I've over-dosed on Scum. Played them pretty exclusively this year, won two store kit events, flying them at UKTC... Definately time for a change.

Back when I first started this game I loved to choose a pilot and build a list around them, and I want to go back to list building. This time around I'm going to pick Luke - no one flies him anymore and this makes me sad, so I've cobbled together a Han/Luke (cos it's cool) and a triple t-65 as a starting block and I'm making it my challenge to place in the top four of my flgs's next event (usually 16ish players around half of whom do the Regionals level stuff). I'm sure the final result will look nothing like either of those but you've got to start somewhere, right?

Does anyone else set themselves similar foolish challenges? Anyone want to share some list evolution stories?

Yeah I do this plenty. I keep coming back to double Falcons for this reason.

The one thing I'd say about doing it with somebody like Luke is that he doesn't really have the upgrade slots to give you much room to really explore many options that haven't already been tried.

Expertise Luke with R2-D2 isn't bad, medium-high damage output and decent Poe style defence not accounting for whatever action he's doing either .

he makes a decent wingman to a falcon or ghost, but you can do a "Luke and the jousters" style list with some FCS U or B wings.

I had to shout out Uwings, I love that ship

27 minutes ago, Quadjumper King said:

Expertise Luke with R2-D2 isn't bad, medium-high damage output and decent Poe style defence not accounting for whatever action he's doing either .

he makes a decent wingman to a falcon or ghost, but you can do a "Luke and the jousters" style list with some FCS U or B wings.

I had to shout out Uwings, I love that ship

I've flown Heff a bit but not really explored the potential of the others. Might be worth a shot. Dark-side Raging Luke with Cassian maybe? Lol.

21 hours ago, Estarriol said:

I've flown Heff a bit but not really explored the potential of the others. Might be worth a shot. Dark-side Raging Luke with Cassian maybe? Lol.

Problem is that you can trade cassian for a Wookie or basic Uwing with inspiring recruit and just have Luke do a green move which also pairs with R2D2.

Bohdi with a Z-95 missile swarm is pretty solid, he flies in, all the Z's target lock and next turn they bring **** with them, it's easier said then done but it's a painful list and a garaunteed game of fun

Occasionally, last store competition I decided to run Imperial as I hadn't flown them in a while. Started practicing with a rage swarm, then added Omega Leader for a finishing piece. Unfortunately I couldn't countenance flying a First Order ship with Imperials so ended up dropping the entire swarm for two Omega Squadron Pilots and an Omega Specialist.

I called them "Omega Force", it's a Saturday morning TV show screened to children throughout the First Order. They take orders from General Hux and go on missions to defeat the vile Resistance and help restore the Empire. Most of the episodes end with Poe Dameron flying off in is Black One cursing Omega Leader.

They didn't do very well, I lost three of the four games played with them.

I also have variations on A-wing Aces which features all four of the named A-wing pilots, I keep going back to that.

I ran Luke Skywalker in a squad with Eaden Vrill and a PS3 Auzituck with Tactician. It actually won a game against a competitive squad without losing a ship. Ridiculous dice luck.

Wouldn't Expertise bee nice on (old version) Han + Gunner?

2 hours ago, Hannes Solo said:

Wouldn't Expertise bee nice on (old version) Han + Gunner?

I think the most optimal is probably predator and hot shot copilot. Expertise makes it less likely to trigger gunner. With predator/hot shot, you can purposefully miss and strip the token then hit hard afterwards.

hot shot copilot and aiming for a miss before gunner is interesting. But I do not see predator works well with old han. You do not need to use expertise so if you just aim for a single hit with the first shot you may ignore Expertise and the you have the gunner shot + han-reroll with focus to hit modification.

I ran against a solid list a while back that felt very old-school. Unfortunately for my opponent, Vader and Quickdraw melted Luke in the first exchange of fire... And he still managed to win. I highly underestimated the U-Wing.

• Luke Skywalker
  • Expertise (4)
  • R2-D2 (4)
  • Vectored Thrusters (2)
• Jake Farrell
  • Test Pilot (0)
  • Chardaan Refit (-2)
  • Veteran Instincts (1)
  • Push the Limit (3)
  • Autothrusters (2)
• Heff Tobber
  • Fire-Control System (2)
  • Rey
  • Jyn Erso
  • Pivot Wing

I'm pretty sure that's how it looked. Heff was an annoying Focus factory for Jake most of the game and was a great blocker. Jake nibbled away like he does. It was a pain to lose, but a really fun list to play against.

I did a three Omega Specialist list. All three had DTF,FCS,TargetSynch, Title, LWF.

I cleaned house against a few lists, spreading damage around and getting three full mod shots on every target. Then I noticed I didnt really need three DTF, because your opponent goes after one ship, I just need a priority target. My list came out to 99pts, so I dropped one DTF and upgraded an Omega to Backdraft + Score to Settle. This gave my triple rear shots more bang with a crit, score to settle to kick in DTF. I won a couple more games handily and was happy with the list.

Then I went against Miranda and Dash, and even though I took out Miranda fast, DTF didnt play a role with HLC and I barely lost that game. Then I played a game with k-wing bombers and the bombs and mines kicked my **** cause my Triple SFs need to stay together. And that is where the list came to a halt. The bomb meta is crazy and I cant be flying these guys next to each other and now TLTs are back everywhere which kills DTF. Still a very tough list that I will bring out anytime to give an *** whoopin to someone though.

Im currently working on a double scurrg/scout list. I like the double scurrg/party bus list that went top4 at gencon and flew it successfully at a Store Champs recently, but the party bus is not my type of ship, so Im subbing it out for a scout. Got a billion variations to try.

As to Luke, I'm kind of a fan of the old Lone Wolf. It combos so well with his pilot ability (reroll a blank, convert a focus), and his natural focus token on offense. With Expertise, it'll be better than Lone Wolf if Luke does a Boost or Barrel Roll, but offensively you'd need to take a target lock. Nothing wrong with target locks, but I just don't like the inflexibility. Expertise will be better if Luke is flying in the middle of a swarm, but there are clearly better swarm ships than Luke.

~~~

1 hour ago, AngryAlbatross said:

I think the most optimal is probably predator and hot shot copilot. Expertise makes it less likely to trigger gunner. With predator/hot shot, you can purposefully miss and strip the token then hit hard afterwards.

Unless Han has a focus token to spend (and he probably won't because Evade and Boost are so good), Predator will roll fewer damage on the second shot. Having either the Han ability or a single re-roll is worse than the Expertise ability. Predator Han has 2.06 expected hits on 3 dice, with a 0.375 chance of three hits. Expertise Han has 2.56 expected hits, and a 0.665 chance of three. That's a pretty big difference, almost as large as between rolling 3 natural red dice, or 3 red dice with a focus token. Predator is slightly better at deliberately missing, but you already have the Han ability for that, and you don't have to trigger Expertise. The marginal gains of using Predator to reroll hits, instead of using the full Han ability is pretty small.

Meanwhile, there are enough low-agility ships out there that the ability to get maximum value out of a first shot is pretty big. Against a Nym who often won't have a focus token anyhow, there's no benefit to a deliberate miss, and a huge upside to the stronger dice mods of an Expertise build.

I love my trench run trio! Wedge Biggs and Luke. Luke takes R2 D2 for thematic reasons, and I build from there. I usually leave r4-d6 off Biggs because I run this in a more casual setting. If I don't put B.B.-8 on wedge I usually give him vectored thrusters.

1 hour ago, Praetorate of the Empire said:

I ran against a solid list a while back that felt very old-school. Unfortunately for my opponent, Vader and Quickdraw melted Luke in the first exchange of fire... And he still managed to win. I highly underestimated the U-Wing.

• Luke Skywalker
  • Expertise (4)
  • R2-D2 (4)
  • Vectored Thrusters (2)
• Jake Farrell
  • Test Pilot (0)
  • Chardaan Refit (-2)
  • Veteran Instincts (1)
  • Push the Limit (3)
  • Autothrusters (2)
• Heff Tobber
  • Fire-Control System (2)
  • Rey
  • Jyn Erso
  • Pivot Wing

I'm pretty sure that's how it looked. Heff was an annoying Focus factory for Jake most of the game and was a great blocker. Jake nibbled away like he does. It was a pain to lose, but a really fun list to play against.

Hahaha! I think I was your opponent! If you were playing in South Dakota! I had Engine upgrade on Heff Tober as well, and it wasn't a high performing list, but boy was it fun!

If only Luke could have survived...

On 9/12/2017 at 10:36 AM, joshthesheep said:

Hahaha! I think I was your opponent! If you were playing in South Dakota! I had Engine upgrade on Heff Tober as well, and it wasn't a high performing list, but boy was it fun!

If only Luke could have survived...

Heyo! Good to see you're on the forums! I did a brief recap of our match a while back as well, probably a few weeks ago now.

Urgh. Played the worst game ever last night. Our club is having a grunts league - no unique pilots or upgrades allowed. I took two protectorates and a Firespray, mindlinked, titled, Thrusters, hlc and k4. My tournament list at the mo is Firespray based and I want to get as many reps in as possible, which is why I chose to fly one here. Last night's opponent brought three Wookiee gun ships. Two had tactician, there was an ops spec in there as well, and draw their fire on two of them. Think one had predator. There was a hotshot copilot too.

So yay, mindlink vs stress control, added to the fact he always managed to miss with his first shot so double stress, then his second shot got focus from ops spec... Arc dodgers vs 180 degree arc. Reinforce diminishing his much damage I can get in and dtf spreading it around.

It was the second game I've conceded in four years of playing. Anyone remember playing against Blue control decks in magic where it cancels everything you do? Felt like that

So yeah, at least that's one archetype I won't be trying!

I am always list building and experimenting. Sometimes the aim is to get a specific pilot, upgrade card, or combo, but most of the time I try to build as close to an 'all-comers' list as I can.

Lately I've been on a themed First Order list kick, so I developed a few lists using all of one callsign, like Zeta Squadron. I've got Zeta Leader, Zeta Ace, 2 Zeta squad pilots, and a Zeta Specialist. I flew it last night and it was a ton of fun! Lots of repositioning, blocking, and shenanigans to concentrate fire better.

I've been trying to figure out a list with TFA Han, but haven't had any success yet. He's just so expensive...

On 9/11/2017 at 11:46 AM, Estarriol said:

Does anyone else set themselves similar foolish challenges? Anyone want to share some list evolution stories?

I tend to limit myself by creating nice even looking squads instead of mixing all together.
When palpaces was a thing and people played Shuttle + soontir +vader I went for Thur or Jax instead of vader so i could play shuttle + 2 (red) interceptors.
Today I like my 3 Advanced aces (Vader Maarek Juno) Also I tried vessery/d +2 Omicron/x7 but that didn't work. People tell me I should mix Vessery/D with Quickdraw and I see why. But putting them next to each other triggers my fluff-ocd.

EDIT: So what about this?

98 points

PILOTS

Luke Skywalker (35)
X-Wing (28), R2-D2 (4), Veteran Instincts (1), Vectored Thrusters (2)

Wedge Antilles (35)
X-Wing (29), R7-T1 (3), Veteran Instincts (1), Vectored Thrusters (2)

Biggs Darklighter (28)
X-Wing (25), R5-P9 (3), Integrated Astromech (0)