With the x-wing store championships around the corner Dan has looked at an idea for a Kylo Ren build.
What do you think of the build and his strategy behind his list?
http://www.fishywargaming.com/single-post/2017/05/08/X-Wing-Ideas-Hello-Darkness-My-Old-Friend
If anyone wants to chat or suggest tweaks to this build please let me know I'm practising with it now
Didn't read the blog. People promoting blogs in these forum is one of my pet peeves. I glanced at the list. My opinion can be summed up in the following 23-point ship:
Lieutenant Colzet + TIE/x1 + FCS
Honestly, I think the roots of the list are very good, but it could use a bit of tweaking. Now, I have admittedly limited experience in tournaments, but I would like to make a few suggestions. This list seems to be extremely reliant on getting that first crit, and blinding a major portion of the enemies list for several rounds. This will make it incredibly strong against lists that are packing only a couple, low agility ships. Unfortunately, it loses efficiency against both swarms, and high agility aces. Aces will make it incredibly hard to get that first damage, while swarms won't be hurt nearly as much by the loss of just one shot. With that in mind, I'm going to list the upgrades that I would recommend cutting, so that you can build to better combat these archetypes. Bear in mind that while I am going to be calling for some pretty drastic changes, this is only my opinion. I'm not saying your list is trash or anything, just that this is how I would build a list like what you had.
First, the cuts:
Saboteur: I like what you were going for here, really I do. This is the best use of this upgrade I have ever seen. Especially with the help of palp, this upgrade really helps play into Kylo Ren's strengths, keeping a ship out of combat early, and building an advantage. That being said, you are now spending 10 points to increase your odds of beating a list archetype that you already have a pretty strong advantage over. MAYBE, if it were on a different ship, so that you could blind several pilots at once, then it would be worth the ten point investment. Unfortunately however, isn't and with that in mind, I am going to have to cut it.
Palpatine: In my opinion, Palp is best used to protect your ships. Spending 8 points to change one die result to a crit just doesn't seem to be worth it to me. Now, maybe you have had different experiences, but, I am going to cut him to save points for other upgrades. This is especially considering I've already cut the saboteur, and therefore your little parlor trick, out.
Dormitz and Comm Scanner: I'm going to look at these upgrades together, because they really go hand in hand. The idea (I assume) is to rush Chirpy forward and catch the enemy on turn 1, so that you can (hopefully) catch them out of position, and you have both a focus and Kylo, or a focus target lock, evade boost etc: most opponents though, seeing this will keep their ships together, and might even knock Chirpy off the board before Dormitz even reaches the combat zone. This. would. be. bad. Generally speaking, engaging enemy ships wil only 50% of you force is a bad idea, and for those rare ocasions were it would be the better decision to rush with the Decimator, you still have the engine upgrade to fly along, so I am going to downgrade Dormitz to a Starkiller base pilot and chop off the Comm Scanner, saving 2 total points.
*Veteran Instincts: The jump from PS 8 to 10 is actually pretty good for just a single point, as it ensures that you can boost pass an aggressive Fenn Rau (or any other high PS ship). I am just going to need the slot for what I feel will be a more potent upgrade.
*Moff Jerjerrod: I can appreciate why you included this card, as you can use it to deport an exhausted Kylo or Saboteur if they are no longer living up to their potential, or even the Moff himself. I assume this is largely there to serve as anti-kylo tech. If there are a lot of Kylo based lists in your meta, then definitely keep this (with VI, hence the asterisks). For the purposes of my analysis however, I am going to leave him out as well.
Collision Detector: Being a free upgrade, this card is only used if you aren't using the slot for something else. As I wll be using that slot, I'm taking it out.
Dauntless: Because I have now taken out the Saboteur, this upgrade loses a lot of use. There are times when it will help, but I feel that those points could be spent better elsewhere.
There you have it, 7 upgrade cards taken off, and 1 pilot downgraded. This opens up 17 points to play with. While deciding how to spend these points, I sort of centered them around countering high agility ships and swarms, as dual falcons and the like should be pretty easily countered by virtue of having Kylo in the first place.
On Chiraneau:
Gunner: You really need those crits to stick, and this is the easiest way to do that. The general principle of gunner is that the first shot strips the tokens, then the second sticks the damage through. This will help massively with sticking that crit onto ships like Fenn and Soontir.
*Predator: Because you are spending your action on Kylo (or boosting) you need to have more dice modification that isn't action dependent. This is where predator comes in, as you then have both a mini target lock and a mini focus on EVERY attack (including the gunner shot). If you have a ton of Kylo's in your meta, then do feel free to replace this with the aforementioned VI and Moff.
+
Kylo Ren
Engine Upgrade
On the Starkiller Pilot:
Mara Jade: Usually the Rebel Captive is the better stressy option for three points, but Mara does gain strength against swarms, and you will need every edge you can get in that match-up. Other than that, Mara will allow you to stress entire mindlinked squads and non-ptl aces. This will encourage you to fly the Upsilon straight into the jaws of the enemy, so the rest of the upgrades are centered around that theme.
Anti-pursuit Lasers: Charging your large base ship into the center of you opponents formations will likely cause more than a few collisions, so you might as well make them damage as well. This can be replaced with the Ion Projector if you would prefer ion tokens to damage.
Boshek: Now that your opponent has bumped you, and possibly taken a damage for his trouble, you can start to play mind games with him. Does he choose the maneuver he wants, or the one next to it. This will hopefully lead to him making the wrong choice at least a couple times in a match.
Fire-Control System: Free target locks are good, especially if you wouldn't normally get your action because you bumped. You might as well make those 4-5 die attacks really sting, as its half your lists firepower.
I hope you enjoy the list, I do feel that despite changing around many of the upgrades, the base of your list is still there, complete with the ability to rush his deployment and the ability to plop down in the worst possible space and screwing with his ships. There are less blinded pilots, but each ship will have higher damage output for those few rounds that they are blinded. I hope you enjoyed the way to much time I spent over analyzing this list, and its upgrades.
TL:DR This is the list I would fly:
Rear Admiral Chiraneau:
Starkiller Base Pilot:
10 hours ago, jmswood said:Didn't read the blog. People promoting blogs in these forum is one of my pet peeves. I glanced at the list. My opinion can be summed up in the following 23-point ship:
Lieutenant Colzet + TIE/x1 + FCS
Hi Jmswood,
sorry you dont like the way this is shared. I wrote for a Blog to help push the community in a game I love.
i understand what your saying about Lieutenant Colzet. The problem I find is his PS and fragility as a ship means he can be focused down quickly.
so the build above is trying to make a more survivable and reliable approach.
but a differing build with the likes of the Tie Advanced and other high PS aces like Vader and a cheap Kylo Bomber would be an interesting aspect too. I just like the lazy turret firing from the Decimator that I find more reliable
Hey Toph,
interesting build. Your right in saying the two weaknesses are definitely the hard to hit aces (Soontir, Defenders X7 etc) and swarms. I've tried it out against a swarm and just relied on PS10 arc dodging to kill ships and didn't use the Sab + Kylo tactic much.
i haven't tried it against high agility ships and ISO think it could be tough to get that hit to stray the ball rolling. Pred/gunner chirpy really helps that a lot and Hot Shot co pilot build is ace in that regard.my only hope is to use arc dodging against these aces at PS10 then hope the green dice don't behave.
gunner and not taking the alpha deployment seems very viable and a lot more reliable from shot to shot. I'm going to play around with my original build but may do some tweaks as you suggest if the forward deploy isn't very effective and I feel like the damage output is lacking
thanks for the post!