Star Wars X-Wing Talk- HWK-290 ‘Moldy Crow’

With Fantasy Flight giving us a preview of the upcoming ships from Wave 3, lets take a look now at the HWK-290, aka the Moldy Crow.

First up we have Jan Ors, a skill 8 for 25 points. For a 4th of your army you can have an extra attack by stressing this guy. Honestly, not too shabby if you want something to die a violet death in the cold vacuum of space.

Out of all the pilots shown, this guy seems to be the best bang for your buck down the line.


Next we have Kyle Katarn at skill 6 for 21 points. At the start of combat you can give your Focus Token to anther friendly ship at up to range 3.

Very much in the vain of Garven Dreis I'm not sure if this guy is worth his points. Same amount of hits on each ship with the same change to dodge. Difference is Garven has more damage output. Granted, you can equip the HWK with either an Ion or a new weapon, but with that you'll up his cost even more. Not to mention co-pilots. But again, this one is given at the beginning at combat, allowing you to do some damage if you want early with high skill pilots like Wedge.

But, that leaves you without any Focus down the line for your own attacks or your defense. It still up in the air, but I think I'd just take Garven.


Finally we have Roark Garnet at skill 4 for 19 points. This guy, he seems, kind of dumb. Now its nice giving another friendly ship skill 12 so they can fire first no matter what, unless your opponent is running this guy as well (which I'm going to assume in case of a tie the ship with the higher pilot skill to begin with goes first, and if same the one with initiative.). But it just comes off a bit gimmicky. But I can see myself actually using him in a variant of my old list. Wedge with Swarm with 2 Rookies and this guy.

Use this power to make floater Rookie 12, then fire with Wedge and Swarm other Rookie. That's a lot of fire before anyone can do anything about it. Not to bad, but, still up in the air.

Now lets check some of the new gizmos and peoples we can get with this ship. The new blaster turret seems real damn nice. Using a focus to get a 360 firing arc with 3 shots? I like that. Granted, is it better then the Ion? Dunno. Time will tell. Also since this is one of those 'Lore' ships, it has its own Upgrade too, and as you can guess, its the Moldy Crow. Now, for 3 points, I don't know if i can get behind this one.

Not having to remove any Focus left on your ship at the end phase seems useful at first, but then you remember, how often do you let those go unused?

With the exception of turn 1, I can't really think of any time I let tokens go unused outside of Target Locks.

Be it for defense or attack. Now I can see using this with Garnet and storing a bunch of Focus for a free Focus giveaway while keeping one yourself is great, but still seems like its gonna happen once or twice at most.

BUT, with that said the Co-Pilot of the Recon Specialist you get a free Focus when you Focus. YO DAWG I HURD YOU LIKE FOCUS? Gonna stop that joke there.

But the Saboteur strikes me as something pretty dirty. And in that good way. Got a enemy with some hits on them, take a action to attempt to make that damage worse but flipping it face up?

That can ruin some days there. And if I'm thinking right, that can possible force some crits on a Chewbacca piloted Falcon, as you're not dealing it to them, but forcing it face up.

Which if you can get that remove pilot abilities, hehe.

When these ships were announced you'll remember I mentioned the stat line made me nervous, and with this being the official preview, I'm still nervous.

This ship seems to force you to use weapon upgrades to make them worth it in a fight. And its low shields make it seem very weak in a defensive way.

But each guys ability going all the way out to Range 3, they seem like they're best in pure support as far from the fight as possible. I'm looking forward to using them, but I got a bad feeling about this.

Hope this helped you and thanks for reading.  -Super Kaiju

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