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Recently, one of the guys in my local group has acquired his third hound's tooth YV-666. After messing around for a bit, he discovered that by running 3 Trandoshan Slavers, he had enough points for a Z-95 and Zuckuss (Crew). The problem is that he has been essentially unstoppable ever since. The 180 degree firing arc on a Large base ship, combined with 40 Hull and Shield points, and 11 attack dice has proven difficult to deal with. He averages one YV lost a game, but has had quite a few where he managed to score a total win with only losing half a YV.

My question is, how the hell do I counter that? I have all the Rebel ships, and I have all of the Imperial ships minus the Imperial Veterans pack. I have essentially no scum ships (4 M3-As, a Y-wing, 2 Z-95s, a Star Viper, and 2 Firesprays).

So far, I have considered a squad of 4 Y-wings with TLT and R2 astromech, 5 A-Wings with Proton Rockets (that went exactly as well as it sounds), I am now considering trying 3 Wild Space Fringers (leaves 10 points to play with), A straight Academy Swarm (8 Tie is still only 24 HP though), 4 B-Wings (Not sure what I would do with the remaining 18 points), Two Decimators, or Two Falcons. Nothing I have considered has the matching Firepower or Hit Points to last in a straight up slug fest.

Play the maneuver game. YV-666's can't turn that fast, so get out of arc and pound them to dust. Also, if you can pile on some stress, then their dial gets terrible.

I would recommend a squad of interceptors with autothrusters etc. You should be able to out manuvour them then

A straight Academy Swarm (8 Tie is still only 24 HP though)

You don't need to match him hit points for hit points, though.

3 YV-666 is a scary prospect, but it can't dodge for jack; essentially any damage you hit them with will stick.

The Trandoshan slaver is PS2, so a 50-50 mix of Obsidian and Academy pilots gives you 8 attackers and the capacity both to shoot first and to block. Without engine upgrade or higher PS, they should have trouble avoiding you, and you've got the firepower to burn them down fast.

If you don't trust your green dice and want hull instead, 6 TIE bombers would give you 36 hull points - but only 12 attack dice (still more than him, though).


The other option is an Alpha Strike capable of taking down a YV-666.

Contracted Scout - Deadeye, Plasma Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Overclocked R4, Guidance Chips x 3

or especially

Gamma Squadron Pilot - Proton Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips x 3

Captain Jonus - Proton Torpedoes, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips x 3

should turn at least one trandoshan slaver into a cloud of expanding plasma in the first shooting phase. The second squad, especially, bungs 4 4-dice attacks downrange, each with one focus-to-critical, one whatever-to-hit, and two one-die rerolls. The odds are pretty good of four hits each, and even if he gets one evade on each attack, that's still enough to kill him before he ever gets to fire, and with extra munitions in the tank, you can do that twice.





I'd concur that ion tokens and stress tokens are a bad thing for a YV-666 to face.


Alternatively, you could go one better; 4 lambda shuttles with a mix of ion and flechette cannons and electronic baffles....not a great squad but even chunkier.

The 3 Slaver list can be even stronger if he drops the z-95 and adds in some k4 security droid, dengar crew, zuckuss crew, and 4-lom crew. If you bring a mediocre list to the table, you will have a hell of a time trying to win.

When flying against this list, your main goal is to kill two of the slavers before he wipes your list. Once he's down to one, you can easily maneuver in behind the last YV-666 and kill it (anything short of the Lambda shuttle can outmaneuver it).

Killing slavers is manily an excercize in focusing fire- if you can manage to get your entire squad pointed at one slaver for two turns in a row, it will almost certainly go down (and a lot of top-tier lists can focus them down in 1 turn with a bit of luck).

Here's where you really need to understand the Slaver's dials and think about where he's going to maneuver his ships:


In particular, slavers will do those 1 speed straight and bank maneuvers often to trigger their k4 security droids. And they will also do a lot of those faster maneuvers to be ornery and block your ships (they're good blockers - with that wide arc and low PS, they can sneak into gaps in your squadron and still have improbable in-arc shots). But once they overshoot your squad, they need a couple of turns to turn around - take advantage of that situation to maneuver into locations where the slavers have to split up their fire.