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https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/11/22/fly-backward/










Funky Little Ship we're getting here.

Scavenger Crane on Dengaroo to reclaim Countermeasures?

Ok!

The abilities seem powerful, but the stats on this ship are direly poor. It's not quite as disposable as a TIE, but it's going to get blown up just as fast.

The tug array is an action, so the PS1 quadjumper will be able to assign tractor beam tokens at will. Because it happens during the action step of the activation phase, enemy ships have no recourse - you have perfect information, probably moving first, and so can dial in exactly the maneuver you need to get the enemy ace in range 1 and activate the spacetug array. Proceed to throw the enemy ace onto a rock, or into a bump.

Unkar Plutt seems like a strong dedicated blocker, but is kind of expensive. Is the tractor beam token and reverse maneuvers worth the 5 point premium over a Z-95?

Zuvio's ability is great as bomb abilities go. Unfortunately, I still think bombs are severely under-powered without Sabine.

Scavenger Crane is odd. Right now, it only seems to work on:
Countermeasures
Stealth Device
Missiles
Torpedoes
Bombs

On most Scum ships, it seems like it would serve mostly as kind of a situational Extra Munitions. Can multiple friendly ships trigger it off of one destroyed enemy ship?

First impressions:

Generic: dear god is this thing scary. The basic stat line compares reasonably well to the TIE fighter benchmark (+2 HP, -1 agility for +3 points), and the upgrade bar is good if a bit expensive to fill properly. But it's the auto-include modification that makes this thing a nightmare. Like conner nets it happens before an ace can do anything to dodge it, you just line up your maneuver based on where they start the turn and automatically succeed. And even if you can't put your target onto a rock that agility penalty can be crippling. At 17 points each you can bring several of them, creating the possibility of having low-HP aces reduced to rolling zero defense dice with enough points left over to bring a powerful threat to get the kill shot. It does have some weaknesses (weak against alpha strikes, minimal effect on large-base "brick of HP" ships) so it probably won't break the metagame, but it's likely to be a very real threat. The reverse maneuver is probably a gimmick since it's likely to take you out of tractor range, but the rest of the dial is ok (though weird, 1-straight and 1-turns but no 1-bank?) so it doesn't seem to be a liability. And upgrade-wise crew, bombs, and illicit all have powerful options if you feel like you can afford to invest in this ship.

Spacetug Tractor Array: another one of those "only a separate card because of text length issues" upgrades. This is what makes the ship worth using. You will take it at all times. If you don't then why are you wasting points on a bad ship?

Unkar Plutt (pilot): probably not worth it? PS 3 is almost worse than PS 1, and trying to set up a block is likely less efficient than just using the normal tractor beam. I suppose there's the potential to tractor a ship as an action and have them run into you for a second tractor beam token, but that seems to be a bit optimistic. And with such a fragile ship you probably want to keep it cheap and efficient.

Constable Zuvio: meh? Dirt cheap for PS 7, but PS 7 is almost a liability on a bomb + tractor beam ship. And without scavenger crane it's a one-shot pilot ability. But it's a really good ability when it works, so maybe good enough overall to see a bit of use? 25 points minimum just seems a bit steep for such a fragile ship, but I could be wrong.

Unkar Plutt (crew): bad. Spend points and a crew slot on an upgrade that only helps if I screw up my maneuver, and I have to take damage to use it? No thanks.

Scavenger Crane: extra munitions for ships without a torpedo slot. The relevant things to return are bombs and stealth device/countermeasures. Dengaroo is probably going to abuse this, since countermeasures is really good as it is against anything resembling a jousting swarm. And now you can get several turns of countermeasures instead of just one. Amusingly Sabine (crew) on the PS 7 TIE fighter (PS 9 with VI) and captured TIE could fly around dropping extra-damage bombs while being immune to return fire. Gimmick? Probably, but it might be fun to try.

A Score to Settle: now we see why it's a zero-point EPT, the effect works both ways. It's a double-edged sword and you have to be very careful about it, especially since picking a ship is not optional. It could be a niche-role thing if you have a ship that is unlikely to take damage at all or you're facing fully-modified dice already (making the return fire effect redundant), but it's certainly much less of an auto-include than it seemed when the first wave 10 article was posted.

Hehe, well with 5 hull, how on earth did this get blasted apart so quickly by a TIE/fo in The Force Awakens?! Unless it was a range band 1 shot with nothing but double damage crits.

Parked craft, possibly be refueled may have given extra attack dice. In other words, "A dark path logic is, once you travel down its road, much diminished your game enjoyment will be"

This thing has a reverse - and bombs you can toss out the front?!? My brother is going to love this. He is a bombing bastard.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Hehe, well with 5 hull, how on earth did this get blasted apart so quickly by a TIE/fo in The Force Awwhoses?! Unless it was a range band 1 shot with nothing but double damage crits.

On screen appearance by Omega Ace.



it's a scary little ship. Devastating its not, but its hella capable for 15 points. The tug array is so useful it's pretty much an automatic choice. I findmyself wondering if you could even make a non-crack shot analogue to a crack swarm - two dice attacks is less of an issue with reverse and nice tight segnors to get range 1,and tractor tokens a go go to mess with green dice.

Countermeasures on dengar is nice - it's a gamble (trading your one manaroo independent turn of Glitterstim for a second turn of countermeasures - maybe more but you can't rely on that) - but a defendable one.

The other one that worries me is Ndru Sulhak getting a second volley of bloody cluster missiles.

locarno24 wrote:
The other one that worries me is Ndru Sulhak getting a second volley of bloody cluster missiles.

Not likely to be an issue. You lose glitterstim, making the missile shot much less effective, and setting up two effective shots is much easier said than done. N'dru is likely to be out of position or destroyed as it is, expecting 2+ shots even with unlimited missiles is pretty optimistic.

 Peregrine wrote:
Generic: dear god is this thing scary.

Holy hell! A swarm of these little things would be brutal. You could even take five all with Tactician and Slicers.

Ketsu Onyo, could also be quite effective in a Swarm, or you could even load them all up with feedback array to put guaranteed damage on high agility targets, even if they're behind you.

I think the crew card can combo well with gonk on large ships, still able to take an action/ptl and then can gonk next turn after the block

Oberron wrote:
I think the crew card can combo well with gonk on large ships, still able to take an action/ptl and then can gonk next turn after the block

That doesn't make any sense. You're spending two actions on later turns (plus the points and crew slots!) to get one action this turn, which is terrible action economy. And the only scum ship with two crew slots is the 1-agility YV-666, where HP regen is weak and the standard "party bus" setup doesn't have room for the combo.

 Peregrine wrote:

Oberron wrote:
I think the crew card can combo well with gonk on large ships, still able to take an action/ptl and then can gonk next turn after the block

That doesn't make any sense. You're spending two actions on later turns (plus the points and crew slots!) to get one action this turn, which is terrible action economy. And the only scum ship with two crew slots is the 1-agility YV-666, where HP regen is weak and the standard "party bus" setup doesn't have room for the combo.

Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

Oberron wrote:
Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

That doesn't make any sense either. How does that proverb correspond to taking Unkar Plutt and Gonk over Party Bus? The Party Bus isn't two birds in a bush. It's a whole KFC bucket in your hand. PTL+Gonk+Unkar Plutt is the food equivalent of a hairy sultana that you found down the back of a chair. Even if it was in your hand, and there were no birds in the bush... you still wouldn't want it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On a high PS ship, Unkar Plutt crew might be reasonable as insurance against blockers, but I can't think of many Scum ships where you would want to burn your crew slot for that, especially with so many other powerful Crew options. Maybe on a Shadow Caster where you want to be able to rotate your arc, or Constable Zuvio, so he can still drop his bombs, but even then you still have to take damage which sucks.

The only other reason I can think of to take it, might be on a ship with Intimidation, but that would only work if you were bumping lower PS ships. The Unkar Plutt pilot card would be better, and it wouldn't cost you a damage.

If only Constable Zuvio were a low pilot skill ship. Tractor-Block and then next turn hit the reverse after dropping a bomb? It is putting a lot of faith in the guy, but it seems cool. If you were even more confident in the guy, take the scavenger arm to do it again and again. Not that he'd live long enough.

Adaptability makes him PS 6, but ships like Vessery and Ryad still move first.

Let's not forget that this guy has a tech slot... Wait, if you take one of these with the Tech upgrade that ignores stress for actions until 3 stress, you can drop a bomb and barrel roll off of a reverse maneuver. Constable says you may drop a bomb or use an action-bomb, so it'd have to be reveal-bombs if you are planning on rolling.

Proxied in the gunrunner with mod alongside my normal party bus and Ventress builds tonight, must say I was impressed. Although it is all kinds of squishy, with a HLC bus it was excellent at pushing ships out of range one and the reduced agility really paid off.

Not sure if there is a better load out for it though, loading it up is very tempting but I cant see how it would ever make its points back. Does anyone have any idea of decent tech for it? I only play scum nowadays and have never had the opportunity for tech before.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and reverses are funny but always felt like using it for the sake of it, like a defenders K.

I deem this ship capable of hi-jinx, shenanigans and maybe even capers (but I'd need some on the table play to confirm that last one)

 Smacks wrote:

Oberron wrote:
Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

That doesn't make any sense either. How does that proverb correspond to taking Unkar Plutt and Gonk over Party Bus? The Party Bus isn't two birds in a bush. It's a whole KFC bucket in your hand. PTL+Gonk+Unkar Plutt is the food equivalent of a hairy sultana that you found down the back of a chair. Even if it was in your hand, and there were no birds in the bush... you still wouldn't want it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On a high PS ship, Unkar Plutt crew might be reasonable as insurance against blockers, but I can't think of many Scum ships where you would want to burn your crew slot for that, especially with so many other powerful Crew options. Maybe on a Shadow Caster where you want to be able to rotate your arc, or Constable Zuvio, so he can still drop his bombs, but even then you still have to take damage which sucks.

The only other reason I can think of to take it, might be on a ship with Intimidation, but that would only work if you were bumping lower PS ships. The Unkar Plutt pilot card would be better, and it wouldn't cost you a damage.

I never said anything about taking it over the party bus all I said was it could be a good pairing with gonk. Then peregrine assumed that there wouldn't be any tokens on gonk and said that the standerd party bus doesn't have any room for the combo. So to answer your question, it doesn't correspond to it at all because there wasn't any mentioning over taking it over the party bus. You can token up gonk in the beginning of the game since most of the time you have 1-2 turns of "nothing" going on, sometimes 3, then if you get blocked you could use plutt and then PTL off of it, next turn you can gonk back a shield if needed. It is just an idea of what could be done with it instead of "well face value this is worse then 'x' so no reason to think any further on it"

It's going to be a decent, cheap option on any ship likely to be blocked and dependent on actions.

The party bus and the manaroo version of dengar tend to be buried in stress, so they're a no go.

Kath scarlet really, really wants a tailgunner (or dengar).

Boba fett is possible-he tends to fly into a mob for rerolls, meaning he gets blocked a lot, but since being blocked means logically he must have at least one reroll, it's not critical.

Ketsu Onyo (pilot) might like it. To use her, you need you mobile arc locked forwards, and essentially run her as a tractor token spewing battering ram. Collisions are likely, and with two green dice and evade, actions would be valuable.

Oberron wrote:
Then peregrine assumed that there wouldn't be any tokens on gonk

No, I assumed that you still have to pay an action to put a token on Gonk. They aren't "free" just because you placed them in the opening turns, every shield token you spend to take an action is one that doesn't repair damage from enemy shooting. There is no way around this, your combo has you paying two actions (along with points and upgrade slots) to gain a single action. And that's terrible action economy.

So to answer your question, it doesn't correspond to it at all because there wasn't any mentioning over taking it over the party bus.

Taking it over the party bus is implied by the fact that you're taking a YV-666 that isn't a party bus. Whatever weird combo you're taking could be replaced with a party bus that would be much more effective.

then if you get blocked you could use plutt and then PTL off of it

Have you seen the dial on a YV-666? PTL is not a viable option.

It is just an idea of what could be done with it instead of "well face value this is worse then 'x' so no reason to think any further on it"

We thought further, and the card is weak. Coming up with bad combos in a desperate attempt to make it "useful" doesn't make it a viable option.

Peregrine wrote:
No, I assumed that you still have to pay an action to put a token on Gonk. They aren't "free" just because you placed them in the opening turns, every shield token you spend to take an action is one that doesn't repair damage from enemy shooting. There is no way around this, your combo has you paying two actions (along with points and upgrade slots) to gain a single action. And that's terrible action economy.

Peregrine wrote:
That doesn't make any sense. You're spending two actions on later turns (plus the points and crew slots!) to get one action this turn, which is terrible action economy. And the only scum ship with two crew slots is the 1-agility YV-666, where HP regen is weak and the standard "party bus" setup doesn't have room for the combo.

The bolded and underline state says otherwise that you thinking that gonk had no shield counters on it. And if the opening turns nothing happens then they might as well be free. With ptl that turns it from 1 action to 2 actions for a future action since opening actions for the most part do not matter. There, a way around it. You really need to stop thinking that there is one way and one way only to fly certain ships.

Peregrine wrote:
Taking it over the party bus is implied by the fact that you're taking a YV-666 that isn't a party bus. Whatever weird combo you're taking could be replaced with a party bus that would be much more effective.

Except the party bus option isn't the end all be all set up for the yv-666, I'm not saying this is a better way since I can't try it out because I don't play scum.

Peregrine wrote:
Have you seen the dial on a YV-666? PTL is not a viable option.

1-3 forward and 1 banks isn't terrible, ryad does fine with ptl and all straights (+ paying for mk2 for banks). It isn't far behind a tie interceptor dial either (granted soonteir is the one that likes PTL the best)

Sorry Oberron but I agree with Peregrine on this, Gonk unfortunately just isn't very good on a 666, I really wish it was but it isn't. Further the 666 dial does suck, really. The abstract of looking at the dial and fielding are very different. I play with 666 every week near enough and it manoeuvres like a brick and if your opponent is even half awake they will be behind you on turn three and you are never getting them out of your baffles and no amount of Gonking is gonna help you then.

I'm with Peregrine on this as well.

Oberron wrote:
The bolded and underline state says otherwise that you thinking that gonk had no shield counters on it.

No, I'm just assuming that tokens aren't free. If you use one to repair Unkar Plutt damage then you have to spend an action to put it back if you want to continue using Gonk. Otherwise those "free" tokens could have been spent on preventing damage from enemy fire.

Except the party bus option isn't the end all be all set up for the yv-666, I'm not saying this is a better way since I can't try it out because I don't play scum.

So you don't play scum but you're confident enough to say that the YV-666 has other viable options? Sorry, but it really doesn't. There are some gimmick Bossk setups but the party bus is so incredibly effective that you have to have a very strong argument not to take it. And your proposed combo is not even close.

1-3 forward and 1 banks isn't terrible, ryad does fine with ptl and all straights (+ paying for mk2 for banks). It isn't far behind a tie interceptor dial either (granted soonteir is the one that likes PTL the best)

You're ignoring the rather significant difference that Ryad has green k-turns. That's why Ryad works, without her pilot ability defenders suck with PTL. And yes, the YV-666's green maneuvers are terrible. If you're limited to 1-banks and straights you're going to very quickly find yourself outmaneuvered and choosing between giving up PTL to turn or never getting back into the fight. The reason the party bus works is that it doesn't require actions so it's free to pile up the stress and never bother to clear it, leaving the whole dial open.

Peregrine wrote:No, I'm just assuming that tokens aren't free. If you use one to repair Unkar Plutt damage then you have to spend an action to put it back if you want to continue using Gonk. Otherwise those "free" tokens could have been spent on preventing damage from enemy fire..

Peregrine wrote:You're spending two actions on later turns[/b]...

What you said very strongly implies that there are no shield counters on gonk...and gonk can still be used to prevent damage from enemy fire

Peregrine wrote:So you don't play scum but you're confident enough to say that the YV-666 has other viable options? Sorry, but it really doesn't. There are some gimmick Bossk setups but the party bus is so incredibly effective that you have to have a very strong argument not to take it. And your proposed combo is not even close.

I've played against scum and people that use the YV-666 that don't use the party bus option to pretty good success. Just because you haven't thought of a different setup for the ship, doesn't mean there is only one way to play the ship.
Never said the combo was more effective than the party bus, I said it(plut) can combo well with gonk. I've never disagreed that the party bus isn't effective so I don't know why you keep hashing that point. Its just thinking about another way to use a card and make up for its faults, just like a lot of other people do with other upgrades/ships.

Thinking outside the box is not a bad thing, even if the results aren't perfect it still shows potential to prevent stagnation in the meta

Several people have been in your position, but you are only in that position or pov because Peregrine is talking about the strongest build for competitive level. There are other builds, but they do not have the same strength as a Peregrine-Sponsored Build. Both of you are right, there are other builds but Party Bus is the one that is worth taking the most for a specific level of play. ((mostly)

Oberron wrote:
What you said very strongly implies that there are no shield counters on gonk...and gonk can still be used to prevent damage from enemy fire

It doesn't, and I've already explained this. Spending a token from Gonk is still spending an action on a later turn because you have to use one to put a token back in the future if you want to get back to where you were before you used the "combo". You don't get to consider those early-turn tokens "free" for the combo because if you don't use them to repair Plutt damage you're going to use them to repair damage from enemy fire.

Never said the combo was more effective than the party bus, I said it(plut) can combo well with gonk.

But the standard for "comboing well" is "can this match or beat the party bus in effectiveness". Your combo requires taking a YV-666 that will cost at least as much as a party bus, which means it has to be at least that good or you should take the party bus instead. If it isn't that good then your combo doesn't work well, it's a non-viable waste of time.

Its just thinking about another way to use a card and make up for its faults, just like a lot of other people do with other upgrades/ships.

Thinking outside the box is not a bad thing, even if the results aren't perfect it still shows potential to prevent stagnation in the meta

Thinking outside the box is a good thing, but to do it effectively you have to be willing to conclude that your outside the box experiment has failed. There are no bonus points for creativity in X-Wing, and the meta does not change just because someone comes up with a combo that doesn't work well. You had the idea, but now it's time to admit that it wasn't a good one and move on.

We have gotten a bit far afield from the topic at hand here, so to bring things somewhat more on track... What are peoples thoughts about the best way of running the 'Jumper?
I have proxied it in about dozen games so far and think that naked with the mod is probably the best way of going. It seems to be a ship that is tempting to load up but will never pay off if you do.

ingtaer wrote:
We have gotten a bit far afield from the topic at hand here, so to bring things somewhat more on track... What are peoples thoughts about the best way of running the 'Jumper?
I have proxied it in about dozen games so far and think that naked with the mod is probably the best way of going. It seems to be a ship that is tempting to load up but will never pay off if you do.

I've only played against it once (zuvio), but that strikes me as the best approach until someone comes up with some interesting crew combo. Zuvio can do some silly tractor beam and bomb shenanigans if you give him pattern analyzer and bombardier, but the ship starts getting expensive for something that will probably get blown up in one round of shooting. I think it's best to keep these cheap, so that you don't feel bad about losing them.

It's going to be interesting to see how this ship gets integrated into the meta. More than any other, this ship relies 100% on shenanigans to be effective.

Cheap seems to be the right approach, especially since PS 1 makes the tractor beam as easy as possible. But I can see an argument for adding BMST, since mass BMST is pretty much an auto-win against certain lists.

If you are taking BMST, why not just take cheaper and shielded Z-95s? Is it the barrel roll action, making the ship a blocker and thus filling two roles, that makes the Quad more attractive despite being I think 3 points more than a PS 1 Zed? Of course the best dedicated blocker would be a Tractor Array Quad.