Before I continue, if you're just going to say "well, look at the points you're spending to make it work" please don't bother to post. We all know that the ICT doesn't take an action and is only 1 point more.

But hear me out. More and more lists are containing large ships, which means the ICT is losing part of it's functionality. I feel like it is difficult to justify doing 1 damage to a 1 or 0 agility ship, and not even ionizing them. So for the first time in a while, I haven't been auto-including an ion cannon. Which means I've kinda shifted away from my old ways of Roark and the HWK. Furthermore, the design space seems to have opened up. You no longer "have" to have 4 ships in a rebel list (or 3 if one of them is a big ship) in order for it to be competitive. People are being successful with 2 ship lists, and 3 ship lists seems to be the new normal. Though even that has changed with the introduction of the Z95, where it's pretty easy to slip one or two of those in to beef up your numbers.

Which is just one more knock against the ICT. If you only have 3 ships, they need to be able to put out damage, and not just 1 at a time like the ICT does. Enter the Blaster Turret. Yes, it is only 1 point cheap, rolls the same number of dice, and requires a focus token. These things have kept it out of even semi-competitive lists since it's introduction in W3. On a HWK, it has the weakness of being susceptible to being blocked and then not even really getting a shot. On the Y wing it has the problem of no way to double up on actions. Enter Kyle Katarn. No, not the pilot, the crew.

The HWK doesn't have the best dial, the only greens are 1 + 2 straight, and 1 banks. This has limited Jan's usefulness because she auto stresses herself, and then is super predictable afterwards. So if you put a blaster turret on her, it was super easy to block, and definitely worth it. But now, if you put Kyle as her crew, she gets her focus anyways, and can continue to fire her Blaster. But it's unmodified since she has to spend her Kyle given token.

So, that addresses an issue of the Blaster turret... But what else can we do to make it better? The most obvious (to me) is to add predator to it. Now, even if you're blocked every. single. turn, you will still be able to stress yourself from Jan's ability, which turns into a focus the next turn, and you'll be able to reroll a die, increasing your damage output from 1.5 [boom] to 1.94 [boom], which is almost as high as the 2.25 [boom] that the ICT gets from the focus token.

Furthermore, I suggest you add an Engine Upgrade to Jan. This works well with predator and kyle, as you don't have to worry about using your action for offense. It also makes blocking Jan much harder to do as she can do her 1 bank to clear stress, and decide where she wants to boost to prevent you from blocking her the following turn. And on the turns that she decides that boosting isn't a good option, she can still take the focus action, which raises her damage to 2.68 [boom] when combined with predator.

So, for those of you that are going to ignore my first sentence, this combo ends up coming in at Jan (25) + BT (4) + Kyle (3) + EU (4) + Predator (3) = 39 points. But it's much more than just 14 points to make the blaster turret work. You have a better ship overall that is more survivable and maneuverable. Not to mention the rest of your fleet is more deadly with Jan's ability.

Thoughts? What would be the best thing to pair with this? What matches would it be good/bad against? Anyway (besides turning it into ICT) to improve?

Blaster Turret has more interesting options, sure. I haven't bad results with just Recon Specialist and Moldy Crow title. I see some Scum Y-wings using it a bit.

The prevalence of large ships should only encourage more ICTs. With the Y-wing title coming out, I'm struggling to find a more solid ship to field against them than a pair of ion golds.

As for the Blaster turret, it's all about S&V and the aggromech, especially

Kavil

*V.I

*Blaster

*Aggro

for 31 points

Otherwise, it's the only way to get offensive bunch on HWKs, and Recon off + title (or Jan w/Kyle crew) is a pretty reliable way to set it off.

Just don't run into Jax

A cheaper way to counter blocking and jan's stress ability is nien nunb.

Nice write-up.

I can see BTL-A4 Y-Wings using it as well.

Either in something like this:

to add to the chorus, I think we will see a lot of blaster turrets on scum y wings because of the agromech. That makes it viable. I really like Kavil with blaster and agro, then add lone wolf or predator. Engine upgrade is good too, but of course it is more points. Now you have a mini falcon throwing 4 attack dice with a target lock, at least most of the time.

the argomech is the solution to make the blaster turret viable.

you can make a blaster turret work (sort of) on a hawk, but you have to build everything around the idea of making the blaster turret hit something, but this robs the hawk of the ability to be the support ship it's designed to be, and results in a fairly fragile ship that is a lot of points.

If you want a ship to support other ships = hawk

if you want a flying turret = y-wing

if you want a rebel small base blaster turret = horton helps

If you really want to make blaster turrets live up to their potential though, the agromech does it better than anything else.

It's enough to make me start flying scum Ys ..... a lot.

Bear in mind that even on a scum Y, you are paying 6 points for the turret and the droid to make it work. that is almost an HLC

Palob Godhali is going to be awesome.

Palob + Opportunist + Rec. Spec. + Moldy + Blaster Turret is ridiculous. He will easily grab an evade or focus token off his victim and let Opportunist kick in. You will have a 4 dice turret range 1-2 against a naked target. He will essentially be a reverse Dash.

Agree with the people above here. The Blaster Turret is going to be a more used weapon, but mainly by Scum HWK´s like Palob (as discussed in another topic: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/129154-palob-godalhi-spoiler-alert-if-you-didn%C2%B4t-like-to-read-previews/#entry1368393 )

or by the earlier mentioned pilots like Kavil or a generic Y-wing with Agromech which doesn´t use the Y-wing title.

Palob is a perfect platform for this. Steal the Focus from someone in your Blaster range.

The R4 Agromech is also pretty nice. Spend the Focus and gain a TL to spend on your roll.

Kavil + Blaster Turret + R4 + Opportunist.

Move and Focus, spend Focus to roll 5 dice at R1-2. Gain TL, Spend TL for better roll.

A cheaper way to counter blocking and jan's stress ability is nien nunb.

It's not about stress, it's about setting up for the blaster turret by generating action independent focus (which can hopefully be followed with focus or a TL)

While I still think ICT is still perfectly viable on Rebel Y-wings I have been weighing the option of Blaster when used in conjunction with the action economy based squads I tend to fly (Dutch, Airen Cracken). I'm actually starting to consider Jan with Kyle crew, PtL and Engine upgrade. Stupid expensive and risky, but flying next to guys with Wingman is looking pretty fun... :3

Palob Godhali is going to be awesome.

Palob + Opportunist + Rec. Spec. + Moldy + Blaster Turret is ridiculous. He will easily grab an evade or focus token off his victim and let Opportunist kick in. You will have a 4 dice turret range 1-2 against a naked target. He will essentially be a reverse Dash.

Not exactly, Have you played gunner against someone? Lets say they had an evade token and you rolled 3 hits, they roll 2 evades, they could cancel the last hit with the evade token but because you have gunner they choose not to spend the evade and take 1 hit.

You can count on similar actions when your opponent knows you have magpie builds. They will stop making focus or evade actions and only target lock, boost or barrel roll. However it will weaken token passing builds in the meta such as Wes or Kyle in Moldy Crow. Also token generating builds like soonter fel and Kyle (Crew).

I love blaster turret on a recon spec moldy crow hwk. I've had it score some great kills. Only problem is dark curse and Jax. They render the turret obsolete. I think it has a very viable but niche place in the game.

How about [36] Kavil, Marksmanship, Blaster Turret, Agromech, Experimental Interface? It needs at least one ship with Wingman (I've been using Palob, hopefully the Scyk will have a cheap EPT carrier) to be repeatably useful, but that's 4 dice with focus, TL, and one eyeball to crit.

Blaster Turret is very viable, so long as people aren't running Carnor Jax, and you can get a way to still have a way to manipulate those 3 attack dice.

People aren't running Carnor Jax, and Recon Specialist exists.

Ergo...

Ran the following a few times last week. It performed very well, especially against the Decimator lists. Spending the focus to activate the Blaster Turret on the Y, then getting the free TL from the R4 made it especially potent, and Palob had the extra focus from the Crow title.

**** people seem to be loading the **** out of kavil

I don't think he needs that much to be effective or to make blaster turret effective

Thoughts? What would be the best thing to pair with this? What matches would it be good/bad against? Anyway (besides turning it into ICT) to improve?

I love your thought process! And I am excited to see some Rebel HWK's get some attention. I can't believe I didn't see it before, but that's probably EXACTLY why the designers thought a Kyle crew card should have that effect. It makes Jan and Kyle go together like...well, Jan and Kyle, right?

So what to run with it? It just so happens that I made a list tonight for fighting against Dash, and had a 39 point ship I wasn't entirely sold on, and Jan may fit here. Maybe.

**** people seem to be loading the **** out of kavil

I don't think he needs that much to be effective or to make blaster turret effective

Oh, I agree, it's just about consistency. After a couple of test games I find that his major weakness is arc dodgers, since they can jump out of a lumbering ship's R1-2 band just as easily as they can dodge an arc.

Going to have to test [32] Kavil, Predator, Blaster Turret, Unhinged Astromech, since the 'mech makes him unreasonably fast.

Blaster Turret will work on a couple of Scum pilots because they have basically the best abilities in the game to date, that also happen to pair well with turrets. I don't see Blaster Turret seeing any more use on other ships, any more than we already do though.