To cool down after losing my Pelta Article let's go to Hoth!
Today is the T-47 Airspeeder, and I know this isn't a starfighter, but its relatively close, and I could have sworn there was a Rogue Squadron game where you could fly these in space
(if any of you also remember it please tell me so I don't think I'm going (anymore) mad).
As the Rebellion knew they could never hold off an Imperial invasion of one of their ground bases for too long, they didn't want expensive equipment to protect their bases as they got their personnel and other more important equipment out, because of this the T-47 Airspeeder (or Snowspeeder thanks to its role in the Battle of Hoth) was perfect. It was a cheap civilian craft that could easily be repurposed as a scout and light defensive unit.
So like Luke in the Wampa cave, let's get stuck in!
The Overall Design:
The T-47 was a bad starfighter, like very bad. But this was because it was an above-average airspeeder, not a starfighter, which I think would make it a cheap light swarm ship in X-Wing, which is similar in-universe.
My design for the T-47 then was quite clear to me from the start, it needed to be like a Y-Wing for upgrades, with the stats of a Vulture Droid and the dial of a Lambda, so pretty bad!
The Stats:
Like I said this thing isn't the best ship, so I felt giving it two agility and attack dice made sense, as its small enough to evade incoming fire, but not as well as an interceptor could, and has decent cannons, but not tough enough to pierce the AT-AT's armour.
For hull, I was torn between three and four as this ship is weak, but it does take glancing fire from an AT-AT without immediately vaporising, so I settled on four but even now I'm not certain.
This ended up with the T-47 having the following stat line:
Front: 2
Agility: 2
Hull: 4
The Ship Ability:
I decided to dedicate the T-47's ship ability to its turret, forcing you to restrict the turret to only its rear half. I did originally play around with making it replace a turret arc with a rear half arc, but I decided I wanted to make the poor T-47's life even harder!
The Actions:
Again these aren't great... Its focus is of course a given. The evade is useful but two agility ships rarely require an evade. The boost will improve the upcoming atrocious dial, however, it being red is another dampener. The red jam is useful but very situationally, letting the little ship run interference for its superior allies.
The Dial:
It's god awful. I took the Lambda's dial to modify it for the T-47 then realised just nocking off the zero stop made it the dial I felt this ship needed, as Poe Dameron, ace of all aces, once said:
"No, no, not the T-47! I can fly anything, but that doesn't mean I want to. Piloting the T-47 is like steering a block of wood."
And I think that justifies my choices for the dial!
The upgrades:
The T-47's upgrades were quite easy to decide on as we all know it has a modular turret, and a gunner seat, so slap on a modification and talents for the better pilots and it's ready to go and defend Echo Base.
The Pilots:
Luke Skywalker:
Of course, all these pilots should be Rogue Squadron Pilots and as Luke is Rogue Leader at this point he needs to be here! Although Luke's T-65 X-Wing ability is very strong, I wanted to go in a different direction for him in this ship, letting him use the force to push his ship to its full potential. Letting him be the only pilot able to make the T-47 seem even close to being an ace ship, which is funny as this ability on any other ship is just broken. I love this ability as it reminds me of Anakin's assault on the Malevolence, where his skill and force connection allowed him to survive where others more easily died. I'd say Luke is roughly about 36-40 points thanks to his high initiative and ability.
Wedge Antilles:
Of course, after Luke, Wedge is the next most important pilot to include here! I went with a slightly different take on Wedge's ability which reflects the Rebellion's desperation during the Battle of Hoth, with them all just trying to survive long enough to escape.
Ironically I think this version of Wedge is better for the T-47 over his normal T-65 X-Wing ability, letting him survive for longer in this much weaker than normal. Just imagine a swarm of eight TIE/ln Fighters all at range two, trying to take out Wedge, and only getting to roll one attack die each! It would be maddening!
However, again like with Luke this makes him expensive for a T-47, at about 32-36 points.
Zev Senesca:
Rogue Two (which always seemed strange to me with Wedge being around...), Zev was another capable pilot in Rogue Squadron, following and completely trusting his commander, Luke. To the point that when Luke was lost in Hoth's night, he never gave up and was eventually the one who found him. His ability tries to make better use of the jam action, letting him use it to increase his attack value if his opponent is jammed. This makes him perfect to be paired with a Jamming Beam B-Wing, letting him make use of those excess jam tokens. Points wise he's still quite strong at about 29-32 points as he's still a high initiative value and can get an extra attack dice, which is nothing to scoff at.
Derek Klivian:
Poor Hobbie... I broke my heart reading the Empire Strike's Back, From A Certain Point Of View when Wedge is dealing with the loss of his long time friend.
Hobbie's ability is similar to his new A-Wing ability but inverted, letting him gain an advantage for removing a red token. This again lets him make better use of jam tokens, giving him a free jam whenever he removes stress, this pairs with Zev Senesca would workreally well, letting Zev more easily gain an additional attack dice without having to waste an action on the jam action.
Points wise Hobbie is about 25-29 points.
The Generics:
As always there must be generics, and these two are a decent pair. The Rogue Squadron Defender is just logical to be included as Rogue was the main squadron that defended Echo Base on Hoth. Points wise I'd say they are 22-24 points thanks to its talent slot and initiative.
The Corona Squadron Scout a group of pilots from Thane Kyrell's squadron as I vaguely remember hearing his squad also flew the T-47 at some point. They would have no talent slot and would be the cheapest at about 20-22 points, making this in the same ballpark as the Vulture Droid and Z-95's cheapest generics!
The Upgrades:
Ground Combat Veteran:
Starting with the most pointless upgrade at the moment! Ground Combat Veteran is a talent I designed to pre-emptively for any ground units I may make in the future for X-Wing, as although we have Legion, I can't afford that! I imagine ground units and starfighters having a permanent obstructed bonus when attacking each other because of the distance vertically between them, so this card gets around this! I'd say it's only 3-5 points.
Rogue Squadron
(Echo Base):
This card again makes use of the ground unit rules I'm starting to make for X-Wing, letting the Rogues fulfil their role as defenders of the Echo Base. It does this by hindering enemy ground unit attacks and aiding allied ground unit attacks. This makes it about 2-4 points. I swear the next card will be of use to the current X-Wing.
Mo/Dk Harpoon:
Now the interesting upgrades are coming! I'm sure you all saw this upgrade coming as it wouldn't be a Snowspeeder without a Harpoon cannon to take down walkers!
The Harpoon Turret works using a new token I designed for this upgrade and potentially a redo of the dreaded First Edition Harpoon Missile. The turret first works like most other turrets and canons
that assign tokens, giving out a token if the attack hits, however maxing out at one token. It then causes no damage unless it's critical as I see that as the harpoon digging into something important. The Harpoon token is of my own design, working very similar to a cross between a lock and a tractor/ion token. Your harpoon token matches your ship ID like a lock and it only affecting a ship if they have a
certain amount of them. However, the bigger your ship the more tokens your opponent is assumed to have, letting larger ships tether other ships more easily.
The Tethered part of the harpoon token lets you increase the difficulty of a ships manoeuvres and movement actions, making it very hard for a ship to remove stress tokens.
The saving grace for those tethered ships is that if they are out of the turrets arc, they lose the harpoon token and are free, forcing the slow T-47 to try to keep up.
I'd say that it will be able to destroy the AT-AT as I'll make special rules about a walker executing a red manoeuvre while stress killing them, and making its only blue a zero stop, so if it moves while tethered it will destroy itself!
Points wise I'd say it's about 5-7 points for initiative one and 1-2 points for every initiative value more.
Ax-108 Ground Buzzer:
This seems like a disappointment after the Harpoon, however, it's a concept I quite like! The Ground Buzzer lets you attack obstacles and cause a spray that affects all ships nearby, giving them a strain token. I'd add to the rules that obstacles have the agility of zero and cannot be assigned damage cards to work with this upgrade! Points wise I'd say it's about 1-3 points as it's barely useful as a damaging weapon, although could be fun on the Y-Wing with the new Tierfon Belly Run upgrade.
Dak Ralter:
The confident gunner of Luke, Dak was an amazing shot who was unfortunate to die so soon, I suggest his story in Empire Strike's Back, From A Certain Point Of View! His ability shows his skills as a gunner as well as his slight overconfidence, always making you reroll a dice. However, you can choose either your attack dice or your opponents defence dice, so it would rarely be a problem. I also tried to make a point of letting most of the gunners in this pack affect special weapons over turrets as there is a real need for those types of gunners. Points wise I'd say he's about 6-10 points.
Kit Valent:
As Zev's gunner, I designed Kit to work amazingly with Zev, letting him spend an orange token from an enemy ship to reroll dice. This means Zev can jam, get an extra attack dice, then still use Kit to spend that jam to reroll dice. This makes the jam action for Zev and Kit more like a superior lock action! Points wise I'd say he's about 5-7 points as you need an orange token.
Wes Janson:
Wes was Wedge's gunner, and being the first to score a hit on an AT-AT and successfully taking it down. Because of this, I made his ability around you always scoring a hit, even if you miss. This a relatively situationally useful ability, only really working with upgrades like the harpoon turret, XX-23 S-Thread or Mag-Pulse Warheads, along with a few others. However always getting these hits is very strong, especially against aces, making Wes about 6-10 points.
Rogue Squadron Gunner:
I felt making a semi-generic Rogue Squadron gunner is quite important as although Rogues were well known for their piloting skills, they were also ace gunners! For their ability I decided to go with a more useful Agile Gunner, letting them perform a rotate action after they move. The downside of gaining a deplete token is annoying for getting a stronger shot, however, used in conjunction with the harpoon turret, you can more easily keep an enemy ship in your arc for the harpoon token.
I'd say as the Agile Gunner is 6 points at most with it decreases as ship size increases, I'd say this works in the same way for the same cost as you gain the deplete token.
Conclusion:
I'm sorry this isn't the article you all voted for, however, I somehow lost all I had written for it and just couldn't bring my self to rewrite it at the moment, I will get round to it again at some point, but as I had a T-47 article in the works after I'd had late-night inspiration, so I decided to go with this one instead!
As for the pack, I felt this was a good way to add new turret and gunner upgrades as we haven't seen any new turrets since the beginning of Second Edition, and we desperately need more gunners that aren't restricted to turret arc abilities.
And again I know the T-47 isn't a starfighter, but it's such an iconic starfighter that I felt it deserves a place in X-Wing, and I'm still sure that I've seen it in space, and I will find proof!
I'm really happy how it came out, it does feel like a filler ship for the rebellion, but as they only really have the Z-95 as a cheap filler ship at the moment or the RZ-1 A-Wing at a push (but I normally find it is a little too fast for a lot of Rebel squadrons) the T-47 could easily find a place in the Rebellion as a cheap Y-Wing stand in!
As normal feel free to use the cards in friendly games to show the rest of the X-Wing community that even air speeders can tackle the deadliest of threats!
Thank you all for reading,
Watcher Leader out.