaver talks about the baddest Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy: Boba Fett!
Hey BoLS Readers and X-Wing Aces! When Boba Fett was announced I knew that he was going to be a counter to the meta. What I didn’t know was the story behind why he was created. It’s not super often we get to take a step behind the curtain and learn about how or why game design choices are made – but this time Paul Heaver sat down with the folks at Fantasy Flight Games and he talked about how the Boba Fett card came to be:
With my second World Championship win, I earned the privilege of designing a second card for X-Wing. As with my first card, Stay on Target , I wanted to aim at a particularly strong portion of the existing metagame. My first message to the developers was sent almost as a joke, asking if I could make a card that destroyed Engine Upgrades and Advanced Cloaking Devices , since that year’s World Championship was the year that upgrade-heavy Han Solo and “Whisper” lists were abundant.
To my surprise, I was told they were looking for an ability to fit on a crew version of the notorious bounty hunter, Boba Fett . The developers had not been happy with previous versions they were brainstorming, and the ability to perform targeted destruction seemed to fit in Boba Fett’s theme, and also within the Scum faction’s overall themes. We traded messages back and forth for a while, and came upon a version of the card that we liked. It fit my goal of countering Engine Upgrades and Advanced Cloaking Devices, but it still allowed the upgrades’ owners to outfly Boba Fett and dodge his effect. If he could not score any crits, his owner could not trigger his ability.
Because my version of Boba Fett is a crew card, it does not fit on either of the Scum faction’s strongest archetypes: dual IG-88 and Twin Laser Turret Y-wings. Neither IG-88 nor the Y-wing have crew slots. This is on purpose, as neither ship needed help. The Firespray-31, HWK-290, and Hound’s Tooth all can take Boba, and it is my opinion that all can use a little more power. Fett also fits on both of the new ships that Scum brings to the table in Wave VIII. And at just one squad point, he is pretty easy to squeeze into a list.
Since you can only trigger him once, I would not invest too many squad points into creating crits just for him. I like him on a bare-bones ship at a lower pilot skill. That way someone else can clear the shields before Boba Fett tries to strip the target of the important tool it needs to stay alive. After he does that, Boba leaves… If you wanted him to stick around, you should have paid him more!
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Boba Fett does not do much to the swarm builds out there; they tend to run without upgrades. If your list already is weak to swarms, it might not pay to put Boba on a ship. However, if you have a good game against the swarm, but want something to help out against the fully tricked out aces, then Boba Fett is a good deal.
Boba Fett will also still be relevent in future waves. Anytime you have a spare point and think to yourself that certain upgrades will be problematic for your list, you can still pay Boba Fett to zap them away!
I hope you all enjoy my new creation!
If you’d like to read the full article click the link – Paul Also goes over the example list and a few great…uh… Bounty Targets that Boba Fett would be PERFECT to use on.
NO Disintegrations!
