After realizing I hadn't heard anything about the new Gonk crew for a while, I did some searching and it doesn't seem like anyone is talking about the little guy anymore. It looks like that unofficial (official?) ruling that calls both Gonk card actions the same action (which prevents using it with Experimental Interface) really took the energy out of what seemed like a promising new crew for Scum. Has anyone found a place for him? Or is he doomed to collect dust on a sandcrawler?

He wasn't even at par with rebel regen in the first place and then he was GONKD FAQd to be a GONK action, and can't be forced via EI to be a 1shield\turn

I personally think that the YV-666 is the only real ship that Gonk can go on - with the cheapness factor of Scum crew, and the -666's 6 shields, it's not hard to find a place for him.

The reason he's not being talked about? Because all the new hotness is alpha strikes, and it's hard for a card that can't mitigate a damage a turn to make a huge impact. I think he's underrated, but we'll have to see...

I personally question anyone's logic on EI and gonk ever being a good combo. Way to much sacrifice for that. Gonk has won me every game he has been in, outside of one, and that very well makes him worth his points to me.

I've been having a lot of fun with PTL Engine Unhinged Gonk Dengar (with title). Bank some gonk shields early, arc dodge like mad, and recover when you do get shot (hopefully returning fire to make it a really bad trade for your opponent).

Now I'm interested in your comment in return, as I don't recall ever seeing EI used competitively since it's release. Do you mind me asking what builds were typical in your area? I know there is the Expose combo for the Deci, but even that saw minimal use in my area.

Well, as I said, K-wings and VCX make use of it. Falcon with EI and Lando. I've seen units with the capability of firing multiple shots (e.g. dengar, Y-wings with title, etc) running with EI and Marksmanship (as Marksmanship works with every shot you make). I'm kinda drawing a blank on what the older lists were though, just that I saw it a bunch. Maybe I'm just thinking of decimator + expose that was everywhere for a while before people realised RAC with VI or Predator was better. Keyan Farlander + Marksmanship or Lando. It's one of those upgrades that isn't quite top tier but I do see fairly consistently at a low frequency.

I use him as an emergency shield regen.

He's on Bossk along with Dengar and 4-LOM.

I'll spend the first 2-3 turns Gonking.

Then when it's late-game and it's coming down to the wire....I'll Gonk to give myself an extra bit of health. Or I'll Gonk to prevent my opponent from getting half-points on Bossk.

And no, I don't use Experimental Interface.

Because I'm using VI + Engine Upgrade.

YV-666

Gonk

Bossk

Gunner

Reinforced Deflectors?

could be an annoying ship even if you get 1 shield back out of gonk. Even in a turn where you have a shot set up, Gonk can be used without sacrificing too much of your accuracy.

The YV-666s tend to have to run away with 3 banks or turns for a few turns when it can't stay in combat anymore, good time to use Gonk then.

Yeah shield-regen had it's 5 minutes of fame and then wave 8 came and it was out of vogue fast. I think it still has certain advantages in the meta (it can handle palp aces through sheer grind, for example), but it is a dying breed. Not desperately upset about that, shield regen can be very frustrating to play against.

Again it is meta shifting from highly defensive units to highly offensive units. Shield Regeneration was one of the few things that could last long than TLT since they were overall low damage output. Now since burst damage and alphastrike is taking center stage shield regen is just too slow (as it should be).

This tends to be the trend with the meta. The first thing with every wave is to find the ship that deals the most damage. Then it is the ship(s) that can survive that terror and take it down. In the next wave it will repeat.

Wave 4 saw the TIE-Phantom and how it destroyed the once venerable TIE-Swarm. The counter the the Phantom was the Fat Han point fortress.

Wave 7 brought out the TLT Y-wings. Then Palp aces started to come out.

Wave 7 now has Torpedo boats. Hmm. TIE Swarm maybe?

I've been having a lot of fun with PTL Engine Unhinged Gonk Dengar (with title). Bank some gonk shields early, arc dodge like mad, and recover when you do get shot (hopefully returning fire to make it a really bad trade for your opponent).

I used Tel Trevura with PTL and Gonk and Engine upgrade directly after I got the box. I attacked very aggressively until he got destroyed, then I banked off and recharged the shields, so my opponent didn't get half of the points. But I played it wrong - I used PTL to use both actions in one turn.

I've been playing a bit of PtL Gonk on Dengar and I'm a fan. Seeing all those shields bank up over the first turns can force your opponent's hand a little, I can usually pull off a decent number of tokens as long as I play carefully, but knowing I can regen means that I don't have to worry too much about taking an early scratch.

I also prefer PtL to EI even without the ruling: there'll be a couple of turns ina game where you really, really just need to get damage through. And in those cases being able to TL and Focus is basically required these days.

YV-666

Gonk

Bossk

Gunner

Reinforced Deflectors?

Reinforced Deflectors is a system upgrade so you can't use it on an Yv.

Assuming you're getting stressed with Bossk you can get the same result for a point less and a remaining crew with :

Slaver: Gonk,K4,EI

For the few of us here that are Not enslaved by FFG Tournament Legalities: GONK starts with full shields VALUE... House Rule Glory!

"GONK-GONK-GONK!"

I've seen GONK do quite well in a scumhwks squad. You won't use it more than once or twice to get a shield back - trying to 'pump' it using action economy mid game isn't the point.

In turns 1, 2 and occasionally 3 (if one player tries to avoid action), actions are 'wasted'.

A Moldy Crow spends this time producing a stack of focus tokens as high as its model. A second HWK....doesn't.

With a GONK on board, it can instead spend time stashing away a couple of shield tokens.

Gonk is right now enjoying a cool spot in my card binder among all the unique scum Bounty Hunters!!! Good company for a card I can't see useing anytime soon, I tried him out and he takes a valurable spot and a focus is often just as good.

You have to think of it more like Han, than other regen ships. You are trying to produce ablative amor to slow down the rate at which you are killed. It combos best with an evade action so the you can mitigate 2 damage a turn. That leaves the Firespray and G1-A as the onlyreally viable candidates.

While Boba looks promising with rerolls of his own, he lacks the action economy and he just moves way too fast to be able to bank any shield before engaging. It would be idea to be able to Gonk while he is flying away and around for another pass but you have to tweak the build too much to make that effective and play keep away at the start of the game to get much more than a token or two.

That leaves the G1-A and since we need action economy and that means stress, luckily for them 4-LOM is pretty nifty with stress and slow enough to bank tokens early in the game. The change to experimental interface is largely negligible, because if you ever need to use both actions you are doing something wrong, and incidentally an evade is typically just as good as shield regen (if not better). You end up with 4-LOM with Gonk, Experimental Interface, likely FCS for attack bonuses for 34 points, with the title and EPT as optional extras. It's pricy but it keeps him around.

The reality is that Frank's ruling on EI did very little to Gonk's effectiveness, but that Gonk's effectiveness was already pretty limited.

There's simply too many good Scum crew (Boba, Dengar, Zuckuss, Bossk...) and couple with only a few ships can carry a crew in Scum (Firespray, HWK, YV-666, G1-A).

I put Gonk on my Palob once. It helps a bit if the opponent has only a few ships left, but since it's only 1 shield and you have to use an action to do it, it's simply not as effective as I thought it would be.

I am currently using gonk on Palob with Attanni Mindlink build with shield upgrade and I will have to say I've never been so happy with it.

You could do a mindlink build where you make sure the ship using Gonk get an evade/ focus from other ships. But still a very valuable spot to use on the gonk if you already get focus/evades from other ships.

After realizing I hadn't heard anything about the new Gonk crew for a while, I did some searching and it doesn't seem like anyone is talking about the little guy anymore. It looks like that unofficial (official?) ruling that calls both Gonk card actions the same action (which prevents using it with Experimental Interface) really took the energy out of what seemed like a promising new crew for Scum. Has anyone found a place for him? Or is he doomed to collect dust on a sandcrawler?

He definitely has a place on my Bossk YV 666, slow roll up popping Gonk until you get into combat, then using K4 droid and Interface to get target locks and recover shields. I also use Greedo, that's for funsies though.

You could do a mindlink build where you make sure the ship using Gonk get an evade/ focus from other ships. But still a very valuable spot to use on the gonk if you already get focus/evades from other ships.

that's why I've been using Palob with him

2 shields and with the first turn or 2 to get into poisiton with moldy crow you can have 2 or 3 shield tokens stored up and 2 or 3 focus stored up too

My opinion on gonk is that even without the ruling he costs 2x actions to recover one shield at the cost of 2 points. This is insanely bad action economy and you are probably better off defensively taking 2 other actions instead of getting your shield back.

Compare gonk to R5-P9 it costs one point more but it only takes 1 action to recover the shield, on top of that the 1 action (focus) can be used if the focus is going to be more beneficial then the shield regeneration like blocking 2 hits (converting focus on defense). and R5-P9 is not taken that much, with gonk being much worse (ruling or not) i cant see him seeing much play. Even if gonk did not require you to bank sheilds and simply read "Action: recover one shield" it would still be worse then R5-P9 as it stands I cant see him being useful.

I am a pretty strong defender of the balance in this game, however they did totally screw up gonk.

Tell me how to get R5-P9 on Boba or Bossk or Dengar and I will concede your point. You cant compare a droid that cant be taken by Scum to a crew card that does a similar action. Scum lack shield regeneration, it is seen as a Rebel thing, a card that gives Scum some regeneration isn't a bad thing in my books.

The ruling that you can only use either or action killed it.

Gonk was subpar even with EI, out of the box. Not a high quality upgrade. People were excited to play it, and after doing so much of the excitement is gone. Gonk is a donk.

There was a player at the Rochester Regionals who used him on Dengar with experimental interface. In one game that he won, he was able to use Gonk to regain 5 shields!!! That's 10 different Gonk actions (combined with focus actions to trigger experimental interface). I've played against a similar kit a few times and it's super annoying.

somebody has to do it

GONK (it's all capitals, you heathens) is great when you can get action economy elsewhere. People have suggested the YV-666 Gunner/Bossk combo, but if you've got Manaroo in your list you could probably GONK whoever you wanted to.

I'm considering GONK on VI Zuckuss (never used 4-LOM's ability once so far) with Manaroo in support - between regenerating a shield and Barrel Roll or Evade the Mist Hunter could be quite annoying to deal with.

I play with my gonk all the time.