EPISODE FIVE Part2 - TIE BREAKER

Hi Everyone. This week my scum cartel faced of against the full might of the empire. Lets take a look at what i was flying.

GAME ONE.
In game one My fleet found itself against dark forces. The emperor himself. Transported inside his lambda shuttle and escorted by Wampa, Omega leader and even Darth Vader himself. This was going to be tricky. N'dru took the right flank. With his barrage of cluster missiles set on Palpatine's shuttle all

he had to do was let the mandalorian mercs distract the TIE's for long enough. Sadly Darth Vader and Omega Leader were onto N'dru's plan and headed straight for him. N'dru just needed to survive one round of shooting, then he could break through towards the lambda. The TIE's fired upon N'dru reducing his shields to nothing, but he got away. Meanwhile the Mercs sent Wampa on a fools errand through an asteroid belt before swinging in and letting those tactician put the pressure onto Vader. N'dru ebbed forward, the lambda almost in range. But Omega Leader was chasing him down. barely in range, with no tokens,  but with a little help from palpatine. 2 Crits. It's ok 3 agility right.....nope. Nothing but blanks and N'dru is down. However the Mandalorians finished off Wampa and have Vader under control. Despite Lord Vaders panic attack, he still proved to be a very evasive pilot. Many more exchanges of laser fire later the Mercs finally managed to down Vader's TIE Advanced and then time was up. My Firespray jump into hyperspace. Leaving Omega Leader alone to escort Palpatine's Shuttle home. Victory to the Empire (but only by 11 points)



GAME TWO.
In game two we happened across a small rebel insurgency team Luke Skywalker with a Rookie pilot wing man, Supported by Ten Numb. Knowing Ten Numb's Mangler cannon would tear threw N'dru no problem we had to take this one easy. The asteroids were set up in a perfect jousting lane so the Mercs faced down Ten Numb and the Rookie pilot while N'dru took the flank and aimed for Skywalker. Both forces slowly inched forwards for a while, neither daring to get into range.

Until my force took the initiative and surged forwards. N'dru's clusters locked onto Luke. The X-wing fired upon N'dru but lone wolf and Glitterstims made sure he was safe. The missiles fired. A few good evades but the missiles were too strong. One dead Skywalker. You don't have to worry about R2-D2 regenerating shields when he's one turn killed. Ten Numb and his x-wing companion began to shred shields off of my firespray but Ten numb was no match for the Mercenaries head on. Only the Rookie X-wing remained who clearly had something to prove. Rolling nothing but evades it took me four more rounds to take him down, but eventually he was gone. Victory to the Scum.



GAME THREE.
In game three my force faced off against a TIE swarm. Two Tie Fo, One TIE Advanced, One classic academy pilot, Winged Gundark and Youngster. The enemy flew in tight formation with Youngster dishing out his Expose ability. Youngster had to die, and fast. Ndru took a flank once again while the Firespray planned to lure the swarm in among the asteroids. Smarter than I thought, the swarm headed strait for N'dru. The Merc's swung in to help but got a little too close. N'dru locked onto youngster. Sadly, his cluster missiles did zero damage rolling only two hits and Youngster rolling good evades.

N'dru didn't get long too contemplate his failure tho, as he was decimated by several TIEs moments later.
It was down to the Firespray. They focused on trying to kill one TIE a turn but there just wasn't enough shots to deal with their numbers. The Mercs killed a TIE Fo while the swarm was focused on N'dru. And then it became bump city central. The Mercenaries edged around the swarm while the imperials broke formation in attempts to get around the Firespray. Using those rear firing arks the Firespray hailed the TIE Advanced with lasers, but only scored a few glancing blows. Luckily the Swarm was scattered. Each turn the Firespray tried to focus on killing a ship, but just couldn't quite make it. All the while the TIE regrouped and picked away at the Mercenaries. It wasn't until time was called that I finally managed to finish off the TIE advanced and Winged Gundark. But it was too late. Victory to the Imperials (By 8 points!)

THE REVIEW
As you can see two of my games were very close. If my opponents hadn't got half points for one of my Firespray being at 50% health then I would have won both of those games. But I guess those changes were made for a reason. The list seemed to work well, but i'm not sure I got the best examples of it, against two lists with lots of ships. I think this list would do a lot better against two ship builds or aces. The Firespray can stack stress onto any ace such as vader, poe and soontir while N'dru can either cripple a large ship or outright kill most aces. I think N'dru got unlucky in the first game, dying to Omega Leader and in the third it was my own fault for having the Mandalorian Merc's too close for his ability to activate. I don't think there's anything I would change about this list other than adding Guidance Chips to N'dru allowing his clusters to be more reliable. Despite mixed results, i really enjoyed flying this list and seeing N'dru do his thing and one shot Luke's X-wing was really nice. This build for N'dru makes up one third of my new tournament list so he will return on this blog sometime soon.


Over halfway through the league now, and wave 8 is coming two weeks from now. Meaning i should have what i need to show you my tournament list for the finale (fingers crossed). As always my commissions page is in the sidebar. Thank you for reading. Until next time.

Goodbye and Fly Casual

EPISODE FIVE - N'dru and Company

Hi everyone this week we fly my favourite character in the scum faction N'dru Suhlak and looks like he brought some friends. Let's take a look at the list.

N'dru Suhlak

N'dru my boy. I've been avoiding using him in my lists for the league as i was waiting for wave 8 to release so i can give him some guidance chips. Since it looks like wave 8 is still a few weeks away, i felt like saying sod it and brought my favourite little scoundrel anyway. Fully upgraded N'dru comes in at a very cheap 25 points with an incredible alpha strike ability. N'dru's job is to line up his cluster missile then wreck any ship in his sights. Lets take a look at how he does this. First his pilot ability gives you one additional attack die if there are no friendly ships at range 1-2. This effects each of the two cluster missile shots, allowing him to throw out 8 attack dice in a turn. The problem with cluster missiles is they have great potential damage, but very little reliability after you spend your target lock to fire them. This is where Glitter Stim comes in. You swoop in, target lock the thing you want to die then activate your

glitterstims. now you have 8 attack dice and all focus results become hits. Of course you're still likely to roll a blank or two. And that's where lone wolf comes in. Already wanting to be off on his own N'dru benefits hugely from Lone wolf.  The first missed shot from each cluster missile can be re-rolled and if it becomes anything but another blank its a hit from the stims. The final piece of the puzzle (sadly missing here) is guidance chips. The chips allow you to turn a blank result into a hit when firing missiles. So 8 attack dice. All focus results become hits. Blank results can be re-rolled and one can become a hit for free. N'dru is a monster. I've managed to kill the millennium falcon in two turns with N'dru and a pare of Kihraxz before. He is a little tricky to fly as he is always off on his own, so has no one covering his back most of the time. And at a respectable, but not amazing Pilot Skill 7 N'dru can take a lot of fire from aces before he can get hit missiles flying. This isn't too bad though with Lonewolf and Glitterstims he has 2 defence dice re-rolling one blank per attack and all focus results become evades. And once his payload as been delivered he can fly around on his own essentially becoming an X-wing with lone wolf. Not bad for 25 points ey.


Mandalorian Mercenary
Flying along side N'dru (but keeping their distance) are a pair of Firespray. The firespray are probably my favourite ship in all of x-wing. In the tournaments I've been to I've always brought three basic firespray and they are always amazing. With one of the best dials the Firespray can be very unpredictable and tho its green maneuvers are limiting its only red moves are its k-turns. With 10 total hull and 2 agility the firespray can be tricky to deal with, not to mention that it's one of the only large ships with the Evade action.

Offensively the Firespray has a solid 3 attack, but its main strength comes from its auxiliary rear firing arc. This becomes great when jousting as you can simply overshoot your opponents ships and blast them from behind without needing to worry about getting stressed. In this list both of my Mandolorian Mercs are carrying a Tactician. The tactician is always a great crew, but on a firespray almost becomes twice as useful as it can still give out stress from that rear ark. This is one of the advantages an auxiliary firing ark has over a 360 firing ark as well as the fact that Autothrusters don't activate in auxiliary ark. I also gave one of the mercs Crackshot. the basic mandalorian merc having Pilot Skill 5 and an elite pilot talent allows you to really build them in a lot of different ways. Veteran instinct gives you a solid Ps7 for 1 point. Crackshot can push damage through to evasive targets and you could even use Push the limits and a cannon to make a slow moving death turret. The firespray really is the poster boy of scum and villainy and rightly deserved. I have never regretted bringing a Firespray.

SYNERGY
with this list the plan is to set up the two firespray towards one of the table edges and N'dru towards the other. The firespray can take it easy trying to get into range 2 instead of zooming on in. once they have stacked some stress on the target N'dru can come on in and unleash his cluster missiles. The Tacticians will make my opponents moves more predictable and N'dru can cause that big hit. Once N'dru's target is taken out the Firespray should be able to Mop up what's left. Tacticians to your firespray its time to roll out.


I've heard people saying that Wave 8 is due to be released on the 17th of march so only two weeks away. If the rumors are true. I will hopefully be able to get a chance to talk about some of the new lists before the league is over. I really think wave 8 will make the scum faction complete. Largely because of the abundance of new crew cards. We will see. Hopefully sooner Than later. Either way i will try and do a Wave 8 special so i can talk about the new cards and some of the ways they can be used.
Thanks for reading. As always my commissions page is in the sidebar. Until next time

Goodbye and Fly Casual.

EPISODE TWO part2 - GAUNTLET OF DEBRIS

Hi Everyone. Well that's round two over and this time lady luck was a little more on my side. Due to an odd number of players i only got to play two games this time around but they pretty fun games. Here's a reminder of what i was flying this week.

GAME ONE.
In the first game i came up against an imperial Decimator
harboring not only Darth Vader but the

Emperor himself. Sadly that lumbering behemoth wasn't alone. An escort of elite TIE fighters swarmed around its flanks. Scourge, Backstabber and Wampa all had my fleet in there sights. The game started off strong with my fleet aggressively swooping in to fire on the Decimator. with my headhunters stripping shields off rapidly the TIE's took aim to protect there masters. After an initial volley the Decimator was on the run and my headhunters gave chase. Our shots where lined up but one TIE pilot strayed too close to the swarm. It proved a little too tempting and Zaaap.

There goes a TIE. The Decimator continued to flee while pelting Torkils Hwk with laser fire but it was backstabbers flanking assault that took Torkils life. My Headhunters were going down and fast. Only three headhunters left and all i had killed was one TIE fighter. The Decimator had two hull left all i have
to do is get one good shot. But it seems the Black Sun soldiers are no match for the Imperial elites as both of my remaining headhunters died before they could catch up with the Decimator. A victory to the Imperials.






GAME TWO.
In the second game it seems the Emperor was a little begrudged about us trying to destroy his Decimator. Krassis Trelix had been hired to hunt down the Black Hwk squadron. And one of the academy finest, Whisper flew along side him in a dreaded TIE Phantom. Both forces started aggressively with the Black Hwk's getting ready to joust with the Firespray.

 With an Unexpected boost of speed my fleet advanced towards Trelix forcing him right into the swarms midst. Whisper approached along side the swarm but fearing the Feedback arrays she was forced to barrel roll out of range one and out of ark.Torkil did his Trick distracting the firespray pilot as my headhunters fired away. I rolled 12 attack dice with focus but only managed to push thru 2 measly damage onto Trelix. Luckily his return fire wasn't much better. Meanwhile Torkil took the opportunity to fire his Ion Cannon Turret at the uncloaked Phantom. Whisper was hit and began to drift. My Headhunters looking into the cockpit of Trellix' firespray saw him release his bomb payload and made a hard turn to avoid it. Overhead screamed Trelix dooing a K-turn to repeat his assault on Torkil. But the trap was set. After last turns pitiful display things had to change. BZaaap. Five Feeback Arrays causing five instant damage on Trellix, And we couldn't even see him burn. One turn later my ships drift forwards towards an oncoming debris cloud but our pray was right where we wanted. Once again Torkil distracts the firespray and ZZap a few more Feedback arrays and Krassis Trelix is no more. But now he have a new issue, my entire fleet staring down a debris cloud. Luckily

Whisper was still recovering from drifting so far away from the action. My Headhunters delve into the Debris cloud trying desperately to turn around before Whisper could bring her guns to bare. I can imagine trying to navigate a Debris field while hoping a phantom doesn't appear and destroy your ship is stressful but things got a little ridiculous. Eventually most of my headhunters turned around and once again torkil managed to Ion Whisper leaving her as a sitting duck. A few lucky shots from a pair of headhunters later and BOOM no more Phantom. A Victory for the Black Hwk's.

THE REVIEW
So this week i had an interesting loss and a Decisive victory. I like this list a lot and it was nice to fly something so different. I think the list is solid but doubt it would be winning a tournament anytime soon. The Headhunters have a great dial and i found this the easiest swarm to control that iv ever flown. Its surprising how Torkil's ability combined with the feedback arrays can be so dangerous to anyone who enters into range one. I also had a few practice games with this list where i managed to have torkil Ion and stress Poe Dameron's X-wing right into the side of my swarm before Zapping him to bits. I don't think there's anything i would really change about the list. Torkil does his job well and the ion was surprisingly useful. The only upgrade that didn't see much use was the Tactician on the Hwk. As an alternative you could take greedo making that one damage the ion cannon does be a critical hit. tho that does make the Hwk more fragile. Alternatively Dengar could be a great alternative making that Ion Cannon Turret more reliable when the new wave comes out. As with any swarm i think the strength of this list will be determined by how well you can fly it. I think i will try this list some more in the future and hopefully become a better pilot myself.

Two weeks in and im hoping for a few more solid victories next time. Im going to be flying a list im much more Comfortable with The Wolf and the Hound. As always my Commisions page is linked in the side bar. If your interested in having any ships painted feel free to send me a message. Thanks for reading and until next time.

Goodbye and Fly Casual

EPISODE TWO - BLACK HWK DOWN

Hello everyone. Last week we tried to make a scum fat and fast list with Boba and Xizor. Well today we forget the grandeur of kings and princes and fly an interesting take on the scum swarm. Lets get those Z-95 pilots buckled up its going to be a bumpy ride. Here's my list.

Z-95 Bug Zapper 

So lets begin talking about the Z-95 headhunter. This underrated little ship really has a lot of potential for its base points. With a solid Dial that boast a 1 forward and a 3 turn (probably the maneuvers i find the most useful) the humble headhunter has a decent stat line with its only downside being its feeble two attack. Due to this underwhelming attack output the headhunters can have a very hard time pushing damage through to highly evasive ships. Tho being at range one can help counter there weak attack sometimes its just not enough. Luckily Scum has an interesting piece of Illicit tech, the Feedback Array. lets take a look at it.
                                         

The Feeback Array allows you to take 1 damage and 1 ion token to instantly       deal 1 damage to an enemy at range 1 regardless of there agility, focus and evade tokens. Obviously you don't use the Feedback Array every turn or you would have a very suicidal squad. But when you are flanked by a phantom, an interceptor or Han solo gets behind your fleet. Normally you wouldn't be able to attack at all but now with Huttechs all new Feedback Array you can make those pesky arc dodgers go Bzzzap. In this list i have five "Bug Zapper" Headhunters. That means if i want i can deal five automatic hits on any enemy at range one. Goodbye Soontir. Now the clear downside of this is on the turn you activate the Feeback Array each of your ships is taking 1 automatic damage as well, but there only 15 point ships and if they can take out a 30+ point ace in one turn ill take the hits. The other downside is the turn after you activate the array you are ionised so your just going to drift that 1 forwards because of this ill have to think about where i'm going to end up next turn before opting to use the Zapper. The final and less obvious Issue with the Feedback array is that it fires instead of your normal attack. Meaning it activates on your ships own Pilot skill. And with pilot skill one or three on the headhunters you could take alot of hits before the Zappers get to do there thing. And this is why the Headhunters brought a friend. 

Torkil Mux
Torkil Mux has a unique ability. From within his HWK-290 he can make one enemy ship at range 1-2

become pilot skill 0. This counters the weakness the Bug Zappers have of activating at Pilot skill 3. with Torkil hiding a midst the swarm anything that dares come into range 1 will be made pilot skill 1 and then quickly zapped. On Torkils Hwk im running an Ion Cannon Turret and Tactician. 

My instant thought was to put a Twin Laser Turret on Torkil so the list can do some consistent damage but Torkil wouldn't be able to fire at range one, which is where the rest of the swarm wants to be. With the Ion Cannon Turret Torkil can fire at range one-two which is ideal and i can utilize the ion cannon in two ways. The first is to set up for the bug zappers. 

If i can ion an enemy into floating strait towards me i can know where they are and zap away. The second advantage is if an enemy has flanked the swarm. If Ioniesed the enemy will drift forwards and not be able to turn and fire at me as i also drift forwards from the ion feedback. The second upgrade i have on Torkil is Tactician. Sadly Tactician is limited to shots within the Hwk's firing arc but the ability to both ion and stress a small ship in the same turn is great.  With the Ioned movement being a white one forwards the ship will not relieve its stress and have no ability to flee the swarm with Barrel Roll, Boost or Slam. And even if the Ion cannon Turret misses i can still put stress on a ship and make its movements much more predictable next turn.


SYNERGY 

So this is the plan. Fly the Headhunters in tight formation with Torkil's Hwk in the center. When flying the squadron everyone should be doing the exact same movement most of the time which sadly limits me to not preforming that nice hard three turn as Torkil can't quite keep up with the Headhunters. First select the squads initial target and then stay on target. The headhunters may have weak guns but that's still 10 attack dice a turn and thanks to Torkil i will likely be firing before my chosen target. Just like Admiral Ackbar said "Its a Trap" the idea is to set a trap with Torkil and Spring it with the Headhunters. Set up range one shots and if they manage to get behind me then Zap away. Each ship in this list is sum what fragile with most of my ships having four total damage points and the Hwk only having one more. But all told that's twenty five total damage points for your opponent to try and chew thru. Oh looks like the ships are back from getting there "Upgrade". Now, Lets go find some prey.

This will be the first time iv attempted to fly a swarm since my days for flying five A-wings and it will be nice to see how the list deals with the ace's type builds i fought last week. As always my commissions page is in the bar to the right. If you are interested in having any ships painted please don't hesitate to send me a message and please follow the blog for all future posts. Ill be back on Friday with news of how the list went but until then.

Goodbye and Fly Casual.