Hi everyone,

Lately I've been flying a 4-ship rebel squad with acceptable results. It consists of:

Hobbie with R3-A2

Dutch with R7-T1 and an autoblaster turret

Cracken with VI

Biggs

When list-crafting, I like to choose an upgrade card or pilot and try to find the most effective way to use it. In this case I started with Hobbie and the stressbot, figured that Dutch would be a good addition, and took it from there. For those that don't know, Hobbie can shed a stress whenever he acquires or spends a target lock, and as Dutch hands them out like candy it seemed like a useful synergistic combo. Knowing that the list would have trouble against arc-dodgers, I decided that an unevadable turret would be perfect for Dutch, along with a PS10 Cracken and the boost droid to help Dutch move in the combat phase if necessary. With 25 points left, Biggs seemed like the best way to keep the Dutch/Hobbie combo alive for as long as possible.

So far I've gone 1-1 against Dash/Corran, 2-0 against Soontir/Chirneau (one of those was against the regional champ with his winning list) and 6-2 against a random assortment of other builds (TIE swarms, rebel swarms, IGs, etc.). Dutch has been key in catching Soontir the times I've had to face him, mainly by making him waste actions to get away from the turret and into positions without a shot, or being forced to turtle up and hope that my other ships don't nail him. It has enough firepower to bring down most large-based turrets and everything fires first against most swarm lists. Another nice thing is that even if you bump with everything, you can still get two free actions if Cracken shoots and has Dutch target lock. K-turning doesn't lower your effectiveness too much as Dutch (doing a hard turn instead of a k-turn) can give a TL to Hobbie to shed his stress (and he can use R3-A2 to later get rid of a second stress with the same TL) and Cracken can k-turn and fire to give either Dutch or Hobbie a focus to help modify their attack dice as needed.

The first combat turn usually starts with Cracken and Dutch with TLs, Hobbie with both a focus and a TL and Biggs with just a focus. Then I generally use Cracken's free action to give Biggs a TL so he can save his focus for defense. Biggs can also (sometimes) get his TL via Dutch even if Dutch TL'ed before as the droid action is not a TL action. Obviously Hobbie will always stress his target and I even spend my TL to reroll zero dice just to get rid of the stress in case I want to do a white/red maneuver on the following turn.

As most people have no idea what this particular combination of pilots and upgrades can do, the list is a surprise for most opponents and I even got a Tycho Pheaver card at a 36-person store tournament (there were two kits and the four undefeated players after three rounds got the cards and range rulers), having defeated relatively standard meta lists which were: Corran/Chewie, Soontir/Chiraneau and a BBBZZ list.

The times that I've lost have been when I've been out-played in the initial approach by a 2-ship list and couldn't focus fire on the fat target, and once against a relatively new player that was incapable of rolling blanks with his TIEs, even though he was bumping them constantly.

I know that X-Wing lists are considered to be ineffective and stiff, but if you plan the initial approach carefully and don't roll pure blanks with Biggs during the first combat turn (putting him behind asteroids helps here) then winning is well within the realm of possibility =).

Share your thoughts/comments/suggestions?

I love the synergy you have found here! Well done on creating a new and unique squad with some underused pilots/upgrades

In this setup, it would be awesome to give Biggs an R7 astro, but I'm not sure where you would get it :/

Thanks! Synergy is exactly what I was going for. As for upgrading Biggs, if I have a point I generally put R4-D6 on him to add some survivability against HLC IGs or Dash but there isn't a single upgrade that I want to part with except for *maybe* Cracken's VI, though that still isn't enough for R7. The stressbot, boostbot and range 1 turret are all necessary for it to work so there's really not much room to play around unless I decide to swap Biggs out for a B-Wing or something.

Wow! I love your list! I've been tinkering and looking for something like this for a while now. Like you said it's something outside the box AND has pilots that a lot of players don't face very often- looking at you Dutch. Also, the results are impressive, most impressive. Lol

What if you went with r5-k6 on dutch, stripped cracken of VI, and gave Biggs a generic R7 for boosted defense?

Alternatively you could ditch VI on Cracken and get R4-D6 on Biggs. Or maybe Draw Their Fire on Cracken?

IMO any 4 ship list with Biggs in it needs to get some damage off of Biggs in order to help prevent him from just dying immediately. The best tactic against a 4 ship list is to just focus down one ship ASAP and all Biggs does is force your opponent to do that. Without anything defensive on Biggs all that happens is that your opponent has his hand forced to make good decisions unless Biggs is expertly flown. You can't always cycle Biggs in and out of combat to spread out damage.

If you can make that forced damage go through a 'filter' of R7 or Draw Their Fire or even just R4-D6 first you're helping your build a lot.

What if you went with r5-k6 on dutch, stripped cracken of VI, and gave Biggs a generic R7 for boosted defense?

Alternatively you could ditch VI on Cracken and get R4-D6 on Biggs. Or maybe Draw Their Fire on Cracken?

IMO any 4 ship list with Biggs in it needs to get some damage off of Biggs in order to help prevent him from just dying immediately. The best tactic against a 4 ship list is to just focus down one ship ASAP and all Biggs does is force your opponent to do that. Without anything defensive on Biggs all that happens is that your opponent has his hand forced to make good decisions unless Biggs is expertly flown. You can't always cycle Biggs in and out of combat to spread out damage.

If you can make that forced damage go through a 'filter' of R7 or Draw Their Fire or even just R4-D6 first you're helping your build a lot.

Honestly, letting Dutch boost in the combat phase with the droid has let me catch the baron with his pants down before so I'm not overly willing to part with it, but trading VI for DTF or giving R4-D6 to Biggs is something I can well appreciate as I love that little droid as well. I'll have to test it and see if it's worth not having Cracken shoot first.

With Biggs, VI on Cracken won't really matter while Biggs is still protecting him.

Good point, VI will only make a difference on the turn after Biggs dies and if the opponent has two or more PS9-10 ships to kill Cracken. And though it also helps prevent arc-dodgers from dodging, Cracken doesn't temd to do much damage to such ships.