Sunday, March 8, 2015

My First Scum Run!

So today marked my first chance to get to use the new Scum and Villainy faction. It was at a small gathering that some friends put on every once in a while in the youth room at their church. It's usually enough to have 2-3 games going on and just a fun time with friends, practicing the essence of Fly Casual! I also look forward getting to meet new people and most of the time there is at least one new person learning the ropes. This is awesome as we can grow the hobby of X-wing in our area. It was a lot of fun as usual.


I only got to play one full game and just start in a second before I had to leave. The first game I brought my new Scum squad aptly named "Pirate's Booty". As you can maybe guess it was Kath Scarlet, she had a Heavy Laser Cannon, Recon Specialist, Inertial Dampeners, and Veteran Instincts. The idea here was to have her rolling at least 4 dice no matter where she was shooting. Her wingmen were 2x naked Binayre Pirates, and a Syndicate thug. The thug had BTL-A4 title, Autoblaster turret, bomb loadout, Seismic charge, and Engine Upgrade. I really wanted to try some of the new Y-wing upgrades since I've never really flown the Y-wing much as it never fit my playstyle. The Y-wing was just hard to maneuver, I missed being able to barrel roll or boost and still get another action with PTL. When I did have a range one shot with the thug, those two attacks, one being from the autoblaster did put out decent damage. The 2x Z-95s were ok, mostly filler ships, nothing stood out with them, especially being naked.
I love her new ability, too bad I never got to use it....
My opponent who was also teaching a new player as he went, was flying a mostly old school build of Biggs, Tarn Mison, and 2x Blues. Biggs had a shield upgrade and R2-D2, just to be extra annoying ha. He flew his ships in a pretty good formation and ended up focus firing on Kath right of the bat and killed her in two or three rounds of shooting. I'm so used to flying flankers that it was just not natural to fly straight at the enemy, this was my ultimate demise. I tried to use the two Zs and the Y-wing to come in beside the Rebel box formation but was too late to do any good and lost Kath before I even got to use her new Scum ability! Very disappointing but I also learned a lot about my playstyle and what doesn't work for me.
Lots of up close fighting and bumping in the asteroid field! This is also Kath's last stand.
I will admit that I haven't played much recently and wanted to try new things with the new faction but got a little too ambitious. I haven't completely gave up on Kath yet but I miss her having two Interceptors to flank with. All excuses aside my opponent flew his list well and proved again how balanced this game is. He took some of the oldest ships in the game and taught me a lot with a swift 0-100 loss. I commend him and was reminded that I tend to learn a lot more by losing as opposed to winning!
My Kath Scarlet repaint, also my first repaint period.
 We actually got to start another game and I played the new player while the other guy mostly helped answer questions. He did pretty good with maneuvering and we just got a couple rounds of shooting in with Kath doing much better on damage output. It was too early to tell who would have won but it did reassure me that my list wasn't as bad as I originally thought, I just needed to fly better. This definitely takes practice and I seem too short on time these days. Hopefully this will change and I can get some more games in, try some other Scum builds (I have tons already built!) and pick one that works with my more flanky, arc-dodging playstyle.

Thanks again to everyone who came out, thanks for my lessons learned, and thanks for flying casual!