Wave VII shipping now.

[Mr Mystery]

It might not be everyone's most anticipated release, but FFG's website confirm it's now shipping to stores.

Me?

I'll have one of everything, and an additional Kihraxz for good measure.

[Erik Setzer]

Since I'm only doing S&V for now, I'll be getting at least the Hound's Tooth (plan on having all the bounty hunters once they're all out). The others look good once I get started on the other factions.

[Mr Mystery]

It's the first wave with a ship I begrudge buying - I really, really don't like the look of the K-Wing.

But, X-Wing Numberwang must be adhered to, and all the stuffs must be owned!

Wave VIII has seen all forgiven though - that wave is cool!

[40kGamer]

I'm content to snag the wave 7 ships. The K-Wing is peculiar but not a deal breaker... now if only they would do more squadron expansions for Armada. :p

[Eberk]

Nothing for me...


(I'm lagging behind. Still need to start buying Wave V -big ships- and Wave VI -Scum-, will get to Wave VII eventually :) )

[Mr Mystery]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6c/57/28/6c5728491696ac74f96bf5dbe01283cb.gif

[Erik Setzer]

Wave VIII has seen all forgiven though - that wave is cool!

Dengar and Zuckuss & 4-LOM in that one. Plus the Rebels stuff. Yeah, that one's going to snag a bit of money from me. If I was crazy, I'd try to paint a TIE Fighter like Sabine painted the one they captured, and talk people into letting me use a TIE Fighter in a Rebel fleet. (I'm also considering a Hawkbats force some time, with Face, Donos, Lara, Kettch, and the gang.)

[Mr Mystery]

Hawkbats?

[Erik Setzer]

Hawkbats?

That's the name Wraith Squadron took on when they pretended to be pirates in order to get close to Warlord Zsinj. They had TIE Fighters and Interceptors painted in various colors that they used on those missions.

Have you had a chance to read the Wraith Squadron novels?

[Mr Mystery]

Nah, I'm funny about the EU.

Enjoyed Courtship of Princess Leia and the various 'Tales From/Of' novels, but couldn't get into Heir to the Empire, and Truce at Bakura made my brain cry. Perhaps unfairly, I stopped reading at that point.

[Houghten]

Oh, but if you enjoyed Courtship you definitely need to read the Wraith Squadron trilogy. It fleshes Warlord Zsinj out from a Saturday morning cartoon villain to a devious fiend who meets his intellectual match in the form of a bunch of pilots who wouldn't know what "thinking inside the box" meant if you nailed them to underside of the lid.

[Erik Setzer]

Ah... I can understand the feeling a bit, it was hit or miss with some of the stuff, and some authors would do a horrible "superweapon-of-the-week" bit or over-feature Jedi.

The X-Wing series, which switch between Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron, was written by Michael A. Stackpole (who also did the comic series) and Aaron Allston. I haven't had a chance to check out other stuff by Allton, but Stackpole does a solid job with anything he does. The X-Wing series was particularly nice in the Star Wars universe because it focused on "normal" people... well, as normal as an elite group of pilots and a group of misfits with extremely useful skills could be. The most "superweapon" style thing they'd go against were Super Star Destroyers. In the Rogue Squadron books, they managed to take one out by getting rid of its supporting fleet (including convincing the commander of an ISD to join them and fight the SSD), and rigging a fleet of freighters with 300 proton torpedo launchers slaved to their own targeting computers, and they just pounded the thing until it had no weapons, no engines, and was kind of a mess (the ISD, for its part, was nearly destroyed, and a lot of the freighters were blown up once they realized what was going on). In the Wraith Squadron books, they went after Zsinj (yeah, same guy from Courtship), targeting Iron Fist to destroy. Zsinj stole another SSD, but it wasn't crewed, so a few squadrons of X-Wings, B-Wings, and Y-Wings were able to take it out (especially with someone on-board breaking the system so it had no shields). Zsinj grabbed the wreckage, had it smashed together and repainted like the Iron Fist, and used that to convince the Republic his ship was destroyed when they chased it into an asteroid field with a pretty good sized fleet. Along the way, multiple characters died in both series, with one of the worst (for a fan) being the Wraith Squadron's sociopath doctor dying of injuries while being dragged along by his teammate and staring up at the ship they were meant to destroy.

Part of the Wraiths' trick to get close to Zsinj was to pose as pirates he was hiring... hence the Hawk-bats. Their leader, Face Loran, was a former actor (who did Imperial propaganda, no less), so they were able to disguise themselves well. Being that they were a group of misfits, they also did some silly stuff, like a running joke about an Ewok pilot named Lieutenant Kettch (just to mess with Wedge, but it took off) who used prosthetics to fly. In one of the funniest twists, one of the aliens Zsinj was experimenting on ended up being an Ewok who knew how to pilot a ship and had prosthetics to do so (prompting an excellent response from Lara of, "Stop, no, I've heard this joke," and the Ewok being confused). Oh, and after they told Zsinj they had an Ewok pilot, Wedge wore the stuffed Ewok they'd been messing with into battle while wearing all black himself so it looked like an Ewok was flying the fighter.

I could go on and on, and I'm sorry for how long I've gone on, but it was truly the best series of the EU, IMO. Even though it almost felt like GoT at times with the character deaths, political stuff, and backstabbing.

[Mr Mystery]

Right then....Wave VII ordered!

Got Hounds Tooth, 2 Kihraxz, a K-Wing (begrudgingly) and a TIE thingy pre-ordered via boardgameextras.

£66.00 for the ships, which I felt was entirely reasonable!

[Mr Mystery]

Doin' the Happy Dance, doin' the Happy Dance.

Wave VII stuff just arrived. And happy to say that the K-Wing is considerably less terrible looking in real life! It and the TIE Punisher are a decent degree larger than the usual small base stuff.