Poe Dameron basically rescued X-Wing 1.0 for me. When the Force Awakens starter and Heroes of the Rebellion came out, I was flagging in my support for the game. The stale meta and lack of nearby high-level events was wearing on me, but the T-70 X-Wing, with its new pilots and fresh style, revived the Rebel faction for me, and brought me back in a major way.

In Second Edition, my enthusiasm has never been higher, but that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to see my old tabletop partner return to the game. His new ability allows him to do all the tricks I used to love from PS9 PTL Poe, and the new BB-8 and Black 1 titles help him be everywhere on the table virtually at once (even if only for a couple turns.) It was inevitable that he’d return to my squads nearly as soon as he was released.

As for what to pair Dameron with, I had to seriously consider the possible options available in Hyperspace (which is my format of choice for Resistance; In extended, I’ll be playing Empire.) Imperial, and to a lesser extent, Scum and First Order, have a large swarm presence. Scum and Rebel seem to favor higher initiative aces and alpha strikes, while Resistance can do a little bit of everything, but nothing so well as the other factions. They also have the advantage in Bombers, as the Rebel Y-Wing, Scum Firespray, and Imperial Striker do not have access to the Trajectory Simulator.

I wanted more than 3 ships, to be able to stand a chance after the first turn against swarms. I wanted less than 5 ships, to be less susceptible to my weaker-hulled ships getting nuked by bombers and alpha strikes. Clearly, 4 ships was the way to go. With Poe, at least 1 ship had to be generic, and of the 2 A-Wing aces, Tallie is both cheaper and has an ability that doesn’t reduce her own defenses. I liked the 2X/2A dynamic of my last Resistance squad, the list was pretty much set.

Tallissan and Poe lead the charge, their high initiatives working with my 7-point bid (relatively large in my area outside of Boba players) to out-maneuver opponents. The Red and Green squadron experts give my list a bit more girth and firepower than a third ace, but still beat out swarms by Initiative. Against bombs, I can tank 1 without too much concern and hopefully bring down the bomber. Against swarms, I should be able to nuke down at least 1 TIE before they fire. Against aces, I hope to outbid them, but if I don’t, I likely have an answer for whatever their support is.

On Friday, I got to put this to the test, playing a 3-round Hyperspace event at Blue Sky. Of the lists, there was only a single player who did not have at least 1 X-Wing in his list: Jim, our resident Scum purist. There were 4 Resistance lists and 2 Rebel ones, alongside Jim’s scum, and Poe or Wedge was in 5/6 of the X-Wing lists. That tells me a little something about the power of the X-Wing in Hyperspace…

As a side note, I’m going to be somewhat general for the reports here, going over key turns. All 3 of my games were streamed on Twitch and saved to YouTube by Jim, so the complete play-by-play is available over there. I am including the links to each video in the title of each match. Don’t pay a lot of attention to the scores and health totals in the video, as we didn’t have a dedicated person at the computer to keep them updated each turn, since Jim was also playing.

Game 1: Joe Moore

Joe was using a mix Bomber/Ace build, with the Ys deployed separately from the Xs, with the latter trying to trap me against obstacles so the former can destroy them on my face. This somewhat backfired, as it left the Xs in engagement range before the Ys could quite get there. The opening round saw the Green barely in both Xs arc, but dodge most of the damage as my ships ganged up on Kullbee, due to him being closer.

Wedge and the Red bumped, leaving Poe and Wedge Range 1, but Poe couldn’t lock him due to a post-maneuver action to line it up. Meanwhile, the Ys attempt to come in, Tallie completely disengages to turn her back arc in an attempt to finish Kullbee, and my Green falls neatly into Kullbee’s trap as he turns his arc to fire on Wedge. Afterward, the game devolves into chaos as the Ys charge straight into the center, Wedge escapes off to a side, Tallie struggles to re-engage, and Kullbe continues to hunt down my Green Expert. This is the 3rd round, and it’s also the 3rd straight round where my fire was focused onto a different ship.

Poe finally smarts up and finishes off Kullbee on the following turn, allowing the As to swing around one another and re-engage. Wedge T-Rolls off into the distance to chase my X-Wings, and the Y’s destroy a scrap for 1 damage on my Red and the trailing Y. The following turn, another scrap is destroyed, dealing a damage to Tallie as the wounded Y goes down to the Green. The painted Y gets a beautiful shot on my Red Expert, who explodes gloriously while Poe and Wedge glide by one another. After this, Poe (who is at this point on 1 hull,) decides to wander off into my corner in a failed attempt to come back into the fight. X-Wings have S-Foils, it helps to flip the cards over to Barrel Roll instead of forgetting to do so, 3 turns in a row…

The A-Wings have now got the remaining Y down to hull, and Wedge is also on the ropes. So much so that before the Green can damage the Y, Tallie finishes Wedge at range. It takes another couple of turns for my A-Wings to figure out which way is up when they are behind a slower-moving target, but the eventually secure half points and the game before Poe can return to the fight at the end of time, final total, 178-122.

It is at this point that I finally, perhaps for the first time since opening the Resistance conversion kit, look at the bloody X-Wing card. It has 3 shields now. I have only had 2 shield tokens on my cards for all 4 games I’ve put T-70s down in thus far. In this game alone, it means Poe doesn’t suffer the double-stress crit that sends him off into my corner, the Red doesn’t die when he does, and I’m generally in a much better position. Just 1 more reason T-70s are better than T-65s.

Game 2: Jim Kelly

Jim is flying his perfected Boba build, alongside Fenn Rau and L3-37. It’s a list that is somewhat familiar to me, as I’ve faced similar to it before, and my plan was the same as last time: kill the coordinator, figure it out from there. Jim sets Fenn up to approach as his other ships draw me in, but when the first attack dice are rolled, it’s all 4 of my ships shooting on L3. It takes me all 4 shots to do it, but the droid goes down without ever firing a shot, while Boba and Fenn take potshots on my Green Expert.

Chaos starts to happen nearly immediately, as Fenn bumps my 4-K’d Red instead of over-flying him, and Fett boosts away from the trap Poe and Tallie had set, forcing me to split my fire and leaving the Green without a rear-arc shot entirely. Fenn manages to take 2 damage for me here though, which helps, and Boba starts to bleed shields 1 or 2 at a time. However, when Fenn Rau approaches you at Range 1, and especially if you’re already down to 2 hull, you might as well consider yourself down a ship, and he proved this correct as the following turn, Fenn deleted the Green Expert from play while my ships scramble to recover their positioning.

Fenn had tasted blood, and he wasn’t about to let it stop there. Taking a daring turn into Tallie’s face, the Mandalorian proceeds to delete Tallissan from the game as well, preventing her s,hot on Fett. The Red Expert, for his part, puts the other 2 damage Fenn needed to die on, and the game is now 2 healthy X-Wings against a shield-free Fett. Jim starts using his lower initiative to his advantage, blocking Poe with Fett and keeping me from getting the shots that I really want on him.

This goes on for several rounds, in fact getting worse as the Red gets closer, and we have 2 turns where no shots are exchanged at all. I break Poe off on the other side of the scrap as I block Fett, then T-Roll the Red to leave Fett nowhere safe. I finally take another shot 3 rounds after the above image, a Range 2 through an obstacle from Poe. However, with 2 X-Wings on his tail and racing toward either a corner or a board edge, Boba has to eventually turn and face me, and he does so 2 turns later.

Poe had set himself up the round before to be able to chase Fett wherever he went and remain stress-free, so this round ends the game as Poe finishes off the Firespray pilot and secures a 200-73 win for me.

Having those 2 extra shields I had been ignorantly denying myself really made the X-Wings worth their points this game…

Game 3: Justin Brown

Another Poe, another A-Wing, and the baddest of Bombers. My game-plan was to nuke down the StarFortress before it became a massive issue in the mid-game, then focus on Poe, as I could either out-tank the A with my junior guys or out-fly it with an ace. What actually happened is Justin brought Poe in on a flank that distracted my Poe, and 2/3 of my other ships didn’t have shots on Finch, so my plan immediately went out the window. After Round 1, Justin’s block and my mis-judgement with Tallie and the Green left most of my squad in range of the first Proton Bomb.

I knew I could tank 1 of these things without too much trouble, and even with the bomb and all 4 of Justin’s shots going into the Red, he still didn’t drop. However, neither did Greer, and Justin’s Poe was in a great position. The following turn goes pretty poorly for my ships, but my Red actually managed to escape the second Proton, which actually hits Tallie and Justin’s Poe. Greer, meanwhile, has booked it and turned his rear arc on my forces, and Finch puts his sights squarely on my junior X-Wing.

As you can probably expect, the Red Expert evaporated that turn, and my Green also went down to Justin’s Poe’s expert shot. In exchange, I ALMOST killed the StarFortress… I was in trouble. The next turn sees Justin’s Poe blow his title and end up behind Tallie at a perfect engagement range, but his lack of modifications leaves Tallie standing, while the StarFortress finally dies and Greer K-Turned out of the fight to come back around. Back to 2 on 2, but I still feel like I’m playing catch-up, since my Poe is out of position and his is not. What I hadn’t remembered is the title leaves Poe ionized, so the 1-straight is perfectly predicted and my ships line up shots on his X-Wing… or try to. Tallie misses her mark by just a hair, so she sends off shots on Greer instead,

We play a few turns of tight maneuvering in about 1/6th of the board space, until both A-Wings finally break for the top board edge as the X-Wings dance in the center. Everyone is bleeding at this point, there are half points all over the place, and the tension is getting high. In order to secure an attempted killshot on Greer, Tallie boosts awfully close to the board edge, while both Poes disengage; mine to re-position himself, Justin’s to try to reduce my numbers further. Naturally, the killshot misses.

That wouldn’t be the only thing Tallie misses, as the following turn, her slight angle places her back corner off the mat by about the width of a sleeved damage card. Luckily, Justin’s Poe doesn’t really have an escape from mine, and dies on the same turn, leaving my Poe against Justin’s Greer. (I missed the most epic picture of the night, so instead, have the one from next round in its place…)

Despite the fact that Poe is already bleeding, I decide not to get fancy and attempt to just end the game with a joust. This of course fails, and I instead end up eating rear-arc shots from Greer as I chase him back down into my corner. Unfortunately for Justin, I started the chase off healthier than he did, and I end up killing Greer 2 rounds later for a 200-158 win.

So, my tournament record jumps up to 19-8, with an average win-rate of 70.3%. I’m reasonably sure I have figured out my default Hyperspace list, at least for this season. This team works well together and, while I didn’t get to stare down a swarm, I’m fairly confident they can take one out without too much trouble. One thing that helped a lot was that I had choice of initiative in all 3 games, so of course, my Poe was moving last. Jim has explained that he would drop the Seismic Charge from his build in the future to land at 190 points. Boba moving after Tallie, and Fenn moving after Poe, would have DRASTICALLY altered the way that game went down.

One thing I wanted to talk about was the controversial upgrade, Heroic. This card only triggered for me 4 times during this event, but each time was a massive swing in my favor. One of them was an A-Wing defense roll that started as 3 blanks and swapped over into 3 evades. Another was an A-Wing attack that changed into just a single crit, which was enough to kill its target. For 4 points total, this card’s performance was great enough to earn its place on my list, at least until something better comes out or I need the points from the bid more.

Next time: Back to Extended!