Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170209170724

So one of my local stores did a draft for pilots. These are the unique pilots I'm allowed to use for the next few weeks' games at that store (we can use any number of generics, and I'm not limited on crew, etc):

Rebs:

Nera Dantels

Biggs

Jan Ors

Shara Bey

Wes Janson

Airen Cracken

Bodhi Rook

Imps:

Captain Oicunn

"Epsilon Leader"

"Night Beast"

Kath Scarlet

"Wampa"

My main focus was rebel; I suppose I was in a rebel funk at the time, and thankfully I picked up some pilots that I find very enjoyable. Imperial was an afterthought after I'd gathered a few rebel pilots I wanted to toy with, and I grabbed Epsilon Leader just to keep someone else's combo from getting too frightening. I didn't even try grabbing up Scum -- it has relatively fewer pilots, and it's HOT right now, so I didn't see myself collecting a viable list. I just focused on gathering some fun (and maybe even effective) pilot combos in rebel and imperial. I got a lot of boos when I snatched up Biggs -- may have killed a lot of people's rebel plans by gobbling up their fleets' keystone.

I'm going to start throwing together lists over the next week, and see if I can create something silly and fun to play. Maybe even win a round or two... though some people gathered up some offensively powerful pilot lists, so I'd better be prepared to lose a lot. ;)

I'm thinking Deadeye Nera, Biggs, and either Shara or Jan for my first fleet. Suggestions welcome!

Also I played this list in one game last night and had fun with it:

Major Stridan [ Collision Detector, Systems Officer , General Hux ] (39)

Turr Phennir [ Veteran Instincts, Autothrusters ] (28)

Juno Eclipse [ TIE/x1, PTL  , Twin Ion Engine Mk. II , Advanced Targeting Computer ] (33)

Stridan was a good source of locks and occasionally focuses & fanaticism, though he spent a lot of time bumping or being bumped, locking the enemy in a mess of ships. Turr is a fun arc dodger (which he used to great effect), and Stridan was able to supply him with focuses and locks so he could boost into place for optimal murder. Juno did okay but rolled exceptionally poorly (while Turr's dice were hot). Also I kept forgetting to use Juno's ability to position better, so it's my fault he didn't fare as well. Stridan did help Juno keep his locks as stuff died, though. My opponent poured all his attacks into Stridan and got half points, and I'm really glad he did that; Turr and Juno were more vulnerable to an empowered Wedge shot than he seemed to realize, and losing them would have hurt me a lot.

He was flying Biggs with M9-G8, which really hurt him (he could have used R4-D6 better). I took down his Biggs on the first round of contact, then focused down his wedge and the game was over. Wedge had Swarm Leader, which I thought was pretty cool. Sabine Wren in a TIE provided an evade, as did an A-Wing. But Sabine also had Jan Ors (Crew) to let Biggs pick up an evade, which both helped his defense and let him provide an evade as needed. But this all came to a (literal) crashing halt when ships began piling up and missing actions on bumps or k-turns. I managed to roll well enough to nuke wedge after the joust, and it was over -- sabine and a nameless a-wing were not going to put up a good fight against my fully armed and operational battlefleet. Unfortunately he took this kinda hard, though I understand -- the dice were not his friend that night, and his wedge + swarm leader idea was pretty cool, yet it didn't pan out nearly as well as it should have thanks to dice and bumping.

Still, I got to fly my new Upsilon and enjoyed it, and I snatched up some enjoyable pilots for the draft games. So, another great Wednesday night!