With easy access to focus and evade he should do pretty well. Let's say you're already running a Jonus TIE Shuttle with Fleet Officer, that's 49 points with Kir Kanos. Now you have 51 points for 2 Bombers. Now that you're not tied to an entire Lambda and can just use a 3 point upgrade on a ship you're already going to use to hand off Kir Kanos his non-evade modifier, doesn't seem too bad. Not too hard to free up some points for Autothrusters.

You could take a Royal Guard with Juke for the same price, and not have to spend your evade token.

Oh.

No, wait a minute. If my opponent has a focus it's still an evade if he spends it.

4 hits at range 2-3 against one evade result is 3 damage. 3 hits against 1 juked evade result that was just focused back to an evade is 2 damage.

The answer is: No. Until Kir gets an EPT, he is garbage.

Oh.

No, wait a minute. If my opponent has a focus it's still an evade if he spends it.

4 hits at range 2-3 against one evade result is 3 damage. 3 hits against 1 juked evade result that was just focused back to an evade is 2 damage.

This is the absolute most favorable situation possible for Kir Kanos. And it's still a bad result for him.

Why?

The Royal Guard still has his evade token. Kir Kanos just spent his.

When his target shoots back, Kir Kanos will need 1 more natural evade result than the Royal Guard to avoid an equal amount of damage. And that's assuming that the opponent isn't spending his focus token... which the Juking Royal Guard would have forced the opponent to spend earlier.

Sorry but with now a 0 EPT coming out, pilots without it suffer immensley.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where Kir Kanos, being in an Interceptor and all, is out of arc with no return shots. Sure, sure, you could make the argument that a high PS enemy will have a shot, but right now there are a lot of low PS TLT caddies, low PS 4 ship builds that a PS 6 could prey on easily.

Kinda sounds like fun, having a pocket ace in an Interceptor. Maybe I'll have to try it.

I think there's just too many other good options for kirs points in the empire.

Just missing another "n" to make an anagram out of his name

Kan?

Nos.

Irk!

Poor guy won't ever be viable

While I love the pilot in the game, I do feel that given the current state of the game he is best kept out of the competitive meta and remain in the best part of the game: narrative, mission based, play.

I

Oh.

No, wait a minute. If my opponent has a focus it's still an evade if he spends it.

4 hits at range 2-3 against one evade result is 3 damage. 3 hits against 1 juked evade result that was just focused back to an evade is 2 damage.

This is the absolute most favorable situation possible for Kir Kanos. And it's still a bad result for him.

Why?

The Royal Guard still has his evade token. Kir Kanos just spent his.

When his target shoots back, Kir Kanos will need 1 more natural evade result than the Royal Guard to avoid an equal amount of damage. And that's assuming that the opponent isn't spending his focus token... which the Juking Royal Guard would have forced the opponent to spend earlier.

Against higher Pilot skill you still have a focus and evade and autothrusters if you made points for it and successfully triggered it. Against lower pilot skill you'll fire before they do and can potentially pile on damage and PS kill something with the Gamma Squadrons you're flying.

Is suppose the problem with this is that you're flying a TIE Shuttle instead of another ordnance bomber. :/

He's still far too fragile, and interceptors lower than PS8 are still notably weaker than Soontir and Carnor ensconced with Push and Autothrusters.

I tried to make him work way back with Howlrunner and a mini swarm, which is still his best option, but it didn't work out. And vanilla TIE Swarm is not up to snuff anymore either.

Crack Swarm FTW!

Fleet Officer TIE Shuttle might help KK. The big difference between Kanos and RGP is that he's got seriously more damage potential. With a Focus, he's doing HLC levels of damage. A PTL RGP is not doing that.

I still love Kanos, even if the devs don't. You're not obliged to use his ability against low skill guys that you haven't dodged, and Aces will make that decision for you.

For Kanos I'm not sure.

But boy it makes X7 Defenders extremely difficult to hit.

If he could somehow get Comm Relay.

Personally, I enjoy flying KK. I was having a hard time not getting destroyed by my buddy's b-wing list until I put this one together and crushed him:

26 Points

only lost the ASP Interceptor.

I'm considering flying this at a Regionals. I'd love any suggestiong on improving this if you guys have them.

He is a relic from older times, when FFG was afraid of every new ability they introduced in the game, which resulted in plenty of underpowered/overcosted pilots & upgrades.

Nowadays, FFG just go bananas with every new expansion, which at least make things interesting.

Unfortunately for those pilots/upgrades nothing short of a re-edition (or 3+ upgrades specifically tailored for them, like the defender) can truly bring them to life. Competitively speaking, of course.

He is a relic from older times, when FFG was afraid of every new ability they introduced in the game, which resulted in plenty of underpowered/overcosted pilots & upgrades.

Nowadays, FFG just go bananas with every new expansion, which at least make things interesting.

Unfortunately for those pilots/upgrades nothing short of a re-edition (or 3+ upgrades specifically tailored for them, like the defender) can truly bring them to life. Competitively speaking, of course.

I'd enjoy a format where the majority of pilots were banned, and all you had were Scyks and generic Starvipers and the weird mid-PS Interceptors and other assorted niche/tier 3 stuff. Ugh, triple Blackmoon is so OP.

Ban some of the power cards also.

I'm sad for Kir Kanos because he's a victim of their earlier design philosophy where they tried to be very conservative. When you compare his ability to many of the pilots from then and now it's simply not a good ability. Just look at Poe. The only reason he'd be good is if he didn't have to spend the token, just have it. I really liked him when he came out and I tried to make him work a lot and it just wasn't happening.

Dunno I just know it makes vessery and brath imba.

Kir's ability isn't weak but he's hurt by his lack of EPT: there's no way he's 2 points better than the RGP. Same with a lot of pilots.

That being said, the TIE shuttle is great news for mid PS TIE interceptors in general, Royal Guard Pilot included. The Fleet Officer allows them to match Fel's action economy. There's also a build of TIE shuttle I call the Scanner Shuttle which takes two Intelligence Agents (or one with Fleet Officer). Being PS6 is a lot less painful when you know where the PS9 aces are going to go before they move. And they REALLY don't like being blocked.

Maybe something like this:

Kir Kanos (24)
Autothrusters (2)
Royal Guard TIE (0)

Darth Vader (29)
Decoy (2)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
Engine Upgrade (4)
TIE/x1 (0)

Tomax Bren (24)
Crack Shot (1)
Fleet Officer (3)
Tactician (2)
Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1)
TIE Shuttle (0)

Total: 93

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

It's rough, and inefficient with 7 points still left over. I don't like using jonus b/c his ability is just too passive. Range 1 is far too limiting and only really useful for the first attack. After that, he's just a 2 attack ship. Tomax on the other hand, can have unlimited supply of crackshot.

Sorry but with now a 0 EPT coming out, pilots without it suffer immensley.

I think it is fairer to say that you need a reason to justify non-EPT pilots. It might be good inbuilt abilities like Red Ace, Biggs etc or simple points efficiency. Sadly Kir Kanos has neither and his ability has been pretty much obsoleted.

Kir's ability isn't weak but he's hurt by his lack of EPT: there's no way he's 2 points better than the RGP. Same with a lot of pilots.

That being said, the TIE shuttle is great news for mid PS TIE interceptors in general, Royal Guard Pilot included. The Fleet Officer allows them to match Fel's action economy. There's also a build of TIE shuttle I call the Scanner Shuttle which takes two Intelligence Agents (or one with Fleet Officer). Being PS6 is a lot less painful when you know where the PS9 aces are going to go before they move. And they REALLY don't like being blocked.

Fleet Officer + Intelligence Agent is legitimately awesome, as shown in my battle report from Store Championships linked above. I know I could have done better, and I'm looking forward to my next try.