Spoilers for the Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2, so read with caution:
Today is the first of my X-Wing Miniatures Custom Ship Packs where I take a group of my custom cards to make a new ship pack for the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures 2.0 game, explaining my creations and the designs along the way:
Today's pack will be for the Razor Crest class gunship, the Mandalorian Din Djarin's personal over abused starship and home.
The Overall Design:
Although featured throughout the Mandalorian, we only have a handful of scenes with the Razor Crest in action. As the Mandalorian is still a relatively new bit of Star Wars, we haven't yet had the copious amounts of media and information on specific parts of the show like official ship sizes, shield strength, crew and cargo capacity, and the overall role of this ship other than gunship. However we can easily make an educated guess on all these things.
My take on the ship and its upgrades is to make the Crest a tough, but easy to hit crew carrier, that can pull unpredictable manoeuvres with great cost. This allows it to fill multiple roles, as a support, jouster or even an ace.
The Stats:
From the shots we had in chapter 10, with the 2 T65X-Wings flying close by to the Crest, we could see that although the Crest is easily larger than the smaller X-Wings, it was not an absolutely massive ship so it will happily fit into the medium base category.
For the rest of the ship stats I decided upon a low agility but tough vessel, with 1 agility, 7 hull and 3 shields, keeping it rugged but easy to hit as we saw in the show.
Attack-wise the Crest was only equipped with a pair of laser cannons, however as we saw in chapter 6, it only took these cannons to reduce a decent sized fighter to debris, so I decided to go with the middle of the line 3 attack dice, keeping it a heavy hitter but no Ghost.
The Actions:
Well the easy place to start with any ship action bar is the focus/calculate action, as you will see with the final product the Crest will have a mix of these pilots.
The next action is the almighty reinforce, the 1 agility ships best friend. With all that the Crest has been through, it is definitely a tough ship withstanding all that Din put it through, so I think it definitely deserves access to this action.
The last actions on the Crest are it's reposition actions, both barrel roll and boost feel appropriate for the Crest with its large engines and the manoeuvres we see it pull in the show. However with both its size and age, I think that although it should have both, they should be red actions to mimic these factors.
The Ability:
Again taking inspiration from chapter 6, I decided to let the pilots in the Crest damage the ship slightly to put the ship into reverse, putting the ship under a lot of strain but allowing you to concentrate on getting a ship in your sights turned to debris.
The Dial:
As a gunship the Crest's dial should be relatively slow and sluggish, but I also want it to be relatively different and unpredictable. I decided to use its massive thrusters and the manoeuvres that Din pulled in the beginning of chapter 6 for inspiration so I gave the Crest both a decent set of forward and reverse manoeuvres.
The Modifications:
The Razor Crest is first and foremost a gunship, capable of transporting large numbers of troops into battle by making use of its tough hull and shields to protect its crew and troops. Because of this I decided to give the Crest access to a pair of crew slots, allowing it to be a strong crew carrier in a similar role to the LAAT, U-Wing and Tie/rp Reaper.
The next upgrade is one that surprised me when I discovered it, the Razor Crest has an astromech slot! The reason we don't see it in the show is because of Din's understandable fear of droids in season 1, so he deactivated the slot and never used it. Because of that, all the pilots except Din will have access to the slot.
The last 3 slots are pretty self explanatory for the Crest. A good old modification slot to let you upgrade the ship in your own way. An illicit slot as although Din has more morals than most scum have in their little toe, he's more than willing to use the less than legal tech that most scum pilots will use. And lastly a Title upgrade for the Razor Crest Title.
The Pilots:
Din Djarin:
I'd be mad to make this ship and not put the Mandalorian himself inside. I decided to make Din’s pilot ability around his original catchphrase "I can bring you in warm…Or I can bring you in cold." A chilling line to give his opponents a chance to surrender but let them fully understand he's confident he can bring them down.
The 2 condition cards allow you to either be a lot more defensive or aggressive, as Din either tries to capture them alive so he flies more defensively or tries to kill them and so flies aggressively.
Originally I was going to have the player choose which card you give your opponent, then I realized that thematically, it’s up to the opponent to choose if they would yield or not so I feel it's fitting for them to choose instead.
I would Give Din a Talent slot as he's definitely seen to be a more than skilled pilot throughout the show.
Q9-0:
The cocky droid Zero was seen as a better pilot than Din because of it’s quick reflexes, allowing it to easily manoeuvre the ship before the New Republic's prisoner transport picked them up on sensors.
I struggled to make his card for a long time because of this, unsure how to incorporate these quick reactions into his ability as it's rare that you want an expensive ship to move first without any knowledge of your opponent's movements.
Then I decided upon this format, splitting your movement in half, the actual move at initiative 0, then performing actions at initiative 5, letting you block ships then outmanoeuvre them with your repositions actions at initiative 5.
Like with Din, Zero is more and skilled enough to have a talent slot as well.
Kuiil:
The wonderful kind hearted Ugnaught skilled in repairing all things mechanical, Although we never see him fly the Crest, I believe that he's possibly one of the only people that Din would have happily let fly it, especially as during chapter 7 Din wants him to take Grogu to the Crest and get him to safety (It would be an interesting alternate universe where Kuiil looks after Grogu).
I found his ability to be the easiest to make, letting you easily repair large amounts of damage to the Crest, which I felt fitting because he practically rebuilt the Crest from scratch after the Jawas took it apart. I also kept his initiative value low as he's defiantly more of an engineer than a pilot, and because of this as well, I'd say he shouldn't have access to a talent slot.
Tribe Foundling:
Every ship in X-Wing 2.0 needs a good old generic pilot (With a few understandable exceptions) for those who can't afford the best pilots in the galaxy in their lists, and a Mandalorian foundling is still a pretty good pilot.
I do think even though they have a low initiative, to show a Mandalorian's training and skills, the Foundling should have a talent slot.
Part Two: The Upgrades, coming soon...