X-Wing: The Phantom II Expansion, an outline of the Coordinate Action, and Six New Upgrades! (Wave 12)(XII)

What the heck is a Sheathipede?  Isn’t this supposed to be a game about starfighters?  On November 10th, FFG dropped the “Coordinate Your Attack” article in which they preview the new Phantom II expansion for the Rebel Faction.  The ship itself is cheap, packed full of action-economy, and some new and exciting upgrades that are also very inexpensive.  Let’s take a look!

 

FLUFF

The Sheathipede-class shuttle was a transport used by the Trade Federation in the prequel era.  It made its first appearance in Episode One: The Phantom Menace.

This particular shuttle, the Phantom II, made its first appearance in Rebels S3E5, when seperatist super tactical droid General Kalani offered the crew of the Ghost a shuttle to escape from Agamar.  Afterwards, Sabine gave it a sweet paintjob (and presumably weapons) to replace the Phantom I which was destroyed on Yarma.

 

THE COORDINATE ACTION

The Phantom II expansion will be only the second ship that has the Coordinate action.  The first and only other ship was the Imperial Upsilon-class Shuttle.  Scum still do not have the Coordinate action on an action bar.

It’s important to note that the chosen ship may perform any free action, not just one on their action bar.  The Coordinate action does not use the same language as Push the Limit or Experimental Interface.

 

TITLE

None of the upgrades in this expansion are “reprints,” but we did get new versions of the above two titles.

It will be interesting to see whether a free action granted by the Phantom II title will be better than free turret attacks granted by the original Phantom title.

 

UPGRADES

Courier Droid is similar to Hyperwave Comm Scanner, which already doesn’t see much play.  However, he is a free crew for Chopper or Moff Jerjerrod.  It also creates some wacky hijinx of a PS0 YV-1300 equipped with the Heroes of the Resistance Han Solo pilot, because there are no other ships on the board, much less at range three.

We have a new crew astromech version of everyone’s favorite homicidal droid: C1-10P (“Chopper”).  One point for one shield is a better bargain than Shield Upgrade, but at the expense of your astromech slot and an action.  “Chopper” encourages you to stack free/inexpensive upgrades on ships that are agile enough to leave the fray, recover, and rejoin the fight.

Speaking of homicidal droids, did anyone else notice that Chopper is lurking in the background of Courier Droid’s art?

 

This is the same type of droid that Chopper attempted to murder!

Many herald that Flight-Assist Astromech is the much-needed T-65 X-Wing fix.  We shall see.

Finally, we get a cross-faction crew card: Maul!

 

PILOTS

 

WRAP UP

The community’s reaction has been tame, but I am actually pretty worried about a cheap way to improve action economy and token stack when we are already dealing with the rising popularity of resilient rebel swarms.

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