An X-Wing (TM) Turn Zero Article by 2013 World Champion Paul Heaver

“Keep your eyes open for those fighters!”
    –Garven Dreis

In his “Turn Zero” articles, reigning World Champion Paul Heaver offers a look at one of the most critical components in mastering the game of X-Wing™… getting started.

In previous articles, Paul has addressed how best to place asteroids to complement your strategy, how to place your starships at the start of a game, and how to develop a winning battle plan within an evolving metagame. Today, Paul addresses another crucial step along your path to victory: assembling your squadron.

Whether you’re looking to improve your chances at FFG’s 2014 World Championship Weekend or you’re just thinking about the best way to introduce the game to one of your friends, squad building is a critical component of your experience and one that’s best to approach with a solid plan.

2013 X-Wing World Champion Paul Heaver in action during the 2013 finals

2013 X-Wing World Champion Paul Heaver on Building Your Squad

The best way to build your X-Wing squad depends on many factors. The first thing you should consider is the event to which you are bringing your squad. Are you headed to a casual game night with some friends, or are you headed to the World Championships? Is your goal to build a thematic squad that recreates the Trench Run or another iconic moments from the movies? It’s not always about winning! I build some of my lists to help me improve my skills with a new ship or upgrade, or to test the choices of another person’s list and see if I agree with them.

Speaking of other people’s lists, you shouldn’t be afraid to grab a popular list off of the internet and try it out. I often do this to see if I can fly the squad as well as others have, or if I think I can make the list better. If you are new to the game, grabbing a known list and learning how to play it will help you improve your skills. You don’t have to worry about whether or not you made good build choices, so you can concentrate on visualization and planning. Plus, the experience will help you in the future when you face other players running the same ships; you’ll know what their ships can do, and knowing where your opponent’s ship will end its movement is the first step toward defeating it.

However, if you feel you’re ready to design your own squad, it’s an exciting time to do so because there are a lot of viable designs. The X-Wing metagame is moving away from squads that feature swarms of ships firing lots of red dice at their opponents, and elite pilots are finding their way back to the top tables. Even so, the lists with lots of ships are still doing well! This fact further solidifies my opinion that it’s very important to be comfortable with the ships in the list you are playing, and it’s also important to gain knowledge of the ships you’re facing.

A squad of TIE bombers in action at the 2014 North American Championships

Shore Up Your Defenses

I tend to think, first, about how my ships perform defensively, and then I try to maximize my squad’s offense afterward. Defensively, I don’t like to have all my ships share the same weakness. That increases my chances of running into a squad that easily counters mine. Squads work best when you they have multiple parts with different strengths, so that your various parts can cover each others’ weaknesses.

For example, the old Rebel swarm of three Blue Squadron Pilots and two Prototype Pilots could tailor its plan of attack to counter TIE swarms and other squads that had many two-die attacks, or they could adjust to counter squads with fewer ships that each attacked for more damage.

Another example is the TIE phantom. It’s an “arc dodger,” designed to position for attacks against foes that can’t shoot back. Since you know that arc dodgers have a weakness against turreted ships, you shouldn’t pair your phantom with other arc dodgers. Instead, since most turreted ships have high health and low defense, using multiple TIE fighters with your phantom has been proven to shore up its main weakness.

With its ability to cloak and decloak, the TIE phantom excels at slipping out of the firing arcs of fighters flown by pilots with lower pilot skills.

Maximize Your Offense

After you diversify and mitigate your weaknesses, you need to maximize your offense. This means trying to squeeze in as many attack dice as possible and making sure you can modify your rolls. It also means that you need to make sure those ships stay alive. You do not want to make your strongest ship the easiest one for your opponent to destroy. You want to give your opponent hard choices; encourage them to make mistakes. This is why unique pilots with offensive abilities tend to be combined with defensive upgrades, such as Wedge Antilles with an Engine Upgrade or Corran Horn with R2-D2.

Similarly, if your pilots are already hard to kill, you want to boost them with offensive upgrades, such as giving Jake Farrell Outmaneuver and Push the Limit.

Upgrading Your Squad

Once you decide on what ships you want, it’s time to determine upgrades. I always recommend fewer upgrades for beginning players. It’s easier to lose track of things when you have multiple ships, with different pilot abilities and upgrades. Then you may fail to take advantage of the important upgrades for which you’re spending your squad points.

When you do use upgrades, it’s easiest too remember their functions if you use the same upgrade on multiple ships or put most of your upgrades on a single elite ship. For example, if you take the previously mentioned Jake Farrell with Push the Limit and Outmaneuver, and then pair it with three Blue Squadron Pilots who each have Fire Control Systems, you are likely to remember to use all of your upgrades correctly.

Bidding on Pilot Skill

Pilot skill is another important consideration. In most cases, the ideal pilot skill value is one higher than whatever your opponent is fielding. But spending squad points to hit that ideal pilot skill is a gambit that can fail if your opponent has pilots with higher skill than yours, or simply doesn’t bother to “bid” on pilot skill and just sticks with the minimum skill levels. Right now, most lists tend towards the extremes of pilot skill, either bidding high with nines and above or going with non-uniques at pilot skills one and two. In this sort of environment, spending squad points for pilots with skill values of four to eight often results in wasted points. Currently, I’d only take pilots in that region if their pilot abilities were extremely useful for my list, such as Biggs Darklighter or “Howlrunner.”

Your List Is More Than a Collection of Cards

Once you have settled on your list, you’re ready to playtest it to learn how it functions. For smaller, local events, I’m usually happy coming up with a basic three-round opening where my ships don’t collide, and I can point all my weapons in the direction I desire. For larger events, I’ll playtest online and in person multiple times to become familiar with how my ships function together and how I can adapt my strategy to face popular squads so that I can make the right adjustments quickly. Knowing where you want to place your asteroids and your ships at the start is also closely related to the list-building process, and has been covered in previous articles in this series.

Thanks, Paul!

Whether you follow Paul’s advice or adhere to a squad-building formula of your own devise, you can soon put your squad to the ultimate test in the galaxy’s greatest battles. The 2014 X-Wing World Championships are nearly upon us. We hope to see you this November 6th – 9th in Roseville, MN. But even if you can’t join us, you can still be a part of the action by following our livestream on Twitch.tv and supporting your friends. Coverage begins Thursday, November 6th at 9:45 AM CST!

…