Played mostly scum in 1st edition, now exclusively in 2nd.

Initially I was on the Boba hype train, since I played Firesprays a lot before. Really like the new spray, but I moved into another direction. (miss my old kath though)

After trying a lot of ships and clearly being influenced by a list of similar name by a well known blogger, I ended up with this assortment of scum assf@#!ery.

Will fly it on 26th on a local tourney, so I will report afterwards how it fared. 28th will also be interesting, let's see how points change.

Without further blabla, here it is

Kavil (42)
Trick Shot (1)
Dorsal Turret (4)
Proton Torpedoes (9)
Han Solo (Scum) (4)
R4 Astromech (2)

Torkil Mux (36)
Moldy Crow (12)

Captain Seevor (28)
Trick Shot (1)

Unkar Plutt (30)
0-0-0 (3)

Outer Rim Pioneer (24)
Trick Shot (1)
Tactical Officer (2)

Total: 199

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

Edited January 24, 2019 by flooze

Tl;dr: this has become really long. scroll down, will give a conclusion at the end of this post on how it went and what i think about that list.

The tournament

Our club invited to a tournament in our club room. 16 players signed up, but 4 reported in sick. Sad, hope they recover soon. Still, 4 rounds to play with 8 of our club guys and 4 visitors. Competition is good: some SOS veterans who did very well last year, 2 of them in top 10 of german national ranking (currently listing 2610 players).

So I was looking forward to a whole day of good games. Looking over the tables showed a two more scum lists apart form myself, the rest being rebels and imperials. Surprisingly noone brought first order or resistance lists.

As shown above, my list has 5 ships. Another 5 ship list was present, and one or two 4 ship lists The majority was 3 ship lists. No 2 ship lists were present.

I made some photos but looking over them... the quality is so bad I feel bad. Wont show them but the help me telling the tale.

First game

First game I got paired with „ flkoe “ , one of our locals. Really solid player, we always have a good battle. He knew my list from last week, where it was basically the same, with the sole difference being pattern analyzer on Unkar Plutt instead of 0-0-0.

He flew Wedge, Thane and Gavin Darklighter. Both X-wings had hull upgrade, only wedge had proton torpedoes. Gave him initiative.

Set up on my left half, Kavil taking the left outer lane and the other ones had some free space ahead of them. Unkar and Torkil up front, Seevor and the pioneer behind in a loose staggered formation.

Initial engagement happened roughly in the middle of the board, with the rebel ships still on the right lane. My approach facing his ships in an overall banking movement, kavil coming in hard from the left flank. He bumbed his wedge, huge disadvantage in this crucial first relecant shooting phase. Torkil was able to set Thane to initiative zero and he got hammered on with proton torpedoes, fully modified Moldy Crow front arc as well as the pioneer. This meant the end of Thane even before he got a shot off, with some bad luck on the green dice. I traded it for three damage on Unkar.

Bad luck continued with Gavin. A sloop landed him on a stone by about 2mm, a risky but otherwise very effective move had it landed. The following shooting phase meant Kavil pumping five red dice into Gavin. Unkar got Wedge tractored but I had to concentrate on this helpless Gavin. Gavin was down to 1 hull by the end of the round, Wedge hat put Kavil down into half points.

Next turn I was dialed in to guarantee Gavin to go, but he killed himself by damage from the rock... Not much to be done from my side. Next turn a talon roll set wedge up to take Kavil down to two hull, but i was able to put him down to two hull as well. The end was near and delivered by Unkar Plutt bumping him together with Turkil setting him to ini 0 - finishing blow curtesy of Kavil.

Good start, 200:63 (half Kavil and Unkar)

Completely forgot 0-0-0, but my decisions overall were good, as well as the approach. Flkoe ended up 9 ^th overall.

Second game

Second game against „ robots “ , with Scarif Base reaper taxiing Palpatine, Whisper and Rexler both with juke. One of our visitors. Setup basically the same as before, approach as well. I feel comfortable but i am a little bit nervous since both the defender and the phantom are much more slippery. I got assigned initiative.

With the imperials taking the speedway on the right lane, engagement happens close to my third of the mat. Kavil is out of range, bad for me but at least he didnt get shot. I got some pot shots on the reaper in, seevor tanking it up like a beast. In the end i think we traded two shield. I had hoped for more but at least I didnt lose any ships. Defender doing defender things (4k back and forth), whisper trying to flank. Torkil is parked in a good spot for a few rounds (bumping, red stop). Meanwhile around him, chaos unfolds: the reaper putting himself in the way of Unkar (it is so fast...) with a bump train coming up - Kavil into Unkar, the pioneer into the reaper. I am not happy with damage distribution since i do not manage to concentrate fire. Seevor is on a mission flanking the phantom and is successful in jamming his evade token, backing up Torkils initiative shredding mission.

Kavil takes it hard and is into the points. Luckily, the reaper also has to go. Time is short so the slightly damaged phantom wants to run for the hills back to his board edge. However my ships are positioned well and i can manage to turn in with all of them. The pioneer really helping out here since i do not care to park Torkil on a stone since i can shoot anyways. Luckily Rexlar bumps Kavil and is not able to do any more significant damage. Whisper is annihilated and robots calls it.

Went to time, 154:31. Happy with the result, only gave up half a Kavil.

Approach was good, some chaos in the center of the engagement but that happens when you jam a reaper into a bunch of ships... I am really happy how i controlled Whisper, however I think some decloak evade tokens were forgotten. He ended up 7 ^th overall.

Third game

Being 2-0 i got paired against Skeffington, quite new to our club since he moved into the area, has quite some experience. I was surprised to see him play imperials because up to now i only saw him play scum and resistance. He showed up with 5 ships: omicron with sloane, scarif base with death troopers and scrambler, wampa, planetary sentinel and alpha squadron pilot. All ini 1, all fly before me. I dont need to set anyone to 0. I think i gave him inititative, but it really didnt matter.

Sloane makes me nervous since i stress kavil every round with han. Seevor and Torkil are also stressed regularly. I didnt make any photo so i may miss a lot here, but there was so much going on with 10 ships on the table that i completely forgot.

Again did my tried and tested setup after he spreads his ships almost over his complete edge. Shuttle centered, the aileron ships on my right, wampa and the interceptor on my left. Kavil is happy to take the jousting lane. Let them have some protons...

I expected and prepared for the ailerons to make a run on the right lane and come in hard, but he converges quickly into the middle. I am really surprised and want to take it slow to bank another focus on Torkil. The Reaper however comes in really fast and stands just before Torkil and Unkar, the striker close on his tail. Not having expected this, but i take the chance and move Unkar into position to tractor the reaper onto a rock. I roll over to get it into Unkars bullseye... and miss by 2mm. Torkil bumps Unkar, the pioneer at least able to coordinate the spacetug tractor array to secure the tractor token.

Meanwhile, the ties speed towards Kavil. For the initial engagement, i have a nice target for Kavil (Wampa) and i got a tractored reaper sitting in front of four ships. The only concerning thing is that Unkar and Torkil have no tokens except trator tokens....

Kavil does his job and pummels Wampa. Wampa catches two crits - additional damage when you dont fly straight and one less attack die. So one concern less. The other hammer onto the reaper, and without any green die, he drops down to 1 hull, including a crucial crit - before engaging, roll an attack die and get a damage if a hit is rolled. He engages - and rolls a hit. Reaper gone after first engagement, noone got stressed by sloane - jackpot. The reds on the return fire show only natties and Unkar goes as well. Kavil looses his shields.

In the following, the striker bumps due to aileron misjudgement which I can capitalize on. Wampa bumps, so he cannot repair his crits but Kavil cant shoot him either. The pioneer gets double stress for taking out the striker. I manage to trade the shuttle for the escape craft, absolutely favorable. No more stress rerolls, no more further stress.

Now the board is rather open, half of the ships are gone. Fortunately for me, i still got a healthy Seevor and Torkil as well as a limping Kavil. On the other side there is the untouched interceptor and a limping Wampa who is flying away from the action trying to get rid of his crippling crits. In the end, the board edge makes this a slow process, and he is eventually cought and the last hull point taken. The alpha squadron pilot has nowhere left to run but does not manage to score further points.

Solid 200:91

Did some minor bumping mistakes, and i maybe got a bit greedy on tractoring the reaper, but having four ships shooting a defenseless reaper was worth it. I think the reaper approach was far too risky and cost him dearly. The death troopers did literally nothing but die. Would have been a complete different story if they were to stay longer. He ended up 4th overall.

Last game

There we were, two players 3:0. A solid chance to win this thing.

Playing against „dome“, one of the visitors and currently in top 10. I called out for revenge for our last game - last tournament we faced each other he won 72:71...

He flew Kagi with palpatine, Whisper with juke and Vader, as well as redline with tragedy simulator proton bombs/torpedoes. With a solid bid he gave me initiative.

Again i decided for my standard setup, he basically went for a direct joust - whisper on the outer lane, kagi a little further to the inside and redline close to the middle.

I like my approach, taking it slow but then turning up the speed to put pressure on the shuttle. Palp and target lock soaking Kagi was my first priority. Whisper and Kavil went for the joust, and i had long thought about which maneuver to take on Kavil. I didnt want to go too fast since i didnt want to expost him too much. Him living through the initial run and delivering another torpedo and turret shots is really crucial for this list. But i dialed in the absolutely worst move in this case, 2 forward. Had i chosen 1 forward, Kagi and Redline would not have been in range - i dont think he would have boosted redline. Had i chosen 3 forward, whisper would have overshot Kavil, not having him in arc. So after the first turn of shooting, Kavil was gone. At least he could deliver one protorp on Kagi before he went... The others added except for Seevor, who jammed and damaged Redline. As if Redline had a problem with that.

Next round I was adding more pressure on Kagi. I knew Whisper was about to sweep around to come in from behind and I was thinking about blocking with the escape pod by rolling into Whispers path. That would have been the godlike move but i didnt do it. I dont know why i finally decided against it, but it cost me dearly. Vader, four dice from Whisper and Redline adding an attack meant he head to go. I managed to get Kagi tractored, but couldnt throw him on the reock beside him because Redline was too close. So while i did some solid damage on Kagi, he could retaliate and Torkil just blanked out. Focus tokens for days but no paint. Sad.

While this went on the proton bombs did damage all around, on both sides. The one suffering the most was Seevor, who was then finished by Vader.

With only Torkil and Unkar left, being on fire and no ship gone on the imperial side, it was really looking grim. Kagi was on one hull, so i had to take him out to get any chance of winning this. I put Redline on ini 0, since he would have wiped Torkil for sure. Shuttle rear arc with no modification sounds survivable. Except there were natties on his side and blanks for Torkil. Focus tokens for days... Unkar had an unmodified shot on Kagi which was blocked by the might of the emperor. In hindsight, this turn would have been the only moment in the whole tournament where pattern analyzer would have really changed something. I had to sloop with Unkar, could then have tractored Kagi and there would have been no green die for palp to turn.

Anyway. Unkar versus the might of the imperial navi. He was feeling the pressure. So he stepped up. Having the stressed Redline in the perfect position, he used his tractor array to provide two tractor tokens. Boost forward, redlines maneuver takes him off the board. Whisper guessed wrong and was not able to contribute, Unkar and Kagi exchanged dice to no avail.

But a quadjumper with two hull left is not the ship i want to have in the end game, being sandwiched between rear firing shuttle and whisper. Unkar chases Kagi but fails to claim the last hull point, then Whisper catches up and four red dice seal the deal.

Sad 91:200

I think two major mistakes cost me dearly in this match. Being indecisive with Kavils approach was the first one. Taking it slow and keeping him relevant is the key for this list, and i got punished (no pun intenden) for disregarding that.

The second being a small one, but the one barrel i was about to take and decided against would have left whisper in a bad spot and my pioneer on the board. Maybe it would have been in vain, but in hindsight the two dice on the defenseless Kagi might have sealed the deal.

Dome went 4:0 and won this event.

To be honest i was a quite nervous when i went to see the results. Having played the finals against such a good player was nice, and it was an intense match apart from Kavil leaving so soon. But since this was swiss it was no real final but for crowning the winner, and i had no idea about my MOV and how the others fared.

TL;DR

I went 3:1, with 56 MOV more than the next player and ended up with 2 ^nd place. Great result overall, the last win would have been sweet but then losing against a player of such a caliber is nothing to be ashamed about.

The list is strong, but clearly not unbeatable.

Keeping Kavil alive is the key, he is an absolute monster when he can contribute, both with protorps and the turret. He can tank only so much with his one green die, but 8 health means he has to be focused upon to be taken down. Be careful with him and he won ’t disappoint.

The other ships provide so much depth of play and flexibility, while they provide the opponent with hard choices on target priority.

The simple way is to set the biggest threat to ini 0 with Torkil, Jam with Seevor and just hit it with four ships. If Kavil can contribute the better. If performed well than that threat may already be gone. The pioneer and Seevor provide ways to really flexible flying. Parking the HWK on a stone is perfectly fine early on. It typically has a focus, so coordinate a target lock with the pioneer and watch that fully modified front arc of the Moldy Crow do its work. I like Unkar Plutt a lot, more than the gunrunner. The bumbing tractor tokens provide so many options, from tractoring large ships onto rocks to rolling yourself out of arc with perfect knowledge of the board state.

I hope they dont change much on the 28 ^th ;-)

So it was fine as long as it lasted

Now it is at 231 points

I find this hilarious. By my count; 12 of the 15 cards you used went up in price! A sure sign of a great list builder