I let this thread repose for some time now, and did it on purpose because it was going in circles, and now that i have a full set of Wave 2 stuff finally, i have tested the Y-Wing again against lots of stuff. Also Vorpal would probably have come through the Internet cable and beat me up if i had continued XD Even if i still think i had a lot of points…

Firespray - Ion it twice takes some time, and Heavy Laser cannon rips Y-Wings apart. Also it is pretty ridiculous that a huge ship like this one has 2 agility and an evade symbol… Meaning even that huge machine is way more agile and manoeuvrable than a Y-Wing. My tip, park the Y in its way, works fine especially with your low skill pilots. I also found out that Y-Wings don't care about Krassis tokens since they go in soft circles anyway most of the time…

Interceptor - Eats Y-Wings for breakfast and if it has a stealth device, good luck hitting it XD. Thankfully has only 3 hitpoints and it is more expensive than standard Ties. So you have a shot at killing them before they kill you, which is actually good for Y-Wings… Also the Ion-Turret just got even more useful since Interceptors are so manoeuvrable, your other ships have a really hatd time getting shots at them at all… So despite them having a 3 attacks, they ate in my opinion less dangerous than 2 standard ties (for Y-Wings, not the other ships).

The good thing about the Y-Wing now is that in fact there seem to be much more elite builds also on imperial side, and you can setup some kills for your squad with a Y-Wing. You could also do this before Wave 2 but against 7-8 ships they would just not care to lose one and kill you dead before you could.

The bad news for the Y-Wing is really that HLC absolutely obliterates it, and of course that it is even moreso reduced to the ion turret. It made no sense to field Y-Wings without them before, but now, i would not even think about a "naked" Y-Wing.

One thing i really regret is that you have no pilot with a medal on Y-Wings because Push the limit would have assured some hits for your turret with your 2 actions and on top of that, Y-Wings dont care about stress tokens a lot. Really a pity it limits the builds you can have for Y-Wings by a lot. I also find it unrealistic that someone like Horton Salm who is the one that actually allows Rebels to capture Soontir Fel and saves Wedge Antilles live too, is not an ace pilot and doesn't have the Medal symbol.

I didn't have time to test it against the Falcon or A-Wings and i still have to figure out if i prefer A-Wings with missiles or Y-Wings with turret as cheap ships to fill up a squad.

By the way, i am a huge Y-Wing fan, that is why i started the thread at all, because i found it a pity they were apparently so awfully bad!

ForceM said:

I'm really quite a nice guy. I just have strong opinions.  (c:

I think you're largely right in your analysis, but overstating your case. The HLC isn't nice to Y-wings at all, but will realistically take 3 shots to kill one. If your opponent wants to spend 2-3 turns with his 40+ point centerpiece taking out your 23-point Gold Squadron Pilot--while you're presumably savaging said Firespray with everything you've got--you've quite decidedly come out ahead on that exchange.

Interceptors are, as I think you've correctly recognized, something of a gamble: their firepower is dangerous to the Y-wing, but the ion cannon is pretty frustrating blow if it lands. 

So I think massed fire from TIE fighters remains the biggest threat to Y-wings, and there will likely be less of that as Imperial lists appear to be shrinking from 6-8 ships to 4-6 ships. On the whole I think Wave 2 is pretty good news for Y-wings…

It would be nice to have an elite skill for Horton or Dutch….seeing as how the A-wing's Green Squadron Pilot gets one ;-) IMO.

I would also second a medal icon to Horton at the very least, if not Horton and the Gray Squadron (I could see why you might not give a medal to Dutch).  I would run Gray Squadron and Red Squadron much more than I do if they had pilot upgrade options.  Gray Squadron w/ Deadeye & 2 proton torps would be fun to try out at least once.

Actually, I was thinking that if Fantasy Flight does booster additions for pilots, it might be nice to get a Gray Squadron Leader Ship and a Red Squadron Leader ship that give benefits to other Gray Squadron and Red Squadron ships.  Perhaps for 21 points you could get Gray Squadron Leader, and it gives other Gray Squadron ships the option for pilot upgrades?

Endgame124 said:

The problem with that is that Red Squadron and Gray Squadron already have leaders.  Garven Dreis, Wedge Antilles (Dreis at Yavin and Wedge at Endor) and Horton Salm were the leaders of Red and Gray Squadrons.

Jim

Before I post I should probably explain my mentality when approaching X-Wing. I value firepower and dodge when considering builds and I don't usually have time for complex combinations of abilities. Rather than a clever combo of using Ion cannons to get optimal position and proton torpedoes, I would rather have an X-Wing with Target Lock to get into range 1 to vaporize that fighter and remove it for play. Or at least, drastically bring down the HP so that my opponent is less adventureous with it (especially TIE interceptors, since it hurts more when one of them goes down).

I find myself in agreement with ForceM. I wrote up my thoughts on the matter regarding the Y-Wing on BGG. A bit of discussion resulted, with some folks extoling the power of the Ion cannon, but I'm still convinced that presently the Y-Wing is the worst fighter in the game. It doesn't have to be, but when I look to build a Rebel list I see every other ship in the game as being a more attractive option. I would easily trade out a Y-Wing with an Ion cannon for an X-Wing, and happily blast a TIE fighter at range 1-2 over making one-damage Ion fun with the 360 cannon.

If I really wanted a turret I would find some way to take an outer rim smuggler.

The problems with the Y-Wing in my judgement are the lack of agility and the lack of offensive firepower. If the Y-Wing had a turret that could deal a decent amount of damage, that alone would be an improvement because flying a pack of turret'ed Y-Wings can fire in every direction and better take down more than one TIE fighter a turn. The agility cannot be helped, since that is hard-printed, but if the Y-Wing had better upgrade options the resilency could be combined with better firepower to make the Y-Wing a decent fighter. The Torpedoes are too ineffective against present Imperial fighters because ALL of them have the highest natural dodge in the game. The only good target the rebels will be using torps against is the Firespray, and the YT in tournaments.

I like to run TIE Swarms, and I was the only one to run 7 TIEs at our local Kessel Run Tournament of about seven players. Just about everyone else was a 3-4 ship Rebel build, and I destroyed my opponents in 45 and 30 minutes respectively before the final run. Asteroids are not a serious impediment to formaiton flying if you know what you're doing, set up properly, and can accurately judge how your fighters are moving. Howlrunner with a group of 3 attendant Obsidian pilots can focus-fire a Y-Wing into oblivion before it usually has a chance to fire. Once you pop the first fighter in a 3-4 ship formation things look much worse for the Rebels than if the Imperials had lost one ship.

This list HAS lost to a rebel player, but there were no Y-Wings in his list to do that.

I wouldn't call the Y-Wing completely useless, just that it is the least attractive fighter in the game as of Wave 2. Again for a Rebel list, I'd rather take other ships since the Y-Wing doesn't look attractive to me based on my approach to the game.

Now, my guess is with Wave 3 likely including two proton-torpedo users (The TIE Bomber and B-Wing),  we'll see more torpedo options for the Y-Wing to take AND There will be more targets to viably use torpedoes against. Both of these fighters are usually portrayed as being low-agility, which means Protons would be great against them. In this case Y-Wings are a workable counter for TIE Bomber and B-Wing lists, since they have enough resiliency to survive most swarm attacks long enough to let their torpedoes go. Better if they fire before TIE Bombers, their likely adversaries, and destroy them before the Bombers let off their Torps in turn.

Its looking like Ions (dutch in particular) will to continue to be one of my go to ships, especially against the uber maneuverable Imperial ships like Turr, Soontir, etc. Playing with the 3 ship imperial build, I did great against a standard rebel X-Wing & A-Wing list, but I suspect I would have been crushed by a couple of Y-Wings as I would have lost all of the benefits of my maneuverability.  

The Empire seems to be balanced more for large numbers of cheap ships, which would make them more vulnerable to Ions *shrug*

I do have to wonder if Rebels are better matched against other Rebels. The Ion cannon seems to be better at restricting the already restricted moves of their main fighters, and protons do better against ships with medium to poor agility dice (like every Rebel ship except the A-Wing).

Endgame124 said:

That's exactly the thing, the Y-Wing still does pretty poor against the swarm. A 4 X-Wing build is still the way to go against these "traditional" imperial builds. But a lot of the new Imperial lists are only 3-5  ships strong. They have lots of firepower of course and X-Wings just can't outmanoeuver the like of Fel, Phennir or any Tie with boost, barrel roll, Push the limit, but now the Rebels access to turret weapons, be it Y-Wings or the YT-1300 starts to make some sense at last. An ioned Soontir Fel is worth a lot more than an ioned Academy Tie… Since it makes up a third of the imperial force nowadays. Of course the new imperials have lots of firepower and they will make quick work of Y-Wings too. But at least they can not outmanoeuver a 360 Turret, no way! So the Y-Wing has found a niche, and can be seen as useful now i think.

After having a few games under wave 2 under my belt, i am positively surprised. FFG now seems to have achieved some kind of balance between elite builds and spam lists, big ships amd small ships, and even Rebels versus Imps. There is a counter to pretty much everything now. Swarm is beaten by A-Wings with missiles, X-Wings or even some elite Falcon builds. Elite Rebel builds can be beaten by Swarms or elite imperial builds… That's now a very different kind of game than it was with wave 1 only stuff. Also with gunners and rerolls, the evasion tokens seem a lot less frightening now. Empire also has to focus now sometimes instead of just evade all the time. If they wanna kill a Rampaging falcon killing them one after another fast enough to win, they will have to make some choices and press the attack whereas before they could evade all day long and just focus Antilles…

I would not have thought it but also the YT-1300 really has convinced me, especially Chewie or Lando plus two other ships (well before i played it i thought it would be at most a huge Y-Wing with a decent gun… ) And you all know how much i liked Y-Wings. Biggs is now even more useful having stealth device and something really big to babysit… i have to test the outer rim smuggler still, i have no real opinion about it right now.

I have to say i am really happy with where this is going now. I love it and had a real blast with the new stuff!

I'd recommend the outer rim smuggler with a healthy escort force. He's low point to allow you to take more ships to do more of the fighting. Less HP, lesser of an attack, more emphasis on being a setpiece in a ship formation than being a key player. Only has two crew slots and one modification slot for upgrades.

I used mine as a moving obstacle and supporting fire ship while a green squadron A-Wing pair and Wedge did most of the killing.

ForceM said:

Sounds like FFG got it right. For once I'm not let down by something with "Star Wars" written on it. Yay!

I want to add this without starting a hoopla.  Last night I watched a good player use four grey squadron Y-wings with turrets take on two slave ones with heavy guns.  Y-wings won.  In the past few weeks I've seen Y-wings take on four squints and ion them to death.  Game is in the player people.   Not the ship.

Picasso said:

Yeah that's exactly the kind of squadrons, Y-Wings excell against. But such imperial builds just were inexistent before wave 2, the way to go was 7-8 ships and you can't beat that with Y-Wings (or at least i have too see it yet).

I might even try out a Smuggler plus 3 ionwings and a little equip. Little damage output, and no dodge to talk about, but what would that be… 34 hitpoints and no hiding from the turrets… Sounds like fun to me even if there are sure better uses for Y-Wings.

The only problem with Y wings is the amount of points that it cost to mount an ion turret.

Everything else is fair ties were designed to be fast moveable and have firepower but no shields or jump engines. 

You look at how much it cost to mount gunners and weapons on slave one and compare the falcon.

I think if you reduced the y wing to five points or just extended the ion cannon to ranage three. 

But if your swarm comes near my y wing my A wing and x wing will pick you off 

ive got no concens about shooting you in the back. 

Options I had been toying with as house rules were allowing the Y-Wing to choose a Heavy Laser Cannon to replace the Ion Cannon. That is you can have one or the other and/or allowing a crew member so you could fire the Ion cannon and primary weapon in the same turn.

Both options are within the canon of the Y-Wing descriptions for load out.

The heavy laser cannon would still be 7 points and follow the firepower and range requirements of the current cannon, but be turret mounted.

The cannon would also only be an option on named characters and Grey Squadron, to stop 4 Heavy Cannon ships being on the board.

You could make a nice balance with Y-wing squads then.

(I personally don't think the Y-wing is broken, but it certainly might get more flight time with a few more options)