Republic Squadrons - Y-Wing

The Republic squadron madness continues! Old school cool meets new school design work, it's the BTL-B Y-wing!

I grabbed what pictures I could for these, so I'm on this adventure just like you!

As I do in these articles, I throw up the card for reference.

The armor makes it look LESS futuristic apparently

It's still a Y-wing.  Speed 3, hull 6, one black bomber dice against ships.  The only difference between this and a Rebel Y-wing is a blue and a black against squadrons as compared to 2 blue.  So when I liberally crib from my previous Y-wing article, I'll have those quotes in blue.  Otherwise it's a bomber; send it against ships as soon as and as often as you can.  The more often you're putting their anti-ship damage into ships, the happier you're going to be.

Y Wings are primarily Bombers.  As we covered before, the primary role of your bombers is to hit enemy ships.  Every turn (except 1) that they're not hitting enemy ships is a turn they're not getting more value for you that they could be.  The ideal case is that you're somehow hitting ships with your Y wings on turns 2 through 6, but that's not always an actual thing that happens.  The more turns you have them hitting ships, though, the more turns you have them rolling black dice.  There's nothing more satisfying than watching someone have to decide if they really want to spend the Raider's Brace to reduce the Hit+Crit down to the more manageable one damage that MAY keep them alive.  Mmmm, tasty.

That cheapness is another benefit of the Y wing.  Speed 3 keeps them the same speed as your V19s, so they can escort them into combat, let Intel and your fighters lock down the enemy squadrons, and then send the Y-wings on in.  Large ships die to concentrated squadron fire, just due to sheer overwhelming of the defense tokens.  When it has to choose to redirect 2 damage from one bomb to just not take it on the unshielded side, that's great usage for the Y-wing's cost.  Imagine doing that 3-4 times..... And big ships without shields are just floating rocks, waiting for death.

"My world's on fire, how about yours? That's the way I like it...."

Anakin is one of my favorite squadrons from the GAR.  By spending a defense token, you can ignore engagement for your activation.  This means you can fire on the ship you're next to, no matter WHO'S engaging you.  This IS where the fun begins.  Giving him Adept and Bomber means with a Bomber Command Center you're nearly guaranteed to get 2 points of damage minimum, all clocking in at a very affordable 19 points.  The red/blue bomber dice aren't as strong as a B-wing's blue/black, but it's very solid and can spike to three occasionally.  One note about Adept-2; it is NOT "I can reroll one dice 2 times," it's "I can reroll 2 dice once."  Only way of rerolling a dice twice is with Shwarm (Nevoota Bee, and that's only on generics, not Anakin) or Bomber Command Center; so best case you're getting him able to reroll it twice (once with Adept, once with BCC).

What a nerf bat

Matchstick! So at its most basic, 14 points for a 2 brace bomber is great in GAR.  Your other aces are usually so expensive that he's well worth just being cheap for one of your token aces.  That's most of what you're taking him for. You also can sorta not take a Boosted Comms on one carrier, or extend your range EVEN more. Is that worth it, especially compared to the old broken "gives out Rogue" version? Man I highly doubt it, but the 2 braces are nice at least.

Note that the squads nearby ALSO have to have Bomber. So, only Anakin above (and not the Delta version) gets the fun power. Wee? These aren't EXTRA squad commands, like Fenn Rau does, just.... nearby ones. It's a nice training wheel, I suppose, to make sure your squads stay where they're supposed to, and let you extend them forwards if needed. But he's certainly gonna be your 6th man, your 5th ace, your 404th point, if you get my drift.

How to Use Them:

Y-wings can get work done.  They're not as glamorous as ARC-170s, not as good against squadrons as V19s, but for sheer points and ability, they can wreck big ship lives.  They're basic bombers, but their damage is significantly higher than you'd think for their cost, just rolling wave after wave of damage into ships.

Like all GAR squads, they love the Nevoota Bee, and rerolling swarm against ships DOES combine with Bomber Command Center.  However, if they get caught in a bad spot, they CAN use their anti-squad dice to bring some hurt.  Without Toryn Farr in-faction, the damage they can do is approximately 1.25 per squadron attack, so as in all things, bring some other friends.  If needs be, they'll fight their way out, but let's hope someone else can do it for them.  Hit those big ships with them!