...Can someone help me understand what Chewbo has going for it over, say, one of the Dash + Falcon lists?

imo chewie and Leebo are going to excel in a meta full of mangler cannons.

Yeah. I think one work around is Rexler Brath, but that guy is rarely played nowadays.

Honestly i would say it is at least as viable as double Aggressor. Comparable Firepower and survivability.

I have to say however that there are a lot more low PS lists that do well and that makes it difficult for elite 2-Ship lists. Lists with tons of B-Eings, Warthogs, Scyk Mangler swarms, Tie Swarms or Tarn Mison Swarm can potentially ruin it for you!

Also against Autoceptors you should try to surprise them by keeping them in arc if possible...

So, if the meta features a lot of swarm builds, then Chewbo would not be a good build choice, right?

I've never found swarms to be a particularly hard counter to Chewbo - in competitive play with timed games you can generally take more points off the board than your opponent can in the time limit - provided you play defensively (which makes sense anyway because Chewbo is a defensive list at heart) and make the swarm chase you.

I've handled TIE swarms with the list before, and wouldn't be particularly scared of Warthogs or Scyks. Anything that's either slow and predictable or relatively soft and squishy can be dealt with.

B-Wings are a problem. Against TIE/sSycks you have a pretty good chance of eliminating one ship per round and reducing incoming fire. Shoot whatever has the best shot at your dudes, and play the attrition game. On the other hand each B-Wing will basically always weather one round of shooting, quite often two, and could be chipping away at you that whole time. It's tough to bait them or get behind them, because they can creep along slowly and stay conservative with their positioning.

I've found that the secret (if you can call something so obvious a secret) to playing a pancakes build is getting the opponent to chase you. It sounds like a no-brainer, but I've noticed several other YT-3700 or YT-2600 players basically try to go into, through, and behind the enemy... I guess maybe because that feels like the fastest way to overshoot them, and dodge arcs? But I would much rather hard turn/k-turn early, like on the 2nd or 3rd maneuver, and make them eat tailpipe.

Anyway, I'm keeping a close eye on this thread. I did ok with Bobacca during SC season, and might break it out for a regional. Although I haven't flown it since Scum came out, and there's a lot of new stuff that impacts it (Autothrusters, IGs, Manglers for both enemies and for Leebo)

Does flying really fast work against Swarms? I am thinking it does because if you fly past a whole swarm, then you effectively arc dodged most if not all of those ships. The next turn, those swarm ships can K-turn but by then you might have moved out of range already.

In short, I think you can do quite a bit of kiting with turreted large ships. Correct?

Edit; This strategy does not work as well against ships with Autothrusters.

Honestly i would say it is at least as viable as double Aggressor. Comparable Firepower and survivability.

I have to say however that there are a lot more low PS lists that do well and that makes it difficult for elite 2-Ship lists. Lists with tons of B-Eings, Warthogs, Scyk Mangler swarms, Tie Swarms or Tarn Mison Swarm can potentially ruin it for you!

Also against Autoceptors you should try to surprise them by keeping them in arc if possible...

So, if the meta features a lot of swarm builds, then Chewbo would not be a good build choice, right?

I've never found swarms to be a particularly hard counter to Chewbo - in competitive play with timed games you can generally take more points off the board than your opponent can in the time limit - provided you play defensively (which makes sense anyway because Chewbo is a defensive list at heart) and make the swarm chase you.

I've handled TIE swarms with the list before, and wouldn't be particularly scared of Warthogs or Scyks. Anything that's either slow and predictable or relatively soft and squishy can be dealt with.

B-Wings are a problem. Against TIE/sSycks you have a pretty good chance of eliminating one ship per round and reducing incoming fire. Shoot whatever has the best shot at your dudes, and play the attrition game. On the other hand each B-Wing will basically always weather one round of shooting, quite often two, and could be chipping away at you that whole time. It's tough to bait them or get behind them, because they can creep along slowly and stay conservative with their positioning.

I've found that the secret (if you can call something so obvious a secret) to playing a pancakes build is getting the opponent to chase you. It sounds like a no-brainer, but I've noticed several other YT-3700 or YT-2600 players basically try to go into, through, and behind the enemy... I guess maybe because that feels like the fastest way to overshoot them, and dodge arcs? But I would much rather hard turn/k-turn early, like on the 2nd or 3rd maneuver, and make them eat tailpipe.

Anyway, I'm keeping a close eye on this thread. I did ok with Bobacca during SC season, and might break it out for a regional. Although I haven't flown it since Scum came out, and there's a lot of new stuff that impacts it (Autothrusters, IGs, Manglers for both enemies and for Leebo)

I am surprised because whenever i went for Chewie with Tie Swarm and Warthogs, he did not last more than 2 rounds of fire. I have not played it with Scyks honestly yet.

Especially Warthogs outdamage Chewbo so hard it's ridiculous, with Ions it can't arc dodge for very long, with blaster turrets i often did 10+ damage per turn to chewie, and that's at range 2! Against all those shots danage mitigation with Title, Jan ors or other sources does just not do much.

Then you will mostly have lost a ship yourself but 3v1 against Leebo is pretty much still doable.

What's the best asteroid/debris configuration for Chewbo?

I have flown Chewbo to a good effect in the sense that I definitely overachieved with them. I feel that it´s a pretty good build in the sense that you generally beat players that are less skilled than you, it´s basically not a build you lose with because of bad luck. What I also experienced is that you really give yourself chance to get lucky with the dice against better players with fragile builds. It takes a while to get those suckers down (being pretty much crit immune) and in the meantime people tend to make mistakes. Autothrusters have obviously made this build less viable so I´ve adjusted mine by adding a Gunner to Chewie and reducing Leebo´s HLC to a Mangler.

Regarding the asteroids, my experience is that it´s best to make it as dense in the middle as you can. Both YTs have the crucial 1-turn which makes it really easy to change directions quickly and to even navigate through cluttered asteroids in an unpredictable manner. As other people have said I think B-wing and Y-wing swarms give Chewbo trouble so it´s crucial to make them scatter at some point or to get range-3 pot shots while flying around the middle. I haven´t played Chewbo with Debris Fields but my feeling is that they make the YTs more vulnerable since formations of Bs and Ys (for example) can just plow through them without losing their shots.

If you look on this forum i was one of the first to post Chewbo builds, and the first touse the name, so i really love it. But i am pretty sceptical to play it now.

My experiences against Swarms, Warthogs, B-Wings, Panic attack, and now also autothruster lists are pretty mediocre for Chewbo. I think it's still a fun list and Mangler made it better than it was, but i don't see it at a top meta spot now.

...Can someone help me understand what Chewbo has going for it over, say, one of the Dash + Falcon lists?

Practically impossible to crit against Chewie (because he turns face up cards face down). Hard to deal a crit that is particularly damaging against Leebo (because it can choose the lesser of two evils).

All in all, it is a very durable build.

Plus, put Determination on Leebo and you potentially choose a crit that you can then discard...

I did pretty good with my version that I came up with at a local 10 men trouney:

Chewie: MF+Draw their fire+gunner+ C3PO

Leebo: Determination+Outrider+Mangler cannon+recon specialist

makes 99ptns

It was great fun and did some niceformation flying with it,

being able to draw off a critt now and then to the critt-imune chewie helps to spread out the damage over both ships

If I didn't fudged up my dials at the start of the fourth round (was gettign really tired and didn't payed much atention by then) I think I could've made second place easily...

Though auto-thrusters weren't out then...

Just playtested against the following build:

TIE Phantom + ACD + VI

Soontir + VI + RGP + SD + AutoT

Turr + VI + AutoT

TIE Phantom fell easily, but it was very difficult to kill or even damage Soontir and Turr because they have Autothrusters. Any advice on how to deal with the 3-ship Imperial build?

I saw one expertly flown list shortly after Wave 6 came out. It made Top 4 in a 36-player tourney (and completely tabled my Panic Attack list when I faced it), but I don't know how well it'd do against double IGs with Autothrusters, or Soontir.

How did it beat Panic Attack? Which ship in that build did Chewbo take out first?

Put nein numb and it will be good.

Just playtested against the following build:

TIE Phantom + ACD + VI

Soontir + VI + RGP + SD + AutoT

Turr + VI + AutoT

TIE Phantom fell easily, but it was very difficult to kill or even damage Soontir and Turr because they have Autothrusters. Any advice on how to deal with the 3-ship Imperial build?

My hunch is the problem isn't the three ship imperial build, it's the thrusters. You'll want to point your guns at them. Use one to block (probably the outrider as it is more maneuverable with the barrel roll, sadly that's a better gun than the falcon's) and make sure the other is pointing its arc to where you think the block will happen. It denies them defensive actions, and ideally, autothrusters. Even if they have thrusters,as long as they lack other actions, you'll likely do damage. The other problem is your version of the list is that it doesn't have gunner or even predator to try and improve offense, so those ships will be tough even without actions.

I'll add that I've seen a phantom take down both of these ships by itself because of the lack of gunner. It's not always going to happen, but a very good phantom player will make sure that he is in a good position for defense, usually R3 against Chewie (depends on which gun you have on Leebo) and make you go through 5 dice and tokens in order to get any damage. So, you're lucky to have taken it out so easily. It will be interesting to see if you continue to have that kind of success against them.

Hope that helps, though I honestly hate seeing the Chewie/Leebo combo in general.