So.... with the discussion about the possible Essential Upgrade, I found myself wondering about Ruthlessness. A lot of people aren't impressed with it (not without cause).
At the same time, it's cheap (1 point!), doesn't need a bullseye lining up to work (unlike Dead To Rights, Heavy Laser Cannons, Crack Shot or Predator), and the benefit is very powerful (any result to an automatic hit, which is impressive on lighter imperial ships which normally can't do anything with blank red dice). It just buggers up your squad something rotten if you overuse it. And that made me remember where I'd seen something like that before.
I am not a good X-wing player. I can usually get in the top half of stuff but my track record of actual event 'wins' is one Game Night Kit (a depressing 3 years ago) and one store monthly tournament where the two best players were off doing something else. The one time I have won a game night kit (against triple deadeye/R4 jumpmasters, no less...) was with the predecessor to my beloved strikers; an 8-ship TIE swarm containing Youngster with Rage. Rage is not a direct equivalent to Ruthlessness; you're buggering up a ship with 1 non-critical damage, not double-stress, and the ship that gets it is not the attacker. Nevertheless, it's not a bad analogy.
Better yet, Academy Pilots dropped to 23 points rather than the 24 we might have expected, and Black Squadron Aces are 26 rather than 28. That means that a Ruthless Black Squadron Ace and a combination Wingman/Blocker/Punching Bag Academy Pilot is 50 points on the dot.
Which in turn means that instead of the 1.0 squad:
- PS1 Academy Pilot x 4
- PS3 Obsidian Squadron Pilot x 4
we get
- I1 Academy Pilot x 4
- I3 Black Squadron Ace (Ruthlessness) x 4
That's a much more impressive force - still 8 warm bodies in an environment where blocking matters and harpoon missiles, cluster mines and twin-rebel-trajectory-simulator-sabine squads have been politely ejected from the building. You can't afford to overuse Ruthlessness because you're going your opponent's job for you, but it's a very nice back-pocket option to have given that, as with 1.0 Youngster, you're still getting 8 ships, 1 more than you can fit in with Howlrunner, and are not limited to any given formation other than 'try to get the academy pilots to range 1' which you were almost inevitably doing anyway.
Alternatively, @Mward1984 and @Archangelspiv noted, Ruthlessness synergises with Admiral Sloane. I want the enemy to kill expendable fighters, stress themselves, and get rerolls on incoming attacks. Ruthlessness helps push the ship I want you to kill to the edge of destruction and rewards you if the enemy takes the bait. I'm not sure you need both rerolls and a change-to-a-hit result, but that does mean you can focus entirely on blocking and evading with your action. As a side benefit, it also means the pilots will get rerolls when chasing opponents doing red moves and linked actions - it's not just about Sloane's double-stress-on-kill ability.
Swapping out the academy pilots to a Lambda for Sloane to ride in, and trying to make the Lambda itself slightly survivable as it's an obvious target.
- I3 Black Squadron Ace (Ruthlessness) x 5
- I1 Omicron Group Pilot (Admiral Sloane, Freelance Slicer, ST-321)
Give someone a free action and lock up an enemy. If they shoot at a TIE, then Ruthlessness/Sloane does Ruthlessness/Sloane things. If they shoot at the lambda, burn the lock to give them a Jam token. Yes, you get a jam too, but since you've spent your lock to trigger slicer, and presumably co-ordinated to get the lock, it's highly unlikely you have any tokens to lose to the jamming even if you roll a hit. In return, you get to strip your opponent of a target lock or focus before they roll dice (admittedly not before a torpedo is launched, but 4 dice with no target lock is worse than 3 dice with one), regardless of arc or range, making the shuttle a bugger to remove.
Edited by Magnus Grendel