For nearly a year, I've been a man with a dark (and somewhat open) secret. With Worlds finally behind me, the time has come for me to step into the light and declare with pride: I am an Imdaar Test Pilot enthusiast.
And you should be too. Because this ship is one of the most criminally underplayed and underrated ships in our current game of X-Wing.
The Runt of the Litter
Much has been said about the other Phantom pilots, and the merits of each are well known and well documented by now. Whisper is a staple in Imperial ace lists, one of the top 5 ace options in the faction and supporting multiple viable upgrade paths to be effective at various price points. Echo is a unique ship with an almost unmatched level of positioning options available and a modest record of success, including a Top 16 appearance at this year's Worlds. The Sigma Squadron Ace (aka the Juke Phantom) is perhaps the most notorious of Phantoms, dominating the early Second Edition meta with a list that took two different nerfs through points adjustments to finally knock it out of the meta, and forever associating the ship with a vague aura of Negative Play Experience even after the Juke Sigma meta is gone. I can assure you, the Sigma Stigma is still very real.
The Imdaar Test Pilot has never seen a ton of play, despite documented successes (several of which we'll touch on later). It's not glamorous and it's not immediately evident why it's so good. But it is good. It's very good.
On a basic level, we can loosely compare to similar ships across the factions:
The I3 Kihraxz Fighter costs three points less, swapping one shield for two additional hull, and has the lock action. The dial is a bit worse, with no access to 3 Hard turns but exchanging one of the Phantom's K-turns for the more situational Tallon Roll. On a purely efficiency basis, this is the ship that likely gives the Phantom the biggest run for its money, setting aside some of the bells and whistles of other options here in favour of being a dirt cheap, functional 3-die attacker. Incidentally, the I1 Kihraxz also feels somewhat underutilised (outside of its use in the Torkil/Seevor/Kihraxz list, where it shines).
The I3 Belbullab-22 also costs three points less and has a very similar dial to the Phantom, with the handy addition of a 5 forward at the cost of the 3 Hards becoming red, as well as having only the S-Loop as a means of turning around strictly by the dial. Action-wise, the Belbullab is a big upgrade, gaining access to either reposition option (and able to link them both to dice mods), although the dial makes shedding stress as cumbersome here as it is for the Phantom. The lack of an evade (shared with most of the other ships on this list) makes this ship pretty fragile. There are strong upgrades available to counter this, but the cost increases accordingly and the ship becomes much less comparable to the Imdaar at that point.
The I3 T-65 X-Wing costs one point less and has one more hull, and it has access to the Lock and (with closed S-Foils) Boost actions. The dial points to a fairly different ship in practice, swapping out the responsiveness of the 1 Hard for the jouster's 1 Forward, and also exchanging one of the K-turns for Tallon Rolls. Due to the dial and the nature of S-Foils, in most situations the T-65 has a slightly harder time pivoting into an arc dodger role than the Imdaar.
The I3 T-70 X-Wing costs three points more than the Imdaar. It's generally just an improvement across the board over the T-65, but at this point cost is becoming prohibitive and it's a bit less relevant in a discussion on the Imdaar where affordability is one of the main arguments for the Imperial ship.
The I3 Aethersprite with 7B costs 12 more points than an Imdaar, and two more points than an Imdaar with Fifth Brother. It makes a poor comparison point for numerous reasons, and there's not a lot of point in discussing it further since we're really outside of Imdaar territory now.
Incidentally, there's one other ship that can compares surprisingly closely to the Imdaar, but we'll discuss that one at the end.
Of course, none of these include the most defining features of the Imdaar Test Pilot!
The Imdaar, like all Phantoms, gets a free Evade whenever it decloaks. In practice, we can consider this to be comparable to first edition's Comm Relay. You can also compare it to a sort of regen, treating the first free Evade as an extra shield on the ship, with the option to regenerate that shield by re-acquiring an Evade and getting back into a cycle of decloaking each turn. This means that, durability-wise, the ship punches above its weight compared to its peers above. By comparison, consider how much the Belbullab-22 pays for these sorts of survivability gains!
The Imdaar also gets a big reposition in the System Phase, assuming it is able to decloak; typically you can expect to be starting turns cloaked and decloaking around 80% of the time, if not more, depending on matchup and dice variance. This is overall a bit weaker than Supernatural Reflexes et al., since it happens before everything else moves, but the size of the reposition mitigates this by being really big. Moving 2-Straight in one of three different directions is obviously very valuable.
Finally, access to the cloak token itself means that the ship can choose to have two more green dice at the cost of shooting. This is situational but is certainly an option that the other 2 agility jousters can natively use. As a rule of thumb, you're better off evading against a single target, but if you're expecting incoming shots from more than two ships, the cloak starts paying dividends. With a cloak token, the Imdaar Test Pilot actually has a chance at surviving slipping into some of the arcs of a TIE swarm that would almost certainly kill an X-Wing or Belbullab (although I certainly wouldn't advise testing this theory more than necessary).
To illustrate, here's a table of expected damage on an Imdaar across a few dozen different scenarios:
Especially when dealing with larger attacks, you can see from the table that a cloak token is often the better choice for surviving multiple attacks, and a cloak token with a focus token on defense is almost always a defensive upgrade (and in some cases a very significant one). Consider as well that many of the 2 Agi + Evade scenarios will cost you your evade token and require you to either Evade or Cloak on a following turn, while the Cloak token cannot be stripped (and will give you the free Evade on the following turn, should you decloak).
What we're then left with is a ship that is largely built to be a capable jouster (and comparable, although largely a bit inferior, to other similar costed ships in the same role), but one that gains the unpredictability and versatility of large pre-dial repositions and the resilience of a regenerating ship. It's in some ways a hybrid ship (see also the TIE Silencer or the 7B Aethersprite), a ship that is nominally a jousting ship but one that can leverage the advantages of an arc dodger and avoid falling into the predictable patterns that the comparable ships in the class above tend to find themselves in.
Big Trouble in Little Imdaar Alpha
There are several pitfalls that should be addressed, of course. Like any good relationship, falling in love with the Imdaar Test Pilot means accepting the ship's flaws.
Having no ability to modify red dice can make it difficult to snowball from successful flanks or otherwise superior positions, and it makes it a bit more challenging to bank on the outcome of an engagement since you often just underperform on damage and can't do much about it. Your ability to reliably and consistently initiative-kill threats is affected by this. This doesn't mean the Imdaar is bad on the flank, but it does mean that they won't output quite as much damage as something like a T-65 or a Belbullab would if it finds itself in a position to fire unanswered shots at targets.
The Decloaks require a lot of forethought in how you maneuver, and it's not difficult to find your cloaked Phantom in a place where it can't legally decloak. Almost as bad is having only one legal decloak, leading to your unpredictable ship becoming... well, predictable.
The ship does not take stress well. The blue maneuvers that clear stress are very rarely the maneuvers you want to be using as a TIE Phantom, and thus a Phantom that is stressed is very predictable, especially at I3. Further, you don't get your free Evade token when you decloak while stressed, meaning that if you decloak, you now need to spend an action to Evade or Cloak in order to get back into a decloak rhythm. For these reasons, try to avoid K-Turning whenever possible (mostly by planning ahead so that this turn's position means your next turn's decloak leaves you able to Hard 1 back into engagement), and consider remaining cloaked on a turn in which you are clearing stress in order to stay safe.
The Imdaar is susceptible to burst damage. With only five total hit points, a double modded Proton Torpedo is killing your token-stacked Imdaar outright 7% of the time on damage alone, not even considering situations where you only take four damage but die due to the torpedo's auto crit (a crit which you'll be taking over 60% of the time). Volleys of Energy Shell Charges are also dangerous, as even with perfect rolls from the Imdaar, if they roll enough paint to get full hits, you're dead in five shots (if not fewer due to the forced crits). The table in the last section really emphasizes the difference between an Imdaar facing down 2-die versus 3-die attacks. Essentially, you can tolerate sitting in a couple of 2-die arcs or a single 3-die or even 4-die arc, but beyond that, you need to either get out of there or cloak and hope.
Phantoms also hate being jammed. An opponent that jams your Evade immediately removes almost all of those advantages I discussed last section, making you back into an expensive Belbullab or an inferior X-Wing. Ships with mostly free jamming abilities, like Captain Seevor or Lieutenant Tavson, can cause you all sorts of headaches and need to be evaluated accordingly.
Under the current ion rules, being ionized is worse for Phantoms than it was previously, since you no longer get to take the free Evade action off of the decloak. Again, as with stress, consider remaining cloaked on an ion turn, since as we may conclude from the table in the last section, not shooting but having 4 focus-modded green dice is likely often better than losing your evade token, especially considering that you're more likely to get focus fired on your ion maneuver turn.
Finally, tractors are bad news and really kill the value of your token stack. Nantexes are just generally awful to deal with and need to be carefully approached with range control and careful consideration of the Nantex's current turret position and probable future maneuvers. The introduction of Chertek is possibly the worst thing ever to have happened to the Imdaar Test Pilot. Nantex match-ups are not even remotely easy for Imdaar lists.
Imdaar Listbuilding
There are a few upgrades you could consider on the Imdaars. Passive Sensors are relatively cheap and give you the red dice modification the ship sorely lacks. Shield Upgrade makes Imdaars even more difficult to punch through, although they don't change the fact that it's three hits to get you to half points.
Either of those upgrades could be used for a Quad Imdaar list, or for a list where you're using one or two Imdaars as filler. I don't think I would use both at the same time, as it's investing a lot of points in what is originally a fairly cheap and efficient ship, but if you can get value out of them, it could certainly work.
There might be situations where Collision Detector is a good Imdaar upgrade, and I certainly will agree that ColDet is great on Phantoms in general, but I would suspect that the points are better spent elsewhere. Otherwise, I don't think any of the other upgrades make much sense for Imdaars.
There are multiple viable approaches to building out lists featuring Imdaars. My personal preference has been to run them naked and use the efficiency they offer to fit in a high-end ship to go along with them, effectively using a hammer-and-anvil approach. Essentially, I put three Imdaars in the list, and then stick the best ace I can find in to finish the list.
I'll discuss two of the ace options below, but Soontir Fel and Duchess are viable here as well, with some flexibility for loadout.
I have seen lists as well using the Imdaars as the main attacking force and adding a support ship (i.e. Jendon supporting Passive Sensor Imdaars) and this might work, but my suspicion is that this sort of list would just have more bad match-ups than Imdaars+Ace without gaining any more advantageous ones.
My Imdaar Lists
My first Imdaar list, legal during the 2019 Q1-Q2 period, was probably my favourite:
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Darth Vader, Fire Control System, Hate
FCS Hate Vader was not the arc dodging Vader one expects from Afterburners Vader. FCS Hate Vader is a bruiser, perfectly willing to accept the odd incoming shot in exchange for punching the other guy awfully hard in the face.
The list generally approaches gamed by moving the Imdaars as one for the early game and sending Vader off to flank, with either element able to punish the opponent's decision on which element to pursue.
I took this one to the Top 4 of the Toronto System Open, getting knocked out in what would turn out to be one of the more infamous games of X-Wing in recent history:
Outside of the controversy of the Toronto Tallon Roll, this game is actually a good example of how I flew that list and how it succeeded. Hate Vader flanking through the rocks is quite happy to have enemy ships try to attack him; in this match, where my Imdaars were all higher initiative than my opponent's ships, I would have been absolutely comfortable trading off Vader for a couple of my opponent's pieces if it meant I could snowball with the Imdaars.
Variations on this list actually did start to see some traction after the Toronto System Open. Another instance of this list made cut at Atlanta System Open, and 3x Imdaar plus Afterburners Vader made cut at Denver SOS, Adepticon, and UK Nationals.
The points adjustment upped the Imdaar by a woefully inadequate one point, but between that and Vader's adjustment, the list needed to be adjusted. The second (and current) iteration, legal for 2019 Q3-Q4, is thus:
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Imdaar Test Pilot
- Whisper, Predator, Fifth Brother
Whisper's no Vader, but she's no slouch either. Fifth Brother on Whisper is excellent, and gives me some of the crit forcing that Vader was able to leverage so well in the previous list. I've foregone a bid in favour of Predator, as I don't think a two point bid will consistently outbid anything of consequence, and Whisper can tolerate going first thanks to her ability.
This list got me to a Top 4 finish in Canadian Nationals. I did get a game on stream (without commentary), but it doesn't seem to have made it to YouTube, and frankly it was a pretty sloppy Round 6 match-up against a list that required me to really take an unusual approach (8x Torrents!), and isn't really indicative of how this list usually operates.
It's also the list I took to Worlds, barely missing cut with a 4-3 record after a close, tough loss on my last game of the day. That said, a 3x Imdaar + Soontir list did make the cut.
The Phantom Menace
This is all to say that the Imdaar Test Pilot is an amazing value for 44 points. Even beyond my preferred list architecture outlined above, you can fit it into all sorts of lists. It's cheap enough that it doesn't have to do a lot to pull its weight, and multiple Imdaars is a real problem for the opponent to have to deal with.
And should the points go up on the Imdaar Test Pilot (which I absolutely feel they should), let me introduce you to Imdaar Junior:
Supernatural Inquisitors essentially do everything the Imdaar does, just worse. Your 3-die attack is now a 2-die attack. Your pre-maneuver 2-speed reposition is now a 1-speed reposition. Your 3 hull is now 2 hull.
But hey, at least you can target lock or boost!
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