Oh god here comes the Emperor’s Guard, we’re doomed!
Recently I was combing through 1.0 for unused art on the upgrade cards when it hit me that there are actually quite a few pilots from 1.0 that didn’t make it into 2.0, and a good example of this is the TIE/in Interceptor.
Don’t get me wrong, they dropped the right pilots, most of them were deep legends pilots who few casual fans would have any idea about, and I understand FFG’s desire to work with cannon only pilots where possible (except Soontir, because there would have been a riot if he was dropped). However, I feel we could work these pilots back into the game with new and improved (and sometimes worse) abilities, increasing our already massive pool of Interceptor pilots!
So without any delay, let’s get stuck in:
The Pilots:
Carnor Jax:
Of course, Jax made it back here. His 1.0 ability made him deadly and horrible to face at close range, preventing your opponents from performing focus and evade actions at range 0-1 while also stopping enemy ships that already had a focus or evades from spending those tokens.
This was a very bad NPE as it practically cut off the focus and evade actions, however, that being said in 1.0 ships had so many mods for their dice, losing those core two tokens really weren’t that much of an issue. For my design, I wanted to keep it similar to the original without creating an NPE pilot ability while incorporating his slight force sensitivity as well. This ends up with Jax’s new ability punishing your opponent for using and gaining green tokens but it doesn't doesn't prevent them from using them. It also affects friendly ships as well, making Jax more of a lone wolf instead of a team player, but this helps balance him a little. His force sensitivity is also present, but as it is not able to recover like Grogu’s (unless near another friendly force user), it is more of a rainy day reserve to keep him alive.
Kia Kanos:
The last surviving Royal Guard Kia was hunted by Jax. Because of this their 1.0 ability was based around evade tokens that add hit results. That's not really an ability that I feel works in 2.0, so I've reworked it completely. It still revolves around the evade token, making you next to impossible to hit at range 2-3 as the attacker loses an attack die. However it also prevents you from spending said evade token and reduces your attack too.
But despite this, a skilled ace can use this to their advantage, taking focus tokens when they are not in danger, but evading to survive bad rounds where your opponent has you surrounded.
Royal Guard Pilot:
Although originally a genetic pilot in 1.0, now we can have multiple limited pilots I've been able to give the Royal Guard Pilots abilities to help them keep their Emperor alive.
The pilot ability is an inverse version of Lowhhrick’s pilot ability, letting you spend an evade token to allow your allies to gain a reinforce token when they defend, however you need to have the attacker in your front arc though which makes it a little harder to pull off.
This is amazing for all low agility pilots but especially shuttles as you can free up their action for coordinates or even modifications for their attacks.
Fel’s Wrath
Originally Fel’s Wrath had an ability that allows them to survive until the end of the engagement phase even if they are destroyed.
However, as Nash Windrider let's any friendly ship do this in a way, and as I'm going to give Tatran Cowall a new pilot ability, I've taken inspiration from his old 1.0 ability instead.
This ability lets you make your non-basic manoeuvres as flexible as possible, letting you execute those manoeuvres at any speed instead of what’s on the dial.
This makes it hard to predict Fel’s Wraths K-turn and sloop positions and makes it hard for them to be blocked on that vital round.
Tatran Cowall:
In legends Tatran was a failed actor who was hired by a warlord to impersonate Soontir Fel so the new Republic thought he had turned against them after he'd disappeared to join Thrawn without them knowing (it's complicated). However, Tatran was successful at this ruse and even tricked Wedge into believing that he was Soontir, despite Wedge personally knowing Soontir. To show his attempt to impersonate the Ace of Legend, I gave him an almost identical pilot ability, with him gaining a calculate token instead of a focus (as Tatran uses a computer to aid his ruse). It's cool to see how this amazing ability works very differently for ships depending on it's initiative.
For an I6 it allows you to perfectly dodge enemy ships and still have an aggressive mod. For an I2 it allows you to concentrate on forcing a bump with your opponents and still gain a defensive mod.
The Upgrades:
Overclocked Twin Ion Engines:
This upgrade is similar to theT-70’s Overdrive Thruster modification, letting you use a larger template at the cost of stress and damage. This isn't the most useful upgrade, but as an emergency “get out of a terrible situation” card, it could be worth it, if it's cheap.
Royal Guard and Bloodstripes:
As happy as I am with the pilots in this pack, these 2 upgrades are my favourite part. I'm sure most people are of the opinion that Sensitive Controls is a poor upgrade that only really makes the Tie Interceptor worse as an ace. However I'm desperate to get them to work with an additional upgrade or two. These upgrades are designed to allow you to gain bonuses from failing boost and roll actions like composure, only much better. This is because it allows you to perform future actions after the bonus evade or lock the card grants you.
Yes these can can go in any TIE , but as of present, there is no TIE that can use it like the Interceptor can, as Sensitive Controls allows you to get the lock or evade using your systems phase boost/roll, then you can still focus with your standard action giving you a perfect defence or attack set up.
I'd like to quickly point out an on-purpose flaw with the Bloodstripes upgrade, if you lock an obstacle or friendly ship by mistake (because nothing else is in range), you cannot acquire another lock using this card unless that object is destroyed. This is to help power down the otherwise stupidly powerful cards, alongside the fact you acquire the lock during the system phase, so you're not certain where your opponent will be.
Despite this, these upgrades are rather powerful, hence why they are both double limited and Standardised. You cannot have a swarm using these configurations, only a pair.
The Example List:
(54) CarnorJax [TIE/in Interceptor] (0) Sensitive Controls (5) Royal Guard Points: 59 (45) Royal Guard Pilot [TIE/in Interceptor] (0) Sensitive Controls (5) Royal Guard Points: 49 (49) Major Vermeil [TIE Reaper] (16) Admiral Sloane (3) Tactical Officer Points: 68 (23) "Night Beast" [TIE/ln Fighter] Points: 23 Total points: 200
The idea behind this list is simple: your opponents don't want to use their green tokens, but not taking them is still bad!
This works thanks to Slone and Vermeil as Slone suddenly allows your entire squad to get their desired rerolls against a target if they choose to use their tokens, but if your opponent doesn't use them, they will be easier to hit and Vermeil can then also cause them a ton of damage!
The Royal Guard also helps to keep Vermeil alive for longer, and Night Beast’s ability lets them have both a focus and evade like their interceptor brothers!
The Conclusion:
I was never an interceptor fan in 1.0 and I'm not really one in 2.0 either. This is mainly because I find glass cannons far too risky and I'm man enough to admit that I like to hide behind my shields!
However, after looking back over these lost pilots I can see why they are missed, well some… I mean one of them. Carnor Jax was amazing in 1.0, if a bit of an NPE for your opponents, but I had fun bringing him and his buddies back into 2.0 updating and redoing their pilot abilities to fit the second edition.
However I'm definitely happiest with my talent cards, Royal Guards and Bloodstripes, they feel thematic and actually give you a good reason to use the Sensitive Controls configuration. That being said, it shows how meh the Sensitive Controls configuration is as it took quite a strong set of abilities before I felt it was worth taking it.
As normal, feel free to use my cards in friendly games to show the rest of the X-Wing community what's yet to come!
Thank you all for reading,
Watcher Leader out.
Oh wait a minute! You've made it to the end of the article, have a discount code for £2 off orders over £10 of my alt art Lego cards: CarnorJax
It'll be valid for 48 hours after I upload this article! Find the cards here!
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