The Fenn/Inaldra/Dengar list is the love child of Paratanni and Dengaroo... and just as strong as that combination sounds.

1 hour ago, SOTL said:

The Fenn/Inaldra/Dengar list is the love child of Paratanni and Dengaroo... and just as strong as that combination sounds.

It's definitely good, I'm not convinced yet that it's as good as those 2 were at their prime (to be fair, I've only played against it once)

So we had an escalation tournament on the weekend. I brought a unique list of my own creation, and won the tourney surprisingly! Let's take a look, shall we?

For those that don't know what an 'escalation' is, it is a tournament where you bring 4 different (but similar) lists. The first one is 60 points, second is 90, third is 120, and the final list is 150 points. Each list must contain all upgrades, pilots, and ships from the previous list. You can add upgrade cards, but not remove them.

So, here was my first list for 60 points:

M3-A Interceptor: •Serissu (21)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Genesis Red (20)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Inaldra (18)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

Total: 59/60

Pretty awful right? Well it is. I knew this going in, and lost my first match against a rebel list with an ARC170 and Captain Rex. Without any mods aside from Attanni, things were WEAK man. But I had a method to my madness. I kinda knew I may lose the first match, and I did.

The second match consisted of the following list:

M3-A Interceptor: •Serissu (26)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

Tractor Beam (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Genesis Red (26)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Inaldra (18)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Sunny Bounder (20)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

Total: 90/90

List is looking a little better, right? The Heavy Scyk and Manglers did their job well. The surprise was Pulsed Ray Shield. This upgrade became invaluable as it offered my scyks 1-forwards as well as regen. The regen was huge.

I went up against a new player, playing Poe, an A-wing, and another T70. Since he was new, I completely decimated him, but I got a better idea on how to fly my list. Mangler, pulsed ray, mangler, turn around, pulsed ray, manglermangler mangler. It works insanely good. Especially with Attanni. Tractor Beam did it's job well as well, placing ships where I needed them.

My 3rd match:

M3-A Interceptor: •Serissu (26)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

Tractor Beam (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Genesis Red (28)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Laetin A'shera (20)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

M3-A Interceptor: •Inaldra (24)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Sunny Bounder (22)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

Total: 120/120

This match was against a seasoned player, and I usually don't do well against him. He was GOOD. I managed to corral him to where I needed him though, and managed a full win. I lost a couple ships, but managed to pull out the win. Again, pulsed ray shield was amazing. Sure, you are advertising your position, but these scyks are insanely hard to hit with focus, evade, and 3 green dice (sometimes 4 or 5 depending!). He complimented me on my list, which made me feel good.

The final matchup was VERY tough. My opponent had:

1 YV-666

1 Shadow Caster

1 Firespray with Tail Gunner

2 contracted scouts

My list was:

M3-A Interceptor: •Serissu (26)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

Tractor Beam (1)

M3-A Interceptor: •Genesis Red (28)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Laetin A'shera (26)

Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Quinn Jast (24)

Guidance Chips (0)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

Ion Pulse Missiles (3)

M3-A Interceptor: •Inaldra (24) Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

Attanni Mindlink (1)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

M3-A Interceptor: •Sunny Bounder (22) Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (2)

"Mangler" Cannon (4)

Total: 150/150

5 big ships against my little scyks. I was scared. Looking across the table with 5 ships taking up the entire edge of the board was intimidating. I thought for SURE I was done, but we met for a joust (!) and managed to survice the initial engagement, taking the Slaver down early in the first 2 rounds of firing (Ion pulse missiles helped here). We bumped like crazy for a couple more rounds until I could get away for a few regens, then came back. took out a Scout, then another the following round with his unlucky pulls from the damage deck. 2 crits - both double damage. That was the turning point of the match I believe. I made short work of his Firespray, losing about 3 ships at this point. Working on his Shadow Caster I lost another ship so it was down to 2 of my scyks against his almost full Shadow Caster. My greens, evades, and focuses pulled though (as well as regen!) and I got the win.

Everyone was amazed that 6 little scyks could take down 5 big ships like that (soooo many hull and shields to chew through!) But the scyks are VERY hard to hit.

So what do you think of this list? Everyone thought I flew well, but I fully realize that Attanni Mindlink is what did a lot of the work here. I personally believe it to be OP, but I know opinions vary.

Inaldra w/ PRS and HLC is pretty funny.

In-built TL, fires late enough to justify offensively burning the shield, ion for a 1fwd + shield regen.

My main complaint about the HLC Scyks was lack of a 1fwd tends to screw them over, they never get more than 1 shot at the same target w/o flipping around. PRS is up for debate if you can zap yourself with an ion when you are not missing a shield, but Inaldra bypasses that by just spending the shield in the first place for effectively a free targetlock.

Ill say straight off i'm not a scum player (empire ever since wave one) but the new scyk pilots have me itching for a try.

This lot looks like a really nasty bunch and due to the way my group plays (very casual, usually 150 or 200 pt games) i'm very tempted to just outright blatantly copy this

One question, what was your general deployment pattern (if you have one) ...all grouped (a la tie swarm) or more spread out individuals? With my ties i've always had a preference for spreading out on deployment and converging on a target mid game as it mostly goes against expecations and gives more options.

This is in reply to Chaotix. long time forum lurker, very few posts. if someone could explain how to use the quote function id appreciate it.

I basically set up in an offset pattern grouped in a swarm. I kept them in a swarm for the most part - except when I couldn't./

Inaldraugar (We really need a name for this squad) won a 66 player store champ this weekend in the UK, beating Tom Reed flying Telgar in the final and generally smashing stuff up.

I'm not convinced it's any more game-breaking than Rau-boats or the other squads we see a lot of at the moment, but its pretty good.

Sunny is pure fun.

Genesis at 7 might sometimes wish a higher pilot skill. Also, when there are mostly generics around he cannot steal theat many tokens. But generally he is quite fun as well.

Tested Quinn 2 times, feeling was that (s)he gets expensive fast, and you cannot use the reload that often on that squishy chassis. Hit'n'run.

Scyks pilotos? I had no idea they were all Greek.

16 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Protetorate is about 1 point undercosted. Esp Fenn Rau. A solid point. (And this assumes Soontir as the standard... which... as many know isn't exactly fair).

The jumps are easily 3 points undercosted. each. They'd probably be ok even adding 3 points AND removing the EPt slot from Scout and Manaroo. AND after the 4 nerfs they've already had. Yeesh. The original out of the box jump without FAQs was probably nearly 5 points undercosted. The original torpscout.

Its really crazy to think that the new overpowered makes SOONTIR and WHISPER look wimpy. When at one point, Soontir was single handedly breaking the game.

For Scouts, the only way I can see for FFG to put that genie back into the bottle is to hard limit the amount of large base ships you can field in a list to two. So you literally are no longer allowed to run triple scouts anymore. It's not like you can run more than two large ships of any other class is it?

On the subject of Mindlink, a FAQ giving that a range of 3 would help, but a Range of 1 bringing it inline with Manaroo's nerf could happen.

A range limitation would actually add an interesting tactical wrinkle to it, you could move outside of it's range when you want to avoid getting stressed, and then nip back in on a white maneouver so you can feed Focus to the rest of the link group.

10 hours ago, Jo Jo said:

VI Genesis Red w/ Mangler for 26 points is a pretty good end game piece.

He's extra hilarious after you hit someone with Spacetug Tractor Array and drop their agility down.

17 minutes ago, Mward1984 said:

For Scouts, the only way I can see for FFG to put that genie back into the bottle is to hard limit the amount of large base ships you can field in a list to two. So you literally are no longer allowed to run triple scouts anymore. It's not like you can run more than two large ships of any other class is it?

Fenn boats is more common than triple uboats nowadays anyway, which this wouldn't change.

1 hour ago, Mward1984 said:

For Scouts, the only way I can see for FFG to put that genie back into the bottle is to hard limit the amount of large base ships you can field in a list to two. So you literally are no longer allowed to run triple scouts anymore. It's not like you can run more than two large ships of any other class is it?

On the subject of Mindlink, a FAQ giving that a range of 3 would help, but a Range of 1 bringing it inline with Manaroo's nerf could happen.

A range limitation would actually add an interesting tactical wrinkle to it, you could move outside of it's range when you want to avoid getting stressed, and then nip back in on a white maneouver so you can feed Focus to the rest of the link group.

Two scouts and Fenn has been a meta staple.

Fenn, Dengar, and a support ship is a meta staple we're not likely to see the end of any time soon either.

Simply hardcoding large base limits isn't likely to help the game much, I'm afraid, when it's the ship in question that's the problem.

1 hour ago, Mward1984 said:

For Scouts, the only way I can see for FFG to put that genie back into the bottle is to hard limit the amount of large base ships you can field in a list to two. So you literally are no longer allowed to run triple scouts anymore. It's not like you can run more than two large ships of any other class is it?

Much like FFG's other attempts at Jumpmaster "nerfs", this wouldn't actually solve the problem. Fenn + Scouts and Dengar + Tel wouldn't care a bit about any such change.

The Jumpmaster is the problem, the Jumpmaster is what needs to be nerfed. The past year has proven that the ship is so fundamentally broken that you can't get it back under control by targeting upgrades and rules around it.

6 hours ago, Mward1984 said:

For Scouts, the only way I can see for FFG to put that genie back into the bottle is to hard limit the amount of large base ships you can field in a list to two. So you literally are no longer allowed to run triple scouts anymore. It's not like you can run more than two large ships of any other class is it?

Not that these lists are top competitive nowadays, but there where some cow builds of 4 Lambdas with stuff, or 2-3 spacecows with cowboy(s)/girls.

Mooo!

They're still in a M3-A Interceptor. So yeah.

37 minutes ago, Shadow345 said:

They're still in a M3-A Interceptor. So yeah.

... which is now at the same efficiency of a TIE fighter, or a TAP packing a freakin' cannon.

Not a bad place to be.

17 hours ago, heychadwick said:

I am a bit miffed that I haven't tried any of them yet. I had car trouble 2 weeks ago and we played HotAC too late the next week. I'd really like to get some games in here.

Well seems like I'm not alone here! I hope to try out them next week.

Sunny Bounder is great fun. I wanted a dirt-cheap filler ship that's not actually garbage for a while, and this one works.

Inaldra, well, she's an enabler for DFI, but she's pretty decent by herself too.

Quinn... I think she's good, she just needs some time. Deadeye+homing missiles+chips is actually pretty decent, cheaper and more accurate than HLC but needs to reload.

Genesis Red I hate. Not because he's bad when he works, but because if your opponent flies after you, you not only lose the PS investment but also the ability. I flew him once with VI, ran into three PS10s. Sunny would've been 6 points cheaper and would actually have an ability.

Maybe I'll give him a try again when the PS creep subsides, but right now there's way too many PS10s and bidded 9s roaming around.

The bad thing about Genesis Red is that he lose all his maneuverability if you want to use his ability

2 hours ago, Cerve said:

The bad thing about Genesis Red is that he lose all his maneuverability if you want to use his ability

You mean by not barrel rolling? I guess if you want to avoid getting shot you lose the actions. However, I'd almost be willing to stay put and hopefully grab a focus or evade token.

3 hours ago, Elavion said:

Genesis Red I hate. Not because he's bad when he works, but because if your opponent flies after you, you not only lose the PS investment but also the ability. I flew him once with VI, ran into three PS10s. Sunny would've been 6 points cheaper and would actually have an ability.

Maybe I'll give him a try again when the PS creep subsides, but right now there's way too many PS10s and bidded 9s roaming around.

Not many lists run 3 ships over PS 9. Usually I don't see more than one ship at PS 9 or higher.

With dengar tel and other high ps alpha lists being it happens a lot IME. I've had lot of times recently when genesis has just been an expensive generic.

I've been having great fun with:

Quinn Jast (18)
Push the Limit (3)
Proton Rockets (3)
Guidance Chips (0)
"Heavy Scyk" Interceptor (Missile) (2)

Black Sun Soldier (13)
Concussion Missiles (4)
Scavenger Crane (2)
Guidance Chips (0)

Total: 45

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

It's a 45-point start which leaves me 55 to bring whatever else I'm in the mood for. Quinn is a beast with her ability to race in and out of combat, popping targets with the Prockets with a TL/Focus. Typically the Z95 had fired the CMs already, so the Crane gives the reload at least once after Quinn does her work and rips another ship to shreds.

But hey, this list works well for my play style and my local community that I play against. It may, or may not, work for you. Enjoy!

35 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

With dengar tel and other high ps alpha lists being it happens a lot IME. I've had lot of times recently when genesis has just been an expensive generic.

With VI you match them, but you need to bring at least a 1 point initiative bid. 2 if you want to make sure. But I agree. Genesis is either really good or blah, depending on who you are facing.

3 or even 4 can be needed to be sure.

And Genesis still wants Mindlink if you're using him tbh. You just have to accept that for some matchups he's goign to basically not have a pilot ability, but for some (COmm Relay, x7 Ryad, etc) he'll be amazing.