Chewing The Scenery - XWA Scenario Changes

12th August 2025

Barry

7 mins

Following on the release of the standard loadouts for Resistance, First Order and Scum factions, XWA have implemented changes to help simplify and streamline the setup of scenarios as well as dropping a new scenario to include in the rotation.

Amongst the changes are standard setup definitions, standardised points scoring for objectives and ships. The former to help stop scores snowballing due to objective points, and the latter to incentivise engaging in combat – which has undoubtedly been a chief complaint from players about objective scoring. It will also undoubtedly influence list-building considerations – and really shake up the absent of a squad points update.

The new scenario – Ancient Knowledge- has had Rosco and I debating the value of high initiative ships vs swarms vs a toolkit. And I’m not sure I’m settled on it one way or another as I’ll discuss further – but as the guy without a plan I’m not about to say with any sense of authority what works.

Ancient Knowledge has three objective tokens - referred to in the scenario as data caches - which have charges that can be collected from the second round using an action. Each ship with the collecting the charge gets the Ancient Knowledge condition card.

At the end of the round if you have a ship with the condition you get 1 point or 2 points if you have more than your opponent. However if you do have more, you must choose one of your ships to lose the Ancient Knowledge condition.

At the end of the round the cache's recover any missing charges for players to collect in the next round.

Simple right?

Testing

This week was committed to this new scenario entirely to get an understanding of how it plays – and so my initial list for this practice was Scum consisting of Mando, Bo-Katan, Fenn and Old T - and I will admit that it was mostly so that I could use the custom Mando and Bo-Katan bases that I bought from Ancient KNowledge. With my Mandalorians packed I faced Chiew as my first opponent – who has been cycling through meme Republic lists by spamming as many of the same unit as possible. Todays is Y-Wings.

Six of them.

May the Salt be with you always…

That’s a lot of chonk to get through. It is also a lot of arcs to dodge and bombs to avoid – all the while trying to chase those objective tokens. As far as meme lists go it has some value. This is also where we probably start debating squad types – Chiew’s list has such a variety of initiatives across so many units he can go for objectives with the low initiative units before I get there and leave his others to focus on a single target – in this case Bo.

Whilst Mando is able to comfortably collect an objective in round two the other Mandalorians are not quite so lucky as going for the objective risks being completely overwhelmed. So my focus shifts to initiative kills and/or half points in the absence of the option to play for an objective win. However, this is not as viable either since the Y wings are cost effective meaning all my damage output only yields a single point in most cases if I don’t get the kill outright.

Chiew’s Y-Wings are as stubborn, frustrating and chonky as my two basset hounds.

Chiew’s ships seemed to just create multiple layers of denial.

The juice isn’t work the squeeze as the combined efforts of overlaying arcs, bodies and bombs means my smaller ships are in constant danger whilst Bo isn’t able to effectively manoeuvre. In the end Chiew is able to simultaneously own the objectives, congest the board effectively, and limiting avenues to manoeuvre with bombs to get a comfortable win 23-10.

Point made, I switch to a list that I had been running successfully as a baseline test. Originally starting out as a test bed to compare the EoD Resistance units, it consists of Rey, Zizi, Zorii and Tali. The SL’s are gone in favour of the custom builds that just hit harder – and that seems to be a valid option now that half points are always on the table.

This game is against another list that overwhelms in numbers as Tim has T-65 Corran, Thane, Cracken, Blount and two generic Z-95’s. I can see the intent with this list, using Corran to constantly palm off target locks and just try and focus damage onto two targets with Cluster Missiles.

Also it’s another list has more opportunity to get objectives early – though Z-95’s are decidedly more squishy than Y-Wings.

Now the obvious target of Tim’s efforts would be Rey, who I commit up the side hoping that the Z’s find it difficult to collectively have range on me while the A’s attempt to flank and take the (hopefully) vacant objective. While Tim does dominate the objective early, he wasn’t able to capitalise on it since Rey (somehow) avoided the majority of arcs and the remainder of my fighters scoring half-points or outright kills.

Forced to disengage with Rey early to avoid giving up half points early.

My score did stall where I did not manage to finish a fighter off for the points, and Tim did start to catch up as he took out Zorii, but when the rest of his ships started getting picked off then the score quickly snowballed my way with the objective and ship points securing a comfortable 23-11 win.

Thoughts

This is an interesting scenario to be sure, though I don’t want to over-simplify list building just for it as there’s more to consider with half-points in all the objectives now. So combat is clearly a path to victory however this scenario I think will make that somewhat more difficult if you refuse to participate. The number of times a ship was saved courtesy of the objective dice mod or – conversely – managed to enhance a somewhat anaemic attack - was infuriating in both games.

How these changes influence play in other scenarios is something time will tell – but do I think it will shake up squad-building?

*yes*

Half points will drastically influence games going forward – where you were able to safely trade shields or hull to achieve objectives of ¾ of the scenarios is definitely over. Equally so, I think the idea of going big orange/big red squads and focusing on the kills might be an option safe for this scenario where an opponent playing the objective is afforded the opportunity to undermine those efforts.

Either way I’m unlikely to have a coherent plan for this scenario either…Stay salty.

- Barry