Today we take a look at the HWK-290 for the X-Wing Miniatures game. It is a pretty big ship pretty much filling the blister pack compared to something like the tiny a-wing that is just swimming in the box.
I have to say I am pretty impressed by this model. While it is not Original Trilogy like the rest of the ships in the game, it is really well done. You get nice details.
It has an nice underslung turret which can be activated with upgrade cards.
All around the model is just nicely done.
Looking at the basic ship it is cheap for a rebel at 16 points but you get what you pay for. It has attack value 1 which is just dreadful to go with the defense of 2 which is pretty average. The hull of 4 is solid but the 1 shield is pretty weak so you will start having to worry about criticals. The ship also has a basic action bar (focus and target lock) and limited upgrade options of Turret and Crew.
You also get 6 upgrade cards in the pack. 3 Crew members, 2 turrets, and 1 title card.
While I love the model, this ship is probably only for the advanced X-wing player as it is known as a support ship. Sure you can give it an ion cannon to get some punch but then you might as well just be flying a Y-Wing. This ship is there to try to make your other ships better. I do not see much point is taking the basic pilot ever as he has no card text. Roark and Kyle seem like the best choices as allowing one of you rookies to shoot first can be pretty handy and pushing off focus tokens can be useful but to get the most out of that you probably need both the recon specialist and the Moldy Crow upgrades which makes it pretty pricey for a ship that cannot really hurt anything.
I think that this ship would have been a great one to have different stat lines for different pilots but I guess you can get some of that with the modification cards if you have them.
Nice review. One other combo is Jans Or with Wedge. The extra attack die with Wedge is an a killer allowing very quick kills. If Wedge is range one that's 5 attack dice with 1 less agility. Big ships beware!
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming by. Sounds like a nasty combo to try to one shot things but in general it is pretty similar in effectiveness to handing over focus tokens.
DeleteAn extra attack die is nice but if you start with 4 adding a 5th is pretty much a 25% bump in attack which is what a focus token gives you without the flexibility of only using it if does something. Plus you pick up the stress token which you have to clear if you want to use the ability the next turn.
Ofcourse there are other ways to get focus tokens but not many to get an extra attack die.