Rebel Aces

Here we go again, another Fantasy Flight Release on the horizon that will be sure to be a winner....

“Proceed with the countdown. All groups assume attack coordinates.”
    –Admiral Ackbar
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack for X-Wing™!
Rebel Aces features one A-wing and one B-wing miniature, both of which come with alternate paint schemes. You’ll also find four highly skilled unique, new pilots; thirteen upgrade cards; maneuver dials; and all the tokens necessary to launch these starfighters into the thickest action of your space battles against the evil Galactic Empire. It also includes a new mission, which thrusts some of the Rebellion’s finest pilots into a desperate rescue effort that highlights the B-wing’s durability and the A-wing’s agility.

Heroic New Paint Schemes
Fly with the best! The alternate paint schemes on the starfighter miniatures from the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack allow you to battle for the Rebellion’s cause while representing the heroic efforts of the pilots who first flew its A-wings and B-wings as experimental prototypes.
Only ace pilots were granted the right to fly prototypes for the Rebel fleet. Piloting the agile A-wing required tremendous focus and lightning fast reflexes. Still, by helping the Rebel Alliance develop and improve upon its original designs, their efforts benefitted everyone dedicated to the cause of galactic freedom, and the A-wing ultimately proved its worth during the Battle of Endor by helping to cripple Star Destroyers.
To honor those prototype pilots who first flew the ship, the A-wing in Rebel Aces features the paint scheme depicted on the Prototype Pilot ship card, with a bold blue central stripe and red and yellow highlights.

Meanwhile, with its heavy weapons array and resilient shielding, the B-wing quickly established itself as one of the Rebellion’s most formidable assault fighters. The fighter’s unique gyrostabilization system ensured that its cockpit always remained stationary during flight, better enabling its pilot to coordinate complex flight and attack maneuvers. However, its rotating cockpit and complex Fabritech ANv-9q sensor system could only be mastered by seasoned veterans, and it took the Rebellion longer than it had initially anticipated to qualify pilots who could fly the ship in battle.
The pilots of Dagger Squadron were the first to be equipped with the B-wing in its experimental stages, and they were the first to be activated and sent into battle with the starfighter. Accordingly, Rebel Aces features a B-wing painted white with red highlights to match Dagger Squadron’s color scheme.

Both the A-wing and B-wing included in Rebel Aces share the same 1/270 scale sculpt as the miniatures found in the A-Wing Expansion Pack and B-Wing Expansion Pack, respectively.
New Pilots and Upgrades
Just as each A-wing and B-wing is merely a powerful tool within the Rebel fleet, the expansion’s variant starfighters are just the beginning of what it offers players.
To fly a starfighter, you need a pilot. to fly one of the galaxy’s most challenging starfighters, you need one of the galaxy’s greatest pilots. In Rebel Aces, you’ll find four unique, new pilots who not only rise to the challenge of flying these demanding vessels, but who can make them dance.
For example, Jake Farrell came out of retirement to teach Rebels how to fly against Imperial forces and was recruited to help design the A-wing. In X-Wing, he appears as one of the game’s most focused pilots. Every time he performs the focus action or receives a focus token, he may perform a free boost or barrel roll action.

Similarly, the tremendously skilled B-wing pilot, Keyan Farlander, enters the game with a potent ability of his own. Any time he attacks, he may remove a stress token in order to change all of his  results to  results. This not only allows him to convert a detrimental effect into a positive attack modification; it also permits him to perform stressful red maneuvers with impunity. If he chose, Keyan Farlander could potentially perform the difficult Koiogran-turn maneuver every round.
Additionally, Rebel Aces introduces thirteen upgrade cards that may very well reinvent the ways in which these ships are used in battle. You’ll find a new missile, a one-cost system upgrade, Title cards for both starfighters, two Rebel only crew, and the game’s first upgrade with a negative squad point cost, Chardaan Refit.

With all these upgrades, your A-wings and B-wings will be more customizable, more versatile, and more useful than ever.
Jump to Subspace
Additionally, Rebel Aces introduces a dramatic new mission, Jump to Subspace, in which a Rebel operative has captured a high-ranking Moff. However, that operative and his captive also happen to be adrift within an escape pod headed toward an asteroid field. As Imperial forces close in on the escape pod, the Rebel Alliance races to the rescue, relying upon the agility of its A-wing and the resilience of its B-wing.
The Rebels begin this mission with more squad points than the Imperials, but they’ll need all those squad points – and the elite skills of their A-wing and B-wing aces – in order to fend off wave after wave of Imperial fighters, even as they must guide the escape pod through a jumble of asteroids.
Don Your Flight Gear
Do you want to prove your piloting skills? Then, here’s your chance to suit up as one of the elite pilots the Rebel Alliance calls upon to fly and perfect its prototype starfighters. The Rebel Aces Expansion Pack is scheduled to arrive at retailers and intensify your X-Wing battles in the third quarter of 2014!

Straight From FFG Here Comes the new X-Wing Pilots

From Fantasy Flight Game's Website here is the preview of the New X wing pilots.

“I’m right with you, Red Three.”
    –Jek Porkins
In an earlier preview of the upcoming Rebel Transport Expansion Pack for X-Wing™, we took a closer look at the pack’s miniature GR-75 medium transport, as well as the new rules, maneuver template, and upgrades that go with it. Today, however, we turn our attention toward the expansion pack’s second starship miniature, an X-wing escort with a variant paint scheme.

A 360-degree view of the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack’s variant X-wing

We’ll also look at the unique new X-wing pilots, new astromechs, and new torpedo that appear in the expansion, all of which will be legal for the game’s Standard Play format, as well as Cinematic and Epic Play.
Rogue Squadron
“Two fighters against a Star Destroyer?”
    –Derek “Hobbie” Klivian
The GR-75 medium transports that the Rebellion used to evacuate its troops from Hoth would never have made their way through the Imperial blockade were it not for the coordinated fire of planetary ion cannons and the valiant efforts of a handful of daring X-wing pilots, many of whom were from Luke Skywalker’s Rogue Squadron.
The Rebel Transport Expansion Pack features six X-wing ship cards, including four unique pilots that are all new to X-Wing. Among these four pilots are three members of Rogue Squadron, all of whom proved themselves during the Battle of Hoth: Wes Janson, “Hobbie” Klivian, and Tarn Mison.

The pilot with the highest pilot skill of the trio, Wes Janson will fire before his foes in most situations. Then, with his ability to remove one focus, evade, or blue target lock token from the target of his attack, Wes Janson can provoke his target to spend a focus token that he would have preferred to hold for his attack, limiting the chances that he'll suffer damage from retaliatory fire. Alternatively, Wes Janson’s ability to remove an enemy’s blue target lock token can help safeguard your Rebel pilots from missiles and torpedoes of any sort; when a TIE bomber has Advanced Proton Torpedoes locked and loaded and ready to fire at one of your X-wings, there are few pilots you’d rather have in your squad than Wes Janson.

“Hobbie” Klivian is one of two X-wing pilots in the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack who can remove stress tokens without taking a green maneuver. Whenever he acquires or spends a target lock, “Hobbie” Klivian may remove one stress token from his ship. This means that he could potentially perform a stressful maneuver like the Koiogran-turn, spend a target lock during his attack, and perform a Koiogran-turn again in the next Activation phase. In this way, “Hobbie” Klivian should be not only be able to keep his foes within his firing arc, but he should be able to establish the appropriate range to line up a shot with the expansion’s new Flechette Torpedoes.

Meanwhile, Tarn Mison can acquire a target lock on any enemy ship that declares him the target of its attack. Thus, in a way, Tarn Mison’s ability forces your opponent into some difficult decisions, and these may be compounded by how you fly your squad. Will your opponent choose to attack one of your ships at a more distant range in order to avoid triggering Tarn Mison’s ability, or will he come in, guns blazing? So long as you can keep Tarn Mison’s X-wing intact through the exchange of fire, you’ll get a free target lock. Accordingly, if you elect to focus, then you’re likely to end up with both focus and target lock tokens – the best combination of any two tokens to have prior to your attack. How best to make use of this combination, then, is up to you.

These new pilots and upgrades offer you a number of interesting new tactical considerations. Will you focus on baiting your opponent’s next action? Will “Hobbie” Klivian maneuver around his opponents by loading them with the stress tokens applied by his Flechette Torpedoes or R3-A2 astromech, even as he acquires and spends target locks to remove his own stress? Or will Tarn Mison equip another of the expansion’s unique astromechs, R2-D6, in order to take advantage of an elite pilot talent like Opportunist and rely upon Wes Janson’s ability to rid his target of focus and evade tokens?
Jek Porkins
“I can hold it.”
    –Jek Porkins
The fourth unique ship card in the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack belongs to fan-favorite Jek Porkins.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, Jek Porkins flew under the call sign Red Six and was the first named member of the Rebel Alliance with a speaking role who perished in the Galactic Civil War.
In X-Wing, Jek Porkins is represented by a ship card with a pilot skill of “7” and an elite talent upgrade slot to accompany the X-wing’s standard astromech and torpedo upgrades. Meanwhile, he’s the second unique pilot in the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack who can remove stress tokens. Whenever he receives a stress token, he may elect to remove it and roll one attack die. On a hit result, he receives one facedown damage card, which bypasses any of his remaining shield tokens.
Like “Hobbie” Klivian, then, Jek Porkins can perform strings of Koiogran-turns to maneuver across the battlefield. However, where “Hobbie” Klivian’s ability to remove stress tokens requires a bit of advance planning, Jek Porkins can remove stress tokens at any time, though every time is a gamble.
Still, the fact that he can remove stress tokens whenever he receives them permits an astonishing range of options. As an example, Jek Porkins can perform the X-wing’s red four-speed Koiogran-turn, elect to immediately remove his stress token, and still take his action. Moreover, if he were equipped with Push the Limit, Jek Porkins could immediately take a second action and elect to remove the second stress token, as well, so that he wouldn’t then have to execute a green maneuver in order to perform an action. In fact, Jek Porkins could even find himself in position to perform two K-turns back to back!
Of course, the cost to remove those two stress tokens could potentially be two facedown damage cards. In such a case, it may pay to equip Jek Porkins with the R5-D8 astromech from the Y-Wing Expansion Pack. Then, whenever he suffers damage to remove a stress token, he can consider taking an action to roll a defense die and remove a facedown damage card on any result of  or .
Strike a Blow for Galactic Freedom
Along with the GR-75 medium transport, the new X-wing ship cards and upgrades from the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack look to permit a great deal of experimentation with squad builds for all of the game’s different formats of play. Whether you fly your X-wing escort alongside the GR-75 transport in Cinematic Play or Epic Play, or you’re just looking for new strategies to employ with your tournament squad in Standard Play, the expansion’s new ship cards and upgrades are going to encourage players to look at their X-wings in a wholly new light!