I'm thinking of trying:

Cartel Spacer + Heavy Scyk + Mangler Cannon (20) x 5

Anybody give this a whirl yet? That's a lot of secondary weapon range 3 criticals on the first round of firing, and some decent defense dice.

We've been trying around with scyks with mangler and hlcs in numbers and they are fairly disappointing. They just go down so easily in the first few rounds, but as the game progresses they really start to shine. It's not usually enough though, and overall I reckon the scyks swarm isn't very good.

I'm not sure I can figure out a role for these guys. Tried a bunch of configurations in various escalation lists and the Ion canon scyk seems to be fairly useful but at 19 points, is probably too much of your point total to be effective.

I'll keep trying out different flavours though, there's gotta be something that works.

Syck's are probably best in a heavy supportive role. Such as to a bigger, more attention grabbing ship such as the Kath or Boba suggestion I heard a while back. Otherwise they would definitely need hull/shield upgrades in order to maintain some survivability.

It also depends largely what your up against; I imagine it would kill big ships once you get past the shield, but the Syck's need a strong favourable engagements to make the crits matter. Vs other swarms I can see the Syck form being strong, but not so strong against mini-swarms (such as Xizor with 4 Z-95.) where it has both numbers and a nice firm hammer.

They are probably one of those ships that do somewhat better at high point games, where you can compliment this hard hitting squad with some fodder or some real heavy hitters.

The problem with 5-Mangler Scyk Swarm is that Scyks are very fragile. I've played 10 games with that loadout and my win ratio was 50%. Something to take into consideration before jumping to the conclusion of "5 Manglers! Yeah!" (believe me, thought the same thing, it does sound awesome and powerful):

-Each ship is 20 points each, representative of your investment in each ship.

-This representation is a weakness, since focus firing down one ship at a time weakens your force greatly.

-They are weak ships, 1 shield and 2 hull is terrible. Especially since the most common crit is Direct Hit!

-Being weak, they rely on green dice to survive. Never trust green dice.

-Moving at PS2 is alright for blocking, terrible for fighting against anything with higher PS for shooting.

As for Manglers, theoretically, they're great against fat things, such as Decimators and Falcons, but when those things are toasting a Scyk a turn your list loses red dice and potency, and at about 3 ships left on your side of the field, you're pretty much done for. One thing I did like about Scyk Mangler swarm is that if you keep them tight together and use them to focus fire some sucker down, the amount of crits generated by 15 red dice will kill the **** out of something. You gotta fly it like a big shark, keep its jaws/all your arcs open to a single target and let them eat crits. However, it wing a PS2 shark without any secondary modifiers is bad juju for 5 Scyks.

While I haven't played 5 mangler scyks, I concure with general attitude of the responses above - 1 or 2 scyks are excellent support but 100pts of them us too fragile.

Thanks for the great feedback.

That list actually won my local tournament this past weekend. It was a nasty list to fly against. It didn't lose a match all day.

I've had some pretty good success w/ 3 heavy Scyk w/ manglers and stealth device+serissu w/ mangler and stealth device.

Not sure it's competitive but it's fun to fly w my pals.

We have a 113 point tournament coming up this weekend that I'm actually not going to make it to, but an acquaintance of mine wants to tests his list. So I'm bringing a variation of my above idea to a store tonight to play him with:

4 x Cartel + Heavy Scyk + Mangler

1 Kavil Y-Wing + Predator + Ion Turret + Unhinged Astromech

I actually have a 5th Cartel in my box in case anyone else comes with a 100 point list and I can give it whirl

No matter what the outcome it should be a fun evening.

I have played that list once. It was against Chewbacca w/Luke & Engine Upgrade and a YT-2400. The key was making sure that the first engagement was a range 3 if possible (I was able to get all 5 in range 2-3 in first engagement) and not in range of both his ships. I took the YT1300 to 1 hull remaining in the first 2 rounds of shooting. He had done 1 damage to me. The key was focus fire on him and limit return fire. Make them take choices between shooting at range 2 guy with a focus or range 3 without one.

I don't know how it will do in the future, but I was encouraged enough to play it again.

Ouch. Chewbacca has to be one of the worst match-ups. Also Leebo+Determination.

Played 2 games tonight with the 113 version of the list. Lost both.

The first game was ridiculous. I basically lost in turn 2. My opponent had 4 phantoms with Stygiums. He killed 3 of the 4 Cartels in one attack (it didn't help I rolled almost all blanks... but still). I surrendered.

The second game he played 4 x-wings: Luke, Wes, Wedge, and Biggs. I killed Biggs and Luke, and Wedge had one hull left. I surrendered when I had one Cartel left. The game was pretty close. I could have killed Biggs a couple of attacks earlier but had some bad luck on the dice... and Luke lived a turn longer due to some more unlucky rolls. Had those gone my way Wedge would have died for sure and I would have probably had 2 Cartels and the Y-Wing at that point against Wes.

There is some potential to running the 100 point 5 cartel/mangler list. Clearly not against Phantoms... but I think their reasonable performance against the x-wings shows some spunk and warrants some game time. I suspect they will do pretty well against many lists.

Ouch. Chewbacca has to be one of the worst match-ups. Also Leebo+Determination.

Yeah. I had some good rolls, but the biggest thing was maneuvering so as to get all my shots on Chewie without him getting the 2400 shots on me. Eventually, you will get the hits (even though you don't get the bonus of crits) to take out the 1300.