Tuesday, June 24, 2014

X-Wing: Echo, echo

Ooo, new toys!

Yes, I'm making a pun off that Disney movie that's about a cute little robot alien.  You know what game I haven't played in a long time because of overtime?  X-Wing.  You know what game I need to play immediately?  X-Wing.  It's a shame I wasn't able to find a game tonight, but then again I'm not too upset because I didn't get my TIE Phantom yet.

Just so you guys know, I plan on fielding a TIE Phantom in my next list just so I can do all the outrageous things with it that you think it can.  I'm planning to field "Echo" along side two of my favorite Saber Squadron pilots, Soontir Fel and Turr Phennir.  Combined with the new TIE Phantom, I plan on making quite an impact on the battlefield as all the ships I have are ridiculously maneuverable.

First, let's take a look at Echo:

Seems good.

The greatest thing about this guy (or girl?) is the ability to go anywhere I want on the battlefield with his ability.  As you can see from this article on the FFG website, Echo can fly anywhere he wants as long as there's enough room to move around.  While this is great and all, I'm quite worried about how the presence of asteroids will limit his ability.  When you think about competitive play, players have the opportunity to place asteroids one after another, in alternating fashion.  A lot of the better players know exactly how these asteroids can affect how the battle plays out:  Tightly clustered asteroids gives TIE Swarm players a fit while more sporadic placement of rocks gives Interceptors and flankers an edge.

Regardless, I think the sheer number of movement tricks will make Echo worth his points.  So what will the layout be do you ask?  Well, I'm thinking about taking Veteran Instincts, Recon Specialist and Advanced Cloaking Device.  This will bring his price up to a whopping 38 points, but hopefully the Recon Specialist and ADC will be worth it.  The reason I chose these abilities is pretty well-reasoned I feel:  Veteran Instincts gives me PS8 so I can move later and shoot quicker.  Recon Specialist gives him double Focus tokens so I can choose to Decloak, Focus x2, Attack and trigger Advanced Cloaking Device.  I will then either have a focus to make my attacks more powerful and keep a another with 4 dice on defense.  If I hit with everything and I'm satisfied with my result, I can hold back both focus for two rounds of enemy shooting.  This greatly prolongs the life of a relatively lightly-armored ship.

Again, just like the motto of the TIE Interceptors, the idea here is to not get dead.  It's a lot harder than it looks when you're playing against skilled opponents, and even harder when they're well-versed in fighting against Interceptors.  To make matters worse, what hurts Echo is the same thing that hurts Interceptors and that's good ol' Stress.  If you get stressed in a Phantom, you're going to feel it as soon as your opponents start opening up.  Since Cloak/Decloak itself is an action, and ADC is a free action, if you can't take actions you're not going to be well-off on defense.  In fact, you're probably going to lose your 38 point ship.  I guess it's also important to point out that ADC only triggers after you attack with Echo.  This means that PS9 pilots or anything that outspeeds you (including pilots shooting first) is going to have the advantage offensively vs. your ship.  Hence why I chose to go with a 99 point list.

This is the other 789 list I have.

As for the rest of my dudes, Soontir and Turr will be flying escort for Echo.  The list itself looks like this:

99 points

"Echo" — TIE Phantom
Veteran Instincts
Recon Specialist
Advanced Cloaking Device
 
Soontir Fel — TIE Interceptor
Push the Limit
Hull Upgrade
 
Turr Phennir — TIE Interceptor
Push the Limit

Let me know what you guys think about the list.  I'm pretty confident it'll do well.  I'm used to flying elite lists by now and this one is no different.

6 comments:

Zeus said...

Hey,

I have been playing around with something quite similar.

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/85365/your-move-echo

This is what I have been playing with up until I have a Phantom in my hands though:

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/74901/tri-fighters

Both lists will suffer greatly against Ion or Swarm or even high durabilty lists like double falcon or trill bounty hunter but they are soo much fun to play. I have some mini swarm lists to go with Echo which I think will be much more successful but... who would not want to fly these crazily maneuverable ships?

ImmateriumPress said...

The Phantom shakes up the style of play more than any other ship IMO. It's just so different -- even more of a positional monster and glass cannon than the Interceptor.

How do you deal with YTs (and to a lesser extent, Firesprays)? They often bring the two things you want to deal with least; high pilot skill values and expanded firing arcs.

HERO said...

Well, that's what I'm thinking to. I think the Echo will not be as good as a lot of people are making him out to be because any high PS, accurate ship with line of fire to him will destroy him utterly. The biggest ones here is PS9 Han Shoots First (very accurate, high PS) and Wedge Antilles. Wedge shooting before Echo in LoS gives him 3-4 dice vs. 1 before Advanced Cloaking Device can even trigger. That's just bad news.

HERO said...

I have, and the only one that sticks out to me is Carnor Jax for the points. Check out my X-Wing tab at the top of this page to see my thoughts!

Money Maniac said...

Hello Ikhero

I know you don’t know me, but name is Casper, and I’m with MoneyManiac. I noticed that you link to a few other people, so I thought I would take a shot in the dark to see if you would be willing to link to us as well.

I have recently worked on an article about cs:go skins and how you get free skins / cheap skins, but you really struggle to get visitors and interested people. I know this topic is hot for many gamers, but i just can't break the ice.

All i'm asking for is a small mention in one of your articles, or some sort of promotion/advertisement that will help me out. I don't expect it from you guys, but it would make me very happy.

Thanks for taking the time to read this email.

This is the article: http://money-maniac.com/how-to...

Have a great day,

Casper.

Portman said...

After what they did to aliens I could care less if gearbox was even still around. Yes I understand they outsourced it for the most part. Which doesn't make it any better. And the fact they talked it up like they did and it was the crap that it was, dude makes me sick just seeing his ugly mug on the video above. Speaking of which,anyone else think he
looking a little coked out? cat mario online

Post a Comment