After seeing a buddy trying out Thane with snap shot to help trigger his ability more often, it got me thinking of who else could try it. Looking at Empire this kind of jumped out at me. Seyn has a pilot ability that let's you slip damage cards under shields and Strom has an ability that would let you then flip it to a crit. Probably not the easiest thing in the world to do but looks like it could be fun to try.

Iden Versio (41)
Ship total: 41 Half Points: 21 Threshold: 2

Seyn Marana (30)
Snap Shot (7)
Hull Upgrade (7)

Ship total: 44 Half Points: 22 Threshold: 2

Zertik Strom (41)
Passive Sensors (3)

Ship total: 44 Half Points: 22 Threshold: 3

Gideon Hask (30)
Intimidation (3)
Targeting Computer (3)

Ship total: 36 Half Points: 18 Threshold: 2

Del Meeko (30)
Intimidation (3)

Ship total: 33 Half Points: 17 Threshold: 2


Total: 198

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0: https://raithos.github.io/?f=Galactic Empire&d=v8ZhZ200Z218XWY224X256W164Y176X240WWY223X122W249Y222X122W&sn=Unnamed Squadron&obs=

Iden and the rest of Inferno are there mostly because they play nice with each other. Though a few black squadron aces with ruthless might be fun too or lower initiative ships to block. Honestly after including Seyn, Iden, and Strom I'm not sure what else to include while keeping it HS legal.

Zertek Strom is an odd pilot. His ability wants him to acquire, but not spend, a lock every turn. Kind of demands FCS in that regard, to get dice mods out of his action, and not just a damage card flip. However, he's low-init, so the first lock acquisition is probably pretty hard. I think Passive Sensors is tempting to that end, but then it means he essentially never gets to modify his dice. Neither FCS or Passive Sensors seems like the perfect solution.

For the rest of the ships, I don't think any of the upgrades are really useful. Snap Shot, alas, has no special synergy with Seyn. Spending the crit is dice-modification, so you can't do it on a Snap Shot.

So if cutting all those upgrades, keeping just FCS or Passive Sensors on Zertek, you'd be at 174-175 total points. Having 25-26 left over, to me, says "bring another TIE Fighter."

After that, there just aren't too many points left, and not much to fill them with. I'd go Ruthlessness. The secret to Ruthlessness is to almost never use it. Don't take that damage unless you think you can push it through (something like range 1 with 2 hits and a blank against an opponent with 2 green dice) or you really need to secure a kill. Maybe a 1 health TIE Fighter is just there, and you can use Ruthless with it three times and then it'll be worthwhile. Overall, it's probably better to use Ruthless maybe once per game in a critical moment, than to use it 5 or 6 times.

So here's what I'd run:

• Iden (Ruthless) 42
• Seyn (Ruthless) 31
• Del (Ruthless) 31
• Gideon (Ruthless) 31
• Academy Pilot (-) 22
• Zertek Strom (FCS) 43 - I think I'd rather have FCS than Passive Sensors, but it's close. If you'd rather have PS, I'd cut Ruthless from one of the TIEs, either Seyn or Iden probably.

Well didn't realize spending a result counts a modification. Oh well, it was probably to gimmicky anyways. The rest of the upgrades were just throw aways while fiddling with the list builder.

Overall though it's something I've been thinking on for a while now. Might still put it on the table. Thanks for the input!

Seyns best friend, Marksmanship, is unfortunately not HS legal, which makes her ability very unreliable. For that reason alone, I've not really looked too hard at Empire HS, as she's 2nd only to Wampa on my TIE fanboy list and those losses hurt.

And yes Snap Shot is no-go.

However, if it's worth anything, I really enjoyed a squad I made to exploit her that worked quite nicely in old extended.. I considered Strom but deemed Krennic on Feroph, applied to Gideon, with Maarek in the x1, to be a more effective strategy for the Seyn card flip. I had Wampa in the 5th slot. Could seriously hurt things, with or without flipping cards. Operated like a weird 4 ship list, with all kinds of mad, untethered approaches available.

Seyn is great, but in HS now, she's sort of relegated to fun rather than actually kind of awesome. It'll work, but it'll feel like hard work. Leaning into it too much will harm a HS squad more than help it.

Strom is perfect for the role, but overall uninspiring. To get his ability to work, without him just instantly dying, you almost need to not engage with him. Him just flying round flipping cards is pretty neat on its own tbf, but requires an awful lot of work to be going on elsewhere. I think a Krennic Reaper will give you a better base for the effect, since it can do other nice things.