I've been testing a build recently that I think is worth discussion. A lot of people are asking how to fly the misthunter and whether 4g lists can be good enough and I decided to try to answers that question with a silly build for fun. The problem (?) is that the more I play it the more I realize maybe the thing has some merit. With no further delay I present:

Railgun Zuckuss

Zuckuss - G1a (28)

- Expose (4)

- Experimental interface (3)

- Advanced sensors (3)

(optional but recommended upgrades from this point)

- K4 security droid (3)

- Misthunter title (0)

- Mandatory tractor beam (1)

Total: 38 (or 42 with the extras)

Order of operations to fire your rail gun is relatively simple:

1) Select a green maneuver

2) Before moving, use advanced sensors for a focus, evade, or barrel roll. Ideally you want focus for maximum smacking

3) Experimental interface for expose

4) Finish green maneuver, target lock your prey with k4 and wait patiently for your shot

5) At your opportunity to attack, always opt to fire your primary weapon with your ability active and lauch 5(6 range 1) very accurate target lock+focused dice and laugh as most anything is scorched beyond recognition.

6) Repeat until no foes remain

This build started as a sort of crazy joke but then after 1 shotting cloaked whisper demanded a bit more investigation. Dropping your one evade die may be scary but let's be honest it likely was going to betray you anyway so the opportunity cost is low. At 42 points this build seems to leave a ton of room for handling the only weakness it has which is high ps arc dodgers. I'm trying 2 tlt unhinged y's with connor nets but basically anything can fill those points as long as our railgun friend can roll in hot and dump dice on people.

you could throw Dengar on there instead of K4 to keep your options open.

you could throw Dengar on there instead of K4 to keep your options open.

Definitely, and the crew slot has several powerful options to use. K4 is nice because you'll be doing a green regardless and it lets you reroll a higher number of dice plus it lets you fly dengar the pilot, but it's certainly powerful to have rerolls not locked on a single ship.

Alternatively.

Zuckuss with Opportunist, K4 Sec Droid and Advanced Sensors
Palob with Predator, TLT and crew of your choosing. Title for flavour

six dice range 1 from Zuckuss all for a stress and you keep your evade dice.

you could throw Dengar on there instead of K4 to keep your options open.

Definitely, and the crew slot has several powerful options to use. K4 is nice because you'll be doing a green regardless and it lets you reroll a higher number of dice plus it lets you fly dengar the pilot, but it's certainly powerful to have rerolls not locked on a single ship.

also with people (really only me) starting to fly Kaptain kagi maybe you wont be able to target lock the target you really wanted to kill anyway

that's a lot of points to lose in one round to an alpha strike

honestly, the difference in offense between Zuckuss with all that and Zuckuss with just Dengar is minimal at best, and at least 7 points cheaper

does make for a funny scene, though, and does the Misthunter's nuclear-bomb shape justice

Seems fun, but, ya, that's quite a point sink that I would think dies to alpha strike and arc dodging aces he will never get in arc...

I think 'repeat until you explode messily before firing twice' is probably more accurate. That's a lot of points to throw behind 0 agility and 8HP.

A railgun?!

that's a lot of points to lose in one round to an alpha strike

honestly, the difference in offense between Zuckuss with all that and Zuckuss with just Dengar is minimal at best, and at least 7 points cheaper

does make for a funny scene, though, and does the Misthunter's nuclear-bomb shape justice

I'd argue an entire red die is not a minimal addition. Many things are considered over or underpowered based on adding or subtracting a single red die.

As for alpha strike, if they're punching in for 8 damage undeterred by 5-6 hits coming back I'm not really sure that having an agility helps at all since on average an evade die is pretty awful.

The build requires a careful approach certainly but again you have 58 points with which to make that possible. Make those points scary and bring the railgun in from the side.

I'd argue an entire red die is not a minimal addition. Many things are considered over or underpowered based on adding or subtracting a single red die.

As for alpha strike, if they're punching in for 8 damage undeterred by 5-6 hits coming back I'm not really sure that having an agility helps at all since on average an evade die is pretty awful.

The build requires a careful approach certainly but again you have 58 points with which to make that possible. Make those points scary and bring the railgun in from the side.

There is nothing at 58 points you can take to deter your opponent from gunning for Zuckuss first. And while Zuckuss will usually get to shoot at least once, even something like a crackswarm will erase him quickly. So sure he'll do some damage before he goes down, but he's 42 points! What can he kill that makes it a worthwhile trade? You mentioned one-shotting a phantom, but frankly that's a statistical anomaly (assuming it was Whisper with focus + evade and 5 green dice, maybe even 6 if R3/obstacle between her and zuckuss). So yeah, Expose still sucks!

Well, if you're aiming at a wingman for Super Dengar...I guess.

Other than that, huge points sink. Could be fun, though.

I'd argue an entire red die is not a minimal addition. Many things are considered over or underpowered based on adding or subtracting a single red die.

As for alpha strike, if they're punching in for 8 damage undeterred by 5-6 hits coming back I'm not really sure that having an agility helps at all since on average an evade die is pretty awful.

The build requires a careful approach certainly but again you have 58 points with which to make that possible. Make those points scary and bring the railgun in from the side.

There is nothing at 58 points you can take to deter your opponent from gunning for Zuckuss first. And while Zuckuss will usually get to shoot at least once, even something like a crackswarm will erase him quickly. So sure he'll do some damage before he goes down, but he's 42 points! What can he kill that makes it a worthwhile trade? You mentioned one-shotting a phantom, but frankly that's a statistical anomaly (assuming it was Whisper with focus + evade and 5 green dice, maybe even 6 if R3/obstacle between her and zuckuss). So yeah, Expose still sucks!

What whisper are you going up against with a consistent evade? Range 1 shot (which this was), rolled 6 hits which isn't that unlikely with focus+lock (94% chance of all hits). Whisper on average 5 dice with focus gets 3.125 evades, so rolling only 2 and dying isn't that far below average, and if whisper has 1 damage already (so not technically a 1 shot) then she dies on average dice.

I'd argue an entire red die is not a minimal addition. Many things are considered over or underpowered based on adding or subtracting a single red die.

As for alpha strike, if they're punching in for 8 damage undeterred by 5-6 hits coming back I'm not really sure that having an agility helps at all since on average an evade die is pretty awful.

The build requires a careful approach certainly but again you have 58 points with which to make that possible. Make those points scary and bring the railgun in from the side.

There is nothing at 58 points you can take to deter your opponent from gunning for Zuckuss first. And while Zuckuss will usually get to shoot at least once, even something like a crackswarm will erase him quickly. So sure he'll do some damage before he goes down, but he's 42 points! What can he kill that makes it a worthwhile trade? You mentioned one-shotting a phantom, but frankly that's a statistical anomaly (assuming it was Whisper with focus + evade and 5 green dice, maybe even 6 if R3/obstacle between her and zuckuss). So yeah, Expose still sucks!

What whisper are you going up against with a consistent evade? Range 1 shot (which this was), rolled 6 hits which isn't that unlikely with focus+lock (94% chance of all hits). Whisper on average 5 dice with focus gets 3.125 evades, so rolling only 2 and dying isn't that far below average, and if whisper has 1 damage already (so not technically a 1 shot) then she dies on average dice.

Your example PROVES that your opponent screwed up by not taking evade as their action (he wouldn't have lost his ship if he had correctly evaded!). FCS Whisper's 'best' action choices are pretty much always like this: a) barrel roll to dodge arcs or to get a shot (if nothing in arc). b) Evade if in enemy arc(s). c) focus only if no one is shooting at you, OR if you are 99% certain that you can kill your target before it shoots you.

In this case, Evade is a no-brainer! The focus would only have been a good choice if Zuckuss had 3 or 4 hull left and Whisper had the chance to erase him before his shot. I mean, Whisper is gauranteed to get the free focus because zuckuss has 0 agility, so assuming he couldn't barrel roll out of that shot (which he should've if he could, because that's not a good damage trade there), but evade is the best call assuming barrel roll wouldn't help for that all-important focus+evade on defense...

So yeah, focus action as default for FCS whisper? Um no....not in most cases....

I CANNOT be the only person who had the first opening to Toaru Kogaku no Railgun running through their head while reading the OP:

https://youtu.be/qozcTpr3OKQ?t=2m37s

Only my railgun can shoot Whisper right now.

So... I think Zuckuss is a fairly strong pilot, as he adds what, between .5 and .9 of a hit thanks to his ability and only adds .35-.6 Evades on average. Still a net gain. I do think that this is potentially worthwhile to test, as it still leaves lots of room for other ships (a U-boat and TLT?) and can really lay on some damage - Expose's problem with dice modification being stronger than more dice is mitigated by Focus+K4...

I dunno if it's good, but it could be fun. Just as long as I play that opening sting of Only My Railgun whenever I pick up the dice.

Incidentally, good anime. Better than Magical Index, which it's supposedly a 'side story' of.

It's a really good gun.

Unfortunately, it's a really good gun that takes exactly 8 hits to kill. That can be achieved by an awful lot of lists, and unless he's shooting at squishy targets, will happen before he's killed anything himself.

Another way to look at it - you're throwing 5 dice. 2 thugs can throw 4 damage in individual 3-die attacks. Against a lot of targets, which of those two do you honestly expect to deal more damage? Zuckuss has better odds of scratching the paint of high-agility aces (Whisper, Soontir especially), but against AGI 0 and probably even AGI 1, my mental math suggests the TLTs will actually outgun it, with twice the hitpoints, for 48pts.

Granted, they shoot after torpboats, so they may well have one dead before they shoot, for instance... but then, if you're only expecting one round of firing before something evaporates, I'm not sure why you wouldn't take something that throws ordinance yourself.

Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty little ship! It's just got the B-wing problem: 8 HP w/ 1 AGI (nevermind 0) means investing any points automatically turns it into a glass cannon. Heck, I feel uncomfortable with the low-30s that 4LOM racks up, y'know?

Railgun?!

I CANNOT be the only person who had the first opening to Toaru Kogaku no Railgun running through their head while reading the OP:

wish I had the photoshop skills to put Zuckuss in a schoolgirl outfit (to illustrate the many similarities)

You can squeeze in the Zuckuss build minus the tractor beam/title, a U-boat, and a Thug with TLT and unhinged. Be fun to try out at least!

My Zuckuss list is primarily:

Zuckuss - Predator/Outlaw Tech/Advanced Sensors/Tite - Tractor

That allows me in a single round to Adv. Sensors to evade, complete a red move = gain a focus and then I have my reroll anyway. The evade really helps!

Also, doing a Adv. Sensors - Barrel to the lower right, reveal 1 hard left (Red), gain a focus move is quite a nice trick.

This my Zuckuss list

Mr Steal Yo Focus (100)

Zuckuss (36) - G-1A Starfighter

Opportunist (4), K4 Security Droid (3), Mist Hunter (0), Tractor Beam (1)

Palob Godalhi (29) - HWK-290

Dorsal Turret (3), Intelligence Agent (1), Cloaking Device (2), Moldy Crow (3)

Contracted Scout (35) - JumpMaster 5000

Deadeye (1), Extra Munitions (2), Proton Torpedoes (4), Boba Fett (1), R4 Agromech (2)

Tested it tonight a bit and it's pretty ok but the thugs with nets may or may not be the best option. Next time I'm gonna try 4x feedback binyare's to try to clog the board more and give a death zone for soontir and friends.

I think I'd still lean toward Opportunist, with Palob or a higher-PS wingman to help strip tokens, over Expose. Going from 1 Agility to 0 drops your overall durability by about a third, which is pretty substantial considering what you're paying for the combo.

I like it. Looking for something to pair with my souped up Dengar, will give this a shot for lols.

I CANNOT be the only person who had the first opening to Toaru Kogaku no Railgun running through their head while reading the OP:

https://youtu.be/qozcTpr3OKQ?t=2m37s

Only my railgun can shoot Whisper right now.

A whisper who let him shoot intentionally

Any ace becomes a Kamijou for that railgun, by simply arc dodging and dispelling all the magic of that build.

Fly a green the op said, fly straight or do a bank-1 he could have said as well. Because that is all the greens the Misthunter has.