Fall of a Meta- X-Wing FAQ Changes

Monday, FFG released the latest batch of FAQ updates. These are always welcome after a wave releases because there are always ambiguous interactions. Aside from the major changes, which we’ll get to in a moment, most of the other changes were of these needed clarifications. To summarize:

Clarified that simultaneous effects aren’t quite simultaneous. This allows nested reactions to occur more cleanly.
No, no you cannot touch after barrel rolling because if you touch, you can’t barrel roll.
I’ll Show You the Dark Side does not work with Vader crew (ISYTD works during attacks only and Vader crew is not an attack)
“Immediately” was cleared up to have no meaning. Which is good because it sounds very important.
Youngster can affect TIE/sf. Yay? Raging Quickdraw with another EPT in combo maybe?
New Han Solo can’t start on rocks without suffering the effects, including removing shields if he gets hit.
TIE Strikers using Adaptive Ailerons don’t skip Perform Action step if the Aileron movement bumps. Yay!
Kanan crew does indeed work with the Sloop Millenium Falcon title but not with Inertial Dampeners or Daredevil.
M9-G8 is the source of his re-roll which allows Snap Shot to work.
Mobile arcs count as firing arcs against things like Backstabbber or Outmaneuver.
Manaroo can’t allow you to have two blue target locks unless you have some ability that would already allow that (Weapons Engineer mainly).

But those are just the needed rules clarifications that are expected for an FAQ update. We also got some pretty major changes.

Emperor Palpatine

“Once per round, before a friendly ship rolls dice, you may name a die result. After rolling, you must change 1 of your dice results to the named result. That die result cannot be modified again.”

Palp Aces has been a thing in X-wing for a long time now. The Emperor’s ability to guarantee a die result is very powerful. So powerful that people devoted 29pts (Palp + Shuttle) just to get it on the board. This change has the potential to fundamentally shift that.

Instead of Palpatine being able to counter a bad dice result he instead has the ability to guarantee a certain die result. It’s almost but not quite the same thing. His biggest strength becomes his biggest drawback. Before, if you blanked out on a critical roll, you could Palpatine to keep a ship alive. Now you have to decide that a roll is critical and you want to ignore chance. You might waste his ability after rolling exactly what you needed.

I still think Palpatine can have a pretty good effect on a game. But I’m also sure we will see a lot less of him. He requires a lot of investment and he may not be worth that cost for many. Still, being able to guarantee a die result when you need it most, is nothing to dismiss. Getting rid of an annoying crit or having that one essential evade to keep yourself alive is still good.

TIE/x7

“After executing a 3-, 4-, or 5-speed maneuver, if you did not overlap an obstacle or ship, you may perform a free evade action.”

I like this change. It reemphasizes the importance of good flying (don’t run into stuff), makes stress have more of an impact on Defenders, and also gives the mostly ignored TIE/D title a boost by not being so completely outclassed. Countess Ryad will still shine thanks to her multitude of green maneuvers. And most good pilots will see little to no loss in function. But opponents now have a new tool to fight a very powerful card (just being -2pts is valuable all on it’s own).

Manaroo

“At the start of the Combat phase, you may assign all focus, evade, and target lock tokens assigned to you to another friendly ship at Range 1.”

This is the only one of the major changes I think went a little to far in the other direction. I’ve never liked range 1 limitations on support abilities. It’s just a restrictive formation. I like range 1-2 restrictions as it gives you more options on how to maneuver.

But I do agree with the general change. Manaroo being able to pass tokens from anywhere on the board was very powerful. Too powerful for her cost. She needed some kind of range restriction. Range 1-3 might have still been to much and Range 1, even despite my personal dislike, is still useful. Especially in combination with Attanni Mindlink. In fact, the range restriction actually makes her ability to pass target locks more useful as she’ll be in range to target lock far more often.

Zuckuss

“When attacking, if you are not stressed, you may receive any number of stress tokens to choose an equal number of defense dice. The defender must reroll those dice.”

The final major change to the game and the one I think was the most necessary. At one point Zuckuss was just to powerful. There are a fair number of game effects that allow you to mitigate being super stressed. Predator, FCS, Dengar (crew), K4 Security Droid etc are all ways to get dice rerolls even when stressed. For one more point, you can just take infinite stress to always be able to make your opponent’s fickle green dice even more fickle.

Some people whine that this will see the death of Zuckuss on the table. I don’t think it will. He’s still only one point. With Inspiring Recruit you can afford to use him every round to force two rerolls. He’s not useless, just worth his price now.

Meta Impact?

That remains to be seen. We’re still figuring out what impact Wave X is going to have. With these changes it goes even more into flux. Dengaroo is good and dead. Paratanni is weaker but not significantly. Palp Aces is a big question mark. I expect a major shift on the Imperial side and a resurgence of the Rebels, especially stress control, as none of these changes directly affected them.