A Preview of the Most Wanted Expansion Pack for X-Wing (TM)

“This bounty hunter is my kind of scum, fearless and inventive.”
    –Jabba the Hutt

Recently, we kicked off our previews of the sixth wave of X-Wing™ expansion packs with a look at its different upgrades, which go a long way toward providing the Scum and Villainy faction with its own, distinctive personality. Its ships don’t permit quite the same swarms or nimble, high-risk piloting as the Empire’s, nor do they work quite as well in formation as the rugged and resilient ships that the Rebellion’s squad leaders most often favor. Instead, the galaxy’s Scum operate best when its squadrons’ individual pilots are left to their own devices and given license to purchase the deadliest and dirtiest upgrades available on the black market.

This generalization holds true even when we look at what the Most Wanted Expansion Pack offers the faction as it reintroduces two of the game’s pre-existing starfighters, repainted and re-outfitted to better suit the faction’s self-centered aces.

By repurposing some of your existing starships, the Most Wanted Expansion Pack kick starts your Scum faction with enough firepower that it can immediately take the fight to Rebel and Imperial forces. It comes with enough new ship cards and upgrades to field a whole fleet’s worth of the galaxy’s most fearsome thugs, hired guns, pirates, and spice runners. It also comes with three pre-painted miniature starfighters, one Y-wing and two Z-95 Headhunters.

Each of these feature identical sculpts to their Rebel counterparts, but they feature markedly different paint schemes. The expansion’s Z-95 Headhunters feature a white and black paint scheme and wing markings that indicate they belong to the notorious Black Sun organization.

A 360-degree view of the Most Wanted Z-95 Headhunter

The expansion’s Y-wing, meanwhile, features its own gritty, Scum-themed paint scheme, one that evokes the ship’s durability.

A 360-degree view of the Most Wanted Y-wing

Though these starfighters look quite different than their Rebel counterparts, they feature the same stats and the same maneuver dials. So what sets them apart within the Scum faction? The Most Wanted Expansion Pack transforms them by pairing them with unique pilot abilities and upgrades.

The Scum’s Z-95 Headhunter

As a ship, the Z-95 Headhunter is the same within the Scum faction as it is within the Rebellion. Except for one thing: The Scum’s Z-95 Headhunter gains access to the illicit upgrade () and all the different tricks it introduces, including the ability to use a “Hot Shot” Blaster once per game to attack a ship outside of your firing arc.

By itself, the illicit upgrade adds enough tricks to Scum pilots such as the Black Sun Soldier and Binayre Pirate to distinguish them from the Rebellion’s Bandit Squadron Pilot and Tala Squadron Pilot, but Most Wanted pushes the distinction between the Scum and Rebel Z-95s even further with the introduction of two unique Z-95 aces who epitomize the faction’s self-serving tendencies.

Whereas the Rebellion’s top Z-95 Headhunter pilot, Airen Cracken, exemplifies his faction’s philosophies by passing free actions to his wingmates during the Combat phase, the Scum pilot Kaa’to Leeachos hordes actions for himself. At the start of the Combat phase, he can steal a focus or evade token from any of his wingmates at Range 1–2. Depending on how you see it, this means that Kaa’to Leeachos effectively has a built-in Push the Limit, without the squad point cost or stress token, or it means that he’s leaving another of your Scum pilots high and dry each round. Of course, both are true in their own way, but it’s noteworthy, either way, to point out that if you put Kaa’to Leeachos in the right squad and formation, his ability grants him access to an evade token that his action bar doesn’t normally offer. It also means that he can grab a focus token even after performing a Koiogran-turn.

Meanwhile, N’dru Suhlak very likely represents the best example of how the Scum faction’s individualistic pilots demand the freedom to fly their fighters however they want, unimpeded by such irritating distractions as tactical formations, rules of engagement, or the legality of their upgrades. So long as there are no other friendly ships within Range 1–2 of N’dru Suhlak while he’s attacking, he gains an extra attack die. This means that while N’dru Suhlak is flying solo, he can hit as hard as a non-unique TIE interceptor or X-wing, but for fewer squad points and with a higher pilot skill.

The Scum’s Y-wing

Just as the illicit upgrade helps to distinguish the Scum faction’s Z-95 Headhunters from the Rebellion’s, the Salvaged Astromech upgrade () begins to separate Scum Y-wings from their Rebel counterparts.

As mentioned in an earlier preview, “Illicit Dealings,” the Salvaged Astromech upgrade replaces the standard Astromech upgrade featured by the Rebellion and helps to reinforce the idea that the Scum faction is a bit less orderly and a bit more aggressive than their rivals. Additionally, it reinforces the idea that Scum pilots follow their own interests and their own flight paths.

We saw a couple of these Salvaged Astromech ugprades in “Illicit Dealings,” but they didn’t fully illustrate how the Most Wanted Expansion Pack transforms the Y-wing. Rather, the Salvaged Astromechs that we saw merely hinted at the many new roles the Y-wing will be able to play within the Scum faction. While at one squad point the Unhinged Astromech may be a good bargain for Syndicate Thugs looking to race around the battlefield at full tilt with an Ion Cannon Turret, more aggressive pilots may prefer to equip R4 Agromechs in order to acquire target locks each time they spend focus tokens to perform attacks with equipped Blaster Turrets. Finally, because there are times that you won’t need to modify your attack dice so much as you’ll wish you could modify your target’s defense dice, Most Wanted introduces the unique Salvaged Astromech R4-B11.

Notably, a couple of the expansion’s unique Y-wing pilots partner exceedingly well with these last two Salvaged Astromechs. Kavil, for one, rolls an extra attack die whenever he attacks a ship outside of his firing arc and partners very well with the R4 Agromech.

Equipped with a Blaster Turret and R4 Agromech, Kavil offers your Scum fleet a consistently modified attack of four dice, so long as he can find a target at Range 1–2 outside of his primary firing arc.

On the other hand, the expansion’s second unique Y-wing pilot, Drea Renthal, is less likely to need the target lock granted by the R4 Agromech since she can simply receive a stress token to acquire a new target lock whenever she spends one. This means she’s far more likely to equip R4-B11 as she guns her ship straight at the enemy fleet, firing torpedoes with abandon. Alternatively, if her Y-wing has the BTL-A4 Y-wing Title, she can attack twice in the same round, once with her primary weapon and once with a turret. Furthermore, if she wishes, she can spend target locks to modify every die roll in the whole sequence. If Drea Renthal spends her target lock to modify her first attack roll, she can receive a stress token to acquire a new target lock, which she can then spend to modify the defender’s results. After that, she can receive a second stress token to acquire a new target lock on the same opponent or a new one, and she can then attack that opponent with a turret weapon, such as the Autoblaster Turret, modify the attack dice, take another stress token, acquire another target lock, and modify her target’s defense dice. However, since she’ll then be buried in stress tokens and her BTL-A4 Y-wing Title will prevent her from firing against opponents outside of her primary firing arc, Drea Renthal may wish to consider equipping a Bomb Loadout, perhaps carrying a Proton Bomb to discourage any would-be pursuers from trying to outflank her in order to claim free shots at Range “1.”

Drea Renthal with an extremely aggressive thirty-two point build.

Pure Aggression and Reckless Abandon

In many ways, the unique pilots and the upgrades in the Most Wanted Expansion Pack serve to define the sort of high-risk, high-reward tactics that the Scum and Villainy faction’s self-interested pilots might employ in their pursuit of bounty or their defense of their profit base. Still, many of the expansion’s upgrades, such as the Bomb Loadout and BTL-A4 Y-wing Title, can also play on ships outside of the Scum faction, and it’s possible that as the galaxy’s Scum enter the game’s heated battles, we may very well see a number of Rebels and Imperials adopting some of their tactics.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more previews of the Wave VI expansions for X-Wing. We’ll continue with our second preview of Most Wanted, exploring some of the ship cards and upgrades for the other ships it makes playable within the Scum faction – the HWK-290 and Firespray-31!

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