X-Wing 3rd Wave Tested

Was up at MacSver's battleshed to try out his newly purchased X-Wing 3rd Wave models in my second proper game.

X-Wing 3rd Wave
Imperial shuttle, HWK-290, Tie Bomber and  B-Wing.

We played a 250pt game (which was really probably a bit high for a rookie pilot as myself) which was fun. I commanded the Empire forces whilst MacSver donned his white shirt, black waistcoat and trusty blaster to lead the Rebel Scum.

Rebel Scum approach the Emperor's Glorious Fleet

Collected thoughts on the new ships (bearing in mind my lack of experience with any of them):

The B-Wing was a pig to manoeuvre, even by Rebel standards. Really poor agility - the proverbial 'flying brick'. But it more than makes up with 3 attacks, 3 hull and 5, yes 5 shields! Add in some really good upgrade options and this is an interesting ship!

The HWK-280 (aka Moldly Crow). Hmm. This ships stat line is nothing outstanding. 1 attack, not offensive at all. 2 agility, not really that evasive. 4 hull, okay, it can take a few hits. And 1 shield so you can negate a crit or just have an extra hit. Not the most impressive stat line.

After passing through the first flypast the shuttle starts its
long and laborious turning maneuver. 

The Tie Bomber is a moving missile platform on a (slightly less maneuverable) Tie Fighter. 4 or 5 missile\torpedo slots and a weapons enhancement slot (the slot titles may be wrong as I was just looking to match up card symbols). The one drawback is you need weapons locks to your target to fire any off. Potentially powerful - one set of missiles had 5 attack dice, and when teamed with the "turn all focus rolls to hits" card - boom!

The Shuttle is slow, unmaneuverable and turns like a barge (it was going to take around 4 rounds to turn 180!). It does have 5 shields and 5 hull points however. It may be the cards I picked out, but it seems like a defensive options machine, carrying abilities to draw in and hamper the enemy and hopefully add some targeting to the friendly ships. Favourite new card was the prisoner\hostage one that stresses the first ship each turn that fires on you! The other cards I'd picked out all had to do with managing and passing on weapons locks. I hoped to be productive in combination with the Bomber - only worked once.

MacSver added that he thought that these new shuttle ships aren't here for their power output, but their overall group utility. It certainly added an extra dimension to the gameplay, rather than just buzzing around dog-fighting as per the previous game.