Talk:Hotshot Co-pilot/@comment-47.189.227.6-20180708014407/@comment-454133-20180708044016

In tournament play it's quite popular on Fenn Rau (Rebel) as a brutal shutdown build. He can shoot one ship to remove its focus with hot shot, and use his pilot ability to impede the token modifications on a separate ship when it activates. It's even harsher when you equip your other ship(s) with Sensor Jammer or Juke, since most enemy ships need a focus token to get around those upgrades.

More casually, it works well on your high-PS ships that fire first, in the same way that Wes is good at enfeebling targets. Stripping the focus token makes the target more vulnerable to the rest of your team's shots (especially if they're Juking), or impedes the target's attacks (including Deadeye ships trying to fire munitions or Synced Turret). For example, Han or Dengar with VI will often fire first except against other PS 11 aces; giving them this crew can make your team a bit safer, and the enemy a bit more exposed. And ships that rely on focus tokens, like Poe, are very unhappy about having that token stripped away. Dengar also has the counter-attack, so forcing an enemy to also lose their focus when they eat the counter can be pretty alarming.

You could also put it on a mid- or high-PS mosquito like a Rebel TIE Fighter, a ship that's normally not a threat and can be kept pretty cheap. Ahsoka, for example. Or a ship that doesn't expect to hit very often (e.g. because it doesn't focus/lock its attacks much, busy on defense) but is still shooting before allies, e.g. Lowhhrick (busy reinforcing to protect allies and himself), a Quadjumper (Spacetug!), or a TIE Reaper (which is busy jamming or evading). A TIE Reaper could be especially cruel since the ships it doesn't jam will lose their focus tokens if they shoot it, spreading out the dice modification blocking so your team has lots of vulnerable targets.

Or put the hot shot on a ship that you want to protect from enemies that normally keep their focus for defense. Support or monster ships like the TIE Reaper or Decimator benefit from giving the enemy a tough choice: try to kill the support that's helping the team but become vulnerable doing it, or leave it alone and hope it doesn't jam/nuke you into irrelevance. And it works well with some pilot abilities: when Vermeil returns fire, the enemy won't have their focus token because you forced them to spend it when they shot first.

Your enemy will have to switch to evading and locking, if their ships even have those actions. You could go further with Black One if you also wanted to strip locks, or just stick with one token removal technique if that's enough to shake up your enemy.

I hope that helps!