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Normally, when I'd see a Ywing , Hwk-290, or headhunters across the table, I usually don't worry too much, but since Scum came out, some combos and their pilot abilities can be pretty nasty. Is the list below viable or will it just get smacked?

(Ywing) Kavil + Opportunist + Blaster Turret + R4 Agromech

(Headhunter) N'Dru Suhlak + Outmanuever + Cluster Missle + Hot Shot Blaster

(Hwk-290) Palob Godalhi + Veteran Instinct + Blaster Turret + Outlaw Tech

(Headhunter) Binayre Pirate

Kavil can get up to 5 dice each turn and a target lock (in addition to getting the focus with your action) Opportunist can actually work because of Palob pulling a focus/evade from your target - that is the reason Palob gets the Veteran instincts - with the exception of the Binayre, all three are pilot skill 7. N'Dru goes off on a flank to get his bonus - including a cluster missle with two 4 damage dice attacks while possibly lowering the target's manuver by 1. Palob will usually go first and pull a focus/evade off a ship that the rest of the ships will target.

What do you all think or is this just going to die miserably?

The Good:

Kavil is pretty well equipped. Opportunist works well with Palob Godhali.

Binayre Pirate is good.

The Bad:

You want Lone Wolf on N'dru. It just works so well with his ability.

Ah, yes, definetely making that switch - with the extra point that frees up, possibly switch out the Outlaw Tech on Palob for a Proton Rocket on the Binayre? Or maybe a Hull Upgrade on one of the other ships?

There are three big problems here, and one smaller one:

1) You've got two blaster turrets as your primary damage output. If you get blocked/stressed/etc your damage drops to almost nothing. And you're helping your opponent stress and block you by putting opportunist on a ship with a 1-straight and 2-straight as its only green maneuvers. There will be a lot of games where your opponent is able to shut off the blaster turrets and deny you any realistic hope of winning.

2) You have no real defense. None of your ships have lots of green dice or defensive abilities, so you have to fight a battle of attrition and expect to lose ships. Each turn of shooting inevitably brings you closer to losing the game. Let's say you're playing against a BBBBZ list: they can take target locks to increase firepower without giving you focus to steal, wipe your HWK off the table in 1-2 turns at most, and then win the jousting fight with superior HP and firepower.

3) You're essentially playing a 3-ship list, but the three ships are all mid-PS pilots with no maneuvering actions. You can't out-PS the aces, and you can't take advantage of your PS advantage over the generics to maneuver out of their arcs. This puts you at a big disadvantage against jousting efficiency lists that can overwhelm you with better math since you don't have the traditional elite ability to avoid damage.

4) You're using N'Dru as a primary threat instead of a cheap supporting flanker. This isn't an automatically terrible idea, but it does put a lot of constraints on your deployment and maneuvering options. If you get anyone inside the range 1-2 bubble he instantly becomes a waste of points that you can't afford to suffer. You're going to have to be very careful to avoid this, and you may find that it's harder than it looks on paper.

That is true, this list does suffer defensively. So, I'd have to try and maximize damage early and quickly. I think my biggest problem is going to be getting into that 1-2 bubble and position N'dru to maximize his ability.

However, if I was facing a BBBBZ list, all my ships would fire (except Binarye) before theirs. Also, if I race ahead to get to range band 2, I'd fire 5 damage dice from Kavil, 8 from the cluster missle, 3 from Palob - all before they fired a single shot. WIth that much damage, and the B's only having 1 defense die and no upgrades, I should be able to destroy one of them and severily damage another one. Also, the B's are alot less Manueverable and I have two turrets that care much less on my positioning. The second round of firing would have me with 5 damage dice from Kavil, 4 from the hot shot blaster and 3 from Palob. That is still 12 damage dice and should theoretically take out the damaged Bwing that was left from the previous turn.

I think overall, this list plays much differently in styles than what is typical - Imperials have lots of green dice, not many hit points, rebels have lots of hit points but are easily hit. the scum philosophy is to alpha strike before they can overcome the parltry defense put up. I don't know, I've seen some scum lists that seem to use some of these that work simply because they can do enough damage early.

I guess what will make and break this list is if I can roll well on the alpha strike turn (s).

Azeroth wrote:
Also, if I race ahead to get to range band 2

But there's a major problem with this assumption: none of your ships are fast. Only your z-95s can do a 4-speed maneuver without giving up the ability to shoot, and none of them can boost. So it's very likely that you'll be forced into a range 3 exchange followed by range 1. And at range 3 you have three 2-dice attacks and a 1-die attack, against four 3-dice attacks and a 2-dice attack. Then on the following turn you have your 16 dice*, but you're taking up to 19 in return (15 if you kill a b-wing before it shoots).

*Unless you get blocked and don't get to use your blaster turrets at all. Which, if you're racing ahead as fast as possible, is a very serious threat.

I'd fire 5 damage dice from Kavil

No you don't. You had to do a straight maneuver to have any hope of getting into range 1-2 without a range 3 turn, so you're taking an in-arc shot and losing a die. Then you're almost certainly not going to use opportunist in that situation because it's a suicidally bad place to have a stressed y-wing.

8 from the cluster missle

There's a big problem with this assumption: you have to stay outside range 1-2 of all of your other ships. This means you're probably either losing the bonus dice or having a lot of trouble coordinating fire on the same target your other ships are attacking.

Also, the B's are alot less Manueverable

Actually this is wrong. The b-wing has much better maneuverability than the HWK, and about the same dial as the y-wing but with a barrel roll option. And the b-wings gain even more of a maneuverability advantage when you remember that Kavil can't do red maneuvers and, if you're using opportunist, can't even do white maneuvers.

The second round of firing would have me with 5 damage dice from Kavil

Not if you had 5 last turn. Your greens are easy to predict and you can expect to find a blocking ship in your path, which limits you to a primary weapon shot at best.

the scum philosophy is to alpha strike before they can overcome the parltry defense put up.

Not really. The scum alpha strike isn't really any better than what you can do with rebels or imperials. In fact, given your reliance on range 1-2 blaster turrets a rebel or imperial alpha strike list is probably significantly better since it's going to be based around missiles/torps and HLCs.

I think the issue is you have 3 fancy guys that all do wildly different things but no "meat and potatoes" so to speak of to beef out your squad.

Honestly, I would pick one, maybe two, of those pilots, and build a list from the ground up with them in mind. The Y Wing pilot for example is an interesting idea, although I would throw the unhinged mech on instead, to give you more green to keep you shooting. I'd rather have a mostly green dial to a chance to get a target lock when I occasionally get to shoot.

The Z95 guy is also an interesting pilot, but I agree with Peregrine that he's practically made for lone wolf and kept as cheap as possible. I'd give him lone wolf, dead man's switch, and make him go nuts in the enemy formation to throw as many wrenches in the other guys plans as possible.

As for the hawk, I have no idea what that one does, but my favorite is the PS0 ability guy. He works best with a swarm though, so you can have as many ships as possible to bully the PS0 phantom, falcon, E-wing, etc. No point in him working with named pilots really.

I could see the Y and Z guys you picked working together in a list with some cheap backup (maybe a couple warthog Y's flying wingman for the named guy with the turret for example) or just a bunch of Z's. I'm still learning scum myself though so Id need to play around with it to find what works.

99 points

Pilots
------

N’Dru Suhlak (21)
Z-95 Headhunter (17), Dead Man's Switch (2), Lone Wolf (2)

Kavil (30)
Y-Wing (24), Blaster Turret (4), Unhinged Astromech (1), Veteran Instincts (1)

Syndicate Thug (24) x 2
Y-Wing (18), Ion Cannon Turret (5), Unhinged Astromech (1), BTL-A4 Y-Wing (0)

I've played a variation on this that works pretty synergistecally - they all fly pretty slow together. Mux makes the target PS0, Kavil and Palob dump 5-4 shots out ( Kavil strips shields, Palob puts the hurt on since if you start slow he should have 4+ focus stored up and then Mux finishes him off or ions the next target).
Feedback is for the arc dodgers/interceptors
Things to watch out for:
Range three stuff is scary
Greedo makes me nervous
I waffled btwn Recon and K4 but having the reserve of focus helps when stress hits

(Ywing) Kavil + Opportunist + Blaster Turret + R4 Agromech

(Hwk-290) Palob Godalhi + Opportunist + Blaster Turret + Recon Spec + moldy crow + Feedback Array + Hull Upgrade

(Hwk-290) Torkhil Mux + Ion Turret + Greedo + Feedback Array

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
I think the issue is you have 3 fancy guys that all do wildly different things but no "meat and potatoes" so to speak of to beef out your squad.

Honestly, I would pick one, maybe two, of those pilots, and build a list from the ground up with them in mind. The Y Wing pilot for example is an interesting idea, although I would throw the unhinged mech on instead, to give you more green to keep you shooting. I'd rather have a mostly green dial to a chance to get a target lock when I occasionally get to shoot.

The Z95 guy is also an interesting pilot, but I agree with Peregrine that he's practically made for lone wolf and kept as cheap as possible. I'd give him lone wolf, dead man's switch, and make him go nuts in the enemy formation to throw as many wrenches in the other guys plans as possible.

As for the hawk, I have no idea what that one does, but my favorite is the PS0 ability guy. He works best with a swarm though, so you can have as many ships as possible to bully the PS0 phantom, falcon, E-wing, etc. No point in him working with named pilots really.

I could see the Y and Z guys you picked working together in a list with some cheap backup (maybe a couple warthog Y's flying wingman for the named guy with the turret for example) or just a bunch of Z's. I'm still learning scum myself though so Id need to play around with it to find what works.

99 points

Pilots
------

N’Dru Suhlak (21)
Z-95 Headhunter (17), Dead Man's Switch (2), Lone Wolf (2)

Kavil (30)
Y-Wing (24), Blaster Turret (4), Unhinged Astromech (1), Veteran Instincts (1)

Syndicate Thug (24) x 2
Y-Wing (18), Ion Cannon Turret (5), Unhinged Astromech (1), BTL-A4 Y-Wing (0)

I like the triple ywing idea.

Kavil that can dish out the big damage, and two ion cannon ywings to immobilize most of their list. I really like the thought of taking out two of those multiple B-wing lists with this every turn.

Quick question - If I hit the Falcon (or any other large ship) with two ion cannon shots, will it suffer the same effect that shooting a small based ship will? If so, has anyone had success with this against any large based ship lists?

I could see you blasting one Bwing and making the other ionized, but Idont see you taking two ships out completely. Y wings are super predictable flyers and even more so with a locked turret. B wings are better in almost every way over a y wing, which is why you see more of them. I'd be careful, especially against anything that issues stress out to Kavil and then makes your locked y wings dogfight.


Big ships require two ion tokens before they feel the effects of the ionization

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
99 points

Pilots
------

N’Dru Suhlak (21)
Z-95 Headhunter (17), Dead Man's Switch (2), Lone Wolf (2)

Kavil (30)
Y-Wing (24), Blaster Turret (4), Unhinged Astromech (1), Veteran Instincts (1)

Syndicate Thug (24) x 2
Y-Wing (18), Ion Cannon Turret (5), Unhinged Astromech (1), BTL-A4 Y-Wing (0)

This is a good list on paper, but in reality I've found that mass "warthogs" has major issues with range. You have essentially no threat outside of range 2, and no fast maneuvers or boost to close the distance asap and avoid a range-3 exchange. IMO the "warthog" is best as a support ship for a big long-range threat, so that your opponent can't easily exploit their lack of range before they close in and start killing stuff.

And of course it still has the same problems with the blaster turret in general: if Kavil gets stressed or blocked he's a very expensive paperweight. And without the R4 droid the blaster turret is hardly doing more damage than an ion turret with focus/TL.

Yeah I tried them for the first time the other day and found the same things you did. Overall I'm not really crazy about them. They're a cool idea and all but they don't really match my playstyle very well, as I prefer lots of more maneuverable ships like TIE's or interceptors. The unhinged droid is a pretty sweet upgrade for a Y though, really opens up its dial a bit and makes it a far more useful ship. I would honestly probably consider it close to mandatory, at least for how I like to play.

I do need to try my idea for a YYZZZZ list that I came up with the other day though, maybe warthogs would work better with that.

Building on the 3 ywing thing - what about this for rebels:

(Y-wing) Dutch + Autoblaster + R2 Astromech + BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(B-wing) Blue Squad

(Z95) Bandit Squad

That is a total of 36 hit points. The autoblasters can't be stopped by defense dice, so no C-3po, no 4 defense dice or fel evade + 4 defense + aut Phantoms, not to mention that being at range 1, the primary weapon would be at 3 dice too. And with Dutch handing out target locks, I should have a good chance to hit with the two dice on the autoblaster. Then add a solid Bwing and z95 harasser. I know that those a-wing won't be doing much until they get to range 1, but they have the hit points to get there.

Azeroth wrote:
Building on the 3 ywing thing - what about this for rebels:

(Y-wing) Dutch + Autoblaster + R2 Astromech + BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(B-wing) Blue Squad

(Z95) Bandit Squad

That is a total of 36 hit points. The autoblasters can't be stopped by defense dice, so no C-3po, no 4 defense dice or fel evade + 4 defense + aut Phantoms, not to mention that being at range 1, the primary weapon would be at 3 dice too. And with Dutch handing out target locks, I should have a good chance to hit with the two dice on the autoblaster. Then add a solid Bwing and z95 harasser. I know that those a-wing won't be doing much until they get to range 1, but they have the hit points to get there.

I would go ahead and count on never having a Phantom or Interceptor at Range 1, in arc of a Y Wing.

Except for random luck or a very bad maneuver by a player that isn't used to flying those ships.

Azeroth wrote:
Building on the 3 ywing thing - what about this for rebels:

(Y-wing) Dutch + Autoblaster + R2 Astromech + BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(Y-wing) Gold Squad + Autoblaster +BTLA4

(B-wing) Blue Squad

(Z95) Bandit Squad

This is another "looks good on paper, doesn't work on the table" list. You gain firepower at range 1, lose the ability to cripple a target with ion tokens, and make the "helpless at long range" problem even worse. Now instead of being weak in a range-3 exchange and having to maneuver very carefully to jump straight into range 2 you've removed your ability to do any meaningful damage at range 2 and virtually guaranteed that you will have to face at least one turn of shooting before you can return fire effectively.

The autoblasters can't be stopped by defense dice, so no C-3po, no 4 defense dice or fel evade + 4 defense + aut Phantoms, not to mention that being at range 1, the primary weapon would be at 3 dice too.

The problem is that most of those targets just aren't going to be in arc at range 1. Fat Han is faster than your y-wings and has no reason to be anywhere near an autoblaster, Fel is either going to dodge your arc entirely or kite you at range 2-3, etc. Sure, when you get lucky and catch one of those targets you'll do some damage, but how many turns of unopposed shooting are you going to concede before that happens? Will you even have a ship left by the time you get your opponent to make a mistake with Fel?

I know that those a-wing won't be doing much until they get to range 1, but they have the hit points to get there.

They really don't. You're pretty much guaranteed to lose at least one of them in the initial round of shooting (before you can get into autoblaster range) unless your opponent decides to kill the b-wing instead. And if you're at a PS disadvantage there's a very real chance that a second y-wing is going to die next turn before it can shoot, even if you did manage to line up a shot. HP tanking ships like the y-wing and b-wing are great when you're trading fire and making your opponent pay for each HP they remove, they're much less impressive when you have to burn lots of HP before you can get them into the fight.

(This is why b-wings are good, they can contribute meaningful damage regardless of range and don't have to waste any HP before they get into the fight.)

I largely agree with the sentiments posted above. I've tried to work both Kavil and Warthog Y-wings into a competetive list for a while and in the end its just not enough against top tier opponents. No competant player is going to let you close to range 1 to use your auto-blasters. The Y-wings just don't have the speed and agility to close the distance. Things like Falcons, Decimators, Phantoms, Soontir Fel, Super Dash, Firesprays and Agressors are all going to arc dodge or stay at range 2-3 and blast you to bits.