So I've been flying nothing but Mindlink lists since the card was released. I've had some good results at Regionals and Store Championships with it, and I feel its a solid card. I'm currently living in The Netherlands, AKA the land of the U-Boats. I have a Store Championship coming up in a couple of weeks, and in anticipation of facing a bunch of Palp Aces, Defenders, Bombers and U-Boats, I'm playing around with this list:

Zuckuss: 31

Attanni Mindlink

4-LOM

Title

Tractor Beam

Palob: 33

Attanni Mindlink

Blaster Turret

'Gonk'

Moldy Crow

Cloaking Device

Manaroo: 36

Attanni Mindlink

K4 Security Droid

Unhinged Atromech

Plasma Torpedos

Extra Munitions

Guidance Chips

Palob and Zuckuss can combine token denial to strip an ace and hopefully take it down. Palob can steal evades from Defenders and focus tokens from U-Boats. Manaroo plays Jack-of-all-Trades as blocker, ordnance attacker and buffs the whole squad. With good positioning this list can throw 12 modified red dice before the U-Boats get to fire.

My main questions are:

1) Is the Moldy Crow/Gonk combo worth it on Palob?Or, should I switch to TLT, drop the title and use the extra point to give Zuckuss Electronic Baffle?

2) Would I be better served by going with a VI & FCS Zuckuss to get a PS9 ship on the board?

Appreciate any input, thanks a lot

My 2 cents:

TLT's on Scum Hawks is not so good because tbeir abilities trigger at R1-2, but TLT's are R2-3. It is ok, but expensive.

Secondly, unless you are trying to compensate for a specific shortcoming, Mindlink with less than 3 ships is probably not worth it. I say this because VI Zuckuss is 100% better than PS7 Zuckuss, and you are going to have Manaroo shoveling tokens to him anyway. Meanwhile, Palob can shove focus tokens, but with Moldy Crow, will not get much except stressed out.

I've found that Moldy Crow on a mindlinked Palob is unnecessary. Each time I've flown it, I simply cannot spend all the focus I wind up banking. In one game alone, I had 8 focus banked on Palob when he focally went down.

Regardless of which turret you run, I love Dengar on Palob. The ability to reroll two dice against uniques makes him with it. Between rerolls and focus, he'll hit with all three dice.

I've never flown Zuckess, so no advice there.

Bonne Chance!

My 2 cents:

TLT's on Scum Hawks is not so good because tbeir abilities trigger at R1-2, but TLT's are R2-3. It is ok, but expensive.

Secondly, unless you are trying to compensate for a specific shortcoming, Mindlink with less than 3 ships is probably not worth it. I say this because VI Zuckuss is 100% better than PS7 Zuckuss, and you are going to have Manaroo shoveling tokens to him anyway. Meanwhile, Palob can shove focus tokens, but with Moldy Crow, will not get much except stressed out.

If any engagement happens @R3 (and they happen a lot, usually at your opponent's leisure), a Scum HWK not doing something is roughly 1/3 of your squad doing squat. Can't have that and, mostly, it's the reason TLT is necessary (not be-all-end-all necessary, but still...).

As for the questions:

1) Attanni Blaster does have its charm. But Gonk/Moldy is unnecessary. Put Dengar in there and you're set.

2) Use the two points you just got and get Zuck some FCS lovin'. With Attanni, that's most likely 3 actions/turn.

I quite like the moldy crow on there - means you can simply ignore stress gained from mindlink.

You might swap zuckuss for 4-Lom and put zuckuss crew with Palob. That's a killer crow now and mind linked stress on 4-Lom can be passed to the enemy, manaroo doesn't mind as you have unhinged and if you charge up the crow Palob doesn't care either.

Good advice guys, thanks a lot! I've got a couple of weeks so I'll try out these ideas and find out what works best.

Blaster Turret + Moldy Crow = essential together!

Any other turret though, and the crow title is optional.

Also, when running blaster turret, I find engine upgrade pretty **** useful (same for twin laser turret). I would rather have boost than Gonk + cloaking device, personally. YMMV though.

I really like the Manaroo build though.

Instead of Zuckuss, I suggest a somewhat crazy idea:

Tansarri Point Vet

-attanni mindlink

-heavy scyk

-heavy laser cannon

-hull upgrade

30 points

My reasoning is that he can hang back behind your other ships. Palob will work his way onto the flank and Manaroo will likely be taking the enemy head on. The HLC gives better damage potential at long range than Zuckuss can (although Zuckuss is better firepower at Range 1). But I don't think you need a R1 bruiser for this list. All depends on your play style of course, but for me, I think the Scyk could do more damage here than Zuckuss (overall). On the other hand, the nice thing about zuckuss is that he draws a lot of aggro, thus taking some pressure off of Palob...

Instead of Zuckuss, I suggest a somewhat crazy idea:

Tansarri Point Vet

-attanni mindlink

-heavy scyk

-heavy laser cannon

-hull upgrade

30 points

My reasoning is that he can hang back behind your other ships. Palob will work his way onto the flank and Manaroo will likely be taking the enemy head on. The HLC gives better damage potential at long range than Zuckuss can (although Zuckuss is better firepower at Range 1). But I don't think you need a R1 bruiser for this list. All depends on your play style of course, but for me, I think the Scyk could do more damage here than Zuckuss (overall). On the other hand, the nice thing about zuckuss is that he draws a lot of aggro, thus taking some pressure off of Palob...

That's the kind of crazy s*** I love! Nice idea. I will try that out for sure. Might try a Stealth Device instead of the Hull Upgrade though.