X-Wing: Quadjumper Shenanigans
This ship can fly backwards! Scum say hello to your new favorite Blocker.
So when the Quadjumper Preview came out a few weeks ago I said I had a few ideas I wanted to go over with you all at a later date. Well that time is now. It would also be beneficial to the discussion if you read-up on the Quadjumper from FFG’s point of view. They have some unique insights because, well, they are the ones that brought it to the tabletop!
I’m excited about this ship because it’s the first ship in the game with the ability to fly backwards. That opens up a ton of cool tactics for you to execute and really mess with your opponent’s maneuvers.
A speed-1 straight and two banks backward might not seem like much, but it really forces your opponent to think about how far they will need to travel to actually clear your ship. That makes this ship uniquely suited to being a pivotal blocker for scum. Blocking is when you intentionally move a ship in the path of another with the hopes of disrupting their maneuver. This will force them to lose their action and can also force them to stay in a particular area – both can be extremely useful!
This was a big influence on the success of the TIE Swarm in the early days. Folks were just used to jousting – or flying right at each other in hopes of landing some crazy shot. The problem is that if you’re on the receiving end, it doesn’t make much sense for you to want to joust. But that’s another topic. My point is that Block came from this idea of stalling your opponent and forcing them to lose actions. It ultimately puts them behind and leaves them vulnerable. With the Quadjumper, Scum now has a cheap and super effective blocker.
I think the Jakku Gunrunner is the ideal candidate for this roll. Now, if you have some extra points you can bump up to one of the other pilots, but the idea is that this ship is supposed to get in the way and cause problems – that means it’s expendable! You don’t want to load this ship up with all the bells and whistles if it’s going to get destroyed. So let’s keep it cheap but make it effective. This ship is all about messing with maneuvers – that’s where the pay off is. It’s not designed to take out ships with it’s guns (although it’s not terrible at range 1). It’s a support ship that, if flown correctly, will be invaluable.
FFG already has a really solid build for us to work with:
Jakku Gunrunner – Quadjumper – 18 points
- Intelligence Agent
- Primed Thrusters
- Spacetug Tractor Array
The Spacetug Tractor Array slaps a ship at range 1 with a tractor beam token. There is no roll involved. After that, you make resolve the effect as normal – meaning you can push/pull them as normal. This is fantastic! First off, that token applies a -1 to their evade which is useful on just about every ship. Second, this allows you to “line them up” a little bit or fling them into an asteroid.
Primed Thrusters is a newer card that allows you to ignore up to 3 stress tokens in combination with your boost/barrel roll. Again, for a ship that needs to get up close to be effective (and because flying backwards will slap you with a stress) this is pretty useful.
The Intelligence Agent is also very useful – this will help you adjust your action so you can better block ships. You’ll have a better idea where they will end up so you can try to use your action to get in their way. Alternatively, this card also helps you with the rest of your ships positioning. If they have Boosts/Barrel Rolls then you can also make those adjustments with them – really, this is a useful card in general.
Now, normally I’d come up with some wacky combo or something to run with this ship. Unfortunately, I can’t really do that with this basic build because, again, it’s really all about how you fly this ship. However, I can direct you to some other ships that might benefit from having a good shot at an enemy ship.
I’m going to skip all the JumpMaster 5000 options because we all should know that the U-Boats are good choices with their crazy firepower.
The Shadow Caster piloted by Ventress seems like a solid fit. It’s a little pricey points wise, but knowing where your opponent’s ship will be will making targeting with the mobile firing arc really easy. Couple that with the free stress and tractor beam tokens and you’ll make mince-meat out of targets in no time.
If you wanted to go the opposite route and fly a swarm I think that the basic Quadjumper from above (or two) mixed in with the new Protectorate Starfighters might be pretty nasty. Running Fenn Rau with some ships that are going to force your targets to be in specific spots seems like a good call! The Starfighter wants to get in their firing arc and wants to joust – the Quadjumper wants to help with that!
Even the humble Kihraxz Fighter paired up with the Quadjumper can be deadly. Talonbane Cobra’s survival rate goes way up if you can close on a flank. That becomes a lot easy to do when you can reliably force your opponent to be where you need them to be with a Quadjumper.
Really, the list goes on and on – But I think you’re getting the picture. Adding a Quadjumper (or two) to a list that has squishy Aces or ships that need a target to be in a specific area really benefit from Blockers. They make great expendable ships and can really setup your ships for a fantastic attack run. Imaging blocking one of those pesky Imperial Aces with your Quadjumper – with no actions to spend that means they aren’t generating evade tokens and they can Arc-dodge away. Seems like a good thing to try.
What are some ships you want to use in conjunction with the Quadjumper?
