Rogue Squadron - Let's Dance (Imperial Edition)

Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series we will be looking at different squadrons you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We give you the squad, what expansion pack all of the upgrades come from and then give you the low down on how best to fly it. Strap in and get ready to fly…

All Wings Report In

TIE Advanced “Juno Eclipse” (Imperial Raider Expansion) (33 pts) (PS 8)

When you reveal your maneuver, you may increase or decrease its speed by 1 (to a minimum of 1).

Title– TIE/x1 (Imperial Raider Expansion): Your upgrade bar gains the System upgrade icon. If you equip a System upgrade, its squad point cost is reduced by 4 (to a minimum of 0).
System- Advanced Targeting Computer (Imperial Raider Expansion): When attacking with your primary weapon, if you have a target lock on the defender, you may add 1 Critical result to your roll. If you do, you cannot spend target locks during this attack.
Modification- Twin Ion Engine Mk II (TIE Punisher Expansion)- You may treat all soft bank maneuvers as green maneuvers.
Elite Pilot Talent- Predator (Mist Hunter Expansion)– When attacking, you may reroll 1 attack die. If the defender’s pilot skill value is “2” or lower, you may instead reroll up to 2 attack dice.

TIE Bomber “Tomax Bren” (TIE Veterans Expansion) (31 pts) (PS 8)

Once per round, after you discard an Elite Pilot Talent Upgrade card, flip that card faceup.

Title– TIE Shuttle (TIE Veterans Expansion): Your upgrade bar loses all torpedo, missile and bomb upgrade icons and gains 2 Crew upgrade icons. You cannot equip a Crew Upgrade card that costs more than 4 squad points.
Crew- Agent Kallus (Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion): At the start of the first round, choose 1 enemy small or large ship. When attacking or defending against that ship, you may change 1 of your Focus results to a Hit or Evade result.
Crew- Navigator (Lambda Shuttle Expansion): When you reveal a maneuver, you may rotate your dial to another maneuver with the same bearing. You cannot rotate to a red maneuver if you have any stress tokens.
Elite Pilot Talent- Lightning Reflexes (Kihraxz Expansion): After you execute a white or green maneuver on your dial, you may discard this card to rotate your ship 180°. Then receive 1 stress token after the “Check Pilot Stress” step.
Modification– Twin Ion Engine Mk II (TIE Punisher Expansion): You may treat all soft bank maneuvers as green maneuvers.

TIE Defender “Countess Ryad” (Imperial Veterans Expansion) (36 pts) (PS5)

When you reveal a Straight maneuver, you may treat it as a K-turn maneuver.

Elite Pilot Talent- Push the Limits (A-Wing/Imperial Aces Expansion): Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar.Then receive 1 stress token.
Title- TIE/x7 (Imperial Veterans Expansion): Your upgrade bar loses the Missile and Cannon upgrade icons. After executing a 3-, 4-, or 5-speed maneuver, you may assign 1 evade token to your ship.
Modification- Twin Ion Engine Mk II (TIE Punisher Expansion): You may treat all soft bank maneuvers as green maneuvers.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Like many of the lists we write about, this one isn’t going to shake up the meta or likely win any regional championships. But that’s not what it’s about. This list is, pure and simple, about maneuvering. Each of the three ships has some ability to change its mind after laying down it’s maneuver dial.

The inspiration for this list was wanting to toy with some of the things from Imperial Veterans. Triple Defenders will definitely be a thing but Tomax Bren is also going to see some play so I made this to combine him with the new Defender. PS8 and the ability to keep reusing some of the most useful EPT’s gives him a lot of options. Obviously, Crackshot is a choice you can’t go wrong with but I wanted to try something else.

Enter Lightning Reflexes. It hardly sees any play but has potential to really mess with people. Since Tomax can get more than one use out of it, and can combine it with Navigator, you suddenly have a very slippery TIE Bomber. Pick a direction, wait for all the low PS pilots to move and then Navigator to whatever speed works best. Then you can flip around and face the other way if you can catch someone unaware.

Further aiding these shenanigans is the new Countess Ryad. She’s the first TIE Defender to encourage the use of Push the Limits thanks to her ability. She has a total of fourteen potential green maneuvers, four of them being K-turns. With the combination of the title she can select a speed 3, 4 or 5 forward maneuver, decide on her turn if she wants to go straight or turn around, then get an Evade, Focus and Target Lock. You do not want to joust her.

Rounding things out is one of the sadly under utilized TIE Advanced pilots, Juno Eclipse. She got a lot of press before the Raider dropped thanks to her ability. She has a built in Navigator that adds several very useful maneuvers to the lacking Advanced dial. Like the others she can change her mind once other ships have moved to find the best position to be in.

The main strategy with this list is to be unpredictable. Your opponent will have to think extra hard when trying to predict your movements. Utilize your ability to change your mind by choosing the less obvious maneuver and then tweaking it as necessary.

Variations

To maintain the slipperiness of this list there are not many changes you could make. You could switch out any two point crew for Agent Kallus. Juno’s EPT is also completely open. Outmaneuver would definitely fit the theme of this list. Push the Limits is also a possibility as with the TIE Mk II she has a fair amount of greens available.

You could make Ryad a little bit less defensive by switching the title and adding in a cannon. In exchange for three points else where you could gain a tractor beam. This would allow you throw some ships around the board. It’s not ideal as Ryad shoots last so the rest of your ships wouldn’t benefit from the agility reduction. Ion Cannon would require a lot of reshuffling to make work.