X-Wing: “Snappy” A-Wings
A-Wings with Snap Shot are my new favorites in X-Wing. It’s a time to get Snappy!
I have always had a soft spot for the A-Wing. Of all the ships in Star Wars it always looked like it was fast. They were never the toughest ship or the one packing the biggest punch, but they were quick and required some serious skills to pilot them on the table (in X-Wing). I wanted a list that allow me to take advantage of their speed and I was eye-balling Snap Shot as the trick to do it.
Snap Shot is a card that came with the Heroes of the Resistance Pack and/or the Upsilon-Class Shuttle expansions. It’s got a neat ability in that it allows a ship to attack out of turn. Now, this attack is pretty straight forward: It’s only a two dice attack at range one, but it triggers at the end of your opponent’s maneuver! That means if they fly within range, they are taking a Snap Shot attack. Because of the timing on this attack that typically means the opponent would not have been able to use any actions to get tokens such as evades up.
If we want to take full advantage of this card, that means we want something Fast and something with a lower Pilot Skill – so you can move BEFORE the enemy.
Enter the A-Wing: Green Squadron Pilot:
It’s fast (it’s an A-Wing after all), it’s PS 3 so it’s going to be flying first and it’s got an Elite Slot…which means you can make it an ace test pilot for a double dip into EPT territory:
Now, I’ve seen cases for running Crack Shot in that second slot, or Rage, or Push the Limit…but really, I think Juke works really well in this case.
Think about it – most of the time you’re going to be flying in hot and you’re going to want to have evade up. Why? Because these A-Wings probably won’t be shooting at the top of the order! If they are in range one that evade is certainly going to help out vs a hot-shot ace.
Ideally, you’re moving quick and they are going to move at you, and probably end their maneuver in range one. So, you move up and use Evade as your action. They move, you take a shot and are ready for them to attack back, if you make it (and you’ve got 3 dice and an evade) you’ve got a decent chance at getting in a shot yourself.
“Well that’s all well and good – but c’mon there has to be a way to improve your odds.” Yes. Yes there is.
When this little Astromech Droid hit the scene I new it was going to be good stuff. Combining M9 with Jess Pava has been a go-to in many a list for me. M9-G8 also allows you to bypass the restriction Snap Shot because the attacker isn’t modifying the dice. The “You” in the phrase “You cannot modify your attack dice” is referring to the ship it’s equipped to – not “you” the player. And before you try to argue or say I’m just being some rules lawyer you might want to read the FAQ.
So, no, I’m not being a jerk – I just happen to read FAQs. Now with a ship like the A-Wing as a wing-man, you want to run more than just 1…so how do we amp-up M9-G8’s ability? With some Weapons-grade Engineering…
Target Lock two of your friendlies for twice the re-roll action! Sounds good to me!
What ships have both an Astromech Droid slot and a crew slot? Another ship on my “favorites” list: The ARC-170. Now, I’ve worked up lists with Shara Bey and Wexley before. So lets look at the other options:
Braylen’s ability is okay – it’s a little too…random for my tastes. But it’s a cheap option and it’s PS 3.
Ahhh here we go. Thane Kyrell’s ability will play into this list nicely. Especially with the free Target Lock as your action. Or if you mod it up with something else. That could work, but lets run bare bones for now – or rather, we already know what’s going in this ship – no more upgrades, yet.
So, if we’re running two A-Wings for the double dose and Thane with the upgrades, that should leave us with 26 points to drop on a 100 point list. You did add Chardaan Refit to those A-Wings, right? That’s should pretty much be an auto include for everyone.
For 26 points, we’ve got a few options. We have mod slots open and we can add Auto-thrusters to the A-Wings to help them close the gap and assist vs turret ships. But really, that’s probably been done before. A third A-wing would be cool and all, I do like redundancy, but I feel like that’s a bit of a waste. I think I want to see some more fire power with these guys – and something that can take a hit. I’ve been having some luck with the T-70 X-Wing lately and as I mentioned Jess Pava above why not go with her?
Only 1 point to spend? Well how about we toss on an R2 droid, and an Integrated Astromech for some extra green and an extra hit? Jess will also be flying at PS 3 so you can do some fun things with ship activations if you need to. Now there are some other ship options but I’ll leave that up to you. I’ve also considered running R2-D6 for the EPT and trying to scrape some point together for Swarm Leader on Jess, but really by the time she would get to shoot you’ve probably used the Evade tokens. Maybe next time…
Squadron *Snappy – 100 points
Green Squadron Pilot: A-Wing – 21 points
- A-Wing Test Pilot
- Chardaan Refit
- Juke
- Snap Shot
Green Squadron Pilot: A-Wing – 21 points
- A-Wing Test Pilot
- Chardaan Refit
- Juke
- Snap Shot
Thane Kyrell: ARC-170 – 32 points
- M9-G8
- Weapons Engineer
- Alliance Overhaul
Jess Pava: T-70 X-Wing – 26 points
- R2 Astromech
- Intergrated Astromech
Do you have any fun builds Utilizing Snap Shot or M9-G8? Let us know in the comments below!
*I really wanted to fit “Snap” Wexley in this build…
