I've been playing around with the following list with mixed results for the last few weeks, and I'm considering taking it along to my FLGS Winter Tournament that's coming up in a couple of weeks' time. It's worked well for me a few times, but also had a couple of heavy losses. In particular, it struggled against a Crack Shot TIE swarm, which took it apart 100-0.

I originally had ion cannons on the Scyks for a control/anti-ace element, but I was struggling to bring things down quickly enough so swapped to the Manglers for extra damage.

How does it look as a list? What do you all think it will do well against, and where will it do poorly?

Its an okay list. Excellent firepower if you can focus all your ships on a single target. Its a borderline swarm, so it lives and dies by jousting and dealing focussed damage faster than enemies can dish out in return.

I can see a crack swarm being difficult due to the difference in Pilot Skill. Ace lists can also be difficult if you can't keep them in arc (hint: blocking is your friend in such matchups). Other jousting lists, well, it tends to turn into a dice-off slugfest (pray to the dice gods and hope they don't abandon you!). Unless you can pull of some clever moves your opponent didn't expect (which should swing odds in your favour).

Do you find you get more crits from the Manglers? As you are trading some health from a 5 Kiharxz Swarm without a lot of extra firepower (3 vs 3), but you are going from 1/4 to 1/2 shield/hull, I would need to see crits or evades making a huge difference.

Do you find you get more crits from the Manglers? As you are trading some health from a 5 Kiharxz Swarm without a lot of extra firepower (3 vs 3), but you are going from 1/4 to 1/2 shield/hull, I would need to see crits or evades making a huge difference.

Perhaps the crits combined with the increased blocking power of the barrel roll makes the Syck's worthwhile, as opposed to K-Fighters?

...for those same 40pts in K-Fighters, you could have one K-Fighters with a Flechette Cannon and Hull Upgrade at 21pts, and another with Ion Cannon for 19pts. This adds 1HP to the list, lowers your damage output, but helps your back row Scyks against R3 targets while simultaneously making enemy movement more predictable, so the K-Fighters can eat 'em up.

...Iono. I'm bad at jousting with naked ships, so I prefer to toss in control elements.

Edit: Oh, you tried the control cannon thing already. Sorry. Nevermind.

Maybe this will still give you that Scummy goodness feeling, while having a few more tricks up its sleeve?

Do you find you get more crits from the Manglers? As you are trading some health from a 5 Kiharxz Swarm without a lot of extra firepower (3 vs 3), but you are going from 1/4 to 1/2 shield/hull, I would need to see crits or evades making a huge difference.

The crits help a bit, but the main perk of the Manglers is that they're secondary weapons, so can shoot at Range 3 without giving a Range bonus to defence. That said, the crits have been quite nasty when they've hit anything without shields.

I've found the Scyks a bit more survivable against TLTs than the Kihraxz. The extra green dice and possible evade helps quite a bit from what I've seen so far.

Maybe this will still give you that Scummy goodness feeling, while having a few more tricks up its sleeve?

That's a pretty fun looking list! I'm a big fan of having matching PS in my lists, as it opens up manoeuvring options when you can pick the order of activation. I'll have to give this a try.