One of the biggest point adjustments this period was the Nantex Chassis dropping considerably. The Petranaki Arena Ace in particular dropped 8 points to 30. When combined with the Belbulab-22 getting added to hyperspace, the first instinct I had was:

New Squadron

(44) General Grievous [Belbullab-22 Starfighter]
(6) Soulless One
Points: 50

(30) Petranaki Arena Ace [Nantex-class Starfighter]
Points: 30

(30) Petranaki Arena Ace [Nantex-class Starfighter]
Points: 30

(30) Petranaki Arena Ace [Nantex-class Starfighter]
Points: 30

(30) Petranaki Arena Ace [Nantex-class Starfighter]
Points: 30

(30) Petranaki Arena Ace [Nantex-class Starfighter]
Points: 30

Total points: 200

The Nantex without Ensnare is a singular ship, somewhere between an A-wing and a HWK-290 (particularly if you imagine the title granting a bullseye gun instead of full front arc). Sometimes it is three agility, but then the moves are predictable. If you are willing to take the tractor token, it can often take any maneuver on its dial and still have a shot at something.

The biggest downside to the list seems to be a gigantic pile of unmodified dice, as outside of Grievous you can’t even hope for more than a single green token and zero rerolls.

I tend to think the list should bring gas clouds to compliment the self tractoring as much as possible, and start grievous at least half the board away from the others so he can flank hard or be incredibly hard to kill bait.

Anyone have other strategies they have tried? Are there variations worth pursuing? How does this stack up against other lists we expect to see?

To double check my understanding properly, re: tractoring yourself and obstacles:

You complete your maneuver, THEN the ship ability triggers, THEN you would take your action, correct?

Scenario A: Fly onto a rock, tractor yourself off, no action

Scenario B: Complete your maneuver, tractor yourself onto a gas cloud, still get an action

Scenario C : Partially complete a maneuver, bump another ship, tractor off the bump, but no action

Scenario D : You were ioned. Complete a 1 straight. No opportunity for tractor shenanigans because you can't do a rotate action, focus.

Are all those proper interpretations of how those scenarios would go?

The only other source of modification I could find is dfs-311. Dropping one Nantex down to give a single force point to throw anywhere could be worth it? It leaves seven points. My first instinct there is outmaneuver Grievous, but he already is target #1 and doesn’t get too many shots.

I the list will have particular trouble against three agility force users. I think they are all small base? The Inquisitorum and aethersptites are unlikely to be bullseyed and can shrug off huge numbers of two dice attacks.

7 minutes ago, Clutterbuck said:

To double check my understanding properly, re: tractoring yourself and obstacles:

You complete your maneuver, THEN the ship ability triggers, THEN you would take your action, correct?

Scenario A: Fly onto a rock, tractor yourself off, no action

Scenario B: Complete your maneuver, tractor yourself onto a gas cloud, still get an action

Scenario C : Partially complete a maneuver, bump another ship, tractor off the bump, but no action

Scenario D : You were ioned. Complete a 1 straight. No opportunity for tractor shenanigans because you can't do a rotate action, focus.

Are all those proper interpretations of how those scenarios would go?

My understanding agrees with those. The obstacle rules where you would lose your perform action step are all in the maneuvering segments, and is omitted from the overlapping segments. Tractors being a move but not a maneuver should mean you can tractor yourself onto a cloud or rock and still have your perform action step.

edit: Debris seem the worst option. You can tractor yourself onto them and not lose your perform action step, but you would get the stress and be unable to perform the action.

I tend to set up the Nantex in a bit of a checkerboard, with the sides lining up to nubs between front row/back row. This gives room to not overlap on banks, but a tight enough net of bullseyes that a small base can’t sneak between them.

front row |
|
|
—-\_/—————

—————/ \————-
|
|
| Back row

I played today something simmilar but with 1 less ship and much better defense mods:

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

General Grievous (44)
Treacherous (2)
Soulless One (6)
Total: 200

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

It's also HS legal. You've got your focus for offense and in defense you should have 1-2 tractored Aces in the back protected by Treacherous by the ships in the front. So you have 3 green dice and 1-2 rerolls in the front and 2 green dice + cancel 1 hit/crit in the back. Also enemy ships can be used to block hits/crits.

You have everything on dial except 1 straight, so it is easy to fly 2x2 formation. Keep Grievous in the back or where you want.

It was really fun to play, so I want to play more games with this list.

Let me know what do you think about it.

I think I like the concept, but the Nantex would fly very differently to how I’ve been doing it. I don’t think my formation has lasted more than one round of combat, and then they scatter/orbit/block. Treacherous is not something I had considered, but Gravitic by itself seemed not worth losing the extra body to me.

I may have to give this a go.

Thanks for starting this thread!

My approach is about the same as what you mentioned in the OP.

Three small gas clouds. Corner them if I’m the arc dodgiest stuff out there, loose cluster(s) if I’m dealing with higher initiative arc dodgers and I don’t want to get bushwhacked too much. Remember that you have the advantage for moving through obstacles and repositioning.

Grievous in once corner, Nantexes in the other (3 front row, 2 back row). If obstacles and opposing list/deployment permit it, I’ll sometimes break off the two or three center-most Nantexes from the group. Other than blocking, there’s no need to keep them in formation, so don’t hesitate to split them to suit whatever the current board state. They make really neat blockers. Otherwise I'm happy to threaten an honourable Nantex joust against anything that isn't clearly a better jouster.

I tractor myself fairly liberally. If I’m only in one arc, I follow the same logic as flying generic TIE/ba’s and straining myself in that I will accept -1 agility on one attack if it means getting a better (i.e. bullseye) shot. The fact that you can tractor/BR and still get focus make this a great option very frequently. The cost of being tractored is only unacceptable to me if I’m facing a ship that can one turn kill a Nantex fairly easily (Boba, Finn, Dengar, QuickDraw) or I’m in more than a couple meaningful arcs. It helps also that the cost of being wrong is low since the Nantexes are so cheap and, unlike Vultures, don’t lose steam quite as quickly once their numbers drop.

They also block some things very well. They’re quite good against Fenn, for instance, since you can often block the hard 2 and also turn your arc to threaten the scarier non-hard 2 maneuvers Fenn might be doing. Plus, arc shots can mean getting actual R1 shots without getting Concordia’d.

Because they can’t do anything about blanks, I really think they need to be rolling as many reds as possible (a quantity over quality approach to red dice). Therefore I’m less inclined to do the side arc orbit thing and more likely to K-Turn or Sloop if it means getting a bullseye this turn or next turn, although this does require a bit more forethought in where the mobile arc is turned. Against low agility ships, I’m more content to use the mobile arcs, for instance dancing around Y-Wings. Bigger 1 agility ships, I’d rather just bullseye them (StarFortresses, YV-666s, Falcons) and kill them quickly before they do whatever dangerous things they are threatening to do.

This list will run wild over <i4 ships non-small ships. Good triple ace lists are going to be a problem, and if the meta swings around to those, I don’t know that this is the list. Swarms are also probably a problem because of how fragile your Nantexes are (and those are match-ups that I would be very reluctant to tractor myself unless absolutely safe to do so).

Obstacles is an interesting choice.

Small Gas give you a lot of space to work with, and you can mostly ignore their effects.

However, Big Rocks are tempting, also. You've got highly mobile ships with extra firing arcs. That seems like the Nantex player will have a pretty large positional advantage over everyone, and using rocks to limit an opponent's maneuvers as much as possible seems like it could be pretty effective.

Choosing obstacles based on asymmetric advantages always seems ideal. Nantexes can go through gas clouds and then barrel roll/rotate. They can also barrel roll themselves right onto a gas cloud to get a sneaky arc dodge. Neither of these are trivial advantages to leverage.

2 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

seems like the Nantex player will have a pretty large positional advantage over everyone, and using rocks to limit an opponent's maneuvers as much as possible seems like it could be pretty effective.

This seems logical but also sort of an oxymoron. If you have positional advantage, then having more open space to exploit it is usually better. Unfortunately, with the Nantexes, when you don't have that advantage (i.e. you're up against Triple Aces), you are incredibly vulnerable to being arc dodged and swiftly murdered. At that point, bringing opponents into a narrow rock passage isn't a terrible idea, as they have less opportunity to reposition out of your shots and you have a better chance of catching them in your bullseye.

I would add that you do have the sort of unique danger where if you try a sneaky barrel roll near a rock and accidentally clip it, you hose yourself instead of just failing an action like normal ships. This probably doesn't come up very often, but it does mean that you can't really safely make those borderline barrel rolls that you might be tempted to make with other ships.

You also just have a ton of ships, and I don't really like big obstacles with a high ship count as it sometimes makes it more difficult to engineer situations where you're getting all of your arcs on the same target. Even with the rotate, lots of thicc rocks means you might have to make sacrifices on either shots on target or positioning.

I think there are good arguments for big rocks and I don't think it's wrong or anything, but gas clouds give the massed Nantexes some really unique advantages that are reasonably straightforward to leverage in a lot of situations, and I have a hard time saying no to that.

welp. Now ill need that whole review of tractor rules and self-tractoring....

5 hours ago, Boreas Mun said:

I played today something simmilar but with 1 less ship and much better defense mods:

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

Petranaki Arena Ace (30)
Treacherous (2)
Gravitic Deflection (5)

General Grievous (44)
Treacherous (2)
Soulless One (6)
Total: 200

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

It's also HS legal. You've got your focus for offense and in defense you should have 1-2 tractored Aces in the back protected by Treacherous by the ships in the front. So you have 3 green dice and 1-2 rerolls in the front and 2 green dice + cancel 1 hit/crit in the back. Also enemy ships can be used to block hits/crits.

You have everything on dial except 1 straight, so it is easy to fly 2x2 formation. Keep Grievous in the back or where you want.

It was really fun to play, so I want to play more games with this list.

Let me know what do you think about it.

I posted this list with marksmanship instead of treacherous on discord; I think its going to be pretty darn good. 5x Hive Guards with GD was really fun, this is MUCH better than that original list. I like the treacherous idea also.

2 hours ago, DoubleDown11 said:

I think there are good arguments for big rocks and I don't think it's wrong or anything, but gas clouds give the massed Nantexes some really unique advantages that are reasonably straightforward to leverage in a lot of situations, and I have a hard time saying no to that.

Mostly, I just think it's worth having a good hard think about, maybe trying it different ways if anyone is banging out lots of practice rounds.

1 minute ago, dsul413 said:

I posted this list with marksmanship instead of treacherous on discord; I think its going to be pretty darn good. 5x Hive Guards with GD was really fun, this is MUCH better than that original list. I like the treacherous idea also.

Marksmanship also gets Grievous Impervium Plating (if that's in HS... haven't checked). Extra tank on the thiccborg seems nice. Might be even better if Marksmanship starts catching on in HS.

4 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Mostly, I just think it's worth having a good hard think about, maybe trying it different ways if anyone is banging out lots of practice rounds.

Marksmanship also gets Grievous Impervium Plating (if that's in HS... haven't checked). Extra tank on the thiccborg seems nice. Might be even better if Marksmanship starts catching on in HS.

With this many Nantex, marksmanship is pretty likely to impact the game. I had marksmanship on the 4 and outmaneuver instead of treacherous on Grievous and it feels pretty good and is hyperspace legal for when IP isn't available. IP is not hyperspace legal right now (as far as my app was saying...)

Gravitic feels a bit expensive. 15-20% of a generic Nantex's base cost is a lot.

Considered another way, how many extra attacks will Gravitic Deflection eat? Is it more than the amount of shots an extra Nantex itself would eat, and if so, is it enough to offset that the extra Nantex was also shooting during that time (who may also be helping you kill other ships quicker and therefore mean less incoming shots altogether)?

9 minutes ago, DoubleDown11 said:

Gravitic feels a bit expensive. 15-20% of a generic Nantex's base cost is a lot.

Considered another way, how many extra attacks will Gravitic Deflection eat? Is it more than the amount of shots an extra Nantex itself would eat, and if so, is it enough to offset that the extra Nantex was also shooting during that time (who may also be helping you kill other ships quicker and therefore mean less incoming shots altogether)?

It's roughly equivalent to an extra agility or an extra health.

If it's a tractor token on yourself, and you're defending on 2 green dice, you'll go from 2.991 average attacks until death (3 red with focus vs unfocused defense) to 3.625 attacks. From Striker to roughly Torrent or A-Wing toughness. It'll go up to 4.007 attacks on average, if there's another buggy-buddy with a token for a 2nd reroll.

If you're defending on 3 green dice, you go from 3.699 attacks to 4.695 attacks. From A-Wing to roughly TIE/x1 or B-Wing toughness.

That's also all non-focused defense, and a focus token should improve things. On any individual ship, mostly GravDef cancels out the penalty of being tractored. However, it'll also allow you to use a buggy-buddy as a bodyguard. Got two damage on a Nantex? Don't tractor that one, but be sure someone close to them does.

So overall, maybe close to an extra attack to kill each ship. Is that worth it? I dunno. I'll say one way it's worth it: $$$. Not that anyone is playing with actual models right now, but the Grievous + GravDef 4 is probably close enough to Grievous + 5, so if you just want to try things out before investing in a 5th bug, you'll get most of the way there.

19 minutes ago, dsul413 said:

IP is not hyperspace legal right now (as far as my app was saying...)

Thanks!

With four Nantex on the board, you're also highly likely to get multiple re-rolls which is a huge benefit.

I am not a fan of these lists. They are super match-up dependent and I hate feeling like a game is won or lost based on list building. I know there are strategies to work through but am I wrong to think your 5 Bugs and Grievous will just ROFLstomp 5 X-wings? Almost every game? And the Bugs and Grievous just eat it against triple aces. Seems like a bad idea to have such a swingy list. Especially in hyperspace.

First, I just want to say that I really appreciate the focus on strategy over simply listbuilding. In terms of actually flying this list, I think that an approach similar to 5A would work. They should deploy fairly spread out, possibly in groups of 2 and basically circle your opponent's forces to make it impossible for them to target everyone at once. Flying in a brick formation takes away so much of their unique maneuverability, and should probably only be done if you're jousting a slower, less maneuverable big ship/swarm. For anti-ace play, blocking is imperative to pushing damage through. I think that they might have a hard time chewing through Boba and other high-agility ships. Bullseyes and blocking with lots of practice is definitely key. And Grievous, of course.

2 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

I am not a fan of these lists. They are super match-up dependent and I hate feeling like a game is won or lost based on list building. I know there are strategies to work through but am I wrong to think your 5 Bugs and Grievous will just ROFLstomp 5 X-wings? Almost every game? And the Bugs and Grievous just eat it against triple aces. Seems like a bad idea to have such a swingy list. Especially in hyperspace.

I think you might be exaggerating the chances a little. I don’t think it will get too many bullseye shots so it’s focused 2 dice mostly on offense, which takes a long time to kill x-wings. And if they are using their initiative to reposition, the bugs die like TIE strikers.

It’s a good matchup, but probably not anything particularly close to a stomp. I think this list has pretty good game against aces that care about being blocked. Force definitely has me worried, but I can say that about any list I have played in second edition.

I’m pretty sure five x-wings are more scared of vulture swarms and passive concussion tie/sf and focho and Boba than they are of ensnareless nantexans.

edit: that being said, I very much agree with you in concept. If a list is too good against one thing and too bad against another, I may as well just go play Rock Paper Scissors. I don’t think this list is pushing the game more in that direction, but I could be wrong. I think this points adjustment might be the season of three agility generics, which has me nervous about bringing any two dice guns.

56 minutes ago, Des Darklighter said:

First, I just want to say that I really appreciate the focus on strategy over simply listbuilding. In terms of actually flying this list, I think that an approach similar to 5A would work. They should deploy fairly spread out, possibly in groups of 2 and basically circle your opponent's forces to make it impossible for them to target everyone at once. Flying in a brick formation takes away so much of their unique maneuverability, and should probably only be done if you're jousting a slower, less maneuverable big ship/swarm. For anti-ace play, blocking is imperative to pushing damage through. I think that they might have a hard time chewing through Boba and other high-agility ships. Bullseyes and blocking with lots of practice is definitely key. And Grievous, of course.

Thanks! I’m pretty sure one of the more common complaints I hear is that squad building is the easiest to talk about so it is pretty much the only thing that gets talked about, so I’m trying to stretch a little.

I like keeping them spread out, but I’m a little worried that it makes it harder for Grievous to flank. I definitely want to assemble the Yamato Cannon of bullseyes if I think something that shouldn’t joust me is going to joust me, or if I think they are going to fake a joust and attempt to turn away. 5 straight tractor forward is 8 on your rule of eleven, which will put a hurt on someone too spread out and only part of their list in front of you.

On that note, I usually point the turret off the board to the side if I start them in a corner, because I expect to tractor myself at least once before meaningful combat and leaves forward or towards the middle as options. Is there a reason to think any harder than that about it?

5 hours ago, AEIllingworth said:

Thanks! I’m pretty sure one of the more common complaints I hear is that squad building is the easiest to talk about so it is pretty much the only thing that gets talked about, so I’m trying to stretch a little.

I like keeping them spread out, but I’m a little worried that it makes it harder for Grievous to flank. I definitely want to assemble the Yamato Cannon of bullseyes if I think something that shouldn’t joust me is going to joust me, or if I think they are going to fake a joust and attempt to turn away. 5 straight tractor forward is 8 on your rule of eleven, which will put a hurt on someone too spread out and only part of their list in front of you.

On that note, I usually point the turret off the board to the side if I start them in a corner, because I expect to tractor myself at least once before meaningful combat and leaves forward or towards the middle as options. Is there a reason to think any harder than that about it?

Nope, there isn’t. If you want to spread the ships out, they have a really good dial and block well with it + tractor. The range one bullseye shots and GG are the two ways you’ll be able to spike damage in, otherwise the turret can be relatively ineffective against aces.

For 5x SHG I flew them loosely together, but at least in pairs. You never want the Nantex to be in arc by themselves when tractored if you can avoid it because they’re probably not getting max benefit of gravitic at that point. Create the target priority problem by cycling the juiciest target away from damaged Nantex (or deny the shot.)

Also, not that you can control it, but damaged engine is absolutely the worst on Nantex.

8 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

I am not a fan of these lists. They are super match-up dependent and I hate feeling like a game is won or lost based on list building. I know there are strategies to work through but am I wrong to think your 5 Bugs and Grievous will just ROFLstomp 5 X-wings? Almost every game? And the Bugs and Grievous just eat it against triple aces. Seems like a bad idea to have such a swingy list. Especially in hyperspace.

I don’t think it eats it that hard against aces under the assumption you can set up blocks. I had relatively ok success with the I3s against ace lists just by denying shots.

10 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

I am not a fan of these lists. They are super match-up dependent and I hate feeling like a game is won or lost based on list building. I know there are strategies to work through but am I wrong to think your 5 Bugs and Grievous will just ROFLstomp 5 X-wings? Almost every game? And the Bugs and Grievous just eat it against triple aces. Seems like a bad idea to have such a swingy list. Especially in hyperspace.

I don't think this is even remotely true. From having tried it, it's both pretty bad and fairly wholesome.

In terms of obstacle choice, I don't see the full benefit of gas clouds. Sure, the nantex can do tricky maneuvering around/through them, but so can Jedi and other aces. Generally, gas clouds benefit the list with fewer ships, which is probably not the nantex swarm. Aces are already the tougher matchup for these massed 2-die guns, and extra gas clouds over rocks means that aces have places to go where they probably just won't take damage (especially Jedi).