Rebel Aces Announcement

We interrupt our regular lessons with this special news flash: Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) just announced the upcoming release of the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack. You can click here for the announcement. 

Rebel Aces coming in 3Q14!

It was noted in the announcement that the Rebel Aces will arrive 3^rd quarter this year. Clearly, 2014 is the year for Rebels. There’s the Rebel Transport + New X-Wings, Tantive IV Corvette and now this? I know us Imperial players got the Imperial Aces earlier but still, give us a break, will you? :P

What are the Goodies?

So the new Rebel Aces Expansion Pack comes with one A-Wing and one B-wing, dazzled up with a new paint scheme. But more importantly, the Expansion Pack comes with 2 named pilots for each ship and a host of cool upgrades. Some of these cards were already revealed and boy, do they look juicy.

Looking at the new pilot cards, it seems FFG is taking the ‘signature’ of each ship and pushing it one step further. The already highly nimble A-Wing can now barrel roll with Jake Farrell, while the hard hitting B-Wing now packs a bigger punch with Keyan Farlander.

There’s so many ways to play Farrell. You can play him naked and get a free boost/ barrel roll every time you take a focus or you can put a Push the Limit (PTL) on him to focus + boost/ barrel roll + free action. That’s 3 actions mind you. Or you could go crazy by first doing the usual focus + boost/ barrel roll and then have Garven giving him another focus and then boost/ barrel roll again. That’s a total of 4 actions!

Farrell is not the only exciting thing happening for the A-Wing. A-Wing unique upgrade cards look great too. We’re likely to see a lot of Chardaan Refit on A-Wings given that it saves precious squad points and fits well in most A-Wing squad builds. 

Farlander’s ability activates when he’s stressed. Easiest way? Give him a PTL. You can stack his ability with target lock to roll consistent 3-hit damages. Best part is you don’t even need to move a green to remove the stress. All you need to do is shoot.

The B-Wing also comes with its own unique upgrade allowing it to carry a crew. 5 shields and 3 hulls not enough? Add in Chewbacca. Fancy shooting twice? Have a Gunner ride shotgun. Or maybe you can field Kyle Katarn or Jan Ors, which will be included in the Expansion Pack.

Other Upgrade Cards

I’ve mentioned the importance of actions in a previous post. Moving first has its advantage. You get first dibs on real estate space and don’t have to guess where the opponent’s ship will be to avoid bumping into them. On the flip side, the opponent has to worry about them bumping into you. Sadly, it’s a system upgrade which means only the B-Wing and Lambda can use it for now and the E-Wing and Phantom once Wave 4 is released. If only it was a normal modification, I would totally play this on Han Solo + Anti Pursuit Lasers……

We still don’t know who are the 2 remaining named pilots and what their card text look like. Kyle Katarn (let me know if you can read the text from the picture above because I sure can’t) and Jan Ors crew cards are still a mystery. On top of that we’re getting more missile types. So stay tuned for more updates in the future!