Good afternoon X-wing players!
In the interest of giving you the best information about Wave 7, your Des Moines Area X-wing League has put together a brief unboxing below to show you all the exciting goodies. I picked mine up at Mayhem Comics in Clive, Iowa (our Monday night gaming location) which at last look had a TON of product in stock. If you’re in town and are looking for a place to buy, Mayhem definitely has what you need.
Just look at all that X-wing goodness 🙂
Below is a look at the boxes of each ship I brought home. For now I only grabbed one of each but I’m sure the collection will grow as I start experimenting with different list options. Plus the K-wing only came with two copies of the “Twin Laser Turret” and that just won’t do. Don’t they look pretty?
On to the actual un-boxing! If you’ve never opened an X-wing Miniatures ship before, my only piece of advice is to be careful to ONLY trim the outer plastic. There’s always a whole bunch of goodies hiding in the paper portion and it would be a travesty to lose any of those to an errant scissor.
The first ship up for review, the Scum Kihrax Fighter:
Compared to the rest of the ships in Wave 7, this thing looks tiny, but they did an excellent job matching the detail and paint style of the Scyk Interceptor from Wave 6. Below are a few more images of the ship from different angles.
While I’m very curious to see how it actually plays, the ship looks great and FFG did a great job with all the little details on the sides and bottom. It reminds me a little bit of the E-wing but looks like it can take more than a hit or two before exploding. As far as the upgrade cards, we have the full spread laid out below:
This pack has some great upgrades and pilots and I will definitely be getting at least a second one, if only for more copies of Glitterstim and Lightning Reflexes. As a reminder, Glitterstim reads “At the start of the Combat phase, you may discard this card and receive 1 stress token. If you do, until the end of the round, when attacking or defending, you may change all of your Focus results to Hit or Evade results.” Which means for one round your ship will be a monster. Couple that with modifiers like Predator or Lone Wolf and your opponent is going have a bad time.
Lightning Reflexes on the other hand is all about positioning and basically lets you turn any white or green move into a K-turn. Like Glitterstim you have to discard it after using it but simply the threat of doing so at any point makes this little jouster a very potent threat on the battlefield.
On to our next ship, the Rebel K-wing:
Seeing this in the package for the first time left me with two big impressions. First, holy cow that thing is big. It looks like it can barely fit in the package. Second, all those K-wing haters were wrong – this thing looks like a freaking A-10 Warthog. It’s loaded up with guns, turrets, and all kinds of scary goodness. Below are more pictures once it’s out of the package.
Once again, FFG has come through and turned a really funky looking design into something sleek and deadly. The ordnance covering it’s wings and the detail on the two turrets really makes it looks slick. This thing is ready to unload some hurt and based on what we see in the upgrade cards below, it’s easy to tell why:
Alex Davy, of FFG Designer fame, promised us bombs and boy did they deliver. Between the Connor Net, Ion Bombs, and oodles of Extra Munitions tokens, you don’t want to be anywhere near the back of this thing. But with the new Slam action and Advanced Slam modification, you may not even have a choice. This thing is designed to shoot past you, drop off a payload of hurt and then tag you from afar, either with its primary turret or the super scary Twin Laser Turret. Of course, the Twin Laser Turret will likely find a home on other ships as well like the Warthog Y-wings, HWK-290, or the venerable Horton Salm (the Great Mustachio as coined by Kelvan Tiberius from the Scum & Villainy Podcast) but the K-wing is certainly not a bad place for it.
Good ‘ol fashion missiles and torpedoes received some upgrades as well with the Plasma Torpedo that robs the defender of an extra shield when hit and the Advanced Homing Missile that flies like the original Homing Missile but instead of dealing regular damage, delivers one critical hit to the defender’s hull. There’s little doubt that even most ardent K-wing haters will have this thing hit the table at least once or twice. It’s just that good.
Next up, the Imperial Tie Punisher:
Like the K-wing, this is a monstrous ship and once you get it out of the package. It feels like a grizzly bear next to the regular run-of-the-mill Tie Bombers. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see no more than one or two of these in a list with separate support. Below is a more detailed look at the beast.
I don’t have a picture up yet of a regular bomber in comparison but this thing is just beastly. Compared to the airframe look of the K-wing and the normal sized Kihrax Fighter, the Tie Punisher very much feels like a bigger, meaner version of the Tie Bomber. FFG did do a nice job keeping everything to scale – the additional ordnance pods match the ones on the Tie Bomber and the wings just looking like plus size bomber wings. It’s a very beautiful model and while I’m having trouble figuring out how to store multiples, it’ll definitely be worth because of the upgrades below:
Like the K-wing, the Tie Punisher includes Extra Munitions, Plasma Torpedoes, and Advanced Homing Missiles. However, it also includes some more goodies that make it a must buy for this wave – Cluster Mines, Ion Bombs, and kinda-sorta-Defender-fix Twin Ion Engines Mk II. While you can see the spread of the Cluster Mines (roll two dice on each mine) and the Ion Bomb gives two ion tokens to all ships within range one, the last little modification turns all bank maneuvers green on Tie’s. While useful in certain situations on interceptors, advanced, and fighters, the Tie Defender will get the most utility out of this upgrade, finally making it viable to actually take red maneuvers without being stuck flying straight. As a fan of the Tie Defender myself, this is huge and I’m very excited to add this upgrade (as well as the others) to the Imperial arsenal. The Punisher itself is of course a complete monster, with high hull/shields, tons of upgrade slots (including sensors!), and access to one of the greatest defensive upgrades in the game – Autothrusters. So you have a high-health, high damage ship with the ability to play the range game and get free evades. That’s a nasty ship and I’m very much looking forward to dropping this bad boy on the table.
The final ship in our unboxing is my personal favorite of the Wave – the Scum YV-666:
In the package and out of the package.
Now, I know I’ve said this about all the ships so far, but this thing is just massive. Those of you who remember unboxing the Decimator for the first time might remember how huge that thing looked. The YV-666 though? Somehow even bigger. We’ve got some additional angles down below:
Unlike the other ships in the Wave, this one I’m a little torn about. On the one hand, the back portion and several side details look just fantastic. On the other hand, the big box out front just seems a touch simplistic compared to what we’ve seen in the past. You look at the detail on the other big ships and it really feels like a big complicated machine. This one though looks like a smaller machine was attached to a boring cargo container. It’s a very weird aesthetic and I’m less excited about it than I’d like to be.
But, no matter how it looks, it’s the goodies and gadgets on the inside that count and this thing has those in spades.
We’ve got secondary weapon upgrades, crew members, additional copies of some excellent EPTs like Lone Wolf and Stay on Target, and (in my opinion) some of the most interesting pilots in the entire Wave. Bossk (the pilot) is just plain brutal and will punish your opponent with the sheer number of hits he can throw out, using just a few choice upgrades. Moralo Eval turns that awesome 180′ primary arc into an 180′ cannon arc. Outrider might be scary, but at least it has a donut hole to exploit. This thing? Anything in the front half is going to be in serious trouble. Even Latts Razzi can help make a serious dent in that YT-2400 or falcon you’ve been chasing around the board the whole game with his defense decreasing target lock. Pair him with the K4 Security Droid and he doesn’t need to waste an action to ruin someone’s day. There’s so many possibilities with these pilots and since they’re on a ship with a ridiculous amount of hull and shields, you’ll get plenty of opportunity to use them.
Of course, we can’t forget about the most interesting part of the package, the Hound’s Tooth title. For the small cost of 6 points, you get a Z-95 Headhunter that shoots out the front of back of your YV-666, giving you another late game threat that gets to keep the abilities and pilot skill of your YV-666. While this won’t see much play on Moralo Eval, Bossk can still be a threat even as a Z-95 and Latts Razzi will just love this title. Have you been annoying your opponent by dropping their defenses all day? Well even if they manage to take out your big ship, you can keep up the fun with a brand new ship they have to kill.
It’s a wonderful ship and I just can’t wait to start terrorizing our local group with YV-666 shenanigans. Before we go, here’s a final shot of Wave 7 in all it’s glory:
We hope you enjoyed our unboxing and if you’re interested in more information about our local group’s events, pictures, or even articles written by our resident 2012 World Champion, check out the rest of the site.
Otherwise, as always good luck and fly casual!
Des Moines Area X-wing 