So I am still playing around with Scum and Villainy and I am enjoying it. I am learning to use ships and learning to fly against the options/ships that are available.
I went to a small 4 round store tournament and brought the following:
Drea Renthal, Auto Blaster, Unhinged astro, BTL Title
Hired Gun, Auto Blaster, Unhinged astro, BTL Title
Tansarii Point Veteran, Heavy, Mangler, Predator X2
I ended up enjoying the day a lot having many good games and one great game.
Match 1:
This one was the hardest for me. My opponent flew Super Dash w/Mangler who was flanked by Chewy w/VI & Jan Ors crew.
I set up in the center, he set up on his left.
I tore the Falcon apart extremely quickly, but Dash just happily arc dodged and whittled down my forces to nothing.
Ideally I would have liked to take Dash down before Chewy, but Dash just wouldn't stay in my arc (he was very, very well flown). I did try to block Dash in the initial engagement. but came up a quarter inch short of a block.
This game really does come down to centimeters at times.
0-1
Match 2:
Now I sit down across from a classic, Acadamey Pilot X8. Now I had lists like this in mind when I built my list (high agility, low/no shields), so I was excited to see how it played out.
He split his deployment into 2 groups one on his right and one in the center, I deployed on my right and my right-center.
I managed to engage half his fleet with all my fleet then just powered through and cut into the next group of fighters which were behind the first wave.
The combination of long range crits on high agility ships and short range Autoblasters double tap let me cut down about 1.75 Academies a turn.
At the end of the game, I had taken out all 8 Academies losing my Hired Gun in the process. This shocked me, I never thought I would see the day when a squad with a Y-Wing could handle a swarm.
1-1
Match 3:
Best match of the day.
My opponent flew Scum & Villainy as well.
He took: Boba (K4, PTL, Hotshot Blaster, Mangler) and Kath (K4, PTL, Mangler)
We basically flew staright at each other at the beginning, I was able to take Kath down in 2 turns of fire, losing Drea on the same turn.
Then we had a 3 v 1 Boba. He flew very well, entagling my ships while one of my Sycks got taken out of the fight for three turns as it struggled to get out of asteroids.
The game came down to a Boba with one hull and my last Veteran with one hull left. He got that last shot off and won. It was one of those games ending with tight, clutch maneuvers.
Footnote, Boba being able to have a focus, an evade, a target lock and being able to reroll dice when people are close is really, really good. Looking back, I should have broken off from Boba and then reformed to hit him with mass fire at long range. One snipe at my ships as they break combat would have been survivable compared to granting Mr Fet all those rerolls. Sometimes its better to take your time.
1-2
Match 4:
Oicun w/Isard, Mara, engine upgrade, Dauntless, Predator (there may be other stuff there two) and two Scimtars with Shield upgrade.
Okay so a lot of hull and I have two crit machines.
This became really viscious, between crits and what not, I took out Oicun in 1.5 turns of fire (I believe he was down to 3 hull after one turn of fire)
Drea took a lot of pain from the Bombers, but didn't go down, and then I started flying her just to get her out of arc and i ended this game without losing a ship.
To be fair, the list did have issues, I think Proximity Mines would have done better than SUs on the bombers and leave two points for buffing Oicun.
2-2
Overall Thoughts
While I made this list to be able to handle high agility, low shield ships, it does very well versus large base ships as well (at least on the first pass), able to dish out serious damage quickly (even to Chewy).
I also found bumping not being that big a deal with this list. Being able to attack 6 times in a round, 2 of which ignore green dice combined with Predator on another 2 attacks is very effective even without focus/target lock.
It does very poorly versus high mobility ships, I was a bit disappointed that I did not get to fly versus a Soontir list to see how it worked, I think things may have been different with the small base Soontir.
Drea is okay, but I am not sure she is worth 2 more points than the Hired Gun. I believe I triggered her ability once in the tourney. Maybe I need to put her ability in the pile of "useful but don't use it every turn"
The issues with her is that
1. It is hard to get the TL on the higher PS ships to start with
2. Sometimes, you don't need to spend the target lock
3. When flying against disposable ships like TIE Fighters, it doesn't seem worth it to get the stress against a ship that will either be dead or out of arc next turn.
4. Denies her the K-Turn
The mix of high agility, low HP, long range damage with low agility, high hp, short range damage in this list really does make target priority hard for your opponent.