With all the hype surrounding quad Vaksais, together with the excellent mini swarm mania thread, it got me thinking. What if the whole squad could be better by boosting both offence & defence with Serissu..? After all, the M3 & Kihraxz dials are near enough identical to fly formation.

Serissu gives defensive rerolls which should pair especially well with glitterstim/focus K's. Add target locks from XX23 and Crack Shot and well, in theory this squad could kick butt. Right?

Let the 4th Vaksai be Serissu

3x Black Sun Ace, Vaksai, Crack Shot, Glitterstim, XX23 Tracers, Pulsed Ray Shield, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 25

Serissu, Juke, Heavy Scyk, Tractor Cannon 25

Total 100

Optional build #1 (Let there be 5 dice missiles)

Let the 4th Vaksai be Serissu, missile variant

3x Black Sun Ace, Vaksai, Deadeye, Contraband Cybernetics, Cruise Missiles, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 25

Serissu, Juke, Heavy Scyk, Tractor Cannon 25

Total 100

Optional build #2 (Let there be some raw damage and stress to slice)

Let the 4th Vaksai be Serissu, damage/stress variant

3x Black Sun Ace, Vaksai, Predator, BMST, XX23 Tracers, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 25

Serissu, Crack Shot, Heavy Scyk, Flechette Cannon 25

Total 100

Optional build #3 (Let there be some control to take advantage of)

Let the 4th Vaksai be Serissu, control variant

3x Black Sun Ace, Vaksai, Deadeye, Contraband Cybernetics, Cruise Missiles, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 25

Serissu, Adaptability (+1), Heavy Scyk, Ion Cannon 25

First build:

Pulsed Ray shield is definitively not good on Kihraxz fighters without Ion Dischargers, which then make it an amazing upgrade in every respect. you can then joust, recover shields and K-turn, and your opponent has to choose between letting you do it again and being ionised out of the next two turns of fighting.

You're paying 3 points for crack shot/deadeye, which means you're paying 9 points of you list for 2-3 extra points of damage, which isn't a very good return.

Cartel marauders are way cheaper, which allows you to upgrade Serissu (who is annoying at most here, since he'll be destroyed in the first round of combat) to a more threatening figure - say Viktor Hel with Harpoons, Scavenger and Stealth Device for an all Kihraxz list.

Missiles are great, but Kihraxz fighters simply aren't the platform for them. You pay way too many points for a single shot, when both the Kimogila and Gunboat do it way better with Long Range Scanners. Kihraxz fighters are janky jousters, plain and simple. But in keeping with your 'alpha strike' theme, here's what I recommend:

Viktor Hel (31)
Harpoon Missiles
Stealth Device
Scavenger Crane
Veteran Instincts
Munitions Failsafe
Guidance Chips
Vaksai

3 x Cartel Marauders (23, 23, 22)
Pulsed Ray Shield
Ion Dischargers
Scrambler Missiles (2), XX23 S-Thread tracers (1)
Munitions Failsafe
Guidance Chips
Vaksai

Totalling 99 points.

Viktor is an awful lot of fun to fly. No ace wants to shoot him, especially PTL aces. If you do hit him, he'll just recover either his deadly PS 9 harpoons or his stealth device as soon as a ship dies (even another Cartel Marauder).

The marauders are pretty carefully designed:

At 99 points you have a pretty crucial initiative bid over the Nu,Nu,Nu, Quickdraw alpha strike list (which is currently in tournament vogue). That means that you can shoot first. The XX-23 Vaksai fires its missile, scoring target locks on the Nus. Then the Scrambler Vaksais fire, destroying the action economy of the Nus and wasting away their entire turn. You might not do much damage, but for 2 points you simply "skip" the alpha strike turn, sans Viktor and QD of course.

Against other matchups you have some incredibly tough ships with shield regen, maneuverability and firepower (by the way, even Tracers/Scramblers rigger Harpooned!), so jousting isn't a problem. Focused fire can typically burn down aces before they do much, and PWTs really can't deal with Viktor.

@Astech thanks for contructive critisism! I see you totally disapprove of the concept (Serissu + 3) here, and I agree Serissu will be the first target. But Evade (juke) + 3-4 greens stand me a decent chance vs other lists than alpha strike/qd in my experience. You may however be right that the total output would be greater with 4 K's or 3+Hel. I like flying Hel too and think he's great.

56 minutes ago, Astech said:

First build:

Pulsed Ray shield is definitively not good on Kihraxz fighters without Ion Dischargers, which then make it an amazing upgrade in every respect. you can then joust, recover shields and K-turn, and your opponent has to choose between letting you do it again and being ionised out of the next two turns of fighting.

You're paying 3 points for crack shot/deadeye, which means you're paying 9 points of you list for 2-3 extra points of damage, which isn't a very good return.

Cartel marauders are way cheaper, which allows you to upgrade Serissu (who is annoying at most here, since he'll be destroyed in the first round of combat) to a more threatening figure - say Viktor Hel with Harpoons, Scavenger and Stealth Device for an all Kihraxz list.

Missiles are great, but Kihraxz fighters simply aren't the platform for them. You pay way too many points for a single shot, when both the Kimogila and Gunboat do it way better with Long Range Scanners. Kihraxz fighters are janky jousters, plain and simple. But in keeping with your 'alpha strike' theme, here's what I recommend:

PRS is great even without Ion Dischargers for me, but you might be right and it's of much more use with ion-d. So far I've only used them on Palob builds, as I like glitter on my K's. I will give them a go.

Actually I'm paying 0 points for crack shot/deadye, which seems like an extremely good return of investment to do 3 extra damage/fire missiles vs not fire them if I choose Black Sun Aces. But I get it, you mean vs Marauders at 20p, so yeah it's 2-3 points for the Elite slot. So you might be right about Marauders. Your list and reasoning seems to indicate you are and I have to give them a shot again.

I disagree about the missiles though, I find Vaksais make great value missile carriers, if only game mechanics ones like xx23-s/scrambler. A discounted Harpoon at 3p with GC giving you a crit is nothing to sneeze at. I think you kind of disprove yourself by including missiles on all your ships in your list..

56 minutes ago, Astech said:

Viktor Hel (31)
Harpoon Missiles
Stealth Device
Scavenger Crane
Veteran Instincts
Munitions Failsafe
Guidance Chips
Vaksai

3 x Cartel Marauders (23, 23, 22)
Pulsed Ray Shield
Ion Dischargers
Scrambler Missiles (2), XX23 S-Thread tracers (1)
Munitions Failsafe
Guidance Chips
Vaksai

Totalling 99 points

I like your list.

1 minute ago, westiebestie said:

@Astech thanks for contructive critisism! I see you totally disapprove of the concept (Serissu + 3) here, and I agree Serissu will be the first target. But Evade (juke) + 3-4 greens stand me a decent chance vs other lists than alpha strike/qd in my experience. You may however be right that the total output would be greater with 4 K's or 3+Hel. I like flying Hel too and think he's great.

PRS is great even without Ion Dischargers for me, but you might be right and it's of much more use with ion-d. So far I've only used them on Palob builds, as I like glitter on my K's. I will give them a go.

Actually I'm paying 0 points for crack shot/deadye, which seems like an extremely good return of investment to do 3 extra damage/fire missiles vs not fire them if I choose Black Sun Aces. But I get it, you mean vs Marauders at 20p, so yeah it's 2-3 points for the Elite slot. So you might be right about Marauders. Your list and reasoning seems to indicate you are and I have to give them a shot again.

I disagree about the missiles though, I find Vaksais make great value missile carriers, if only game mechanics ones like xx23-s/scrambler. A discounted Harpoon at 3p with GC giving you a crit is nothing to sneeze at. I think you kind of disprove yourself by including missiles on all your ships in your list..

I like your list.

The trick with Serissu is that, using the tractor beam, she's not contributing damage, and her chances of hitting a lot of meta monsters are actually worse with Juke than just taking a focus action, like against Poe or Dash. Serissu + 3 has promise, but I'd almost say a HLC on Serissu is the right call, but her ability is then totally contradictory with the 'glass cannon' role.

When flying glitterstim ,you simply can't use PRS on the same turn, because you're getting stressed and ionised on the same turn, yet you really want to use both at the same time. It's amusing against a lot of lists that just can't afford to be ioised, like PTL Kylo or BB-8 Poe.

To get your elite slot, you have to upgrade from Cartel Marauder to Black Sun Ace, which is a price jump of 3 points per ship. Since the jump in PS from 2 to 5 is pretty meaningless in the current meta, you're pretty much paying those three points per ship exclusively for the elite slot, hence the 9 point 'cost'. It's tempting to fit in another 'free' upgrade, but it does't work well from an efficiency standpoint.

High PS Vaksais make amazing missile carriers, but the generics (and even BSAs) make a poor substitute, since you have to either take deadeye or have some kind of fairly unreliable TL gimmick (like Tracers) to get full use out of them. At that point, a Cartel Brute with Long Range Scanners is just better at the alpha role.

I view the missile slot on low PS Vaksais as a slot to counter the meta. At the moment it's alpha and beta strikes, so scramblers make a good deal of sense and are incredibly cheap. Viktor already carries Scavenger Crane as part of his standard build, and has the high PS and mods necessary for reliable shots, so Harpoons make a lot of sense for him. I'm just not a personal fan of them on generics - not my play style at all.

Great input, thank you!

It's just occurred to me - have you thought of a quadjumper instead of Serissu? They're so often overlooked, but Ol' Cloaked Unkar can guarantee that tractor beam (or two) on the first combat turn, and cause massive disruption after that, all for a very low price that would fit right in with all your lists above. It'd pretty much justify all the missiles, too.

Ohhhhhh, yessssss, QJssssssss.

How about this:

Jakku Gunrunner

Tractor Array

Pattern Analyzer

Cloaking Device

Cikatro Vizago

Cartel Marauder

Vaksai

Ion Dischargers

PRS

VT

2x Black Sun Ace

Vaksai

Attani Mindlink

Vaksai

Ion Dischargers

PRS

VT

18 hours ago, Greebwahn said:

Ohhhhhh, yessssss, QJssssssss.

How about this:

I love it! By my count you're at 96 points, so you could afford to either give the QJ a nasty bomb, missiles to the BSAs or upgrade the QJ to Unkar and bump the Cartel to a BSA (downgrading PA to Primed Thrusters for the extra point). You really don't need the initiative bid, I think.

I've had time to think about the feedback, and tweaked my list based on the great input. So now Serissu can do damage (probably makes her an even bigger target though), and downgrading to Marauders got me two Harpoons supported by a XX23. Granted, Serissus's Mangler crit only comes the turn after the Harpooned condition is dealt at PS2, but still.

The important thing is that this allowed me to switch to the PRS/Ion Discharger combo while still keeping some extra firepower. I will give it a go.

Let the 4th Vaksai be Serissu V2

2x Cartel Marauder, Vaksai, Harpoon Missiles, Ion Dischargers, Pulsed Ray Shield, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 25

1x Cartel Marauder, Vaksai, XX23 Tracers, Ion Dischargers, Pulsed Ray Shield, Guidance Chips, Munitions Failsafe 22

Serissu, Juke, Heavy Scyk, Mangler Cannon 28

Total 100

PS. Don't own a Quadjumper, but since I like tractor, tech, llicit and shenanigans, I clearly see I have to get one.. DS.