Lieutenant Sai in the shuttle with perceptive co pilot, freelance slicer and st-321 title

"Mauler" Mithel

"Scourge" Skutu

Gideon Hask

"Howlrunner"

My idea is to use the Shuttle with tank/jam enemies while being able to pass out focus tokens to the Ties. I am kind of new but I think it will get most of my Ties a three dice attack roll with a bunch of focus from the shuttle and Howlrunner ill help with rerolls. Does his ability stack with focus?

On 3/18/2020 at 5:14 PM, *player4872344 said:

Lieutenant Sai in the shuttle with perceptive co pilot, freelance slicer and st-321 title

"Mauler" Mithel

"Scourge" Skutu

Gideon Hask

"Howlrunner"

My idea is to use the Shuttle with tank/jam enemies while being able to pass out focus tokens to the Ties. I am kind of new but I think it will get most of my Ties a three dice attack roll with a bunch of focus from the shuttle and Howlrunner ill help with rerolls. Does his ability stack with focus?

I definitely think shuttle builds are still effective. I'm not certain THIS shuttle build will be...but I'm not certain it won't either. I think it would be worth throwing on the table to find out. I would caution that having all 4 of your TIE fighters being acey can help them some, but they're still very fragile ships with no margin for error. If you fly them into a bad spot, one bad round and your whole squadron will fall apart. I don't know your skill level with the game, of course, but I don't think this is a good list for beginners. Again, there's not a lot of margin for error that I can see. All of the TIE pilot abilities you are using are helpful on attack, but you've got nothing to help you with defense except 3 AG, and a little variance can really burn you at the wrong time.

And yes, Howlrunner's ability definitely stacks with focus. Just make sure you spend the focus token AFTER you spend the reroll. So for instance, let's say your starting 2 die attack was Blank/Focus. You can reroll the Blank, and if you get a focus result, spend the token and change BOTH results to hits. Also, I know it's not super important, but in canon, Howlrunner is female.

On 3/18/2020 at 2:14 PM, *player4872344 said:

Lieutenant Sai in the shuttle with perceptive co pilot, freelance slicer and st-321 title

"Mauler" Mithel

"Scourge" Skutu

Gideon Hask

"Howlrunner"

My idea is to use the Shuttle with tank/jam enemies while being able to pass out focus tokens to the Ties. I am kind of new but I think it will get most of my Ties a three dice attack roll with a bunch of focus from the shuttle and Howlrunner ill help with rerolls. Does his ability stack with focus?

Lambda shuttles are always nice support with the dual arcs and coordinate ability. Perceptivecopilot is not worth the points on a shuttle. People are gonna be shooting howlrunner first, so your two focuses on sai are unused. And slicers just prevents enemy shooting at the shuttle further making perco useless. I think you want them shooting at the shuttle instead of your ties. Could add Sloane crew or Informant or Krennic or Death Troopers to aggro onto Sai. Or run sai cheap and get Iden to protect howlrunner.

Something like:

Lieutenant Sai (47)
ST-321 (4)

“Howlrunner” (46)

Iden Versio (41)
Crack Shot (1)

Gideon Hask (30)

Seyn Marana (30)
Marksmanship (1)
Total: 200

or

Lieutenant Sai (47)
ST-321 (4)

“Howlrunner” (46)

Iden Versio (41)

Alpha Squadron Pilot (31)

Alpha Squadron Pilot (31)
Total: 200

Iden protects howl, and interceptors give you 3 die attacks with no gimmick range restrictions etc.

or

Lieutenant Sai (47)
Admiral Sloane (9)
Freelance Slicer (3)
ST-321 (4)

“Howlrunner” (46)
Elusive (3)

Academy Pilot (22)

Academy Pilot (22)

Academy Pilot (22)

Academy Pilot (22)
Total: 200

Enemy shoots sai, sai can jam with slicers. Enemy kills a tie, gets double stressed.

Sai is best used as a bruiser/blocker as his ability primarily helps himself and having a 3-die gun with focus and lock is not something you want to leave out of the fight if you can help it. Also since Sai wants to coordinate Focus actions (almost to the exclusion of other options) I like to fly him with ships that can then link off Focus actions to further increase list-wide action economy.

Freelance slicer does turn some of that offense into potential defense, but keep in mind that if you roll hit/crit (50-50 odds) you get yourself jammed and lose a focus token which might cost you a point of damage anyways if you end up rolling an eye result on defense or cost you damage output if you roll eyes on offense. The cost for freelance is low enough that you can comfortably use it only occasionally when you have no token yourself and no shots to make.