Local invitational tournament. Last time I placed 9th in this tourney and ended up getting into the top 8 eliminations due to a drop. I took the following list today:

Norra Wexley (29)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Rey (2)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Alliance Overhaul (0)

Jan Ors (25)
Adaptability (0)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
Nien Nunb (1)

Wedge Antilles (29)
Expertise (4)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Total: 99

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

I was hoping to go 2-2 and just have a really good fun time and hopefully at least have close games for my losses.

Game 1 vs 3 Crimson Bombers.

I was terrified of this. Stacks of cluster mines, one has trajectory and bomblet. This was not going to be a good time. I flew against this using Rey/Poe once and got dumpstered hard. I expected similar losses this time. He spread out on the center line while I moved up my right board edge as fast as possible. I turned in about 2/3 of the way up the board and took shields off his bomblet guy. I then turned hard back towards the board edge with the squad to avoid the trajectory bomb. Surprisingly enough he turned away with his bomblet guy and started moving laterally across the board. I curved around his 2-2 rock on my right edge. Wedge and Norra took one of his cluster mine bombers down to 2 health. Wedge took one mine the next turn and then let Jan and Norra finish off the bomber. His other miner got slapped by Wedge and turned back. I came in fast into the side of the bomblet bomber and lit it up with the whole squad, it died. I then was able to go after the final cluster mine one without too much trouble. Wedge lost 2 shields.

100 - 0 Win

Game 2 vs Yorr, Quickdraw, Omega Leader

One of the better players in town, who I have yet to beat. He loves his imps, and this is a proven list for him. I was expecting to get annihilated, but I knew I had a chance if I could kill Quickdraw, even if I had to loose Wedge. He setup on my board right in the corner. I decided to setup across from him. He kinda pooped his pants a bit. I moved in hard and fast. He moved laterally towards the left edge running away. I turned in slightly to give me two angles of attack down the side or the middle depending on what he decided to do. He moved Yorr to the mid and QD slooped on the side. OL way out of engagement at this point. Luckily Norra was able to flight assist a boost into QD's side, Wedge and Jan faced him down. QD's initial strike into Wedge was shrugged off for no damage. Wedge fired back and took down 3 shields and a hull. QD fired back at wedge and stripped shields and gave him a direct hit which I burned with IA. Jan Ors TLT'd QD to death and Norra banked her focus. OL did some dancing and kept evading with a ton of natty rolls. Finally in the final engagement I got all three ships firing on OL again and nuked her into oblivion.

100 - 0 Win

Game 3 vs Rac Inquisitor

I'm feeling pretty good going into the next game after my two unbelievable first games. I knew this game would ruin my perfect MOV however... My plan was to feast on whatever he presented me first. He setup each ship in a different corner. So I setup across from Inquisitor. He turned hard and started moving Rac down the board edge boosting for speed. I got a shield off on inquisitor before I moved quickly to get Rac down. He boosted instead of kyloing due to range which opened me up to get at R1 with Norra and Wedge. I cut him down to 8 hull that round while Jan took pot shots at Inquisitor. He boosted away with Rac and I couldn't nail him down with my squad. Norra didn't escape and got shot down while Wedge and Jan moved away from Inquisitor. He turned away with Inquisitor as he thought I was setting a trap for him, nope, set a trap for Rac and he placed him R1 of Wedge with Jan not far behind. 3 hull left. He forced me to burn Integrated with a PS0 crit. I finished off Rac next round. Now it's a 2 hull Wedge and full Jan vs Inquisitor. I got this.... Nope, 4 rounds of trying to break through Inquisitor. Even when he was just at range 3, tokenless against Wedge... I fired and BLANKED, rolled TL into 2 focus blank blank. He rolled natty evades, revenge shot took Wedge down. It came down to Jan vs Inqisitor with 2 hull. I needed the perfect attack with Jan to do it... nope natty evades from Inquisitor, and he took Jan down.

0 - 63 loss

Game 4 vs OL/ QD/ Ryad

Decent player with defenders. Ryad is his lady, and Ryad is one ship that gives me a lot of trouble for some reason. Of course OL just makes me mad... So he spreads out his setup a bit, I decide to setup in the corner across from OL as I figured QD is going to take a turn or two to reach me and I'd rather kill OL first as he shuts down my list pretty hard. I moved up fast trying to catch him off guard, but he bugged out with OL and 5 forward with Ryad. No shots. QD starts turning in and he 5 K's with Ryad again, OL is now kind of center of the board and I'm very confused. The next turn I'm circling in from his side of the board about to come up the mid hoping that I can stay at R3 or further from Ryad while I setup a trap for QD. Ryad banks off as he thought I'd come in on an angle, forgetting about my flight assist to get me further faster. QD ends up R1 of Wedge, R2 of the other two. He fires on Wedge and takes down his shields. I retaliate and get QD down to 2 hull. Jan gets 1 more hull off. Norra decided he must die and pumps 3 hits and a crit into him. QD evaporates. OL Sloops in the next turn, but Wedge turned away hard 3 and re positioned behind OL with guns of Ryad. Jan strips the evade and the focus tokens off Ryad, Norra gets him down to 2 hull with an out the butt clutch crit. Wedge finishes him off. The next turn OL gets into the perfect spot, I cant flight assist Wedge due to bumping Norra. OL crit crit hit's into Wedge and wedge dies with both crits being double damage. Norra and Jan finish off the next round.

100-34 Win

Final swiss standings - 2nd place with 3-1 and 631 MOV

top 4 elimination round vs - Rac Lo

sonova... not the matchup I wanted. I wanted Dash/Miranada.... This time the game goes really fast. Same setup for him, but I decided to sit across from Rac. I come up slow, taking 4 turns to get to the center line. Meanwhile his Rac has made it to the opposite board edge and is slowly turning around... Inquisitor trying to flank me. I decided to joust. I get up into R2 of Inquisitor who only has a focus, it's got to be now! Wedge blanks, TL into blanks!!! Norra and Jan get 1 shield off Inquisitor. Rac throws up into Wedge and takes down shields. The next turn I'm expecting Inquisitor to turn away as he usually does, so I fly 3 bank with Norra, 1 forward wedge, 1 bank Jan to setup a kill box. He 5 straights and lands right beside Wedge. Rac assigns 0 skill to Norra. Jan ends up being at R1 of both ships.... Jan takes the R1 shot into Inquisitor.... Inquisitor blanks and has to spend the evade! Norra takes the 3 dice shot out the rear....and hit crist, focus to a crit.... nattie evades. Inquistor fires Prockets and gets Jan down to 1... Rac kills Jan. Next turn Inquisitor is way out of position, Wedge and Norra get revenge on Rac and burn him down to 10 hull. Norra gets PS0, and I have no idea what the Inquisitor is upto... Rac gets down to 6 hull and then he unloads into Norra getting all the crits and blinding her. Inquisitor is back from his slight detour... Wedge is out of position and tries to the R3 on Inquisitor...yea, all the evades all day long. Rac R1 into Wedge and puts a crititcal hit into him... direct hit, burn Flight Assist, Inquisitor fires and burns Wedge to the ground. Norra vs the world.... Norra gets major explosion into a double damage chain reaction due to a inquisitor shot. Rac then finishes her off.

Not bad for a T65 and a HWK-290....Wedge did most of the damage all day, but Jan Ors was the key piece that put it all together. Norra dealt consistent damage and was always in the right place at the right time. I love this list, and I can only imagine it will get better with the release of the T65 fit... especially if it is 1 point or less. It's a brutally hard list to play which allows 0 mistakes and a lot of luck. Norra rarely builds more than 2 Reys, and often needs to disengage build them back up. Jans TLT's were brilliant for stripping tokens. but Wedge just does so much damage with Jan backing him up it's pretty scary. If only he could get a token for defense, because natty evades are rare... and often with no defense tokens he's going to die.

Everyone was pretty shocked how fast the list actually moves, and each ship has their own dangers which means that target priority is not exactly easy. Most players seem to think Wedge needs to die first, but I will gladly trade Wedge for QD, Poe, Miranda....etc. Any day of the week. I bet those games with QD would have gone a lot differently if I didn't burn her down in a single combat round.

I love this list. You have posted about it before and I can't help seeing that Wedge and Jan's abilities put together read "When firing at range 3, give an X-wing the Inquisitor's ability."

29 minutes ago, BDrafty said:

I love this list. You have posted about it before and I can't help seeing that Wedge and Jan's abilities put together read "When firing at range 3, give an X-wing the Inquisitor's ability."

LOL, that's exactly it! Then when my opponent gets hurt by that they sit there and think... wait, kill Wedge. So they kill Wedge, then Jan goes "fine, I'll boost Norra then", and then Norra throws 5 dice and my opponent goes "well crap"

After my first game against the trip bombers, my opponent goes "well, when you can do 9-12 damage average a turn these bombers don't get to last long"

Miranda is sad because she has no defense dice against Wedge, and Wedge/Jan/Norra can cripple her pretty bad or even kill her in the first engagement, especially if Wedge can get R1 on her.

It's a surprisingly strong list. Not Meta defining, but it's pretty good, and fun!

I've never even thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170. How come I never thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170?!

Great work @Wiredin !

This is a great list and a terrific writeup. However, I can only give it 9/10 because it was not titled "The Cutting Wedge."

5 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I've never even thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170. How come I never thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170?!

Great work @Wiredin !

Thanks! Flight Assist was the key for me. I built this Norra on a whim and tried it, loved it, decided I can't do without her. I never felt Norra was worth her value at 40+ points, especially with my hard and fast play style. It's fun with Shera/Norra squads too.

52 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

This is a great list and a terrific writeup. However, I can only give it 9/10 because it was not titled "The Cutting Wedge."

Thanks. I love that name! I should totally change the list name from "Fast Attack" to "The Cutting Wedge". It is a total blast of a list to play. It's very unforgiving to mistakes, but it does so much damage so quickly that it might be a bit overwhelming. For sure my favorite list today.

18 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I've never even thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170. How come I never thought about putting FAA on an ARC-170?!

Great work @Wiredin !

I think it's because with a rear arc, FAA is a little bit harder to get to proc. You really, in my opinion/experience, have to fly to intentionally avoid arcs to get the free reposition. Sometimes that's not easy with one firing arc, let alone two.

16 hours ago, Scopes said:

I think it's because with a rear arc, FAA is a little bit harder to get to proc. You really, in my opinion/experience, have to fly to intentionally avoid arcs to get the free reposition. Sometimes that's not easy with one firing arc, let alone two.

why fly intentionally to avoid arcs? The idea is to get your arc on target, so while it does make it harder to run away with Norra, it does really help to keep her on target, and that is where the difference lies. You boost or roll on the engage to lineup the front arc, when fleeing, if they are not in your rear arc, you get to repreposition to get them back into arc to shoot out the butt. I get the idea of flying to avoid arcs, and I've done it a lot with Wedge, but as one of my opponents realized "it's pretty crazy that for one point you get a free action to get me into arc when I spent time trying to not get shot!"

Went to another tournament this past weekend. Decided to take my peers advice and swap in Fenn. The idea is that the list is fairly fragile and Fenn could help in a few ways... locking down mods, stripping focus, and coordinating an action to Norra or Wedge.

The list changed to:

Norra Wexley (29)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Rey (2)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Shield Upgrade (4)
Alliance Overhaul (0)

Wedge Antilles (29)
Expertise (4)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Fenn Rau (Sheathipede) (20)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Hotshot Co-pilot (4)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Pulsed Ray Shield (2)

Total: 99

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Game 1 : Sol and Nym

His approach was awesome, setting up a proxi mine wall to give him some extra defense. I, mistakenly, went all in on Sol first. I forgot to pull a focus off Rey... fired with Norra and ALL focuses. Could have really done some damage...if I remembered to pull a focus of Rey. Wedge fired and did 2 damage (evade from the bomb wall). Nym threw a harpoon into wedge, Wedge took it all. Sol finished him off with TLT fire. Norra and Fenn eventually took down Sol and stripped shields off Nym, but in the end not enough. Pulsed Ray Shield actually helped Fenn survive 3 extra turns! This opponent ended up going 4-0 winning the day.

Game 2: Scum Alpha - Nym, Jostero, Torani

Lots of harpoons across from me, pretty scary! I figure I can out position him with my flight assist and fairly quick ships, so I came up hard across the opposite edge and took initiative since he was running PS9 on Nym and Torani. I really wanted to kill something first. He started turning back after his two turns of 4 forwards. I split Wedge and Norra up coming down two lanes of asteroids and had Fenn back a bit. Fenn was too far back for the first engage and wasn't able to stop the full mod harpoon attack on Wedge which took him down! But Wedge and Norra got Jostero down to 2 hull...even after Wedge target locked himself into some blanks. Nym was debating dropping a bomb on Jostero to get him to fire.. but decided to keep him alive to draw more fire. Smart move. I ended up taking him down, but after that it was too much harpoons coming my way and I failed. In hind sight... Nym dies first.

Game 3: Kylo, Omega, Tomax

It's do or die time! I need to redeem myself. I came up fast from the opposite side, as usual. He kind of setup split up a bit. I figured I should go for OL or Tomax first as Tomax and his never ending crackshot and homing missiles (wat?!) was going to be a problem if I left him go unchecked. Kylo was going to be left for last as he had an optimized version at PS9 with initiative. As we spent 4 turns jockying for position we finally started to meet in the center of the map. He boosted/barrel rolled with Kylo to hopefully avoid some arcs... well Flight assist is beautiful and I got all three guns @ R1 on the poor guy. Kylo disappeared. Wedge disengaged hard after getting shield stripped. Norra fired on OL out the bum stripping shields and giving a double damage crit on a classic 5 dice blank out (R3/stealth device). He got Fenn with a well placed OL shot and Tomax's missile. OL started getting a little slippery as we exchanged shots the next round and Norra lost shield to the other missile and OL gave her a couple of nasty crits. Finally Wedge came back around and took OL DOWN hard. Norra slapped back Tomax hard and then Wedge finished it off the next round. Only lost Fenn.

Game 4: OL, QD, Deathrain

I've never faced a deathrain, so really had no idea what to expect. He setup a bit spread out and came in a bit of a mish mash. I only had a shot on OL the first round of combat, but with all guns. I got her down to 1 hull and she flew right by the next round as I gained all guns on QD. QD stripped shields off Norra and the two answered with getting QD down to 1 hull. He disengaged with QD and OL as they are now where I deployed and I'm on his edge of the map with Deathrain. Deathrain gets a harpoon off on Norra and she gets really sad with natty crits (took direct, structural damage, damaged engine, and stress). QD took down Norra, but Wedge avenged her! Fenn took down OL, but Deathrain took down Fenn... now it's Wedge (full) and deathrain (no shields), 30 minutes left. We danced for 25 minutes with only 1 shot exchanged which Wedge dodged but got Deathrain down to 3 hull. Finally, I steered him into the rocks and I was able to spring my trap with my much faster X-Wing and got a R1 shot on him taking him down. Wedge for the win!

So... how did the test of Fenn being slotted into the support role work here? I WANTED JAN BACK ALL DAY!!!!

Game 1: if I didn't forget Rey and had the Jan boost...I probably could have killed Sol before he fired. Wedge would have taken the harpoon, but would have been able to toss the condition next round (disengage fast) and then come back around to rejoin with 2 hull left. Then she still could have boosted Norra to take down Nym.

Game 2: I probably still would have lost... but I would have had more confidence to go for Nym off the hop with the chance to erase him in the first pass.

Game 3: would have been over faster. OL might have died on that poop a crit shot.

Game 4: OL would have died in the first engage. QD would have died on the second engage. Deathrain wouldn't be able to survive the next round.

My conclusion here is that one needs to go either ALL IN on offense or defense right now. No going part of the way. Fenn doesn't give enough defense or offense himself to slot into this list and be effective. He did negate some damage from the harpoons, but really it could have been negated entirely by the extra offense and those ships dying a turn or two earlier.

The counter argument I fielded was "it's only one extra die, it's only 1 damage a turn". No, no it's not. Not only is it an extra die (usually on Wedge to maximize the damage output) but it's also the TLT shots. Thats 3 extra damage a turn because Fenn did on average 3 damage a game. Wedge also becomes the primary target instead of Jan when I use Fenn. So if Jan dies first, chances are I've already damaged the enemy enough to take them easily with Wedge and Norra.

I'm still not sure if this list has reached it's maximum optimization..... I keep looking at swapping out Jan, but maybe Norra needs to go.... I have a few ideas I'm going to test. Either way, I cannot wait for my T65 upgrades!

I like your Norra a lot. I have been using it with Crackshot instead of VI to help push those back arc crits. People tend to underestimate her and ignore her at the beginning. I usually have Airen as wingman to counter Black One and Countermeasures.