Five shots of Hell.

So, a while ago I may or may not (definitely did) have bought the entire X Wing range, mostly in multiples. This meant that I had far more ships in my ccollection, than I had ever flown or will ever fly. In an attempt to rectify this somewhat, I started playing around with builds for some of the ships I had literally no experience of whatsoever – starting with the YV666, the Hounds Tooth.

Whilst I can appreciate the merits of the Bossk builds, I am always looking to play variations on the more common builds, both as a way to really push my development as a player and also to make things interesting for both me and my opponent. So, with this in mind, I set out in search of something novel. Which just so happened to coincide with the more detailed leaks from Wave 9, and this beauty;

The thing that has made BroBots so enduringly competitive, is their synchonised pilot abilities, and long have I wondered about what it would be like to synergise other ships with those abilities. Like the benevolent Force itself, FFG listened and delivered. Now, anything with a Crew slot can benefit from the IG88 synergy, and share the pilot ability of any Aggressor on the board (equipped with the IG2000 title). This opens up a world of possibilities, and gives a new lease of life to your Scum ships.

Anyway, back the the YV666 and how you can make this work with that in mind:

My initial thoughts behind this list were;

YV666
– Mangler Cannon; whilst the Autoblaster will always have a place in my heart, the extended range of the Mangler makes it far less situational, plus the ability to upgrade a hit to a crit is a serious psychological stumbling block for most opponents, forcing them to waste tokens when they wouldn’t normally. This list really likes people wasting tokens…
– Engine Upgrade; the ubiquitous and ever useful Boost has rarely been more useful than it is on something as static as the Hounds Tooth. Until trialling this build, I didn’t realise how accurate the moniker “flying brick” really is for this beast. A Boost will really help mitigate such an awful dial, especially with the 180 degree forward arc.
– Recon Specialist; one of my favourite crew upgrades ever. By getting two Focus tokens for just one action, it means you don’t have to make a decision between burning them for Offense or Defence, instead being able to split them across either. With a potential 3 attempted Attacks, this can be crazy useful, and if nothing else you can use them to to offset a fairly awful Agility, and keep the brick in the air for longer.
– Gunner; the lynchpin to this list really, Gunner allows you to triple tap on the YV666, when used with IG88-D as he mimicks his B-type brother. Whilst it doesn’t up his damage output, it gives you an insanely high chance of putting stuff down in a turn or two.
– IG88-D; one of the newest (and as yet unreleased) upgrades, you get access to the previously unique synergy between IG’s. This is crazy good, and for 1 point, there’s literally no reason to not try single Aggressors now.
– Hound’s Tooth; I naturally assumed this was an auto-include on the YV666, both as the unique title for the ship and also because I see it on a lot of builds. For 6 points, the ability to spawn a Z95 seemed really great, and essentially gave me a third ship to my list.

Aggressor
– Standard use for a BroBot list, as discussed in my previous article. Can double tap as needed, using it’s intrinsic “Gunner”-like ability. Built pretty much for all out aggression, but need to still pick your engagements, because when he goes down you lose the symbiosis of pilot abilities on the YV666.
– The only real difference being the lack of Push the Limits, which actually didn’t hinder the ship that much. Using FCS meant I got a free Target Lock every turn, and Focus was my “go to” action, so a second action would’ve been a “nice to have” more than an essential
– Adaptability was thrown in because it was a 0pt upgrade, and the extra pip of Pilot Skill came in handy a few times throughout the game describe below

The potential to shoot five times every turn across just two ships seemed like one of this ridiculous builds that you hear about, but just can’t understand how it works. And I stumbled across it mostly by chance. I was super keen to get it our for a test run, to see how it fares, and so I dropped out local X Wing guru a line to organise a game at our local club. This morphed into a doubles game, with my above Scum list paired with an Imperial Interceptors list (Tetran Cowall, Soontir Fel and Carnor Jax), versus a Kanan in the Ghost and Biggs (this list is tough, particularly in the hands of our resident expert flyer), paired with an Imperial mixed list; namely Whisper, Omega Ace, Royal Guard Pilot and Fel.

I can’t remember exact details, but the highlights are below;

– Turn 1 saw the YV666 shoot 3 times and strip 4 shields off of the Ghost
– The Aggressor took a lot of punishment from the Ghost, as it was able to double tap Accuracy Corrector’d Autoblasters, for 4 automatic hits a turn. Despite this, it managed to put some serious damage on the enemy Imperials
– By turn 6, I had managed to put out five shots every turn, and wiped out the opposing Imperials, with a little help from my allied Imperials, although we lost Fel on turn 2
– Managed to corner the Ghost, got in behind it but outside of it’s rear arc, and unloaded Mangler and Primary shots into it from the YV666 and blew it up
– The Phantom Shuttle deployed, but with two Interceptors at range 1 and the YV666 with two shots, it was pretty much game over

What I learnt from this game;
– Five shots each turn is brutal
– Fire Control Systems is fantastic on the Aggressor, and on IG88-B with Mangler Cannon, makes me not miss Accuracy Corrector/Autoblasters at all
– The Ghost isn’t as daunting as it first seems, and so long as you can keep out of it’s arc(s), it really suffers with a base 0 Agility
– The Hounds Tooth title is a bit of a waste… It’s certainly no game winner, and is really a bit of a desperate contingency plan. For some builds, I am sure it’s awesome, but it was 6 dead points on this build.

That last point was something of a sticking point for me. The game was awesome – with such great players, it was one of the more fun games I have played – and the list was scarily efficient and mopping stuff up. But, I felt that with those 6 points for the title spent elsewhere, it could have been even nastier. The X Wing expert and I were talking mid-game about the list, which he admired both it’s efficacy and novelty, and we mentioned how it could be made even better…

This new list became a lot more familiar to me, as the extra points gained from dropping the Hounds Tooth title meant I could build the Aggressor to my usual BroBots spec, and still spend a few points on th YV666.

Aggressor
– Push the Limits; whilst I didn’t exactly miss it in the first outing of this list, the ability to take an Evade or a Boost would have maybe kept him alive a lot longer than he was, and piled the hurt on the enemy even more
– Autothrusters; I love them on most ships, but on BroBots, they really do make a difference. Without them, I was suffering at the hands of that Ghost/Biggs list, which would’ve been offset some by the extra survivability they grant
– The rest is the same as above

YV666
– Glitterstim; an ubiquitous upgrade on Scum lists these days, it’s not hard to see why. On the YV666 build I am playing around with, these could be seriously awesome, not only making it more deadly, but also more survivable for a round when you perhaps get a little too close for comfort
– The rest is the same as before

So, that’s my take on a slightly different Hounds Tooth build, and an idea I feel there is a lot of legs in. The ability to shoot potentially five times a turn, with just two ships, is not to be underestimated, and demolished a Ghost, trollishly regenerating Biggs, a cloaked Whisper and a whole load of other Imperial nastiness. Not to mention, handed me my first win against the best local X Wing player. As always, I would love to hear your feedback, thoughts and criticisms!