Hi all,

First time poster here. I'm trying to build out a Brobots squad for our organized Friday X-wing tournament and/or a store championship occuring this weekend.

The meta is varied, which I love, though there's at least one TLT squad and at least one Tie swarm (6x of them, probably named pilots?) flying around. The TLT squad won last Friday with a MOV of 500+ on a 3 round tournament, so there's that.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Symmetrical:

IG-88A and IG-88D

Thought process:

Lot of 4+ fleets in our group. And I love arc dodging/being unpredictable so D is more a personal preference.

Alternate build:

B and D for the built in gunner

Modifications:

Outmaneuver

Accuracy Corrector

Mangler Cannon

Inertial Dampener

IG-2000

Autothrusters

Concerns:

1) Heavy Laser Cannon is a LOT more points (6) and costs me a range 1 secondary weapon which makes it a little worse if I pair it with B.

2) I think Range 1 is death for me - I know TLTs have that donut but getting to range 1 is going to cause a lot of problems. The TLT squad is running 2x Y-wings and 2x HWKs (scum build) - Pilots for HWKs are Palob and Torkil - so it's an intense pain in the butt to get into range 2 or less unless I can seriously focus those things down in one round.

3) Mangler is less dice than HLC but with a built in option to crit on these Y/HWKs.

Other options:

Asymmetrical but I haven't found a proper build for those yet that I like.

The one I ran last week was Mangler + HLC and differing Elite pilot skills.

Thoughts?

I've seen B and C run with

Accuracy Corrector, VI, Autoblaster, IG-2000, and Autothrusters (one also had a proton bomb) before with a 1pnt bid. They won two of our local tournaments and consistently raped our club league.

Edit: It's important to note that the player doing this was amazingly good at keeping within arc and at Range 1 nearly every single round.

Brobots are a very tough list to critique because they have a very high skill ceiling. Your list will certainly function, and the upgrades you have chosen can work well together. I however, prefer the much more offensive (and more frequently used) set up of HLC, FCS, Crackshot(or VI) with Thrusters, title, and illicit to choice. My thought process is, Brobots only have 16 HP, and 2 ships can get focused down fairly quickly if left outnumbered for long. You need to kill things quickly, and 4 die crackshotters will do that. If you roll well, you can destroy a y wing before it ever fires a shot.

If you are feeling really “tanky” you can run: Predator, Jammers, Mangler, Dampeners, Title, Thrusters. Still get some offensive modifications, but these two backed up by shield regen can be a PITA to damage.

Overall, have a plan and run with it, your list will work OK, but it really depends on how you fly it!

I typically prefer ptl with B+C, but brobots can be flown many different ways.

Trying to match your play style a little, how about this:

IG-88B (36)
Outmaneuver (3)
Fire-Control System (2)
Heavy Laser Cannon (7)
Glitterstim (2)
Autothrusters (2)
IG-2000 (0)

IG-88D (36)
Outmaneuver (3)
Fire-Control System (2)
"Mangler" Cannon (4)
Inertial Dampeners (1)
Autothrusters (2)
IG-2000 (0)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

I've found that HLC is needed on one brobot. To punch through something like another brobot or fel or poe, you need that 1 more die. It makes a big difference because your odds of making a hit stick are more than simply 1 die.... because of the way red dice scale compared to green.

I've never been a fan of AC on aggressors. It's consistent damage, but I feel aggressors need to hit hard and fast, at least when B is being used. So thus, FCS.

Glitterstim is a better illicit mod imo b/c it can save you against multiple targets if you get blocked, and it doesn't cause a stress token. It's also triggered after everyone moves so you never use it if you don't need to. I couldn't quite fit a second glitter onto D, but I did contemplate swapping outmaneuver for VI or something.... but asymmetric PS's would be a problem. B would be the primary target anyways.

And like others have said, brobots have a pretty steep learning curve, but still by favorite to fly. My friends don't let me fly them anymore though

my personal feel, and I might be wrong, is that AC is better with autoblaster or at least HLC. with mangler you want to crit every turn, and AC negates that. B's reroll is better than AC in that regard. so I would put B or swap AC out. I also like having ion+mangler on one of them, and I liked wired when I used it because of the amount of stress going around. I also found that jammer greatly increases the bots survivability.

I'm not sure why you're going AC with mangler. AC prevents you from modding dice. So you're throwing away mangler's bonus if you use it. What would be much better is FCS. I also wanted to use 88A at one point, and while I can see shield regen being a key event in some games, it only regens the shield of the killer. Not both IG's

I also wanted to use 88A at one point, and while I can see shield regen being a key event in some games, it only regens the shield of the killer. Not both IG's

Whoa seriously? I didn't know that - that limits the appeal of A for me.

I'm considering trying B and C tonight for play testing - I love D's ability but it's fairly limited in the grand scope and that free evade token is super handy.

Also - I don't have glitterstims, nor do I have crackshot unfortunately - without those I'm pretty limited in that regards but I am realizing I want to do FCS over AC and possibly Mangler over HLC or run an asymmetrical build.

I am SUPER excited for Tractor Beam though - I can get it worked in and I think it's going to be a crazy fun element - especially if I have one 'bot with tractor beam putting doing a boost on a ship to put them on a rock or even triggering outmaneuver on 'bot #2 (I'm liking the idea of them rolling two less agi dice against my HLC!). Can't wait for that to come out to play around with it.

FCS is a great card. It ups my offensive ability so much. Mangler is a good cannon too, so if I didn't run HLC I'd run mangler.

I also have wanted to experiment with asymmetrical builds and using D. D adds a crazy new maneuver, but it does sacrifice either B or C. C has great action economy, and B is pretty essential for your firepower. One thing that was pointed out to me by these forums is the fact that IG's hit points won't last forever. So playing the slow control game gets risky. Rolling red dice is how you end games.

I recently won a 18 person SC with the following Brobots build;

Thanks for the input so far! I'm loving these two ships - there's such an intense amount of variety with just these two ships, it's awesome!

Plus with Tractor Beam + Rage coming out soon I'm even more pumped to try some of these out.

I'm thinking of some shenanigans with B + Rage + FCS + Glitterstim - that's a LOT of dice modifying in one turn potentially for a great alpha strike

Stress is a good way to kill an aggressor. Predictable moves, and no focus/evade. So with rage, the first shot would be fine, but then you have 2 turns until you can take actions again.

And.... you can only reroll a die once. So TL and rage doesn't stack.

You can net the same result with with PTL and adv sensors. TL -> Focus -> 1 stress -> green move -> Clears stress. Or if you're running C also. Boost -> Free Evade -> PTL -> Focus -> 1 stress -> green move -> clear stress. Its dangerous though, easy to mess yourself up...... but really fun.

my bots are often stressed, that's why I run wired on both.