Never tell me the odds
By sprenger– January 9, 2013
Now I that I have blogged about the Tie Interceptor, A-Wing and Firespray, all there is left is the YT-1300. I guess you could say I saved the best for last because this ship is a beauty and can really pack a punch.
When I first looked at the YT-1300 (aka The Falcon) I was surpised to see an agility value of 1. I thought man this ship is going to be torn to pieces in no time but then I saw that it had 5 shields and 8 hull. “She’ll hold together”.
I have to say what impressed me most about this ship is the fact it’s primary weapon is a 360 turret that can fire up to range 3. This means there is no way for the enemy to get the best of you. If they want to attack you then they are putting themselves in your sites.
As for attack power I was kind of surpised that both new ships only roll 3 attack dice for a base attack. I guess this helps balance the game.
For this squad I had to go with Han Solo, at 46 points you know that he has to be an excellent pilot. Solo is a 9 PS and allows you to upgrade his YT-1300 with 2 crew members, 1 missile and a pilot skill. For an extra point you can make the YT-1300 the iconic Millenium Falcon, this gives you the evade action.
Total Squad Points: 100
Pilot: Wedge Antilles
X-Wing (29)
Upgrades:
- R2 Astromech (1)
- Engine Upgrade (4)
Pilot: Han Solo
YT-1300 (46)
Upgrades:
- Push The Limit (3)
- Homing Missles (5)
- Millenium Falcon (1)
- Luke Skywalker (7)
- Chewbacca (4)
When selecting the upgrades for the YT-1300, I wanted to go with theme over strategy. Because I am running Solo, I have to make it the Millenium Falcon. I know it seems like a waste of point for an action that you probably won’t ever use but it can’t be helped.
To make the most of the evade action, I decided to give Han the Push the Limit skill. Not only does this added to the theme of the squad but allows me to focus and evade when I need to.
Following theme, I picked Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca as my crew members. Pairing Luke with Han’s ability is pretty awesome. With all the re-roll abilities, you pretty much know that you will being dealing some kind of damage to your opponent.
While I happened to think Luke is outstanding as a crew member, at the same time I’m still not convinced that Chewbacca is worth 4 points for a one time effect. From what I can tell is that Chewbacca can be useful in two really important situations. First if you would take a critical that makes you ignore your pilot skill and/or upgrades. The second would be when the Falcon would be destroyed you could discard Chewbacca to save it.
As for the missile upgrade I had a couple options but in the end I decided to go with the Homing Missile. Right now Evade is not a commonly used action in the game so it’s effects seem pointless however when you are just going for high damage rolls I think this will be effective against the ships with two or more actions like Vader.
Think of the Chewbacca crew card this way: if the Falcon had 1 more Hull and 1 more Shield, it would cost 8-9 more points. Chewie has an effect that’s a little better than a straight-up durability increase, and he only costs 4 points.
I don’t know whether that makes it worth it for you or not, but for what he does Chewie is an incredible bargain.
Oh, and Homing Missiles: I missed it on the first reading too, but ignoring Evade isn’t the reason it costs a bit extra.
Unlike every other missile, it doesn’t instruct you to spend your Target Lock to make the attack–so you can spend the Lock for rerolls on the missile’s attack dice, instead. It’s actually a great upgrade over Concussion Missiles, most of the time.
My mind is blown! A missile wthout having to use a TL! Now that I think about it that makes perfect sense. I guess I just assume it was like the rest of the missiles just like I was confused about the ion cannon for the Slave 1. I guess I should re-read all the new cards again!