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I'm thinking of bringing one of the following lists to one of my rare Saturdays off, on May 20th

1)A Paul Heaver list, rather self explanatory:
Miranda Doni (29)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
Extra Munitions (2)
Sabine Wren (2)
Thermal Detonators (3)
Cluster Mines (4)
Advanced SLAM (2)

Biggs Darklighter (25)
R4-D6 (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Gold Squadron Pilot (18)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
R3-A2 (2)
BTL-A4 Y-Wing (0)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

2)A simple Combo that delivers a metric tonne of damage:
Rey (45)
Expertise (4)
Kanan Jarrus (3)
Finn (5)
Tactical Jammer (1)
Millennium Falcon (TFA) (1)

Jan Ors (25)
Trick Shot (0)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
Chewbacca (4)
Hull Upgrade (3)
Moldy Crow (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

3)A little home brew of mine. Untested:
Captain Rex (14)
Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1)

Biggs Darklighter (25)
R4-D6 (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Bodhi Rook (25)
Fire-Control System (2)
Jyn Erso (2)
Jan Ors (2)
Tactical Jammer (1)
Pivot Wing (0)

Jess Pava (25)
R3-A2 (2)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

The plan is to keep Rex to the side, and Biggs and Jess behind the U-Wing. Rex is fragile, but if I get him in a wide enough arc and don't worry about hitting as soon as possible, once he does, hopefully he is out of his target's arc, The plan is to make Biggs a bit more surviveable while those three 3-gun attacks hopefully chew through whatever is in front of that block? Stressy Jessy is for lulz.

IMO list #1 is the best one. It's a proven winner, and all of its elements are strong choices. I've been playing it a bunch lately (and had thought of it before it was popular!) and it's just a good list. U-boats + Fenn Rau is a problem (since they can bypass Biggs with ordnance), but that list is at least as difficult for the other two options to deal with.

List #2 has some impressive firepower when it's working well, but starts to look a lot less impressive if anything goes wrong. Stress control, powerful alpha strikes, Biggs, blocking, etc, can quickly ruin your plan and there's very little you can do about it. So yeah, you'll get some wins where rolling (effectively) 5-6 red dice wipes stuff off the table, but you'll probably also get some very one-sided losses when you hit a bad matchup. And that's not good for tournaments.

List #3 is just too much of a gimmick list IMO. You gain some stress control compared to the conventional Kanan + Biggs combo, but you lose firepower and the 360* arc that makes Kanan such a threat. U-wings just have not impressed me at all, it's way too easy to get behind them and their only option for turning around is incredibly predictable and kills their defense for a turn. You might be able to get away with using one in a support role, but here it's a core part of your list and once it's out of the fight you're in trouble. Worst of all, you haven't had an opportunity to test it, so you're probably going to lose games because you haven't figured out how to win yet.

Agreed on #1. What scares me a bit is that you have to combine being bold and tricky in your approach to drop bombs. A case in point. My friend has settled on a Whisper/Inquisitor/Pure Sabacc list for the tourney, so he is running the hell out of it for the past 2 weeks. I got rid of Sabacc very handily by pointing all my ships straight at it and dropping a bomb on my first pass.

I was desperately trying to turn my stresshog about when he decided to... let it be and go after Miranda. He'd just polished off Biggs and I wasn't feeling hopeful. But that gave me an opening to turn the hog around just in time to have him a)leave his Inquisitor stressed in the path of Miranda (so I basically knew which manoeuvres he would do to clear his stress) so I could drop bombs and b)force Whisper to manoeuvre through a debris field straight into the path of the hog.

But I still feel like I got a lucky break.

#2Does terrible against Tie/Ds, oddly enough. the repeated onslaught is just too much. I've had crushing defeats of overwhelming victories with it. You may be correct that it might be inherent in the list. Stress does shut it down if it piles up.

#3I want to try in a practice game just to at least have done it once.

I'm also voting for list 1, it's solid and proven, yep the Y-Wing has a weak(ish) dial but its nothing a bit of planning can't compensate for

Not sure about list 2, chucking and re-rolling lots of red dice is fun but I get the feeling a lot of games are going to be 0-100 or 100-00 (I had a Kanan Ghost with Jan that was quite similar in theory)

List 3, never flown U-Wings but games I've seen they just seem like bad Lambda's, slightly better dials but still quite mehh

I'd say they're good Lambdas. Nothing to write home about on most days. Great for casual fun. Essentially they're B-Wings writ large. If it weren't for the cost, I'd be curious to see 4 of them as a solid block breaking up formations.

With #1 I wonder how it works against a kanan-Biggs list or multiple ships with decent evade dice and good hit points (cough, jumpmasters, cough). Even with Sabine it only can do a total of 6 damage with bombs. ..

Apostasus wrote:
With #1 I wonder how it works against a kanan-Biggs list or multiple ships with decent evade dice and good hit points (cough, jumpmasters, cough). Even with Sabine it only can do a total of 6 damage with bombs. ..

Kanan-Biggs is survivable. Your own Biggs keeps your key ships alive while you kill their Biggs, and the combination of PS 8 donut-holing, regen, and action denial means that you can probably deal with Kanan. Miranda and the stresshog are putting out a consistent 4-6 hits per turn on Kanan, without even counting the bombs (up to 18 damage total if you have the dice and bomb placement of god, not 6). It's not an auto-win, but I think you can deal with it.

Jumpmasters are the real problem. Their HP isn't a big deal because you have TLTs to get damage through and regen to win the long game, the issue is their alpha strike ignoring Biggs and the near-immunity to stress control provided by mindlink. U-boats with Fenn Rau has a pretty decent shot of killing Miranda in a single turn, and then you lose the game. It's pretty much a hard counter, and you'd better hope you have a player skill advantage if you get paired against it.

I haven't seen Rau boats in my meta yet. But since I am "travelling" to this venue. (As in the store is about 15 minutes away by foot from the last stop on the subway line, in another city) I'm not too sure what their meta is.

I remember someone in a thread arguing to keep Biggs away from his wards at the first pass. Would spreading the targets wide on the first approach force a triple-jump/Rau boats list to commit and then you can reconvene and adjust?

I'm not going to get that many opportunities to fly against different lists, as my friend is pretty set on his and won't deviate.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I remember someone in a thread arguing to keep Biggs away from his wards at the first pass. Would spreading the targets wide on the first approach force a triple-jump/Rau boats list to commit and then you can reconvene and adjust?

The "keep Biggs back" plan is usually used when you can trade a few HP but not worry much about losing anything (like with Kanan/Biggs). With this list against Rau boats the alpha strike potential is just too much, they can nuke a ship off the table in a single turn. Keeping Biggs out of the fight just means you don't have that 3-dice gun shooting as they delete Miranda. Not that Biggs' ability helps much against those ordnance shots, but at least you might draw Fenn Rau's attack and keep the situation at "probably lose Miranda" instead of "game over, period".

So it turns out I need to know when to push my luck and not regenerate a shield. Trying to hurt 3 green dice target with only two red is not ideal.

So basically, if I have no one firing at Miranda, or only a single opponent, I can afford an extra die here and there, but I'm not too sure that it's worth it unless its Defenders. Damn Defenders.

If a target has two hit points left, though, I'd be tempted to regen a shield instead of going for the kill. Not aggressive enough?

There's a fine art to knowing when to spend that shield, and there's no consistent rule for it. You just have to anticipate how the game is going to go, and how much you can afford the risk. Sometimes you'll be in a position where it's clear that Miranda isn't at risk of much damage (thanks Biggs!) and you can afford to be aggressive even against full-HP ships, sometimes you obviously need as much tank as you can get. Just remember two things:

1) You can spend or regen the shield on either attack, so always do it on the second one. That way you get to see the outcome of the first attack before you commit. Forced them to spend all of their tokens and/or took them down to 1 HP with the first shot? Go for it. First shot failed and they still have lots of tokens? Accept that you're not dealing any damage and recover a shield instead. So right away that situation of going for the kill against a 2 HP target goes away, you either have a target at 1 HP against the second shot or know for sure that you aren't killing it this turn (though you may still want to spend a shield).

2) As nice as your shield HP is, remember that you still have that 5 HP hull as well. Sometimes you can play aggressively and take a damage card or two, especially if your opponent doesn't have any crit effects to really punish you for taking damage on the hull. And this can actually save you damage in the long run, as a dead ship is no longer rolling red dice at you while you try to regen tank later in the game.

Why the y-wing title though? You lose the whole point of a turret on a ship that's fairly easy to stay out of arc of. Am I missing something cause I normally avoid that title like the plague?

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Why the y-wing title though? You lose the whole point of a turret on a ship that's fairly easy to stay out of arc of. Am I missing something cause I normally avoid that title like the plague?

double stress from the bot, yes the double stress' the Y-Wing as well but as it's firing last and even actionless its chucking a fair few dice some damage will creep through, and whilst it can be dodged even one salvo causes enough problems to a lot of ships, you can also fire at different targets with primary and turret for thinly spread stress, its a smidge magical christmas land but worth considering

Ah okay I don't own the stress bot so I guess that's why I didn't see that combo.

Peregrine wrote:There's a fine art to knowing when to spend that shield, and there's no consistent rule for it. You just have to anticipate how the game is going to go, and how much you can afford the risk. Sometimes you'll be in a position where it's clear that Miranda isn't at risk of much damage (thanks Biggs!) and you can afford to be aggressive even against full-HP ships, sometimes you obviously need as much tank as you can get. Just remember two things:

1) You can spend or regen the shield on either attack, so always do it on the second one. That way you get to see the outcome of the first attack before you commit. Forced them to spend all of their tokens and/or took them down to 1 HP with the first shot? Go for it. First shot failed and they still have lots of tokens? Accept that you're not dealing any damage and recover a shield instead. So right away that situation of going for the kill against a 2 HP target goes away, you either have a target at 1 HP against the second shot or know for sure that you aren't killing it this turn (though you may still want to spend a shield).

2) As nice as your shield HP is, remember that you still have that 5 HP hull as well. Sometimes you can play aggressively and take a damage card or two, especially if your opponent doesn't have any crit effects to really punish you for taking damage on the hull. And this can actually save you damage in the long run, as a dead ship is no longer rolling red dice at you while you try to regen tank later in the game.

With the emphasis on high damage output in my meta, I'm not too comfortable flying without shields. Swarm Leader, the above Rey build, bunched Defenders, Phantoms+Inq and twin Lancers have all been very popular lately. I know you shouldn't always plan for a bad manoeuvre, but eh... True about the dead ships though. They do not fire back. It seems I am going to get to test the list less than I thought, as there is a surprise Q2 event next Tuesday. No time like the present, eh?

Turnip Jedi wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Why the y-wing title though? You lose the whole point of a turret on a ship that's fairly easy to stay out of arc of. Am I missing something cause I normally avoid that title like the plague?

double stress from the bot, yes the double stress' the Y-Wing as well but as it's firing last and even actionless its chucking a fair few dice some damage will creep through, and whilst it can be dodged even one salvo causes enough problems to a lot of ships, you can also fire at different targets with primary and turret for thinly spread stress, its a smidge magical christmas land but worth considering

It is potent on the first pass, often, but can leave you without a target for a few turns. I'm going to try to split up the Stresshog and Bigg/Miranda, to have converging fields of fire, rather than just one way to shoot. I am seriously considering maybe removing the title... but if I do, I hardly get the advantage of the stressbot often enough, and rarely stacked. The other option is just to git gud and learn to fly.

Gitting gud is harder than I thought.

I can't even blame abysmal dice, they were very, very average.

So my regular opponent kept himself so far out of range that he'd only have shots every two or three turns, but 4 red will take a toll eventually.

I met a very strange beast last night. A Dornitz/Oicunn build. Completely shut me down. He had Oicunn with BoShek, Intel Agent, Rebel Captive, EU, title and Daredevil.

I mis-identified Dornitz as the primary target, but it took too long to destroy him, he had a really good green die. Yes, single. But it must have come up evade... 8 out of 10 times. Insane. By the time I'd downed him, Oicunn was bashing into my ships with reckless abandon.

I'm thinking I need to corral my enemy a bit more into asteroids formation in order for the bombs to be effective.

Yeah, Oicunn is clearly the primary target there. Dormitz is irrelevant against a PS 8 ship with SLAM, so once you kill Ociunn you automatically win the game.

Also, bombs are ok when you get a good shot, but not your primary weapon against large ships. They have too much HP instead of green dice, so fixed HP damage is of much less value. Against something like Oicunn you're far better off focusing on the TLT and just plinking away with an automatic two damage per turn from long range. Their return fire becomes much less effective and they can't use their own bombs/ramming/etc.

It was the constant hit-and-two-crits that did me in. The guy could not miss to save his life.

He began by castling up in one corner of the board, so I decided to skirt him and try to come up outside of his shuttle's firing arc, I was just not ready for the shocking amount of ground a Decimator can cover when it can both Daredevil & Boost. At least now I know, if we meet again on the 20th (pretty sure we will) I'll have an inkling of what not to do.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was just not ready for the shocking amount of ground a Decimator can cover when it can both Daredevil & Boost.

I'm confused, how is he doing both at the same time?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was just not ready for the shocking amount of ground a Decimator can cover when it can both Daredevil & Boost.

I'm confused, how is he doing both at the same time?

I'd guess using the Upsilons co-ordinate to pass an action

Exactly.

Ok, so last update before the tourney tomorrow. I had one last game with my regular opponent who favours and practices almost exclusively with his Inq/Whisper/Pure Sabacc list.

I was able to dispatch him while losing only three shields with a set of factors in my favour: 1)he had terrible red dice. Not going to lie. 2)I kept my force tightly packed and forced him to manoeuvre around asteroids. This allowed me to fly in formation with Biggs and stress the Inq. and then Whisper on consecutive turns.

By not focusing on getting Pure Sabacc off the board first, I was able to deal early hits on his more capable ships and deal with Sabacc with Thermal Detonators (he'd chosen to keep initiative, his ships are 8/8/9 in PS) as an afterthought. This was great, it eased the pressure on Miranda. I didn't need to use a single shield to push damage through.

Alright, so I got a bye on my first game because we were 15 players. Great because I'd just downloaded a book on Watergate. It seemed topical.

"Second" game was against A Doomcimator, OLeader and Inq in their standard builds. (OLeader didn't have a SD)

Inq whiffed some early evade dice and got himself multi-stressed, thus unable to evade a thermal detonator. The Doomcimator damaged himself to kill Biggs, was unable to (thanks IA!) and landed on rocks twice in a row, rolling crits twice. 100-26

"Third" game was against a Chopper-Dash list, I got both ships down to half, but he was great at switching me out and out manoeuvering me. 100-50

Last game was against Miranda with Rey and Corran(a variant, R2-D2, Adv. Sensors, PTL and EU) He was very skittish and no damage was dealt for the first 30 minutes. I became very aggressive and super-stressed Corran. He double-tapped Miranda but was unable to finish her, while I focused him down and bombed him to death.

The last turn was "all in" for me as I SLAMmed within an inch of the board's edge to drop my last set of cluster mines on Miranda, with Biggs rolling a natural crit, hit, hit (I had no mods available, to boot) to barely finish his Miranda off. 100-0

I ended as second overall!

How do you like them evades!!!!

Well done mate!

Nice, congratulations