Biggs & Kyle – A 100 pts. X-Wing Rebel Starter Squadron

Here’s a simple & fun 100 pts. Rebel Squadron for the X-Wing Miniatures game. I’ve recently started experimenting with the Imperial side in X-Wing, though I did originally start my collection with a few Rebel ships.

This isn’t a “tournament-list” by any stretch. Quite the opposite, the main charm of the squadron below is that it can be build straight from the following products.

• X-Wing Miniatures Game
• X-Wing Expansion Pack (or any other X-Wing miniature you can get)
• HWK-290 Expansion Pack
• A-Wing Expansion Pack

At full retail prices, these add up to about £67,-.

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#1 – A 100 pts. Rebel Starter Squadon

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#2 – Flying with Biggs & Kyle

I like this list, as it’s robust and allows me to play with a variety of ships. The most obvious downside are the low-skilled pilots. The upside is the extra ship, giving you 4 Rebel ships in a 100 pts. list, 4 ships that tend to work very well together.

• Kyle Katarn

I really like this little support ship. The hidden star in many of my games is the Ion Cannon Turret. My Rebels rarely leave home without it.

With the Recon Specialist and Kyle’s special ability, this can also create 2 Focus tokens a turn and pass one of the off to a nearby ship.

A very helpful combination, that allows the other ships to use non-Focus actions more freely, notably R2-F2 on Biggs and Boost, Target Lock or Evade on the A-Wing.

• Biggs Darklighter

Easily one of the most popular Pilots in the game, and for good reason. If the squadron sticks close together, the opponent often must fire at Biggs over other target.

This helps keep the HWK-290 alive, as well as keeping the A-Wing alive until it had a good shot with its missiles (especially at Pilot Skill 1).

The R2-F2 Astromech allows him to spend an action to become even harder to hit, which – as noted – works well with Kyle Katarn, who takes care of the Focus Tokens. Generally, Biggs’ job is to make the opponent waste as many shots as possible.

• Rookie Pilot

An extra X-Wing! It usually does a lot of the less fancy, less glorious legwork.

• A-Wing

The A-Wing brings a Homing Missile, which I found incredibly useful to dispatch (or severely) damage a key ship from the opponent early on. Howlrunner, Soontir Fel, etc.. are the kind of targets the A-Wing hunts early on.

After the missile is spend, a lot of opponents pay less attention to the A-Wing. The A-Wings’ lower firepower means he usually doesn’t do supremely well against agile Tie Fighters, but it’s fast enough to be almost anywhere I need him to be. The A-Wing is also surprisingly effective in chipping away at less agile ships like Tie Bombers or the Lambda Shuttle.

• General Thoughts

The strengths of this squadron are the close-range synergies between the different ships. They should all start on the table in a closely knit formation, usually the two lower-skilled pilots to the front with Kyle & Biggs towards the rear.

This list doesn’t benefit from a split deployment, or something along those lines, though the A-Wing often shoots off to wherever it  can annoy the opponent the most, after it used its missile.

Otherwise, the ships stay close together, trying to scramble the opponents’ maneuvering with the Ion Cannon, or a blocking Rookie Pilot getting in the way, to make up for the (usually) higher maneuverability and/or pilot skill of opposing squadrons.

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#3 – Thoughts?

My current Rebel-ship collection is limited to those 4 ships, but even with those, there are obviously hundred more ways to configure and combine them, and I often do tinker with it from game to game.

I really like the synergy and cross-ship effects, one of the reasons I’m such a fan of the HWK-290 in the first place, though lists with a different emphasis are easily imaginable.

If you’ve played a bit of X-Wing, let me know which (Rebel-)lists you’ve enjoyed, and why!

Z.