An ideal tractor beam user has a few, contradictory requirements.

-It must have high pilot skill, so other ships can act on the reduced evade

-It must have a way of improving it's accuracy, so it can actually hit targets you want to drop.

-Despite the above, it must do a low enough damage that it's action is not "wasted" doing no damage

-It must be able to actually take the card.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me present...

Ten Numb (31)
Calculation (1)
Tractor Beam (1)
Mercenary Copilot (2)
B-Wing/E2 (1)

Total: 36

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

With enough room left to bring 5 headhunters (or 3 attack shuttles), Ten Numb is built around slippping a single crit at a time through any defence the enemy can put together. Without Mangler cannon, that critical is a bit more difficult to manage (3/8 odds on each of 3 dice, outside range 3 where the Merc takes care of it), but replacing the single point of shield damage with an agility reduction (and breaking stealth while he's at it) suddenly Soontier gets to discover what it's like to be a decloaked phantom, running around with 2 agility.

That is an interesting idea.

What about something like:

Ten Numb

-Calculation

-Tractor Beam

Lt. Blount

-Vet Instinct

-Tracers

Bandit Squad Pilot x3

-Concussion Missle

Ten can reduce agility, Blount hands out TL, Bandits take down target.

Best hands down would have to be rexle with the new tie/d title (allows him to make a primary weapon attack after using the tractor beam)

Rexler Brath 37

Tie/d title 0

Outmanuver 3

Tractor beam 1

For extra shenanigans pair him with jax to block focus/evades and you target is very venerable to 6 attack dice unless cloaked.

Serissu (25 points)

Heavy scyk

tractor beam

Squad leader

Enough of an annoyance, but not too many points that she becomes the focus of all enemy attacks.

It has to be a Defender with TIE/D Title. They get to fire the Tractor Beam, reduce target's Agility, then hit with a 3 Attack Primary Weapon. Any other ship has to forego doing damage to utilize the Tractor Beam.

Son, its time for a talk about the Birds and the B.

Ten numb, calculation, tractor beam 33 points

Rebel operative, TLT, 22 points, x3

Ten numb has a 1/4 chance of NOT hitting full stack soonier fell. But is it better to force through a single crit... or open the floodgates for 6 3-die TLT shots against a 2 agility fell? Even with the emperor backing him up, he can only modify 4 rolls, snd the TLTs, even without modification, have a 1/8 chance of rolling more hits than he can evade (without saving his evade AND ensuring a perfect roll)

An extreme example, but given the popularity of palpaces, not an unreas onable one. It should also be effective vs the rest of the crop of high agility aces, and low agility foes can eat Tens 3 red dice.

False

Best Team user is a Tie/D

Sacrifing damage is not worth it

VI vess with some ordnance bombers

Even vessery has trouble landing hits on agility 3 (or 4) with evade and palp, exactly the sort of target you WANT tractors for.

Admitedly, vess isnt giving anything up to try it, but I feel ten's autohit outweighs Vess' s extra attack.

Even vessery has trouble landing hits on agility 3 (or 4) with evade and palp, exactly the sort of target you WANT tractors for.

Admitedly, vess isnt giving anything up to try it, but I feel ten's autohit outweighs Vess' s extra attack.

have to think big picture though... Vess is admittedly 1/3 the list (maybe 2/5) but he's just one ship, using two attacks even if tractor doesn't hit.. just like TLT's its a Token stripping ship with the potential to ruin some ships whole life...

Imagine two shots from vess with Tractor and primary...

3+3

say Tomax and Jonus are in the list flying in Tandem... each with EM Cluster Ion Bombs (for when people try to get frisky in the back) and Long range Scanners... but Tomax has Crackshot.

Alpha strike has Bromax and Bronus launching TL'd (plus Bronus for when no TL) focused 3+3 cluster shots. thats...

3+3 plus 3+3 plus 3+3 shots. now assuming you used your 1(or 2) evasive defense tokens on Vessery to avoid rolling 1 less green dice on the following attacks... thats... 4-5 unmodified 3 dice attacks fully modified... thats 12-15 damage in one FEL swoop....

thats-a-spicy-meat-a-ball...

I agree with OP. I flew a kitted out Bossk with HLC, TL and two focus tokens firing down on Palp-ace soontir with stealth device. All my shots were evaded, you need to sneak a hit through to get that puppy down.

Now compare that to the 3 TLT HWKs with guaranteed tractor beam, and I think youll find Tens team does more vs high agility targets while vesary is better vs lower agility

If you go one point higher on Ten, you can carry Ezra, turning another EYE into a KABOOM, statically.

That gives you room for 2 Dagger, Acc Corr (you don't care about modifying the results actually, you'll take the two hit results unless you naturally roll better) with 9 points to spare.

Rexlar (35)

Tie D title (0)

Tractor beam (1)

MrkII engine (1)

Ruthlessness (3)

Epsilon pilot (15) x4

Hope the defender fix gets here before store championships are over

Maybe not the best tractor carrier but still interesting:

Laetin asheara

He's cheap, his attack is crap, and best of all he is a bad target- people will not want to shoot him.

Working against him is the inherent inefficiency of the Scyk itself.

in order to fully reap the benefit of a tractor token, you'll want a swarm of efficient ships backing up your tractor carrier. So Binary pilots are the natural backup for laetin.

If we ever see a Scyk fix, this could become very interesting, but until then I'm just very curious as to how this would play.

Etahn could also support Ten with a few Zs. Not the best, but provides some early reliability:

Maybe not the best tractor carrier but still interesting:

Laetin asheara

He's cheap, his attack is crap, and best of all he is a bad target- people will not want to shoot him.

Working against him is the inherent inefficiency of the Scyk itself.

in order to fully reap the benefit of a tractor token, you'll want a swarm of efficient ships backing up your tractor carrier. So Binary pilots are the natural backup for laetin.

If we ever see a Scyk fix, this could become very interesting, but until then I'm just very curious as to how this would play.

I like this with Mux to get your bins to shoot first at the lower agility target. It also feels sort of thematic to drop down your beamed target to zero pilot skill.

Drop that E/1 and Merc Co-Pilot from him, it's three points for a "meh" crew member that isn't going to do much more that Calculation already isn't doing.