Bossk Mangler

By Rakky Wistol, in X-Wing

imo, you need some kind of guaranteed damage reduction or some super maneuverability (or an excessive combination of both + a bloody turret) to qualify as a viable "fat" ship, otherwise you just get plinked to death hard.

The Hound has a very chunky profile and a great price-tag, but unlike either the 'spray or the aggressor it lacks a.) more than 1 agility b.) evades

No word about the 180 firing arc until I've put it on the table, but while I'm loving the chance to play with it I don't know how it will contribute to the ship's maneuverability. The spray's auxiliary arc gives you quite a bit of flexibility i.t.o positioning and still having shots, turrets give an excessive amount thereof, but this new "arc" is difficult to gauge (especially without the dial)

Now, I'm willing to believe that the hound will be a great "anti-fattie" (stack tacticians: profit ^_^ ) especially with Bossk pushing damage through low-agility ships like yts or decimators.

I'm inclined to agree, really expensive ships thrive through damage mitigation and arc-dodging. The huge front arc of the YV makes me think Barrel Roll will be incredibly useful, but the dial is really going to govern that. Hopefully it has the common 1-Bank greens, which should make the Mangler/K4/EH combo pretty effective. Plus, you can always bail into the Pup!

There are all sorts of good ideas in here that I will have to math out later. No ETA yet.

He could also bring Greedo along for the ride.

Oh dang. For one point? Done and done.

Greedo doesn't work. It doesn't add a crit. Just forces a damage card to be face up.
He does flip the first of those damages face-up, turning a crit into a crit and a hit
Fair enough. But that's no better on him than on any other pilot. And with 6 hull he's not liking those face up cards either.(Granted nobody does, but I figure Greedo's a better fit with Ion packing Hawks)

I think he will combo particularly nicely with Bossk, because of the amount of raw damage Bossk can deal. You can eat through shielding, and if there are additional hits one will still get dealt face-up.

And depending on how the Hound/Pup points surrendering works, you might be able to bail out of your smoking, self-Greedo'ed Hound's Tooth and launch a factory-fresh Pup.

Anyway I hope Team Green becomes a thing, because I like scumbag bounty hunters, and 2>1.

Personally, rather see Greedo on a cheaper somethingsomething-666

you can circumvent Greedo's drawback entirely if you put him on something your opponent doesn't want to shoot :P (or protect a more important ship by making your opponent want to shoot greedo)

Edited by ficklegreendice

Personally, rather see Greedo on a cheaper somethingsomething-666

you can circumvent Greedo's drawback entirely if you put him on something your opponent doesn't want to shoot :P (or protect a more important ship by making your opponent want to shoot greedo)

You mean like on a Spice Runner with an Autoblaster Turret? if you put down two Firesprays or a pair of HLC Scyks, that incredibly annoying HWK falls down pretty far on the priority list.

for me, definitely not a HWK

a cheap ship is fine, but an auto-blaster spice runner is going to have a hard time doing something more than nothing between dat dial, dat one die innate, and dat range 1 limitation

I don't actually like Greedo on either of the current crew ships because you give up a lot to get him on them (and I don't like that either of the two current crew ships only have 1 crew slot)

The somethingsomething-666 gives him (imo) the most ideal platform between a fairly beefy profile, implied cheap cost (relative to the other large ships, given Bossk = MM in point cost), and 3 freaking crew slots :o affording you plenty of flexibility even if you do take him

Edited by ficklegreendice

Guaranteeing that 2 damage is where it's at. People get so hung up on dealing crits; I'd rather just stack cards on things until they die.

Oh sure, the three crew slots on the YV represent the best way to tuck him into a viable offensive platform.

That said, a PS1 HWK can be incredibly irritating when it bumps into a Falcon round after round haha. C-3Pwho?

Bossk (35)

Opportunist (4)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

K4 Security Droid (3)

Greedo (1)

Palob Godalhi (20)

Veteran Instincts (1)

Ion Cannon Turret (5)

Tactician (2)

Hull Upgrade (3)

N'Dru Suhlak (17)

Lone Wolf (2)

Hull Upgrade (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

There is the pain.

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

Not sure that would quite work, the attack has to hit before you can change the crit to two hits, That means the defender might have the opportunity to cancel the rolled crit with defense dice before you can change it to two hits. An FAQ update addressing that would be appreciated of course, but I'm pretty confident that's how it works. Sorry mate!

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

Not sure that would quite work, the attack has to hit before you can change the crit to two hits, That means the defender might have the opportunity to cancel the rolled crit with defense dice before you can change it to two hits. An FAQ update addressing that would be appreciated of course, but I'm pretty confident that's how it works. Sorry mate!

the rule as written works as Tsiegtiez pointed out

you need an attack "that hits"

auto-blaster allows your crits to be canceled by the opponent

Bossk can only cancel your crits (and I don't believe you can cancel the same result twice, since it'll remove the result from the pool before Bossk's ability triggers).

I guess it could push more damage on low agility ships, but then why not just use your range 1 primary?

not much synergy there, sadly, but it doesn't mean it won't be good on the other pilots :) (again, S.o.T & Outlaw Tech... & Intelligence Agent with room to spare :lol: )

Edited by ficklegreendice

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

Not sure that would quite work, the attack has to hit before you can change the crit to two hits, That means the defender might have the opportunity to cancel the rolled crit with defense dice before you can change it to two hits. An FAQ update addressing that would be appreciated of course, but I'm pretty confident that's how it works. Sorry mate!

Dunno, the core rules state that all abilities that cancel dice have to happen at the start of the 'compare dice' step, so I think some clarification of how the ability works is needed anyway.

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

Not sure that would quite work, the attack has to hit before you can change the crit to two hits, That means the defender might have the opportunity to cancel the rolled crit with defense dice before you can change it to two hits. An FAQ update addressing that would be appreciated of course, but I'm pretty confident that's how it works. Sorry mate!

Dunno, the core rules state that all abilities that cancel dice have to happen at the start of the 'compare dice' step, so I think some clarification of how the ability works is needed anyway.

Right, I'd appreciate an FAQ entry too, but since it makes mention of "an attack that hits" and then "before dealing damage," I'm going to say you've already done the red dice/green dice compare step to cancel applicable roll results.

my diagnosis is the same and I'd be bowed over if it didn't work that way (not by how amazing it is, but by how horrible the wording is)

but hey, it's a new wave. FAQ clarifications are about as inevitable as the rising sun :P

Edited by ficklegreendice

An attack only hits if the defender is unable to cancel all the attackers defense dice. If you use autoblaster, then the opponet gets to cancel crits first. That means that when the attack hits, there will be no crits left to cancel.

In the case of greedo what happens is your attack hits, and then you cancel a crit to make the attack hit harder, and then if that punches through the shields the first one will be face up. Remaining damage will be face down, and remaining crits will be face up.

An attack only hits if the defender is unable to cancel all the attackers defense dice. If you use autoblaster, then the opponet gets to cancel crits first. That means that when the attack hits, there will be no crits left to cancel.

In the case of greedo what happens is your attack hits, and then you cancel a crit to make the attack hit harder, and then if that punches through the shields the first one will be face up. Remaining damage will be face down, and remaining crits will be face up.

Exactly. It's a decent idea, but because there usually won't be any crits left for Bossk to work with, Autoblaster is kind of left on the wayside, as usual.

If the tooth is fast enough, an autoblaster cannon on bossk could be interesting. Assuming you have a way to deal a crit for sure you get a very interesting combo to push through some crazy pain.

Not sure that would quite work, the attack has to hit before you can change the crit to two hits, That means the defender might have the opportunity to cancel the rolled crit with defense dice before you can change it to two hits. An FAQ update addressing that would be appreciated of course, but I'm pretty confident that's how it works. Sorry mate!

Dunno, the core rules state that all abilities that cancel dice have to happen at the start of the 'compare dice' step, so I think some clarification of how the ability works is needed anyway.

If a card gave the ability to boost or barrel roll, even if that would cause an overlap, the card would trump the rulebook.

Ifa card said to roll attack dice instead of defense diceand call all hit/crit results evades the card would trump the rulebook.

This is no different.

I thought about the Autoblaster build too, but yeah, it's not great due to the reasons already mentioned.

I also briefly contemplated the possibility of him being able to deal 3 damage with an Ion Cannon, but that doesn't work either.

Yeah Bossk lite will be a thing, I think you're underselling fat Bossk though. Unless the dial is HWK-tier horrible, combined with engine, fat Bossk will pump out the dmg faster than almost every other ship.

A HWK dial on a Large ship is much better than the same dial on a Small ship. Though, yeah, the confining of of hard turns hurts to 2 speed would hurt the large ship far more than the Small.

It's a shame that Bossk's ability doesn't have the Autocorrector timing, becuase it then would have worked with autoblasters. Would have been a fun combo (and a somewhat worthy use of 5 points).

Strangely enough Bossk's ability just reinforces the notion that more dice is better which keeps the HLC up there as the go to option. It does require some hoop jumping for sure to hit the potential 5 max damage, but it might well be worth it. But then again it is hard to argue with the cost efficiency of just going with the mango cannon.

It's a shame that Bossk's ability doesn't have the Autocorrector timing, becuase it then would have worked with autoblasters. Would have been a fun combo (and a somewhat worthy use of 5 points).

it'd also be ******* broken :P

If Bossk keeps his pilot ability and EPT when he jumps in the Nashtah Pup, then Calculation might be better.

Trusting a cannon on the HT, is approximately half as bad as using a cannon on a YT-2400 without the title. Calculation may have finally found a home on Bossk. Saved this squad for further perusal...

Bossk (35)
Calculation (1)
K4 Security Droid (3)
Tactician (2)
Recon Specialist (3)
Hound's Tooth (6)
Binayre Pirate (12) x4
Total: 98

EDIT: forgot some important bits and changed squad. Not sure what best use is for last 2 points.

Edited by gamblertuba

Trusting a cannon on the HT, is approximately half as bad as using a cannon on a YT-2400 without the title. Calculation may have finally found a home on Bossk. Saved this squad for further perusal...

Bossk (35)

Calculation (1)

K4 Security Droid (3)

Tactician (2)

Recon Specialist (3)

Hound's Tooth (6)

Binayre Pirate (12) x4

Total: 98

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

EDIT: forgot some important bits and changed squad. Not sure what best use is for last 2 points.

Why is using a cannon bad at all here? It's like using a cannon on the Firespray, with auxiliary arcs that make it more likely to bring your cannon to bear.