At a small tournament last night, I ran Omicron with Vader, Advanced Sensors and Engine Upgrade, with 3 Royal Guard Pilots and Veteran Instincts, giving me 3 Pilot Skill 8 Interceptors and a Lambda that can't be ignored.

I lost my first match. I placed my Lambda near the middle and the Interceptors near the opposite corner from my opponent, thinking I could catch him in between the two, but his squad of 3Tie Fighters, Howlrunner and 2 bombers were able to clear his asteroids faster than my Interceptors, so he had better positioning and then I proceeded to roll as many blanks as possible. The one highlight was blowing Howlrunner up turn 2 with the Lambda at range 3 (Vader got a direct hit)

Second match was almost the opposite, I won because of absolutely amazing dice rolls and nearly all blanks on his defensive side. At one point I rolled 4 dice on a B-Wing with 1 shield left and got 3 crits.

Final match was against a powerful and skilled opponent who had bested his previous challengers with his squad of Biggs and 3 Red Squadron X-Wings with Flechette torpedoes. In order to win the tournament, I would have had to have gotten a decisive win and against his squad of X-Wings and his piloting, I figured that the odds were pretty low. We set up our asteroids in a unusually symmeticral way, three on the top near his side of the board and three on the bottom near mine, slightly funneling inwards to the right

He set up using the pinwheel formation on a corner, while I set my Lambda up near the middle, closer to his side pointed down the middle of an asteroid lane. I then set my 3 Interceptors in an offset formation, pointed down the middle of the next asteroid lane.

I 0'd with my Lambda turn 1 and moved the Interceptors 5 forward and boosted, while his X-Wings did 4 forward. No shot that turn.

Turn 2 I did 1 with the lambda and focused, he did a sharp turn 3 with all the X-Wings, coming beautifully down the middle of the asteroid funnel. I did another 5 forward with my Interceptors, having thought I would still be out of range (I was not). He had target locked on my closest Interceptor, and if I stayed where I was I could evade and be shot through an asteroid and probably take no damage, but still get stressed from the flechette torpedoes. I decided to be risky and boost with all my Interceptors, a bank towards his fleet, the offset formation kept them from colliding but it didn't do as much to get me out of his firing arc as I had hoped.

My Interceptors still had no shots and he poured the fire into me, torpedoing and then destroying the closest Interceptor. His last few shots missed the next Interceptor in line. Than my Lambda got to shoot at the belly of the enemy formation. Biggs was just out of range, so I fired at the X-Wing who hadn't fired his torpedoes and had no focus, getting three hits at range 3 to his zero evades. Then I vadered for a Direct Hit, scoring a dead X-Wing.

Next turn was the deciding one- I moved my Lambda 2 forward and then boosted 1, placing me directly in front of the x-wings. He had thought I would move the Lambda slower and had turned to face it, but ended up colliding all of his x-wings in the lambda or each other, with only 1 of them having a shot at the shuttle. Then my interceptors did a 1 and 3 turn, coming in perfectly on the X-Wings flank and making my previous risky Boost play totally worth it as now the X-Wings were unable to fire at them.

The Lambda and X-Wing traded blows and the Interceptors shredded Biggs, not quite killing him. Following that round, I spent the rest of the game spinning my Lambda around an asteroid and close range dog-fighting with the X-Wings, but my higher pilot skill enabled me to maintain better positioning and always have shots, while he sometimes didn't to clear stress, leaving me with a victory that only cost me that first interceptor.

My plan with this squad kind of worked out, forcing the opponent to choose between facing the manueverable Interceptors or the deadly Lambda, and being able to flank and pincer them regardless of their choice. Advanced Sensors and Engine Upgrade makes the Lambda actually really agile and fast and Darth Vader makes it terrifyingly dangerous (1 shotting an X-Wing! Madness!)

You know, I kind of hope other pilots, X-wing excluded (I want a Rogue Squadron Pilot), never get PS6 generics. RG Pilot is one of the things that makes Interceptors special.

Yeah, plus they're comparatively cheap. I kind of assume that if they had a unique pilot ability, the Royal Guard would say "This ship costs 2 points less than it should". I love them, and running them as 8's is great, although it didn't help at all last night.

Sounds good. I have had success with 2 PTL RGP and 2 Void Manatees (Doom and Zoom). Really gives your opponent a tricky choice, remove the blockage of the OGPs and risk the Squints getting behind you, or chase the uncatchable interceptors. I find two shuttle very effective together denying space in the middle. Ive seen on here talk of 3 shuttle and Soontir Fel, which I can see could be very effective, as is the mix you ran, but in the end the 2 and 2 mix seems the most balanced.

Yeah, plus they're comparatively cheap. I kind of assume that if they had a unique pilot ability, the Royal Guard would say "This ship costs 2 points less than it should". I love them, and running them as 8's is great, although it didn't help at all last night.

Yeah, I love RGs. Running them with PS 6 is also just fine. Even better with PtL since they are somewhat invincible...until you run into a HSF list. Then they are sad-faced.

Nice report on your games, btw.

I love running Kagi + HLC / Howlrunner + 4 Academies.

It's a really fun list that makes opponents think, and if you can pilot the cow with some finesse you can really unleash the pain.

Also cool that if you fly them together properly, you can't flechette the Tie's, or shoot assault missiles at the mini-swarm thanks to Kagi's pilot abiity.

I always used to think the Colonel Jendon was the best Shuttle pilot, but after using Kagi, I have changed my mind. In the age where Jax can deny Rebs the use of their tokens so they TL. Kagi will reign, forcing them to TL him kinda like an Imperial Biggs in a way.

I always used to think the Colonel Jendon was the best Shuttle pilot, but after using Kagi, I have changed my mind. In the age where Jax can deny Rebs the use of their tokens so they TL. Kagi will reign, forcing them to TL him kinda like an Imperial Biggs in a way.

Dude -

My buddy and I played the other night and he was not overly familiar with Kagi, and when I saw his load out consisted of some torpedoes, I just sat quietly until he announced his TL on Howlrunner and then I peed all over his parade, not to mention the compounding of the issue when his assault missiles failed to land on a 1 agi ship. XD

I have a huge issue running named shuttles. I haven't run Kagi but I have tried jendon and yorr, I always feel I am better off just taking a OGP then any of the others. I like to load the shuttle up a bit and it just seems like I never get the points worth with a named pilot. That being said I could see Kagi and Jax being an interesting combo.

Im quite a fan of running Yorr with some ptl squints. He can buy you a few turns of continuous ptl's.