Revisiting Shadows of the Empire with X-Wing
Oooh I ‘member…
30th December 2024
Barry
8 Mins
This weekend I had every intention of painting miniatures – and I’ll get around to it eventually though as I cleaned up my games room to make space for everything (see Rosco’s article for divesting), I uncovered something.
My Nintendo64.
I wasted so much time playing Star Wars Shadows of the Empire this weekend.
For those that might not remember – or in fact never came across it – Shadows of the Empire was a story set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi focusing on Black Sun’s leader Prince Xizor and his attempts to supplant Darth Vader, and the rebels attempts to rescue Han Solo from Boba Fett. There’s the game, the novel, the comic book, action figures, was added to the collectible card game, it even its own original soundtrack (and yes, I owned the soundtrack).
There’s everything but a movie.
The thing that I love about Shadows of the Empire though is that it isn’t exactly one cohesive story, the game, book and comic all tell the same story from different points of view. So, the representation of events changes depending on the medium.
Oh really Dash? Three AT-AT’s?
The game introduces Dash Rendar as the hero though his story doesn’t quite make sense and is clearly embellished. He takes out a bunch of AT-AT’s in the Battle of Hoth, he blasts IG-88 and tracks down and defeats Boba Fett in an effort to recover Han Solo, he gets the plans to the second Death Star… I think you’re getting the point.
Those events happen in the other mediums, but in the book and comic which are told from Luke and Leia’s perspectives Dash’s involvement is…less. While he is at Hoth it’s questionable what he achieved. He might have defeated IG88 to track down Boba Fett, but he runs away as soon as the Imperial’s are onto them.
Dash is talented sure but clearly full of himself.
Look at this smug jerk…
Now…Shadows of the Empire has been sacrificed to the category of Legends since Disney bought the rights to Star Wars though Dash and other characters from it continued to pop-up in the X-Wing and I wanted in this article to discuss the thematic list building options available.
Rebels
There are three main battles that come to mind for the Rebellion in the multiple instances of the story, the first is an attempt to liberate Han Solo from Boba Fett who is getting repairs on Gall though it’s split into two separate sections which is Leia, Lando, Chewie in the Falcon and Dash in the Outrider (who bails before there’s any fighting) and Luke and Rogue Squadron fighting a bunch of generic TIE’s in space. So…not particularly interesting for list building but there’s the option for Leia, Dash and Luke.
The second battle involves the capture of the Suprosa – the Imperial transport that was carrying the plans for the second Death Star. The rebels include Luke, Dash, squadron of Y-Wings piloted by the Bothan spies Mon Mothma mentions.
The Y-Wings are loaded up with ion turrets to disable the Suprosa whilst Luke deals with the fighters and attacks the weapon emplacements. Dash and a bunch of Bothans board the disabled ship to steal the plans – funnily the Dash omits the Bothans in his recollection of events.
The options for appropriate Y-Wings in XWA and AMG’s points are somewhat restrictive, with Gold and Grey squadrons not as tempting as say the standard loadout pilots so I would recommend going for volume with this list.
The third battle involves the escape from Xizor’s palace on Coruscant while a battle between Black Sun and the Imperial Navy has started around Xizor’s Skyhook. The main culprits here are Lando, Chewie, Leia, Luke (gunner unfortunately), Dash, Leebo and Rogue Squadron including Wedge and Wes.
Now we can’t in good conscience use Luke gunner unless you take Chewie. So for this list my personal choice would be custom Lando, with Leia crew to help Lando’s ability and Chewie crew is included for flavour. There are so few points available on him so why not throw Ablative Plating on there too – because anyone can do that Dash you show off.
“Curse you Gadget!”
Scum & Villainy
Now there’s loads of options here – Shadows of the Empire introduces Black Sun which constitute a huge amount of the factions generic units as well as Xizor and Guri. There’s also Boba Fett’s storyline in the comic book where he is pursued by the Rebels and other bounty hunters like IG-88 and Bossk.
Starting with Boba Fett’s storyline – we easily have the points for all those characters in this squad. Bossk’s crew includes Zuckuss and 4LOM – though Zuckuss is actually being held prisoner by Boba Fett so he’s not included here. For the sake of argument, I’ve included IG-88D as crew – as Bossk has taken essentially everyone he can from the Bounty Hunters Guild to help him get Solo. This also helps fit in some synergy with the inclusion of IG-88B since there’s no explanation of which one it is that gets blasted by Boba and Dash.
For Black Sun, we’ll start with Xizor in the Virago, and then we can either go for volume with five Black Sun Soldiers or Guria and some Black Sun Assassins. In the first instance, I think we can show how little Xizor cares about his troops and would definitely put Deadmans Switch on all of them. Let’s make them suicidal with Electronic Baffle and because they’re here for a short time not a long time Crackshot.
The second list, we still keep Xizor as he is and add Guri and the two Black Sun Assassins. The Assassins actually have a decent little bit of loadout so we want to get a bit more out of them. There is a couple of combinations to be had here though so definitely play around with the list builder. There is a strong temptation to run five Black Sun Enforcers and hope that they don’t just die horribly.
Of course, there are other Black Sun operatives to be found in X-Wing such as Ketsu Onyo, Talonbane Cobra and Black Sun Aces in the Kihraxz which you should absolutely have a go of using even if they’re not part of the Shadows of the Empire storyline.
Jix does a lot of the heavy lifting for Dash.
Empire
The Empire is presence is somewhat lacking in Shadows of the Empire. This is mostly because Emperor Palpatine is busy gaslighting Darth Vader - this is how he always looks like he knew what was happening I’ve since realised.
The result is Vader is restricted to operating through proxies in the underworld to do what’s needed until he has a clear opportunity to strike out.
Conclusion
Shadows of the Empire remains one of my favourite stories in Star Wars – though I’ve recognised that most people have only experienced the story through the Nintendo 64 game. And that’s unfortunate as looking back the gameplay is pretty horrible, the controls are awkward - though I must recognise it’s the best Nintendo could come up with in 1996 – and yet playing it again has been a blast. The soundtrack whilst repetitive is still awesome, and if you can nail the game on hard mode you’ll get treated to an alternate ending.
There is a part of me that desperately wishes that it gets made into an animated movie like Rebels though that’s probably never going to happen. Elements of the Legends stories are finding their way into Disney’s re-telling so maybe we’ll see it re-imagined. For now I do recommend reading the book (not the abridged audio book heathens), and if you can find the comic book absolutely get into that.
Maybe just watch a speed-run of the game though to save yourself the pain…
Cheers,
Barry