We promised you more and we deliver! Here’s the rest of last week’s Celebration Europe gaming news, along with some pre-GenCon news from Fantasy Flight!
Tabletop Games
Another new preview for X-Wing wave nine was released earlier this week, this time looking at the Special Forces version of the First Order TIE Fighter! This was the TIE that Poe and Finn stole at the beginning of TFA, so we know it’ll feature a co-pilot and a second firing arc!
FFG also released a look at more tournament prizes. We got a glance at the North American championship prizes that those playing at GenCon will have a chance to earn! While the awards for all the games look awesome, the Living Card Game playmat looks particularly cool.
I’d link you to the Star Wars Armada Fleet Commander Contest, but the link from their page seems to be broken! D’oh! If and when it gets fixed, we may address it. Otherwise, if Armada is your jam, just keep an eye on www.fantasyflightgames.com and the Armada subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsArmada/
Actually, there is some more Armada news! The one big announcement to come out of Celebration Europe from the FFG team was about a new type of expansion for Armada. This first new type of campaign expansion is titled The Corellian Conflict and, among other things, features support for two to six players!
The last real bit of news for the tabletop world is about the results of the X-Wing System Open tournament, which concluded with the Coruscant Open at Celebration! The folks over at the 186th Squadron, an X-Wing group out of London, provided some really fantastic coverage of the swiss round and the very close finale.
Video Games
As we’d already known, the third expansion for Star Wars Battlefront would be the Death Star, but at the EA Panel, they did treat us to some new images, information, and a little teaser trailer. Death Star features new heroes, new maps, space combat, and “multi-stage gameplay,” which we hope means interaction between ground and air/space forces.
The Death Star plans were not the only bit of Battlefront news. We also got word that expansion four would feature maps and heroes from this winter’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story! The new planet will be Scarif, the tropical world we’ve seen in the previews, and the heroes will, of course, be Jyn Erso and, a little surprisingly, Director Orson Krennic. A release date was not announced, but with pack 3 coming in September we can almost count on pack 4 having a similar release window relative to the movie that Battle of Jakku had with regards to Force Awakens.
The Battlefront news continued to roll out with the previously announced offline Skirmish mode having been released earlier this week. Currently, it only supports Walker Assault and Fighter Squadron, but it’s a start. Also, apparently you should play on Hard, as the AI really does play Stormtroopers authentically (ie, dumb).
The last news from the ‘Front is a new Hutt Contract, this time featuring a very interesting weapon: the Stinger Pistol. It’s locked behind a new contract, but apparently doesn’t overheat and is immune to disruption. This might be worth some credits.
The other big announcements came from the Old Republic corner of the EA couch, and they kicked it off with a look at the last five years of SWTOR! Hard to imagine it’s been that long, but they did it justice with an awesome 5-year retrospective video…
The video ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger, with a single-image look at the upcoming expansion Knights of the Eternal Throne, the successor to the Fallen Empire storyline! Further details will be coming later.
