After what seemed an exhausting wait, Second Edition is here! Or rather, it’s been here for a week now already! It’s great to see that the reaction to the new game has been overwhelmingly positive (the app debacle aside, but we won’t go into that…) and the sheer amount of variety appearing on tables is a welcome sight indeed.

Personally I’ve managed just a handful of games so far, but they have been immensely enjoyable. Whilst the game feels very familiar, it also feels very different – any critical hits are absolutely brutal and can turn a game on their head in an instant. Stuff dies really quickly compared to before. Like, REALLY quickly. And I’ve even witnessed a 2-dice attack, through a rock, put a damage onto Soontir. That was literally impossible before.

I hadn’t actually played for a bit – I chose to let my last tournament be the very last time I play 1.0 and let the game end on a high note for me. And I didn’t attend any 2.0 events on the opening weekend as my hockey season is just getting underway which generally means Sundays only for X-wing for the near future. Also, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not really interested in playing formats other than Extended for the time being. We’ve just gotten these conversion kits, I want to use all the things!

Actually I’m lying. There’s one thing I want to use. Obviously it’s the Mist Hunter. I wrote a post a short while ago about how to build it in 2.0, though some of my thoughts have changed since then – I definitely had my 1.0 head on when I wrote it; it’s becoming increasingly apparent that jamming ships full of upgrades until they burst is not the way to go in this new iteration of the game. So after a bit of fat-trimming, not only could I play my favourite bounty hunter ship, I could also play my overall favourite Star Wars ship, the Millennium Falcon, AND still have room for a third ship! Madness! The new Hawks look like contenders for most improved ship in the game, so I was keen to try one of those out also.

The main dilemma I had with the list was who was going to get 0-0-0 crew? (Who is far too cheap at a meagre 3 points). He works on both 4-LOM and Han, but they can’t both have him sadly! I went with Han in the end – Han gets a benefit either way on his attacks from whichever choice the opponent makes, either a calculate token to modify the attack, or an extra attack die from the stress due to the Falcon title. My concern on 4-LOM was that my opponent would just choose calculate every time. Which is not necessarily bad, but given 4-LOM’s ability I would probably have one already. I figured Han was thus a more effective placing for him. Which meant I decided to stick with Maul on 4-LOM as per my original plan. It’s expensive, but it gives me another way to generate a stress to pass even when not doing a red move. I felt these two options left the list more flexible overall. I had to trim a few things from Han where I’d gone overboard, though it was somewhat annoying I couldn’t find an extra point in order to keep Greedo as I’d originally intended. Both from an amused point of view, and the fact that crits are savage! I also couldn’t quite afford the Palob build I wanted – Moldy Crow and Lando crew. Again, 1 point too many. Damn you FFG! David Sutcliffe’s blog had an equally nice looking Palob build, so as it was a point cheaper and thus fit the points, I nicked it. Sorry, David! (Turns out our Han builds are the same too. Freaky). And this is where I ended up:

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4-LOM (75)

Maul, Advanced Sensors, Mist Hunter, Elusive

Han Solo (68)

0-0-0, Rigged Cargo Chute, Trick Shot, Lando’s Millennium Falcon

Palob Godhali (57)

L3-37, Elusive, Moldy Crow

Total Points: 200

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Got to play this against a friend of mine who’s now returning to the game after a hiatus, again another positive to draw from the re-launch. I can fully understand why some people were no longer playing the game, as there were far too many ways to create negative play experiences in list building before. From what I’ve seen of Second Edition, everything just seems fun again. And it does seem to be drawing people back in, which can only be a good thing.

As for the actual game, well we learned the Moldy Crow is beastly (another thing that’s probably undercosted given the bang you get for your buck), Han is tremendously efficient for the points if you strip him to just the essentials, and 4-LOM is savage! From the other side of the table, Guri also looks like a complete monster- over the course of several games I think I’ve done just a single point of damage to her.

My only regret is that I’m playing the Imperial faction at the UKTC coming up next month and I should really be focusing on lists for that. (I still love Whisper after all). But this outing was very positive for the new version of the game, and long may that continue. Can’t wait to get another game in with this!

Happy hunting!