anyone think cannonbot (iggy B) is a good candidate for marksmanship?

By nikk whyte, in X-Wing

i'm thinking

ig-88B, mangler, marksmanship, advanced sensors, inertial dampers, and a proton bomb for 49 points. have 2 heavy scyks with ions trailing, controlling the board and survivng with their stealth devices.

or i could drop the proton bomb to a seismic and give the scyks manglers, and bump iggy to an HLC?

Marksmanship should only be taken when you need to modify multiple attacks per turn, and so a ship with gunner- or pseudogunner- is a plausible candidate.

I will say that Fire Control System does nearly as much to modify that second shot, and is action independent. Also costs a point less. If IggyB gets blocked, he can still get the benefit of his ability, and can use FCS to modify the attack. If he's in the middle of a couple firing arcs, he can evade- and then get the benefit of FCS and second shot. In neither case can the same be said for Marksmanship.

Negative ghostrider for reasons stated above. What about opportunist? I never thought of that before, but if you stripped the guy of his tokens on the first attack, the Mangler would be unstoppable during the second attack.

I'm not a huge fan of stressing yourself out these days. Too many enemy stressors out there as well, and dealing with double stress takes a lot of the fun out of the Aggressor.

I'd just stick with Predator, personally. The boring choice maybe, but hey it works.

As far as IG88B interaction is concerned, my thoughts are the following:

Fire-Control System > Predator > Marksmanship, but you definitely want at least one of the three.

The Aggressor really wants to spend its actions for Mobility or Defense, oddly enough.

You don't have to kit out for Mobility/Defense if you run A+B and joust down the middle on your first pass. As long as you're not facing another 2 ship build you're going to kill something and you can regen a shield. IG88 is so **** dirty, I feel filthy just thinking of builds for him.

I wouldn't be using marksmanship every turn, as it would probably get hits through on the first Attack. It would be useful against things like fat Hans (which I think have seen the time come and go) and the newly christened super soontir.

I do like predator and FCS, but I like the flexibility that adv sensors and inertial dampeners provides. I've seen the dampeners turn two games around on the turn they were played. It was brilliant. Adv sensors would give me the pick of the litter as far as actions were concerned, and it's not a bad upgrade just to have.

You don't have to kit out for Mobility/Defense if you run A+B and joust down the middle on your first pass. As long as you're not facing another 2 ship build you're going to kill something and you can regen a shield. IG88 is so **** dirty, I feel filthy just thinking of builds for him.

Using Aggressors to joust is a very bad idea. They're very tanky ships in the abstract, but not when you spend 50 points each on them and then fly them down the middle of the table.

So yes, you always need to kit out for mobility and defense rather than attack.

Edited by Vorpal Sword

I've been a proponent of Marksmanship on IG-88B for a while, but it hasn't worked out for me. I usually only get one or two attacks with Marksmanship because I'm either stressed or blocked. I usually rin FCS with Marksmanship, so maybe switching to Advanced Sensors will alleviate half of the problems. I think I still have a lot to learn about flying these guys.

The Aggressor is a very powerful ship that can take on many match ups, but you need to upgrade it to face each. Swarms/jousters will get outmaneuvered quite easily and equiping the ship with Autothrusters deals with (fat) turrets just fine.

It's biggest problems lie in ships that can get out of it's arc, high PS arc dodgers. VI elevates this problem a bit, (without it, EVERYONE will outmaneuver you) but the best arc dodgers are often PS9. However, you could play IggyB to make sure you hit when you do finally get a shot.

You don't have to kit out for Mobility/Defense if you run A+B and joust down the middle on your first pass. As long as you're not facing another 2 ship build you're going to kill something and you can regen a shield. IG88 is so **** dirty, I feel filthy just thinking of builds for him.


Using Aggressors to joust is a very bad idea. They're very tanky ships in the abstract, but not when you spend 50 points each on them and then fly them down the middle of the table.

So yes, you always need to kit out for mobility and defense rather than attack.

Jousting is kinda is what they do, just and super speed and while trowing some weird unexpected curves in the joust course. But basically it's; approach, overshoot, S-loop/K-turn, repeat.

Edited by Joostuh

I've never played as the Aggressor, but I have probably about a dozen games against the (dual) aggressor. I have to say, I'm not impressed. It might be because I almost always play my 38 points Tycho, who flies circles around aggressors (or any lower PS ship for that matter). But at the end of the day, you either have 2 4 dice attacks (HLC, typically with some combo of Predator, Dampeners, AdvS and AT) or 2 3 dice attacks pretty much kitted out with all of the previous things. Sure, it's a large ship that can boost and then 3S turn, and get an evade at the same time... Or it has a 4 dice gunner effect...

I'm not saying the Aggressor is a bad ship, but I think it has too many weaknesses to be run in a dual configuration. I'm really liking the -C since it's defensive with both the boost and evade. And when coupled with Predator (or PTL since some like that due to the number of greens, and it's effective against my lists since I don't stress the opponent normally these days) you still have a decent offense.

But the more I play against it, the more I think it'd be better off running as a single IG-88 with support craft. Just something I made up off the top of my head:

IG88C w/ HLC, Predator, AdvS, AT, Dampeners

Boba w/ VI, Dampeners, Tactician, EU

Now you have Boba who's deadly at R1 or R2... Go go free rerolls at R1, and stress at R2. Plus he gets twice the coverage of the stress with his rear arc. With EU and PS10, he can deal with the Vaders, Fels, Whispers, (and Tychos) of the world. He can control the board via stress. And he's pretty durable as well, especially if he hugs R1 and gets defensive rerolls.

And then you have IG88 who's defensive in his own way with 3 dice, AT, and an evade every turn. If Boba is the main target, then 88 can clean up whomever is left because you can target the largest threat (high PS arc dodgers) at the beginning of the game. And if Boba is the last guy standing, he can make good use of his arc dodging capabilities himself while still getting a shot out the butt gun.

this thread is about single aggressors with support. and marksmanship.

also, dual aggressors finished second at the last atlanta store championship yesterday. they're good.