So I have a 3 ship scum list I've been tweaking for quite awhile now. I won't reveal the first 2 ships as I don't want the focus to be on them, but I will say they are both PS 5.

My current 3rd ship though is

N'Dru - 17

Adaptability - 0

Cluster Missiles - 4

Glitterstim - 2

Guidance Chips - 0

Total - 23

He has great damage potential, and has done so many games, however I've also had several games now where he never got his clusters off due to being blocked or taking the wrong attack angle. With his limited dial, lack of barrel or boost, and the fact he needs to stay at least range 3 from the rest of my ships to really have his ability pay off, it makes him a tricky ship to fly, though he is cheap at least.

So while I could still keep using him, with the new faq out, I have two other possibilities I could use in his place.

Option 2

Tansarii Point Vet - 17

Title - 2

Mangler Cannon - 4

Total - 23

Option 3

Kaa'to Leeachos - 15

Deadeye - 1

Homing Missile - 5

Guidance Chips - 0

Total - 21

When comparing those two, kaa'to has a better first attack, but tansarri has better attacks the rest of the game, and is also a bit tankier due to the extra agility. Kaa'to also leaves 2 points to add to either him or one of my other 2 ships if I want. Mangler could be cool to add crits to ships after my other 2 ships have shot already though. Both options are PS5 like my other 2 ships, which gives me a lot of flexibility when doing movement and attacks.

Which of the 3 options do you think is best? Also just to clarify 23 points is the max the ship can be or I'll go over 100, and I'm not cutting or changing anything from my other 2 ships to get more points. A possible 4th option would be a naked Concord Dawn Ace, but that really doesn't excite me.

Not knowing the rest of the list does make it hard to make useful suggestions.

Offhand, I would say not to bother with the Tansarri Vet unless you can capitalize on his EPT slot. With only 23 points, that's not really possible. Instead, I would take the cartel spacer w/ HLC (again, not sure if this is a good suggestion without knowing the rest of the list).

Kaa'to Leeachos: I like this guy. He's great for his cost, but is best used in a Mindlink list where his ability basically becomes a free bonus token. While he might be more reliable in firing off his ordnance (due to deadeye being easier to use than N'dru), I'm not sure what he's doing for you. Are you struggling with high PS, high agility aces? His homing missile is unlikely to hit those targets anyway, since its not difficult for them to avoid his arc (although maybe the rest of your list can capitalize on that? I don't know).

Fang Fighter: with only 23 points, its not wise to consider the Dawn Vet or Dawn Ace. Running them naked is a waste, imho. I would be looking at the Zealous Recruit, personally. At 23 points, you can run him with both autothrusters and title. At PS 1, he has some nice punch and is an excellent blocker. You can even drop the title with little loss in effectiveness if a small initiative bid is appealing. Again, I don't know what else you're running, so not sure if a blocker is helpful or not to your specific list...but that would be the main reason for considering this pilot.

That's the best I can come up with not knowing what your list might be strong or weak against, or what might be giving your current list difficulties...

Ah yes, I know well the challenge of filling that third slot in a scum list. Thankfully the Scyk is fixed, now it's actually a reasonable option.

To bad you don't have 24 points. I often design lists with 24 points for the 3rd ship cause 24 points is a TLT Y-wing.

The best Suhlak builds are also usually 24 points.

VI / Cluster Missiles / Glitterstim / Chips

VI / Concussion Missile / Illicit Cloaking / Chips

I have flown 20 point Kaato, but it's not good enough. Suhlak is significantly better.

Kaato / Deadeye / Concussion Missile / Chips

Generic Fangs and generic Kihraxz are both worse than Kaato with missile.

The Scyk now truly is the best Scum ship in the 20 point range.

Cartel Spacer / title / Ion Canon = 19 points

Cartel Spacer / title / Mango Canon / Hull Upgrade = 23 points

Tsnari Point Vet / title / Ion Canon / Crackshot = 23 points

Go with the Mangler Spacer if your list needs more damage output. Having an Ion Canon makes the ship so scummy though. A crackshot Ion Canon can be game changing. That's what I would use if I had 23 points.

I'm going to be using that 19 point Ion Scyk in many future lists. The first one is going to be with PTL Fenn Rau & VI Bossk.

If you fly a Scyk, it would be wonderful to hear your experience with it. I haven't actually put one on the table in a long while. I do remember they are fun to fly. 1-turns are always amazing and thankfully they have barrel roll.

The Scyk is an amazing ship to the purpose. But if you like N'Dru, try this comp: LoneWolf, Cluster, Guidance and Cloaking Device.

Yes you lose the focus for glitterstim, but you get an amazing boost/barrelroll of 2, that improves your mobility (and Dru loves mobility). You can even lost the Device, you don't care because Dru just need 1 occasion to shoot his Missiles.

And you're not completely out of modificators: LoneWolf still help you to reroll 1 red die per attack + Guidance chip.

If you don't lose the Device after the first roll, you can even consider to rest in cloak: you defend at 4 agility+1reroll, and you can acquire a TargetLock this turn. Then, you can even lose the Device (still you can do a decloak movement) and next turn get the focus.

You can simply adapt your ship to the situation.

All interesting ideas, some of which I've considered. I keep getting drawn to the tansarii with mangler though. Having another 3 attack ship will be nice, and all those crits (especially if firing last) could be devastating.

The kaato with homing missile was super tempting because of all the x7 defenders around, but at PS5 at 4 hit points too great a risk of getting killed before firing. And if he spends his focus to stay alive he gets no shot, though he could steal a second one at the start of combat of course.

That's what's nice about the scyk, if I run him in the back of my formation, his mangler still works great, but being at possibly range 3 with 4 dice and 4 hit points means he's less likely to get focus fired down right away, so I can still have 3 ships for at least a couple rounds hopefully.

I guess I'll give it a try and see what I think. Maybe I'll end up going back to n'dru, or maybe I'll try something else.

So I tried out the scyk tonight but didn't really get any use out of it as it died before even firing a shot. I had taken an evade, and had a 4 dice shot with TL and focus and a 3 dice shot with focus coming at me. They got 6/7 hits, and I got 0/6 evades so I died. Then to make matters worse my other 2 ships shot at dash and did zero damage thanks to one of my attacks whiffing and dash rolling almost all evades.

It was kind of a weird game as I was playing PTL dash so I couldn't exactly fly in formation like I wanted, which allowed for my scyk to become a bit isolated.

Even after all that early bad luck I still won the game though.

Well, so much effort into a 20 point ship. That's fine! Anyway maybe try to snipe with the scyk, looking for range 3. But of course if he enemy focus it down, well that's fine to me (: It's just a filler.

Dice are fickle apparently. But you still won? So also apparently, it took the heat off of something else? Just a thought.

2nd game with the scyk lost by 1 point on dengar. Once again my scyk did not get a shot. Got an unlucky crit from a debris i barely clipped, then got 1 shot by dengar at range 2. Only rolled 1 evade and he rerolled it to a blank.

So still don't know what to think about this ship lol.

EDIT:

Played a third game now. This time the scyk survived the whole game (undamaged even)! His shots were horrible though, only did 2 damage from I think like 4 shots, though only one was modified. But one of those damage was the final one to win the game!

Ndru + Crackshot + Concussion + BMST + Chips

Gives him 5 attack missile with crack to do major damage. VI to get a TL on high PS ships. BMST to be usefull vs high agi ships afterwards.

Spice Runner + TLT + Greedo

Do some faceup damage with your TLT. Or throw Zuckuss on there.

So I'm 4-1 now with the scyk version of the list. Could have been 5-0 in that super close game I mentioned earlier against Dengaroo.

After having it blown away before firing in my first 2 games, it's lived until the end the last 3 games, including one game by 1 hull (thank you new title!).

I'm still having bad luck with it firing unmodified shots, can't believe how many I've shot now that were all focus/blank.

While it's nice when it draws fire away from my main two ships, it's definitely done better when left alone taking pot shots at range 2-3 where he's safe but my opponent gets no extra evade die. Has worked nice as a blocker at times too.

While there's no doubt there is much more potential from n'dru, in the first round of attack anyways, I think the buffed scyk is more fun possibly, and more fits my playstyle.

I'm also thinking that the "A Score to Settle" EPT might go good on him since it's free once wave 10 comes out. Give a little extra offensive help on those whiff rolls I keep having against one target anyways.

If I'm able to go to my regional in 2 weeks, I think I'll probably take this build. I just need a clever name for it...I was thinking maybe FIVE Scum (a play on FIVE gum) since they are all ps 5.

Do you care to share what the full list is now?

Do you care to share what the full list is now?

Hmm I suppose I could.

Mando Merc - 35

Predator - 3

4LOM - 1

BMST - 1

Slave 1 - 0

LRS - 0

Total - 40

Latts - 33

Dengar - 3

Zuckuss - 1

Total - 37

Tans Vet - 19

Mangler - 4

Total - 23

100 points total

Latts - 33

Dengar - 3

Zuckuss - 1

Total - 37

No K4? How do you bring the TargetLock when you get stressed by Zuckuss?

Latts - 33

Dengar - 3

Zuckuss - 1

Total - 37

No K4? How do you bring the TargetLock when you get stressed by Zuckuss?

There is Dengar already for rerolls

Her ability get used maybe once a game. Usually its better to just focus unless the target is really beefed up. I also just wanted higher PS than 2 since the slaver can die really quick with pretty much everyone shooting before him. Plus it's nice having all the same PS as I mentioned.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

After my first kinda bad loss this morning I did learn a lesson...if facing multiple regen ships, and one is norra, go for norra first. I went for Poe instead and killed him pretty quick, but I think norra is the bigger threat since she hits harder and can regen easier than poe.

Other than that I haven't seen any major weaknesses in this squad yet. Other than bad dice luck for me/ good dice luck for opponent which is unavoidable. It's always nice to know there's no "horrible" matchups, and that any game is winnable if you fly good and dice are fair.

Latts - 33

Dengar - 3

Zuckuss - 1

Total - 37

No K4? How do you bring the TargetLock when you get stressed by Zuckuss?

There is Dengar already for rerolls

Latts needs Target Locks, not for hit

Her ability get used maybe once a game. Usually its better to just focus unless the target is really beefed up. I also just wanted higher PS than 2 since the slaver can die really quick with pretty much everyone shooting before him. Plus it's nice having all the same PS as I mentioned.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

After my first kinda bad loss this morning I did learn a lesson...if facing multiple regen ships, and one is norra, go for norra first. I went for Poe instead and killed him pretty quick, but I think norra is the bigger threat since she hits harder and can regen easier than poe.

Other than that I haven't seen any major weaknesses in this squad yet. Other than bad dice luck for me/ good dice luck for opponent which is unavoidable. It's always nice to know there's no "horrible" matchups, and that any game is winnable if you fly good and dice are fair.

If you build up Razzi as well, you will use her ability 2 times in any turn. That's why is kinda strange to me see her with this settings. Is not a partybus, 4Lom is missed, even the Mando Merc don't convince me.

Imho

Latts needs Target Locks, not for hit

Ah, of course. My bad.

In that case I would try and lower Scyk's ps to get those K4 target locks. I'm pretty sure those will make bigger impact than Scyk's higher ps.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

Only good reason I can come up with TPV is the ept slot, if you had trick shot for example, that mangler would be nice sniper behind the rocks. PS synergy is nice but I think you could get more out of those three points putting them somewhere else.

Latts needs Target Locks, not for hit

Ah, of course. My bad.

In that case I would try and lower Scyk's ps to get those K4 target locks. I'm pretty sure those will make bigger impact than Scyk's higher ps.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

Only good reason I can come up with TPV is the ept slot, if you had trick shot for example, that mangler would be nice sniper behind the rocks. PS synergy is nice but I think you could get more out of those three points putting them somewhere else.

Latts - 33

Dengar - 3

Zuckuss - 1

Total - 37

No K4? How do you bring the TargetLock when you get stressed by Zuckuss?

There is Dengar already for rerolls

Latts needs Target Locks, not for hit

Her ability get used maybe once a game. Usually its better to just focus unless the target is really beefed up. I also just wanted higher PS than 2 since the slaver can die really quick with pretty much everyone shooting before him. Plus it's nice having all the same PS as I mentioned.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

After my first kinda bad loss this morning I did learn a lesson...if facing multiple regen ships, and one is norra, go for norra first. I went for Poe instead and killed him pretty quick, but I think norra is the bigger threat since she hits harder and can regen easier than poe.

Other than that I haven't seen any major weaknesses in this squad yet. Other than bad dice luck for me/ good dice luck for opponent which is unavoidable. It's always nice to know there's no "horrible" matchups, and that any game is winnable if you fly good and dice are fair.

If you build up Razzi as well, you will use her ability 2 times in any turn. That's why is kinda strange to me see her with this settings. Is not a partybus, 4Lom is missed, even the Mando Merc don't convince me.

Imho

4lom is great on the firespray. Even when fully ioned he can still shoot from behind. I don't like him on the yv since you need to keep moving to keep your arc on enemies. Once you're ioned makes it easy to get them behind you.

Plus it's "almost" like having two party buses. Both get at least one refill on offense, merc can freeze a token and latts can force rerolls.

I know the firespray doesn't get much love right now...especially low ps versions. But it's my favorite ship and I still get good results with it.

If they ever do a firespray fix my lists are gonna be amazingly good.

Latts needs Target Locks, not for hit

Ah, of course. My bad.

In that case I would try and lower Scyk's ps to get those K4 target locks. I'm pretty sure those will make bigger impact than Scyk's higher ps.

If I had the points I'd totally add K4 to go along with Dengar, but I don't unless I drop the vet to PS2, but don't want to do that.

Only good reason I can come up with TPV is the ept slot, if you had trick shot for example, that mangler would be nice sniper behind the rocks. PS synergy is nice but I think you could get more out of those three points putting them somewhere else.

As I mentioned earlier I think the 0 point ept from the quad jumper expansion will go nice with him. Double crits on the biggest target each game!

It also looks like you are going to be giving that ship the same benefit against your Scyk. Trick Shot wouldn't be a bad choice on a Mangler TPV. Mangler denies the extra green from range while Trick Shot makes obstacles give both of you a an extra die which the Scyk comes out ahead with. For a player that can manage range and obstacles well a Trick Shot Mangler Scyk could be a strong piece that get underestimated until it gets off a couple of four dice Mangler shots.

So it's finally time to take this list to my regional tomorrow.

I got a total of 14 practice games in with it. Went 9-4, with another game undecided since it ended early, but it was more likely I would have won it than lost. Plus two of my losses were by a single hit point, so I coudl have potentially been as high as 12-2 with the list which is super good.

Multiple aces lists are probably the toughest for me. Especially ones with good offense. If the aces can't do rerolls on offense and/or are afraid to spend focus and not have it for defense, that helps me since I take minimal damage and still have good enough offense to get through their tokens and do damage.

I'll give a recap on how I do later.

So an update on this.

I've done some playing around with the list, and ended up tweaking it a bit, including dumping the scyk to go with kaato like I had originally proposed as an option.

The updated scyk was a lot of fun, but didn't really carry their weight enough.

My revised list now looks like this:

Mando Merc - 35
Predator - 3
4-lom - 1
Slave 1 - 0
LRS - 0
Total - 39

Latts Razzi - 33
Dengar - 3
K4 - 3
Zuckuss - 1
Total - 40

Kaa'to Leachos - 15
Homing Missile - 5
Deadeye - 1
Chips - 0
Total - 21

List Total - 100

I like this list a lot. I've yet to have a game where kaa'to doesn't get his missile off. He usually gets all 4 hits with it so that's a much bigger punch than the mangler scyk had. K4 is great on latts. Gives me a lot of opportunities to reduce agility on a enemy target, especially aces. So far I'm 5-3 with this version of the list, including winning my first 2 vassal outer rim league games so far. Toughest matchup so far is paratanni (of course), and similar attani builds, but that's the same for pretty much everyone right now.

Kind of wish I had done this version sooner for regionals last fall. Might have made the difference for me to go 4-2 or better instead of 3-3.