Ok. So I have always liked Horton Salm; I think bar lack of EPT he’s pretty solid. He has one of the better pilot skills out there and really good PS to boot. His card art is good and his name reminds me of a place that sells donuts. I like donuts. So that’s a plus . He is also one of the few decent ordnance carriers Rebels can take off the bat without a lot of upgrades.

I am using him in a campaign I'm running as one of my ace pilots, so have been giving a bit of thought recently to ways of fitting him into lists. Also, with Wave 7 incoming there are cards in there which will reduce his cost (extra ordnance), add ordnance options and the new turret in particular, if the spoilers are accurate, will synergize very well with Hortons pilot ability.

So I figured Horton lovers everywhere could discuss their ideas for pilot and squad builds featuring our favorite ace donut retailer bomber pilot. Ill start with a few of mine.

• Horton: R3-A2, Ion Turret, Stresspedoes x2, BTL-A4, munitions failsafe = 38 points

Load stress onto key small targets on the way in and use slow crawl greens to manage stress from R3-A2. Failsafe and BTL-A4 arent essential. Ion turret for support/control and opportunity shots when torps are gone or you aren’t at range 2-3. Good against small ship elites and can really annoy phantoms.

Pros: Hands out stress really well, shutting down action dependent elites. Can survive without additional action support due to pilot ability and can recycle stresspedoes for points efficiency.

Cons: 3 red dice (at most) is not outstanding and only lasts for 2 (good) shots. Once your torps are gone or if you aren’t at range 2-3, your offensive potential drops off with only the turret (without BTL-A4). Stresspedoes are not so useful against fatties due to hull restriction on the torps.

• Horton: R2-D6, Predator, Proton Torpedos x2, BTL-A4, Blaster turret = 42 points

Expensive but can hit hard. Concentrate on target locks to get torpedoes off and use predator to offset the lack of focus for dice modification. Predator also makes blaster turret more effective with just a single focus. BTL-A4 is optional but really increases offensive output if you can line targets up. Great against fat turrets and low agility ships. Drop one torp to reduce costs and allow you to concentrate on turret attacks later.

Pros: Hard hitting on the joust with BTL-A4/torps. Blaster turret & predator can be effective once torpedoes are gone.

Cons: You want actions for focus, to maximize blaster turret opportunities, so you’re vulnerable to blocking. The build sucks up a lot of fire as it poses a threat and 1 green dice dies hard to swarms. Ideally wants action support to maximize offensive potential and decent offensive support to strip tokens from key targets. Expensive (cheaper with wave 7).

• Squad build: Horton (with ordnance upgrades) and Garven with R2-D6, Veteran Instincts.

Garven directly supports Horton running at the same PS. Garven passes focus to Horton (ideally will have target locked) who then benefits from focus + TL. It’s a cheapish, flexible focus battery, with a decent ship (X Wing) backing Horton up.

Pros: Relatively cheap focus support and decent offensive backup from Garven.

Cons: Gimmicky – falls apart if Garven goes down. Hope your ordnance has been fired by then.

Anyone else got any ideas?