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As the title, excluding Brobots?

Guri Star Viper is pretty good. Yes, she is generally a point sink, but, one of the few aces. Talon bane Cobra is also good. Trick for taking on late game aces is to not let them get to shoot you. If you can push them towards a corner, they become more predictable. It is a tough thing, as most S&V aces have lower pilot skills.

The simple answer here is that you have to do it early or you don't kill them at all. If you're fighting an endgame match against Fel/Corran/etc then you've probably lost the game. You have nothing that can match their maneuverability or defense, and your only hope is for dice luck to go significantly in your favor. You need to kill those threats early in the game while you still have a lot of ship on the table to overwhelm them.

 martin74 wrote:
Guri Star Viper is pretty good.

No. Guri is terrible in this role. PS 5 is way too low to fight endgame aces, you're probably never going to get a shot with her.

Talon bane Cobra is also good.

Not really. He's not bad if you have him alive at the end of the game, but getting him there is really difficult. He's an extreme glass cannon like Wedge and very unlikely to survive until endgame.

TLT can plink away at them from long range. It's not terribly fast or efficient, but I ended up killing Vader and Fel with a single TLT while they were busy chasing other things around the board.

Peregrine, I know it's not perfect. But it's part of a solution to a complicated situation.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
TLT can plink away at them from long range. It's not terribly fast or efficient, but I ended up killing Vader and Fel with a single TLT while they were busy chasing other things around the board.

Peregrine, I know it's not perfect. But it's part of a solution to a complicated situation.

I think the problem with TLTs is that you have to win with them early in the game, just like all of the tools scum have. A single TLT just doesn't have enough damage to get through the tank on Fel or Corran, and even with two of them you'll probably have trouble getting shots with both. It's still a great weapon but winning endgame situations against aces is not one of its strong points.

I am rather fond of Fet+Vet Instincts+Engine Upgrade.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
TLT can plink away at them from long range. It's not terribly fast or efficient, but I ended up killing Vader and Fel with a single TLT while they were busy chasing other things around the board.

Peregrine, I know it's not perfect. But it's part of a solution to a complicated situation.

I think the problem with TLTs is that you have to win with them early in the game, just like all of the tools scum have. A single TLT just doesn't have enough damage to get through the tank on Fel or Corran, and even with two of them you'll probably have trouble getting shots with both. It's still a great weapon but winning endgame situations against aces is not one of its strong points.

True. I re-read the op and his focus on late game. I think that late game... you have to have had a plan coming in. I think having a large number of hit points on a big base such as a YV-666 and a couple of TLT, from my limited experience, helps with a constant source of weak damage that adds up. I agree that it's not a panacea.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I think having a large number of hit points on a big base such as a YV-666 and a couple of TLT, from my limited experience, helps with a constant source of weak damage that adds up.

TLTs can certainly help. They're actually very good early in the game, when you can concentrate enough fire on an ace to overwhelm their tank. TLT effectiveness against aces isn't linear with the number of TLTs. One can't break the tank at all, two are a threat but you'll have a hard time getting shots with both, and then three or more (or two with another threat to cover the donut hole) overwhelm the ace's limited supply of tokens and start getting damage through. You just have to think of your TLTs as an early-game ship and go straight for the kill, and not assume that you can win an endgame fight with them.

Kill them early while you have all your ships and upgrades.
Or, kill the meaty big ships (fat han, palp-mobile, deci) then play keep away for 45 minutes.

dkellyj wrote:
Kill them early while you have all your ships and upgrades.

That's kind of my take as well. A player with aces wants to be in a situation where it's his Ace/Aces vs your weakened squadron. As a scum player, you should be taking advantage of your more generally powerful special abilities and upgrades to weaken/control his list and negate the advantages of his PS and special abilities.

Indeed. By comparison, scum have lots of ways of killing or weakening aces early in the game, with lots of cheap tools like feedback arrays, hotshots, etc that can briefly give you the edge - you need to capitalise on this to build up a lead they can't come back from.

If worried about an arc dodger, then...yeah. One on one your best dogfighting ship is the Starviper, but neither pilot is an especially fantastic ace hunter and they're both expensive. At the same time, they can be okay, but they take a lot of work to use right; against a higher PS pilot in something manoeuvrable, Guri is unlikely to get her pilot ability to trigger, whilst Xizor's ability is great for getting him to the endgame more-or-less unscathed but isn't any good once he gets there.

Things like inertial dampers are good at giving you a one-turn edge, but aren't sustainable. If you must dogfight in a starviper, look to upgrades that don't take up actions (lone wolf, sensor jammer, autothrusters) and try to avoid pulling red maneuvers - it gives you back the edge against a TIE interceptor because 99.99% of the time people take push the limit and tend to use it even when they didn't really need to, which can lead to their otherwise manoeuvrable squint being nailed to the so-so green parts of its dial.

Also, if facing an ace, bug-zapper Z-95s are a godsend. They're like Academy Pilot blockers, but provide a huge no-go area bubble to fence in something like a TIE interceptor.

locarno24 wrote:
Also, if facing an ace, bug-zapper Z-95s are a godsend. They're like Academy Pilot blockers, but provide a huge no-go area bubble to fence in something like a TIE interceptor.

Not just aces, but arc dodgers in general. I played with a pair of Feedbacked Z-95s against a triple Interceptor list, and they accounted for the majority of the damage. Being able to crash into aces and still do damage (that ignores green dice!) is amazing.

Not from tournament play but two ships I have had luck with against aces are:

Emon Azzameen
Conner Net or Proximity Mines can cause some havoc early or late game to aces, and with Emon you have a ton of bomb dropping coverage and with the rear arc you don't usually sacrifice a shot to drop bombs.

Bossk
- Marksmanship
- Gunner
- Tactician
- (optional) Engine upgrade, cluster missle, K4 Security Droid

With the 180 degree firing arc you'll very likely have arc dodgers in arc at long to mid range. With marksmanship and gunner you will very likely deal 2 damage if a shot gets through (due to bossk's ability), also with tactician even if you miss both attacks thats potential 2 stress tokens. Combine that with Cluster missile you get a nasty once off attack at range 2. But once they get behind you its pretty rough...

HWK-290 with TLT and tactician could be effective too but not as good as the K-wing

I was also thinking... Torkil Mux can also be used to power down high-PS aces, by making sure your whole roster gets a shot at them.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was also thinking... Torkil Mux can also be used to power down high-PS aces, by making sure your whole roster gets a shot at them.

Main problem with that is that if things are going well for my ace, you don't get a shot on them. Sure, it can put the nails in any mistake-coffins, but it won't help you against a player who is already winning.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Main problem with that is that if things are going well for my ace, you don't get a shot on them. Sure, it can put the nails in any mistake-coffins, but it won't help you against a player who is already winning.

Exactly. Mux was great against TIE phantoms (and still is, if your metagame still uses them) because he keeps ACD from triggering and giving extra defense dice. When a phantom is only rolling two green dice even a z-95 is a major threat. But PS 0 is much less of a problem when your defense isn't tied to being able to shoot first, you can just turtle up with a stack of tokens and/or shield regen and wait for your turn. A good ace player isn't going to willingly put their key ship in a position where they have to kill a threat before it can shoot if they expect to survive, they're going to maneuver away and wait for a better opportunity. Mux can make sure that last-chance throw of the red dice doesn't bail your opponent out of a bad situation, but he does very little to help you set up that bad situation.


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IMO the scum HKW that is really scary for aces is the one that steals focus or evade tokens. Aces need those tokens to survive, take them away and you can end a game really quickly. In real games it's actually kind of rare to get to use his pilot ability since your opponent knows this and will do everything they can to stay away, but that range 1-2 bubble is a huge no-fly zone for the ace and helps a lot in setting up a kill shot with your other ships.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Main problem with that is that if things are going well for my ace, you don't get a shot on them. Sure, it can put the nails in any mistake-coffins, but it won't help you against a player who is already winning.

Exactly. Mux was great against TIE phantoms (and still is, if your metagame still uses them) because he keeps ACD from triggering and giving extra defense dice. When a phantom is only rolling two green dice even a z-95 is a major threat. But PS 0 is much less of a problem when your defense isn't tied to being able to shoot first, you can just turtle up with a stack of tokens and/or shield regen and wait for your turn. A good ace player isn't going to willingly put their key ship in a position where they have to kill a threat before it can shoot if they expect to survive, they're going to maneuver away and wait for a better opportunity. Mux can make sure that last-chance throw of the red dice doesn't bail your opponent out of a bad situation, but he does very little to help you set up that bad situation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
IMO the scum HKW that is really scary for aces is the one that steals focus or evade tokens. Aces need those tokens to survive, take them away and you can end a game really quickly. In real games it's actually kind of rare to get to use his pilot ability since your opponent knows this and will do everything they can to stay away, but that range 1-2 bubble is a huge no-fly zone for the ace and helps a lot in setting up a kill shot with your other ships.

Actually, come to think of it, if I have an ace stuck in the open, I would love to shoot last unless there is a soft, hard-hitting target I could kill easily. This way, I can see if I need to save Focus/Emperor for defence rather than attacking. No more waffling because I rolled all focus results! If I still have focus then, I can use it!

So it's a worse idea than initially stated.

IMO the scum HKW that is really scary for aces is the one that steals focus or evade tokens. Aces need those tokens to survive, take them away and you can end a game really quickly. In real games it's actually kind of rare to get to use his pilot ability since your opponent knows this and will do everything they can to stay away, but that range 1-2 bubble is a huge no-fly zone for the ace and helps a lot in setting up a kill shot with your other ships.

Works well paired with a twin laser turret, I find. Try to hide in the bubble and you find your tokens disappearing and someone else shoots you, try to stay away, and you get pelted with an additional two 3-dice attacks that will probably burn said token anyway.

Screw up and land in range 2 and you're really in trouble as you get hit with both...

I know the blaster turret is a nice cheap option as you can feed it with the stolen tokens, but a TLT gives you more tactical options for not all that many more points.

Also pairing a Scum HWK-290 with TLT and tactician is pretty nasty against aces, even more if its palob.

I like (on paper) the duo of an Ion ships, preferable turrets, with a titled Y-wing with TLT. the Ion keeps them flying predictably, and the Title allows up to 4 damage a round...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
in practice, The y's are shredded too quickly fore my taste.

One other option with Scum HWK-290s is if you take Dance Bonearm and have another ship with a few Conner nets. All you got to do is drop that Conner net on an ace and you can deal 2 damage (with Dance), and next turn it's ionized and cant perform actions... that's when you throw everything you got against it.

I think that you need to find a way to prevent them from becoming 'Late Game Aces'... take them out early with a few Feedback Array hits from expendable Z-95's... preferably early. Don't depend on dice if you can avoid it.

 easypeasylemonsquezy wrote:
Also pairing a Scum HWK-290 with TLT and tactician is pretty nasty against aces, even more if its palob.

Remember that tactician only works on in-arc shots, which makes it pretty bad on a HWK.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 easypeasylemonsquezy wrote:
One other option with Scum HWK-290s is if you take Dance Bonearm and have another ship with a few Conner nets. All you got to do is drop that Conner net on an ace and you can deal 2 damage (with Dance), and next turn it's ionized and cant perform actions... that's when you throw everything you got against it.

The problem here is that now you're spending multiple ships on killing the ace, and that's almost certainly tailoring your list too much.

So, I remembered this thread last night as I was playing scum against a Jax/Fel/Vader list. I had a useless IG-88B (I made it useless by flying like a turd). The rest of my list were three bugzappers with Hull upgrade.

I'll preface this by saying that, again, I am blessed in having opponents that love clipping asteroids, but all I lost was my Aggressor. Which, all in all, it was a big laZ0r magnet, I'm not going to complain.

But with careful flying, I was able to keep Vader within a Range 1 bubble of at least one Z-95 for the last 4 or 5 rounds.