X-Wing: Krennic Is Here to Direct You
In all the justified hubbub and hullabaloo about X-Wing 2.0, it was easy to miss another piece of news that dropped last week: the TIE Reaper preview.
We could talk about the ship, sure, but I want to focus more exclusively on a particular upgrade card. Director Krennic, along with his wounded pride, brooding, and ugly temper, is joining us in X-Wing. He’s trying to do something no one has been able to do: bring a crew-based support option that displaces Palpatine.
It seems a heretical notion, I know. Palp’s ability to be there, no questions asked, when a dice roll has to go your way is amazingly powerful, so much so that he by himself makes the Lambda-class Shuttle a high-end ship. Palp Aces has been a perennial top-end list ever since his introduction.
Like a boss.
That’s a pretty ambitious target to try and hit—but Krennic is nothing if not ambitious.
The argument to be made for Krennic is two-fold. First, he can outstrip Palpatine’s performance in the first round of combat. Whereas Palp tops out at one modification per turn, Krennic can modify as many as three rolls in the first turn of combat. (For the purposes of this discussion, we’re treating the extra point of shield as basically equivalent to Palping an evade.) He makes the Prototype harder to kill by one point, allows for the burning of a result (note: a blank result is still a “result”) to burn a shield, and gives a reciprocal target lock from the Prototype to Krennic’s ship– three mods in a turn.
Second: he’s three points cheaper than Palp and takes one fewer crew slot.
Over the course of a long game, Palp wins. He’s more flexible, and his ability to guarantee evade results is more valuable than your run-of-the-mill offensive mod. Krennic’s utility diminishes as the game goes on: your extra shield only matters once, eventually the enemy runs out of shields to strip, and when your wingmen explode there are no reciprocal target locks to give. Krennic is about maximizing your early game– think of him like ordnance that takes a crew slot. Aggressive players who want to involve all their ships might be able to leverage Krennic to great advantage in a way they can’t with Palp.
A Director Travels In Style
Of course, we still have to find the right ride for Krennic. It’s a non-trivial task: unlike Rebels and Scum, who’ll weld an extra chair on to any old ship and call it good, the Empire and its officers are more selective in their rides. Krennic will only deign to come to battle in a Firespray, TIE Phantom, TIE Reaper, Decimator, Lambda, or Upsilon.
Do you think a Director would deign to be shoved in a converted TIE Bomber? Go lick my boots clean.
I like the idea of putting Krennic on a Firespray, since the ship flies aggressively and (as an ordnance carrier) can greatly benefit from the reciprocal target lock. The problem is, well, it’s a Firespray, renowned flying brick and arc-bound large base ship. I’ll still try it because I’m an idiot, but I don’t expect to light the world on fire. The Lambda and Upsilon are viable, but they have many other limitations and, as two-crew ships, are probably better served as Palpmobiles.
The Phantom is an interesting case. As we’ll discuss below, these are hard times for the Phantom generally, and Whisper likes to swing so wide she’s rarely in position to make the reciprocal target lock work. Then again, you could put Krennic on Whisper and assigning the condition to herself. You will, after all, always be in range 1 of yourself, and Krennic would duplicate the effect of Fire Control System, Whisper’s most common Systems upgrade. The net effect would be that you’d be paying three points for the extra shield and the shield-burning effect. It’s an interesting proposition; the difficulty comes from the general unpleasantness of the current metagame for poor Whisper.
The upshot is that there are generally two forms of list we can consider: jousting lists with Krennic on a Reaper in formation, and classic two-ship lists with Krennic on a Decimator and a small ship shotgun.
ARE WE BLIND?! DEPLOY THE GARRISON!
Having sorted out Krennic’s chariot, what about his precious Prototype? What ship shall be the beneficiary of our largesse?
We can make some hard cuts as to which ships we’ll consider for Optimization. First Order ships are out—Krennic only boosts “Galactic Empire” ships. This is too bad: Kylo Ren and, especially, Quickdraw could make absolutely superb use of this bad boy. (I mean, Quickdraw with more shields? Yeesh.) Our second cut has to do with ship quality. Krennic is expensive and his ride is more expensive. If we’re going to distort our list to buff a ship, we’re going to buff a ship that’s worth our time. I’ll admit, it’s entertaining to imagine Mauler Mithel with Krennic and some aggressive EPT charging in as the World’s Scariest TIE Fighter. It’s easier to imagine that ship getting focused and blown away, and us losing our investment without much of a return.
Therefore, for purposes of this discussion, we will only consider ships with an upgraded cost of, oh, I don’t know, totally arbitrary number here: 25 points.
Arc Dodgers
A lot of the Empire’s more famous (and, if we’re being frank, more fun) ships live in this category. It includes Vader, Soontir, Whisper, and Inqi. We can even toss in Duchess at 26 points, though she hasn’t made nearly the splash of the others. A lot of these ships have faded from prominence of late because increasing amounts of unavoidable damage (from bombs, TLTs, and hyper-accurate ordnance) have made their lives too dang hard. A free point of shielding doesn’t arrest that trend, but it provides a little protection, at least. (It matters a lot more to Soontir than to anyone else!) Additionally, all of these ships frequently have to burn lots of actions repositioning, limiting their ability to modify their dice. This means they’ll frequently have misses they can burn to strip shields, sustaining their offense.
On the other hand, a good part of Krennic’s value is the reciprocal target lock for the Krennic shuttle. These ships tend not to support that. Soontir, Inqi, and Whisper, in particular, tend to flank extremely broadly. Boosting them gives up a portion of what you’re paying for.
Vader seems like the best choice from this bucket. His guaranteed crits give him nice self-synergy, since he can burn a shield from the target before his crits connect. He’s also robust enough to survive in the current environment.
The other consideration is that arc dodgers are likely the ships we’re pairing with the Decimator, and the Decimator’s bulk provides another layer of protection. And if we’re maximizing the shield-stripping power of our Prototype, and the Prototype is shooting high in the order, then Rear Admiral Chiraneau can follow up with a focus-to-crit primary with a free target lock. Yeah, something’s gonna die—at high PS, too.
Jousters
If we’re going to demand more ruggedness and cooperative flying from our Prototype, we need to look at some of the Empire’s more straightforward ships. We need to look at jousters.
Even there, the primary weapon restriction for Krennic thins the list quite a bit. Gunboats, Bombers, and Punishers are all secondary weapon platforms first of all, so all of them waste some of Krennic’s potential. Cross this with our ship quality criterion and we quickly arrive at our answer: TIE Defenders. /X7 Defenders, flying in formation with a Reaper with disruptive abilities of its own (jamming and another crew slot), are going to pack a wallop. I feel like there’s some serious potential for jam-and-Juke combos here… Something like this, perhaps:
• Countess Ryad: X7, Elusiveness, Optimized Prototype
• Colonel Vessery: X7, Adaptability (-1)
• Captain Feroph: Advanced Ailerons, Director Krennic, ISB Slicer, Lightweight Frame, A Score to Settle
Elusiveness makes a rare appearance! Normally, this card doesn’t do much and I advise people against taking it. Ryad rarely has trouble shedding stress, though, and the list’s synergies revolve around her, so we want to protect her a little. For more offense, Juke fits in seamlessly. Feroph uses his Jam ability (boosted by the Slicer) to strip tokens off of multiple enemies. Ryad shoots first. Even if she has to use all her tokens for defense, she will at least strip a shield and give a lock to Feroph. That allows Vessery to get a modified (or potentially double-modified) shot going second. Then Feroph, who spent his action debuffing the enemy, gets to shoot with his own lock and A Score to Settle for a pseudo-double-modded attack. Plus, none of these ships are much fun to shoot at: Ryad and Vessery have lots of HP and double tokens, Elusiveness is harsh on token-less attackers, while Feroph has eight HP and an effective two agility and is the least valuable of the three.
It is… intricate, to be sure, and the potential exists (if you can’t get your jam in) of just getting blown away by a good alpha. Still, I love flying Defenders, and the interlocking nature of it appeals to me. Surely someone charged with building the Death Star can appreciate over-engineering. A variant would be to drop Feroph down to a Scarif Base Pilot and make Vessery a TIE/D… even more interlocking special rules!
This is My Triumph – Not Yours
All this talk about Krennic and we haven’t even discussed the Reaper itself! And that’s okay. Crew cards with Krennic’s potential don’t come around every day. What matters for now is that the Reaper, flying in formation with Defenders, can carry its share of the firepower and can keep pace with those speedy ships (though it doesn’t turn around as gracefully).
~Anyway, there’s plenty of time to get to know the Reaper before 2.0 makes all of this as relevant as Alderaan.
