Hotshots & Aces II Scum Overview

SWZ97 Hotshots and Aces II

“I smell profit!” –Hondo Ohnaka, Star Wars: The Clone Wars™

Scum and Villainy receives five additional pilots in the Hotshots and Aces II Reinforcements Pack for Star Wars™: X-Wing. In this pack, some fan favorites make their debut. There’s a wide assortment of ships to expand the Scum roster.

Tor Phun is exactly what one wants when flying a Fang Fighter. He’s all offense, and just wants to get in fast, blow up as much as possible, and then hope Concordia Faceoff saves him. Tor ideally wants to get into range 1 of a ship and target lock it. His teammates then weaken it, and Tor destroys it. Once that happens, he takes an action – probably reposition linked to focus – and performs a bonus attack on someone else. If all goes well, Tor is stressed, double-strained, and then does a blue maneuver to try again next turn. Tor doesn’t defend well against attacks where he can’t use Concordia Faceoff, so try to avoid situations like that.

Durge is in this pack as a Scum Rogue ace as well as in the Separatist faction. Durge is a new high initiative pilot option for the Rogue-class Starfighter, higher than any other Rogue pilot. Like the Separatist version, as a Scum pilot Durge has an ability that makes him hard to destroy. When defending, after dice results have been neutralized, if there are more hit and critical results than Durge has active shields, he may change a hit result to a critical result and cancel one hit result. Early on, this stretches the value of Durge’s two shields, especially against heavy hitting attacks. Later in the mission, once his shields are gone, Durge can gamble with what faceup damage card he’ll receive in an attempt to reduce further damage to his hull.

Lapin is one of those tricky annoying pilots that Scum is known for. In their Modified TIE/ln Fighter, Lapin tries to fight stressed ships to make use of their ability. Denying a ship the ability to modify their dice is a good ability, and there are crew and pilots in the Scum faction to strengthen it. For example, 0-0-0 works well in a squad with Lapin, making your opponent want to avoid the stress even more. A stressed Cad Bane pilot can transfer his stress onto an opposing ship, letting Lapin follow up. Even though their chassis ability references asteroids, Lapin wants to bring debris to try to cause more stress to their opponents.

Flying a YV-666, Doctor Aphra is a long-awaited character brought to X-Wing. Her ability is another one that combines well with Lapin, and generally means 0-0-0 will be in one of your crew spots on the ship. Before you engage, you can spend a green token – you’d prefer it to be a calculate token from 0-0-0 or Overtuned Modulators – to stress an unstressed ship at range 0- 1. If the entire enemy force has fired already, which is quite likely given Aphra’s 3 initiative, then spending your reinforce is also a good idea. A YV-666 will almost never be destroyed before getting into close range, so you should be able to get good use of this ability. Ships that want to get behind the bulky YV-666 and shoot at it while it can’t shoot back do not want to gain any stress, because it severely limits their options.

Finally, Hondo Ohnaka is piloting a Firespray. Playing both sides, he grants actions to two ships that are not friendly to each other, and then skims a calculate token off the top. Note that he can choose himself as one of the two ships. Most often, you’ll choose the weakest opposing ship on the enemy side and your strongest ship, which might be Hondo. If you choose yourself, he can target lock (and calculate) for a double-modified attack. Granting boost actions to ships before they move is also a strong move that is hard to plan around, especially if they couldn’t normally boost. You also get to choose what order the ships take their actions, so you can react to an enemy ship’s action with your own. Being in a Firespray, Hondo will be difficult to pin down and destroy when he inevitably decides a venture is no longer profitable.

That’s all of the Scum pilots coming in the Hotshots and Aces II Reinforcements Pack! Look for it at your local game store in November. Pre-order your copy at your local game store or through the webstore today!