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Hey all, I've had a bunch of ships for quite some time and just sort of had them as collector's pieces sitting on a shelf. Now, I'm thinking I'd like to get into the actual game and play the Scum & Villainy faction. I already had a starter set and a bunch of Rebel and Imperial ships, including 2 Y-Wings to use. Today one of the LGS had a 30% off sale going on so I picked up the Most Wanted pack and a Kihraxz Fighter expansion pack.

What ships are considered "essential" for a Scum player? I've always loved Y-Wings since I was a little kid, but I'm also hoping to field something decent.


As an aside, what price should a Canadian expect to pay for ships? My closest LGS charges $21.99 for all small ships. The one I got this stuff from today had some for $17.99 and others for $19.99. Sets like Rebel/Imperial Aces, Most Wanted, IG-2000 and Hound's Tooth were all $49.99 there, but at my closest LGS they're $59.99 which seems a bit dear. I think I paid $34.99 or $39.99 for my Rebel Aces and Imperial Aces sets, although that was well over a year ago. Have prices really skyrocketed that much with the game's popularity?

Welcome to this excellent game! There are no really terrible ships in the game right now and I think all the scum ships are viable. Y-wings with Twin Laser Turrets (TLT) are pretty hot right now. There are lists with 3 or 4 Y-wings armed with TLT's that are pretty easy to fly and very competative. Unfortunately, the TLT is found in the K-wing expansion pack. Firespray's are a great versitile ship that can be kitted out to fill all kinds of roles in your list and the scum Firespray pilots are pretty good imho. Z-95's are good swarm and support ships while Syk's seem to be good in specialized roles. IG's are solid and Bosskk seems pretty good too. Of all the scum ships it seems to me that Starvipers and the Kiihraxz are struggling to find a spot in peoples lists. Note that any ship from any faction you buy is likely going to give you some descent upgrade cards you may want anyway (Autothrusters in the Starviper). So unfortunately, my usual advice to people is to: collect everything! You're going to want to get it all in the end.

Prices in Canada (and I assume elsewhere) can vary quite a lot. The cheapest I've seen them is at the big, specialized game shops (Meeplemart and 401 Games downtown Toronto). They have small ships on for $15.95. The larger ones clock in at $31.95 and box sets and even larger ships go for $41.95. Essentially you're paying online pricing without the shipping which is really good. You'll pay a bit more than that at other game shops and even more at book stores and those fake game stores in malls (stores like Gamers Den that mainly sell puzzles, pool tables, darts and educational toys). If you're only option is to pay more than $20 baseline for small ships, you can probably get them cheaper online (especially if you bulk up a big purchase and save on shipping). Of course, I do buy some of my stuff for more than I could get it online because I'm supporting a really great local store. If you have a LGS that has play area and a healthy pool of players that play regularily, then I suggest you buy at least half your stuff there and the rest cheaply online.

I'd get out of the mindset of playing a faction if you can. You're of course welcome to have your favourites, and focusing in one is probably a good way to get started, but the way the game is structured means that you'll often want upgrades that are only available in a ship that doesn't exist for your faction.

Friendly games you can obviously proxy in, but in a more structured ie competitive, environment you'll need the cards. Realistically you'll probably eventually want to own one of everything, and they're much better value if you can play the ships.

To address what's essential, the game really makes most of them viable at the friendly/friendly competitive level, and you can make a lot of things work.

Speaking in broad terms, the Agressor and Firespray are both favourites of mine, I think the Khiraxz is great to fly too. The Z is always good value and the Y is a staple of many lists. Broadly speaking the Starviper and Scyk are the hardest to make work, but I've flown against Viper based lists that have been challenging to play against, the Scyks, maybe not so much, but there's still things that can be done with those to give your opponent a nasty surprise.

Yeah, I've heard about having to buy certain ships to get some good upgrades. K-Wing saddens me a little, as it's more expensive and doesn't really appeal to me. E-Wings have good Astromechs I've heard but again they don't really appeal to me.

There are sellers on fleabay amd places like Team Covenant which split and sell the components, but anything popular is invariably strongly priced and/or out of stock.

I've seen the C3PO card on offer for £30 by itself while I've seen the Tantive in its entirety for a little over £40. This being the case, it's probably more economic to just buy the ships, then at least you can play them once in a while for variety.

 Lord Corellia wrote:
Yeah, I've heard about having to buy certain ships to get some good upgrades.

Well, they have to make money and this is the best way to do it. Don't worry though, every ship is worth the money you spend for it. Like a couple people have said already, the M3-A Scyk and StarViper are underwhelming, but that's mainly in a competitive setting.

K-Wing saddens me a little, as it's more expensive and doesn't really appeal to me. E-Wings have good Astromechs I've heard but again they don't really appeal to me.

The K-wing is an awesome ship. For starters, it's the only small base ship with a PWT and the only ship that can take the SLAM action. The best ace in the expansion, Miranda Doni, is one of the most well rounded ships/pilots the Rebels have. As far as the E-wing goes, that expansion's best ace, Corran Horn, is one of the best pilots in the game. Give him R2-D2, Fire Control System, and Veteran Instincts to make him an extremely lethal supership.

 Azreal13 wrote:
There are sellers on fleabay amd places like Team Covenant which split and sell the components, but anything popular is invariably strongly priced and/or out of stock.

I've seen the C3PO card on offer for £30 by itself while I've seen the Tantive in its entirety for a little over £40. This being the case, it's probably more economic to just buy the ships, then at least you can play them once in a while for variety.

Plus, the 2016 store tourney pack has 3P0 as the participation prize, so he's about to become a lot cheaper.

If you're willing to make a bulk purchase to make sure your shipping dollars aren't wasted, go with Meeplemart. They have the cheapest price by far. Your prices are higher than what the most expensive FLGS in Montreal charges (and we're talking about a store that charges an extra translation tax tacked on to ships in French).

I have to echo what everyone is saying... IF you plan to play competitively, expect to buy one of everything, and multiples of favorites or much needed upgrades/ships.

The side benefit is everyone ends up with enough ships to introduce new players to the game with, which I think is a huge part of its exploding popularity. My wife got into the game using my many extras and now we just automatically buy 2-3 of any release knowing it will get used at some point (even then, we spend a literal fraction on X-wing versus what we used to spend on 40k).

I'll also throw in another vote for the Khiraxz being great. Its priced appropriately and people sleeping on Talonbane Cobra might suddenly find themselves in the sites of a very maneuverable ship... and five attack dice at range-1.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
If you're willing to make a bulk purchase to make sure your shipping dollars aren't wasted, go with Meeplemart. They have the cheapest price by far. Your prices are higher than what the most expensive FLGS in Montreal charges (and we're talking about a store that charges an extra translation tax tacked on to ships in French).

Wow, that's insane! I may just drop by Meeplemart when time and money allow. It's about a 45 minute drive away from me and it looks like they've got a ton of stuff for decent prices.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
If you're willing to make a bulk purchase to make sure your shipping dollars aren't wasted, go with Meeplemart. They have the cheapest price by far. Your prices are higher than what the most expensive FLGS in Montreal charges (and we're talking about a store that charges an extra translation tax tacked on to ships in French).

Support a FLGS if there is one that you would like to play at. X-Wing miniatures are really in my "Grab one whenever I'm at the Store" range of prices.

I'm pretty much at the point where I buy 2 of everything on a small base and at least 1 of everything on a large base. So far the only exceptions have been the Star Viper (1), Kihraz (0), M3-A (0), Punisher (1) and Hound's Tooth (0) but I'll likely pick some of those up in the next few months. (Seems like I'm one of the competative guys taht NewTruthNemaxim is talkign about) There are people I know who are buying up to the point that they can run 100 points of any ship. That would be 8 Ties (12 points x 8 = 96 points) etc. Don't feel that you need to go in either of those directions. I have a buddy who just started into the game, bought a Core and Rebel Aces and is going to town... he's having a blast (even if I need to tone my lists down somewhat to play him).

I just don't have an FLGS to play at in my area. They sell, but the only tables there are reserved for card games.

Mind you, I haven't been to every store in the city, but that's because I have to little time to go on a jaunt to those places.

 Anpu-adom wrote:
Support a FLGS if there is one that you would like to play at. X-Wing miniatures are really in my "Grab one whenever I'm at the Store" range of prices.

I like the store near me and I've been going there since I was a little kid, but I just kind of feel ripped off when I can take a 15-20 minute drive and pay $3-5 less for the exact same thing...

Like I said... support the store you'd like to play at. If you'd rather drive 20 minutes that's fine too.

I'd love to only have to drive 20 minutes... as I'm 'deep in the Outer Rim' so to speak.

I don't know that I would support a store that has such marked up prices, and then tells you the tables are all "reserved" for card games.

They want your business... but you're not as valuable to them as the kiddies buying up Yugioh packs? Sorry... not putting the F in "FLGS". :-p

Edit: Referring to Mathieu's post.

I actually found a store that had even more jacked up prices yesterday. I asked him how was business, and said really slow. I looked at the league calendar and it was pretty full, but he said he was going to stop supporting those, because people buy elsewhere and come and play at his store. If they show up at all.

In a sense, if you're on a tight budget, I understand that you can't offer the deepest discount. Or even a modest one. People walk into my store, ask what are my discounts and when I tell them "none right now" they walk right out again. I think we have to see the B&M store as a place where the quality of the experience also matters, not just the price, because you have to be willing to pay for excellent service... and similarly shame on the store which doesn't give that excellent service and just expects money.

Jacked up prices at the store aren't cool. He doesn't have to do discounts, if he provides a good atmosphere. But jacked up prices and wondering why people buy elsewhere? Newsflash...if everyone is buying elsewhere, and you don't sell at retail...it's probably not the customers' fault.

I bought a couple ships at a store I like with good atmosphere, but each ship costs a tiny bit above retail. If the ones I wanted weren't currently OOP, I'd buy elsewhere. Even though I like the store.

My usual place occasionally pops a 10% discount on. Not much, just enough to be a little bit less than before tax. And it's usually only tacked on when I spend over a certain amount. I never feel entitled to it, it's just a cool add-on when I get it. It was nice when I bought my $100 imperial star destroyer/advanced tie combo today.

Mine doesn't discount, but when you spend $50 you get a $5 dollar off a $10 purchase coupon. That means I've spent way more than I would normally. ( even if it is only $5-10 more) just to get the coupon.

With the wild fluctuation of the dollar in the last 18 months, I don't even know what retail for X-Wing is supposed to be.

And don't forget, taxes in my province are at 15%.

If I do simple math (FFG's site price) multiplied by the exchange rate, I get 19.88$ per ship, plus taxes, so about 23$. So even that store was only 11 cents above retail. It puts other store in perspective, though. Someone selling them for 15$ a pop is giving almost 25%.

FFG is a US company. So I have it easy to check in dollars. Small ships are 99% of the time set at $15. Or $14.99, w/e. The larger sized small ships (like K-Wing, Virago, Punisher) are $20, big ships are usually $30, hound's tooth is $40 (due to the Z-95 bonus), core sets are $40, and the aces are at $30. Big ships are scattered.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
hound's tooth is $40 (due to the Z-95 bonus)

The Hound's Tooth doesn't come with a Z-95. Like the Decimator, it's $40 because of it's size and they are the only two large based ships that cost that much, all of the others are $30.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
The Hound's Tooth doesn't come with a Z-95.

It durn't? That's a shame.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
The Hound's Tooth doesn't come with a Z-95.

It durn't? That's a shame.

Meh.

FFG is working under the assumption that most people have a Z-95 (or five...) laying around, especially since the Scum "starter set," Most Wanted, comes with two of them. In practice, it's kind of a so-so upgrade anyway. In no game have I played against someone with the title equipped on the ship has it even come close to turning the tide of the game in their favor.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
hound's tooth is $40 (due to the Z-95 bonus)

The Hound's Tooth doesn't come with a Z-95. Like the Decimator, it's $40 because of it's size and they are the only two large based ships that cost that much, all of the others are $30.

I just said Z-95 bonus. Sorry, should have been more specific that it included a dial. Yeehah!!

Alright, so $19.99 Cdn should be an alright price to pay for small ships? Not everyone can be Meeplemart, I know. $22.99 feels like I'm being gouged though...

 Lord Corellia wrote:
Alright, so $19.99 Cdn should be an alright price to pay for small ships? Not everyone can be Meeplemart, I know. $22.99 feels like I'm being gouged though...

The Kirhaxz I just bought cost me $19.99. Some older ships can be found for less, while the big ones (K-wing, Starviper) can hit $25. So that $22.99 would really depend on the ship.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
The Kirhaxz I just bought cost me $19.99. Some older ships can be found for less, while the big ones (K-wing, Starviper) can hit $25. So that $22.99 would really depend on the ship.

TIE Phantom and Bomber. Nooo thanks

Sounds about right though.