Hi, long time fan of your articles!

I was dreaming up a similar list myself and was loving your rod to regionals post.

I was trying to come up with a use for the Syck fighters and I thought of the 35 pt Kavil plus a couple of Tansari vets with VI and mangler cannons and then Kaa'To with Bodyguard to follow Kavil around and maximize his opportunity attacks with the ATB turret. The 2 Syck fighters would try and hang around at range to load on hits and crits and since they are all PS 7 you can also strip those focus and evade tokens off for opportunity strikes.

Haven't had much chance to test it out but I figured while the Sycks are brittle, as long as I stay at range 3 I should make people spilt their attention b/w Kavil and the manglers.

Thinking of calling it Kavil's cronies or Cannons r' us.

Anyway your thought would be greatly appreciated!

I ran a Kavil with Opp and a Palob with EU at one point. I found that EU on Palob was just awesome and really made Kavil hit like a truck. YMMV

Hothie I just wanted to say I love this journal you are keeping! It has given me a lot of insight into brobots and actually helped me in my recent local where I faced 3 rounds of them! I'm just trying to install vassal and later in the week I would love to get a game against you of you are interested! You seem like a great player to go against so I can try and up my game

Also wanted to say I recently started listening to the nova podcasts and I enjoyed hearing you talk about your list and experiences!

Player nine that was an extremely in depth look into IG + firespray! Thank you for that. It was one of my all time favorite single posts to read on these boards. I used to play B and Fett together so hearing from someone who has far more experience than I with a similar list was great.

I would really appreciate if you guys would give me any feedback you may have on my dual firespray batrep (if you have time of course). I'm hoping to take it to a few regionals but don't have much time to test unfortunately.

Either way thank you for the great insight into IG builds to both of you! That has been and will be a tremendous help for my regional run!

And hothie I look forward to hearing how the rest of your regional run goes and wish you the best! I hope the tire situation works out, I was really sorry to hear about that. Life is full of obstacles :/

Tire update: got new tires last weekend. $700. But everything else on my truck, which is about 300 miles shy of 200,000 looked good. So it's looking like Minneapolis will be a go.

I ran my Thieving the Thief squad against JChav on vassal over the weekend. he was running Keyan with 3 Blues. I managed to burn down Keyan in the first round of combat in exchange for Palob. From there, though, I was just never able to focus fire on any one of them enough to take it out, so he ended up winning that one.

I think palob is the key to that squad, and without him the squad tends to fall apart due to lack of offense.

So I've been thinking a lot about what to run, because you have to have a squad that can beat Corran/Dash as well as BBBBZ, Fel/Chirpy, etc.

Tonight I went with a Boba and 4Z buid.

Boba with VI, tactician, Engine, and Flechette cannon
BS Soldier X4

I feel like I need the shots vs B's that 4 BS Soldiers can give me shooting at PS3. Fett can handle the high PS targets.

First game was against Guri and 3Z's with engine and Dead Man's Switch. I managed to kill one of the Z's, damaging Guri. Then he killed some of my Z's, and fett got a Range 1 shot to chain kill off the other 2 Z's and took it, even though it put 2 damage on me. Guri took a while to pin down, but Tactician was big for shutting down ADvS, and I ended up getting her with Fett and a Soldier left on the board.

Second game was against Kyle running his 3 Interceptor squad. I changed out Flechette cannon for a Seismic charge, since in the first game I used the cannon once, and it didn't hit. His first round of caombat hurt Fett, and Fel didn't take a single damage from all of my shots. Next round, though, Fel collided and I burned him down. Jax and Turr burned down a few other Z's while Fett was turning around. I managed to double stress Turr and was able to finish him off with fett. jax killed the other Z, so it was Fett at 4 hull vs Jax at 2 hull. We flwe around the board, but my higher PS and positioning gave me the advantage, so I finally caught him and finished him off.

As much as I like the swarm aspect of the 4Z's, I think I'm going to change 2 of them out for a Warthog. Z's just seem so slow and tough to maneuver, and just aren't my style. The other option being an IG instead of the 4Z's, but I'm not going to jump into that pond just yet. I may play a few vassal games and see what I think about Boba with 2Z's and a Warthog first.

Hi, long time fan of your articles!

I was dreaming up a similar list myself and was loving your rod to regionals post.

I was trying to come up with a use for the Syck fighters and I thought of the 35 pt Kavil plus a couple of Tansari vets with VI and mangler cannons and then Kaa'To with Bodyguard to follow Kavil around and maximize his opportunity attacks with the ATB turret. The 2 Syck fighters would try and hang around at range to load on hits and crits and since they are all PS 7 you can also strip those focus and evade tokens off for opportunity strikes.

Haven't had much chance to test it out but I figured while the Sycks are brittle, as long as I stay at range 3 I should make people spilt their attention b/w Kavil and the manglers.

Thinking of calling it Kavil's cronies or Cannons r' us.

Anyway your thought would be greatly appreciated!

The trouble is you can't stay at range 3 all game long with the scyks. And Kaato not running with Palob will hurt you coniderably if you try to use bodyguard. Draw their fire will work better, i think, for keeping Kavil alive a little bit longer. Give it a go, though, and see what you think.

Hothie,

have you considered using Guri. I run her with Virago, VI, Autothrusters, Accuracy Corrector and Inertial Dampeners. She is an absolute terror set up this way, you simply cannot ignore her. Along side Kath or Fett you have 2 ships that are real threats. sprinkle in a Scyk or Z to flavor?

I quite like this list. It's simple, no frills, but packs a punch.

Hothie,

have you considered using Guri. I run her with Virago, VI, Autothrusters, Accuracy Corrector and Inertial Dampeners. She is an absolute terror set up this way, you simply cannot ignore her. Along side Kath or Fett you have 2 ships that are real threats. sprinkle in a Scyk or Z to flavor?

I quite like this list. It's simple, no frills, but packs a punch.

Boba Fett Firespray-31 (44)

Veteran Instincts, Engine Upgrade

Guri StarViper (37)

Veteran Instincts, Virago, Autothrusters, Accuracy Corrector

N’Dru Suhlak Z-95 Headhunter (19)

Lone Wolf

I have been finding tactician to be effective lately, especially against AdvS builds.

So I'm looking at a boba Kath build, both with tactician.

Fett with VI, engine, tact

Kath with expert handling, tact

Binayre

I like the list, but the pirate feels like a free 12 pts to my opponent.

I might also dabble in a boba/IGB squad with ion and fett with tact. I haven't built it yet, but might when I get time.

Something like this:

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/249256/yin-and-bang

I have been finding tactician to be effective lately, especially against AdvS builds.

It also helps shut down anything with PTL, and it can help scare people off from K-turns and the occasional S-loop. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite upgrades.

I like the list, but the pirate feels like a free 12 pts to my opponent.

Yeah, I'm going back and forth on that, too. When it works, it's a nice addition to a list: a little blocking, a little extra durability, a little extra firepower.

But in actual tourney play last weekend, it didn't seem to contribute much to either victory or defeat. It was just... there, sometimes plugging away, but never functioning efficiently as either a blocker or a distraction. But my old list-building reflexes are dying hard, and I find myself loath to remove it from the list entirely.

Is there any way you could scrounge 2 points to upgrade the pirate to a Cartel Spacer? It would be a much better blocker, have the same attacking power, and be roughly as durable.

Is there any way you could scrounge 2 points to upgrade the pirate to a Cartel Spacer? It would be a much better blocker, have the same attacking power, and be roughly as durable.

Not from that list. The Firesprays are already pretty pared down.

Played my Team Covenant Aces Relegation round last night vs Starslinger. This was to get into the Aces League, which I wasn't before. My list was Yin and Yang, my double IG list that i haven't played since May 2nd in Omaha. Tyler ran a Fel, Vessery, Yorr list that is similar to what he has been running for the past year or so. So he was very familiar with how to fly his list.

We set up in opposite corners. He slow played, letting me come to him through the rocks, which I did. Third round we saw the first combat, with Vessery rolling 8 natural evades in 12 dice without modifiers. My 2 (4) attacks did 1 damage to him. He took D's shields out, the last being a vader crit from Yorr. That would be the only shot that Yorr would get for the rest of the game. Next round I did an AdvS BR and Inertial dampeners with D to get behind Vessery, who K-turned. It only gave him one shot at D with Fel, which I think he hit me for 1. D's shot missed Vess, and B's second shot put a Damaged Engine on Fel, which was big. Vessery then chased down and finished off D, while my B followed his shuttle, which was going in the same direction as fel. B finished off Yorr, so it was down to Vess and Fel vs B. Fel put some early hits on B. We did a lot of maneuvering, and I guessed he would try to block B's K-turn with Vess, so I did a 1 turn instead, which turned out to be big. A few turns later I managed to get a shot on Fel, and the second shot finished him off. I finally got through Vess's shields to give him a Damaged cockpit. He had init, so he was moving first anyway, but this meant that I would be shooting first. I ran into the corner, shedding stress, then got turned around enough to get a range 1 F/TL shot on him to finish him off.

B's surviveability shined after D was dead, which really makes me want to run my Boba version, Yin and Bang. I think it would help vs the high ps lists, and Fett's rear arc is way better than D's front only arc. Ions and Tactician will help vs B-wings, so I think I'm gonna work on that list for a week or so and try it out.

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/249256/yin-and-bang

I really like this variation of your list - Boba frankly does a much better job shoring up the IG's weaknesses than D and while the built in gunner was nice, a PS 10 tank who doesn't mind getting in the fray on occasion and has some nice control options is probably going to serve you better.

Excited/scared to fly against it!

EDIT: It got rid of the handy quote box for some reason

So I took Yin and Bang out fo a test run last night vs Serrate running BBBBZ.

He set up in a box in his lower right corner, while I set up up top right with mine, so we were opposite. He did some greeat moving and barrel rolling to fan out into a line with his B's, while his Z came up the side. My IGB went hard to his Z and managed to one-shot it at Range 1. Boba, however, clipped a debris token, so he was stressed, inside the obstacle field, and had 4 B's pointing at him. I did manage to ion one of them, but took 5 hits in return. Next turn I tried to stay at Range 3 while my IGB turned in and flanked his B's. fett took 2 crits, Thrust Control and Weapons malf. So now he was down to 1 hull with 2 stress tokens.Serrate turned his B's into my IGB. I had ioned another one, so it went onto a debris token. The ioned B was the only one who could shoot at Boba, range 3, and it finished him off. So now it was down to my IGB vs his 4 B-wings. This is when the complete defensiveness of my IGB combined with the slow dial of B-wings kicked in. My IGB killed off all 4 B-wings single-handedly while only losing 3 shields in return. So, I won the game, but in this match up on the table, it very likely would have gone to time. I killed off a B and a Z, and I'm not sure if I would have gotten his second B (which is what I needed to win on points) in time or not.

Even though Boba was ineffective this game, I'm not willing to give up on him with all of the Fel/Whisper/Corrans out there. But the defensiveness of IGB was again on display this game.

Two vassal games yesterday vs Xmage running scum Boba Kath build. I was running my Yin and Bang list of IGB and Boba.The first game he set up facing each other, then did 3 bank and 3 turn respectively, i think. Next round Kath did a 4 fwd and boost ptl focus, which pointed her toward the board edge.

Both my boba and IG ioned a stressed Kath, so next round she moved 1 fwd, which didnt leave her any room to go anywhere after that. My 2 ships turned in to his Boba, and after Kath left the board, he was left with his Boba vs both of my ships, so he conceded so we could reset.

Second game he stalled first turn. I messed up by bringing both of my ships together down my right side at him. I was able to double stress and ion his Boba, but I really left myself nowhere to go for a solid 3-4 turns. Also flying together negated Lone Wolf, and B went down hard. So it was my Boba vs both of his ships, his Boba being lightly injured. I did manage to fly down and take out his Boba way longer than it should have taken, and kath and my Boba danced for a bit (meaning we flew around the board for 10-12 turns taking minimal shots at each other, him trying to get me in rear arc, and me trying to avoid it) before I got tired of the game and just got into her rear arc to end it.

He had PTL Kath with K4, which is a tempting build, but it's tough to give up on Tactician.

So today on the table I flew this variant:

IGB with Mangler, Ion, AT, SJ, LW, and ID (52, adding the ID since I downgraded Boba to Kath)
Kath with Ion, Tactician, VI, Engine

I can't decide which ship to put ID on, as there are good cases for both options.

First game was against a Xizor, Guri, BS Soldierx2 list. This was a good game, with Kath taking out a Z and doling out some more damage before going down. B finished off Guri next turn, then Xizor a few turns later, but not before getting down to 1 hull. His final BSS was full, so I had to play it well to stay alive, and all of my defensive options meant that his Z was never able to land a single damage on me, so I won. It was a well-flown and fun game.

Second game was against a RAC with 2 Black Squad Pilots list. He had Isard, Captive, and Mara on RAC. I managed to separate Chirpy from his BSPs and picked off the TIEs taking only shield damage in return from RAC. Then I was able to focus down RAC for the 100-0 win.

I didn't use the ions in the second game, and only once in the first game, but I like having them for the BBBBZ match-up, or really any low AGI ship. So I don't really want to give them up. And tactician was clutch in both games on the table today, so even though K4 would give me better attacks, I think I'm gonna stay with tactician for now, because it really messes with people, and Scum doesn't really have a good stress counter right now. But between Mara, Captive, and debris, Kath ended the game with 4 stress tokens. But she's still doling out 4 dice in rear arc even with stress, so it wasn't a big deal.

It's the kath vs Boba argument that I'm debating right now. kath with VI is still PS9, and Boba with VI is PS10, which is a big difference in this meta. (And to harken back to earlier in the diary, Determination on Kath would have been SOOO good in the Xizor game, because she took Damaged Cockpit and Stunned pilot crits early.) Kath fits my style better, but even at PS9 she can be outflanked by Fel/Whisper/Han, etc.

But Boba can reroll both offense and defense dice at Range 1, which against an action denial or stress list can be huge. And rerolling defense dice at all on a Firespray tends to keep them on the table longer.

The Inertial Dampeners I got from downgrading I used once in the Xizor game to get a good position on Guri. I didn't use it in the second game because I was already taking stress as it was, I didn't want to pile onto that. And a case could be made for having the ID on Kath instead of the B, or for having an init bid. So there is still play room with the list.

Kath is just so much better offensively than Boba is, though, especially the way I fly them, using the rear arc more than the front one.

Hmm, I'll think about it.

I ran Kath/88B at WV regionals two weeks ago and went 4/2 and ranked around 16th. I could have played better, etc. etc. However, last night I took Fett instead to the NJ regionals and had a wildly different outcome. Suffice it to say, I think I have resolved the Boba vs Kath debate for myself, and while I am definitely shelving Boba, I might just shelve the firesprays all together for a while.

So the PS9 vs PS10 debate with kath vs boba... Having a higher PS value than a vulnerable ship, even whisper, doesnt mean you're going to kill it. Even with boba, if you manage to get Whisper in arc, you're throwing 3 dice at 2 agility that usually has a focus or evade on hand. Same thing with Soontir, sort of. In fact, stealth device soontir is also 4 agility until you crack the armor, but you deal with both of them the same way: Force them into arc and blow away their tokens, then have something else blow THEM away. Getting them into arc is often the tricky part, but you dont necessarily need a higher PS value to do it.

In short, I felt I had been bringing Boba for PS 10, but do you know who kills all the Whispers and Soontirs in my games? Iggy-B with HLC doubletap and predator. Boba tries, sure, but he really just strips a token or two. If Iggy is getting shots, anyone lower PS (pretty much) can conceivably get shots and strip tokens. So in that case, what am I bothering with the bid for? And sure, once every ten games against a Soontir, Boba actually rolls massive damage and blows whisper or soontir away in one shot. But that's once every 10 games with each of them... so if you face 2 in a tournament, you're probably only really one-shotting these guys once every four or five events that you actually get paired up with them.

I've given up on the init bid entirely. There is some gravity to it, I admit, but better flying is just plain better flying. If PS order was the determining factor in more games, I might be convinced, but it seems to very rarely be the case, even with arc dodgers like Soontir.

Kath is excellent pretty consistently. Boba is excellent in very specific situations, and fighting arc dodgers isn't one of them (he is better than average thanks to actually being in a firespray, but not enough to justify all the eggs being put in that basket). Even when you do get them in arc, it's still an uphill battle to also HAVE any of those rerolls when you shoot at them.

So, I had the wild hair of running 2 HLC Scyks instead of IGB.

Cartel Spacer X2 with title and HLC
palob with Opportunist, Engine, Moldy Crow, K4, Blaster turret
Kaato with draw their fire

Went against gary from the ORS podcast. he was running Dash with 2 FCS Blues.

First attack of the game, unmodified Dash hit, crit, crit, crit vs my focused scyk, blank, blank, blank. Sigh, that's about how the game went. The scyk's went down quickly, then kaato died shortly thereafter, and then palob got dash down to 2 hull before the B's finished him off.

So, yeah, IGB is laughing at me trying to supplant him with scyks. Abyssmal failure.

Tonight's squad:

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/253457/kath-and-b

Ok, so I haven't yet thought of a good name for it. All of the upgrades aren't action dependent, except for engine on Kath. Will try it out and see what I think.

So, I had the wild hair of running 2 HLC Scyks instead of IGB.

Cartel Spacer X2 with title and HLC

palob with Opportunist, Engine, Moldy Crow, K4, Blaster turret

Kaato with draw their fire

Went against gary from the ORS podcast. he was running Dash with 2 FCS Blues.

First attack of the game, unmodified Dash hit, crit, crit, crit vs my focused scyk, blank, blank, blank. Sigh, that's about how the game went. The scyk's went down quickly, then kaato died shortly thereafter, and then palob got dash down to 2 hull before the B's finished him off.

So, yeah, IGB is laughing at me trying to supplant him with scyks. Abyssmal failure.

If you drop kaato and upgrade the scyks to veterans with predator and shields it's pretty solid against swarms. Nuking 1 B per turn is great fun.

But I'm not convinced scyks are very competitive in general.

HLC Scyk veterans might be the only thing I would shoot at before Opportunist Palob. Maybe.

two vassal games yesterday.

First was against a Han/Keyn build. I was running

IGB with SJ, AT, Mangler, LW

Kath with Predator, Ion Cannon, Flight Instructor, Engine

I planted Kath on a rock early with a wrog move, which cost me a Range 1 rear arc shot at Keyan. Plus the 2 crits I pulled on IGB were Injured Pilot and Munitions failure, so he was useless. I messed up by hitting the rock, because that meant I had to devote more shots to Keyan and less to Han. In the end I got Han down to hull, but he finished off B for the win. Flight Instructor rolled blanks every single time, as did predator.

Then against Andrew running a Soontir/Whisper/Doomshuttle build, I changed up a little bit. I dropped Flight Instructor for Tactician and ID on both. I should have gone with a seismic, because I had a prime spot to hit both the shuttle and soontir with it. I lined up a range 1 rear arc shot vs a collided and tokenless whisper, but managed to roll 3 blanks in 5 dice (with focus), rerolled 1 into an eye for 3 hits, which he got 1 evade on. BMF said the expected damage of that shot was 3.53, which could have easily killed Whisper right there. but i didn't, and the shuttle managed to finish off Kath, and the other 2 finished off B.

Last night vs Evan, I ran

Kath with vi, engine, ion, tactician

B with sj, at, lw, ion, mangler

He ran a boba and igb build. It started off well, I double stressed and ioned his B onto a rock, so it was out of the fight for 3 turns while I worked on boba. Kath put 1 ion token on boba, but B tried twice for the second ion, rolling 4 blanks while focused, so boba escaped. I wasn't able to recover from there, as he picked off Kath, so he had 2 ships to my hurt B. He won in the end, his gunner coming up big a few times. According to lady luck, with rerolls he threw 114 dice to take out my 18 hp. So I think the squad worked well, I just didn't get the midgame rolls I needed to maintain control of the game.

One of the new builds that I have been testing out recently is this:

Kath w/ VI, HLC, K4, Engine

IG-B w/ HLC, FCS, Thrusters

100pts

It's been doing really well. Its a max firepower list that can still do heavy damage without any actions. It will take ships off the board faster then some of the more defense oriented builds. I just wish I could fit VI on B somehow...but I don't want to drop thrusters, or downgrade from K4. K4 has been one of my favorite upgrade cards from scum, especially paired with engine. I find it hard to justify any other crew unless you have some sort of other passive TL skill. I even take it with Boba.

I guess I would go with tactician on Kath because I do more white moves than green, usually. That leaves 48 points, which has been my defensive B for a long time now.

Kath with VI, HLC, tactician, Engine
B with Sensor Jammer, Lone Wolf, AT, mangler

i don't lose much offensively because of the crits, and B stays on the board much longer this way. I also get a Range 1 gunner attack, which is where people would rather be against HLC B. The trouble, though, is Bwings, especially lots of them. i won't be able to pull them off of the board fast enough before one of my ships goes down. Bwings are the reason I have been running this:

Kath with VI, Ion, tactician, Engine

B with SJ, AT, LW, Mangler, Ion

It's much more of a control list, trying to minimize the shots against that I get. Plus pulling a Munitions Failure on B doesn't make him worthless. But, I'm winless with this list on vassal (although, i haven't faced Bwings yet), so maybe I need to go with the first one in this post.

I flew Kath and IGB against my brother yesterday, who flew a 3 Ace interceptor list. Kath's trait is DIRTY against arc dodgers. With EU and 1 banks you can do nice long turns to make sure they can't dodge out of your rear arc, and the K4 keeps you from throwing unmodified dice. Strongly considering a variation of this list for my regional event now.

I flew Kath and IGB against my brother yesterday, who flew a 3 Ace interceptor list. Kath's trait is DIRTY against arc dodgers. With EU and 1 banks you can do nice long turns to make sure they can't dodge out of your rear arc, and the K4 keeps you from throwing unmodified dice. Strongly considering a variation of this list for my regional event now.

Well, they CAN dodge out of arc if they are expecting that...

I flew Kath and IGB against my brother yesterday, who flew a 3 Ace interceptor list. Kath's trait is DIRTY against arc dodgers. With EU and 1 banks you can do nice long turns to make sure they can't dodge out of your rear arc, and the K4 keeps you from throwing unmodified dice. Strongly considering a variation of this list for my regional event now.

Well, they CAN dodge out of arc if they are expecting that...

And then they line up nicely for the trailing IGB with HLC