Wave 11 has arrived! TIE Aggressor Unboxing & Impressions

It's here! Wave 11 has shipped and arrived at various FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store), and Stickus actually managed to get his hand on one of each of them before they sold out.

Today, we'll be focusing on the TIE Aggressor, with an unboxing and quick impression of the ship and it's included cards.

"Designed for long missions, supply chain raids, and tactical flexibility, the TIE Aggressor can engage foes in close with it's maneuverability or from afar with it's ordinance and powerful turret."

Yes, you read that right. It's only the second Imperial vessel to have a 360° firing arc, and the ONLY Imperial ship to have a turret slot, allowing it to equip the dreaded Twin-Laser Turret.

Lets get this thing open.  Using my specialized "package opening tools", I opened the plastic and pulled everything out

Time to check out that model.  Got it up on it's pegs and did a little turn around. I like it. The quality of the sculpt and the paint are great, it's clear that FFG is paying more attention to the details on it's minis.

Check out that dial. Looks kinda familiar, doesn't it? Almost Y-Wing like (except with the white turn 3, rather than red), but I'm sure there are no surprises there.

More tokens! And of course, the pilot tiles for the various pilots

Lets check out the pilot cards, starting with the two generic pilots: Onyx Squadron Escort and Sienar Specialist

All the ships share their basic stats: 2 Attack, 2 Defense, 4 Hull and 1 Shield.  All of them share the basic upgrade slots as well: 1 Turret and 2 Missile slots. The only difference in these two pilots are their actual pilot skill value, with a 5 for the Onyx and a 2 for the Specialist respectively.

The ship also comes with two unique named pilots: "Double Edge" and Lieutenant Kestal

"Double Edge" looks to be an interesting pilot with an almost Gunner-like ability.  This could be used to shoot with the new Unguided Rockets and then follow up with a TLT or the new Synced Turret if you happen to miss, or vice versa.  The addition of a Elite Pilot Talent (EPT) slot is quite welcome as well, offering some real flexibility.

Lieutenant Kestal looks like they were tailor made for TLT or missile ordinance, with their ability to cancel your opponents blank and focus defense results.  This puts a real kibosh on Autothrusters and pilots with defensive reroll abilities. Fenn Rau now has something to fear and tanky pilots like Jess Pava are in for a rude awakening.

There's the pilots, so lets check out the upgrade cards now. There's not a lot of them, but I think some will really be in the meta soon. First up, the new flip card: Intensity

As soon as I saw this card I immediately thought of Countess Ryad, with the TIE/x7 title upgrade. Move fast, get a free evade, perform a barrel roll, get a focus, spend either the focus or the evade (if you still have them) at the end of combat to flip it back. Others have pointed to Jake Farrel with this card (take a focus action, boost off that with Jake's ability, get free token from Intensity, PTL for another action).  That said, this card is useful on just about any ship that can boost or barrel roll, including the TIE Punisher.

Next is the new turret that comes with this and the new H6 "Scurrg" Bomber: Synced Turret

It's interesting in that it's a 3 dice, range 1-2 turret that needs a target lock to fire.  You don't need to spend the target lock, and, if your opponent is in your arc, you don't can reroll up to your primary attack value in dice. This upgrade is interesting, in that it forces you into actions that are offensive in nature, like taking a target lock.  I can see this being fielded with the Targeting Syncronizer to allow the use of other target locks and better targeting flexibility.

This next upgrade will have some limited utility, due to it's requirements, but on ships that can equip it, it will be very useful indeed: Unguided Rockets

Two missile slots? Two? Okay, I suppuse the three attack dice at ranges 1-3 and the 2 point cost can make up for that.  With only a limited number of ships that can equip this card, don't expect to see it all the time, but do expect to see it in Imperial lists, at least for the time being.  With no ability to reroll or modify dice, except in the use of a focus token, I expect to see this equipped to "Double Edge" in conjunction with a TLT to interesting effect.

The last two upgrades are things we've all see before, but it's nice to get some in an another upgrade pack: Twin-Laser Turret and Lightweight Frame. 

Nothing we haven't seen before, but since the K-Wing is going to be out of stock for the time being, at least there is another way to get those TLT's. It also never hurts to get another Lightweight frame to help keep your Bombers and Punishers alive just that turn or two longer.

And there you have it!  Don't forget to check out our weekly live stream on YouTube, Twitch and Mixer (formerly Beam), Thursdays at ~8pm Pacific Time.  If you like what we do here then come and check out our Patreon page too.  We'll see you next time, here on the mat!

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Star Wars X-Wing: TIE Aggressor