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.