I just bought my ticket to my first tournament which also happens to be the European Championships in a few weeks! Bit hardcore but its in my home town so rude not to.

I have a Ray/Norra list but was considering changing Norra to also use Expertise.

Ray (58)

Expertise
Kanan Jarrus
Finn
Falcon Title (TFA)

Original Norra (40)

PTL
R2D2
Vectored Thrusters
TailGunner
Alliance Overhaul

Alternate Norra build (42)

Expertise
R2D2
Vectored Thrusters
Weapons Engineer
Alliance Overhaul

My thinning is with expertise I don't need a focus action for attack so only need to go for Target lock, and weapons engineer allows TL on 2 ships for one action. This maximises my attacking ability. (maybe?)

Down side - No defence bonus - but as I would have to choose between spending TL on attack or defence and I can shoot out the back anyway is it that big of a sacrifice?

Any feedback, tactics and or tips on how to fly it welcome. Iv'e only been playing a few months so if you do have suggestions some reasoning would very much be appreciated.

Thank you all

Expertise is too good. its well balanced at 4 points because it can be hard to fit it into a list... but it is a magical upgrade. especially so you can use your actions for other stuff.

Expertise is wasted on Nora. She has enough greens that it's easy to remove stress, plus you're doing greens with R2 anyway. Keep push and add Kyle Katarn instead of tail gunner or weapons engineers. That way, you're basically getting up to three actions per turn.

If your opponent deals out stress, it's a nightmare. If they don't, it's amazing. It's has everything to do with what your local meta is like.

53 minutes ago, HouseofCutler said:

Alternate Norra build (42)

Expertise
R2D2
Vectored Thrusters
Weapons Engineer
Alliance Overhaul

I once flew Norra with that same build and I learned a few things. When you use Weapons Engineer, you are telling your opponent which ship you are attacking next, because you already have the TL. Therefore, your opponent will fly that ship in order to avoid getting hit and forcing you to then TL another ship. The problem is now that you need to TL once again that round and your strategy of having the Engineer failed because you couldn't free that action from being TL. Additionally to this, if you are using your TLs for Norra's ability, then you won't have your action to BR. Now, these are things I've learned and are not a fact, you may have a situation where the ship that had the second TL is a BR away from being a valid target, so your strategy with WE may paid off. I mean, these are things that happened to me.

What I also learned is that Norra tends to die fast by focus fire, so things like her ability and C3PO may contribute to her survability. Another thing, the common Norra build* is 41 pts while this one is 42 and yet is less solid (from my point of view).

*Norra Wexley + R2-D2 + Push the Limit + Kyle Katarn + Alliance Overhaul + Vectored Thrusters (41)

If you want to stay with that build, my only suggestion could be to switch the Engineer to C3PO to compensate the defense lost.

I'm currently flying Norra as some sort of Ace with the cost of her repositioning:

Norra Wexley + R2-D2 + Veteran Instincts + Jyn Erso + Alliance Overhaul + Experimental Interface (39)

Anyway, if you want, @Stay On The Leader wrote an article about ARC's and some ways to build them, perhaps it can help you.

Expertise on Norra makes it a lot more difficult to benefit from the defensive part of her ability - which is to be fair the less useful part... until she's one on one with the last ship on the board, it which point PTL means that it's functionally impossible to meaningfully damage her with 3 dice attacks. Put 3PO in and she's guaranteeing to block two to 3 damage (1 from 3PO, one from her ability/focus token, and potentially one from the eyeball rolled on her defence die) and regen 1.

I'd be inclined to PTL/3PO or PTL/Tail Gunner.

This is essentially my favorite list right now and I recently posted about it. There might be some good info here for you.

I wouldn't recommend it. If she makes it into a 1 on 1 situation, using the TL+F for defense is great as it denies at least one damage, a 5/8 chance of a second damage, and R2D2 regens a third damage. This all results in she's very tanky. Heck, if you throw C3PO on her as well, then you have a guaranteed 3 damage mitigation every turn, potentially 4. By putting expertise on her, you are 100% ignoring her secondary ability. Plus, you're redundant with the focus -> crit ability of the rear arc that often results in not needing to spend the focus token anyways (43.75% chance of naturally rolling an at least one eye, resulting in 2+ total after you spend the TL to add an eye... I suppose there's an outside chance of two blanks rerolling into two eyes, so technically 44.14% chance of spending a focus/using expertise out the rear at R2-3).

So expertise is wasted on the shot out the rear, denies her the defensive half of her ability, and is shut down by numerous stress builds these days (stresshog's double stress, Asajj's start of round stress, StressWes - though he strips your TL as well, rebel captive), doesn't open up your dial (you're still doing greens for R2-D2), costs more than PTL. I suppose one could argue that if they're shutting down Norra's expertise, they're not shutting down Rey's...

18 minutes ago, Khyros said:

I wouldn't recommend it. If she makes it into a 1 on 1 situation, using the TL+F for defense is great as it denies at least one damage, a 5/8 chance of a second damage, and R2D2 regens a third damage. This all results in she's very tanky. Heck, if you throw C3PO on her as well, then you have a guaranteed 3 damage mitigation every turn, potentially 4. By putting expertise on her, you are 100% ignoring her secondary ability. Plus, you're redundant with the focus -> crit ability of the rear arc that often results in not needing to spend the focus token anyways (43.75% chance of naturally rolling an at least one eye, resulting in 2+ total after you spend the TL to add an eye... I suppose there's an outside chance of two blanks rerolling into two eyes, so technically 44.14% chance of spending a focus/using expertise out the rear at R2-3).

So expertise is wasted on the shot out the rear, denies her the defensive half of her ability, and is shut down by numerous stress builds these days (stresshog's double stress, Asajj's start of round stress, StressWes - though he strips your TL as well, rebel captive), doesn't open up your dial (you're still doing greens for R2-D2), costs more than PTL. I suppose one could argue that if they're shutting down Norra's expertise, they're not shutting down Rey's...

@Khyros presents some sage advice and statistics to back it up. There's an argument for Expertise on Rey, but I agree that Expertise on Norra is a mistake.

Wow - thanks to all you guys!

You have all offered awesome advise, I was indeed being foolish in considering Expertise on Norra (but you have to try right?) and you guys have provided the reasoning not to do it. There are so many build options for Norra and Arcs I can see why they are popular.

I actually have a 3PO in my collection so may add him to the mix and reinstate PTL. Also like the idea of using Kyle Katarn's ability but I don't have the card. Jyn Erso + Experimental Interface also sounds fun but again I don't have the cards. Will add them to my list builder for another day.

The other thread millsbr91 linked also had some good advise - I need to go find some inertial dampners...

thaks again

49 minutes ago, HouseofCutler said:

Wow - thanks to all you guys!

You have all offered awesome advise, I was indeed being foolish in considering Expertise on Norra (but you have to try right?) and you guys have provided the reasoning not to do it. There are so many build options for Norra and Arcs I can see why they are popular.

I actually have a 3PO in my collection so may add him to the mix and reinstate PTL. Also like the idea of using Kyle Katarn's ability but I don't have the card. Jyn Erso + Experimental Interface also sounds fun but again I don't have the cards. Will add them to my list builder for another day.

The other thread millsbr91 linked also had some good advise - I need to go find some inertial dampners...

thaks again

Not foolish for trying. At the end of the day, fly what you like.

And I say that with much respect to all who responded; they all give good input.

Though with all of these negative things about why Expertise isn't the solution, if you can get her a second action to go along with WE, she can then use the two target locks for offense AND defense. Dutch/Ashoka seems like the easiest way to do that. Norra ends two TL, Expertise for offense, and F for defense... Not a horrid thing to fly, especially if the rest of your list likes the synergy.

Perhaps something along the lines of:

Norra w/ Expertise, WE, AO, R2D2

Ashoka w/ VI, Captured TIE

Rex

Biggs w/ R3-A2, IA

First few rounds Ahsoka can help Biggs' offense by giving him a TL, Rex helps his defense by reducing dice. And after Biggs dies, your opponent still wants to go for Rex, bringing Norra into the end game, where she can utilize her offensive AND defensive abilities (assuming there's more than 1 enemy on the board still)... Top tier, probably not, but it could actually be interesting to fly. I kinda wanna try it now (well, the Norra/Ashoka/Rex/Biggs thing, not neccessarily Expertise/WE)

22 hours ago, gennataos said:

If your opponent deals out stress, it's a nightmare. If they don't, it's amazing. It's has everything to do with what your local meta is like.

I never run Expertise for this exact reason.

I use Rey & Nora both with expertise, it's all or nothing but it's fun.

Rey, Expertise, Finn, Kanan Janrus, New title

Nora, expertise, r2d2, title, shield upgrade

I like Norra w/ PTL C3po and r2d2 and title...maybe vector thrusters too. Conventional wisdom says the Rey goes down quick usually....but that Norra hits like a truck and is a nightmare in endgame

I won a Q2 store kit event today. 3:1, won by 20 mov overall l. My mov with double expertise rey & Norra is usually terrible. The only game I lost was against the world's winners list.

So after all the ideas you guys have provided I have an idea.

Ray (58)

Expertise
Kanan Jarrus
Finn
Falcon Title (TFA)
smuggling compartment
inertial dampeners

Norra (39)

VI
R2D2
Experimental Interface
Jyn Erso
Title

While I lose my vectored thrusters, jyns ability means that if Ray gets stressed (very possible against tournament lists) I could assign her focus tokens to make up for a deactivated expertise. Will have to see how well I can fly the list - Will test it out tonight.