Rogue Review- M3-A “Scyk” Interceptor

Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series, we will be looking at the ships you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We’ll take a look at a chassis and what makes it unique along with some upgrades and squadron combos. Strap in and get ready to fly.

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

Turning away from the Galactic Civil War, we’re going to get dirty with some Scum. We’ll start with, what until recently, was the forgotten child of the Scum, the M3-A Scyk. This ship has always had a weird place. It’s called an interceptor but doesn’t intercept very well. It’s relatively cheap but was never quite cheap enough to make a good swarm.  Now, thanks to 2.0’s ability to adjust points, you can finally fly an eight ship Scyk swarm or a seven ship swarm with some cannons.

The special ability for Scyk’s is their Weapon Hardpoint that allows them to equip a cannon, torpedo or missile. This gives them some flexibility in load outs. Need a specialty weapon? You can slot one in fairly cheaply on a Scyk.

They are similar in scope to a TIE/fo in health, defense and cost but with a worse dial. And the dial does make a big difference. I’d almost always choose an FO versus a naked M3-A.

That said, four health protected by three green dice and the option to equip any weapon is nothing to sneeze at. They can be built to pack a punch if needed.

Red Five Standing By

The M3-A comes out box with an impressive six unique pilots and two generics and they gained one more from the Hot Shots and Aces pack.  How do these pilots compare?

1. Sunny Bounder (I1)– While you defend or perform an attack, after you roll or reroll your dice, if you have the same result on each of your dice, you may add 1 matching result.
   1. This is a fun ability. It’s not something you need to work to trigger but it’s nice when it does.
   2. It doesn’t have any limits. So roll two attack dice that are blank. Add a blank. Spend a Lock and reroll all three into hits. Add another hit. Congratulations, you turned two dice showing blanks into four hits. Very rare but feels amazing when it happens.
   3. One of the few ships that doesn’t mind the crit that reduces your weapon attack by 1. Then you get to add a matching result to every single (non-range 1) roll. Every crit becomes two crits.
   4. Compared to most of the other named pilots, Sunny feels like an amazing bargain.
2. Cartel Spacer (I1)– None
   1. These are currently priced to allow for a full eight ship swarm of them.
   2. Cheap enough to slot into many lists even with a cannon.
3. Quinn Jast (I3)- At the start of the Engagement Phase, you may gain 1 disarm token to recover 1 Charge on 1 of your equipped upgrades.
   1. There’s a lot of fun things you can do with Jast. Reloading munitions is the obvious choice but his true advantage is that it applies to any upgrade.
   2. Stealth Device, Afterburners, Crackshot all have valuable abilities with limited uses. Jast gets more mileage out of them than anyone else.
   3. Overseer Yushyn makes a good wingman as he lets Jast recover charges with a stress instead of a disarm.
4. Genesis Red (I4)- After you acquire a lock, you must remove all of your focus and evade tokens. Then, gain the same number of focus and evade tokens that the locked ship has.
   1. This is excellent action efficiency. So long as you Lock someone with tokens, you can take one action and get the equivalent of two without any downsides like stress or strain. The requirement to remove all your existing focus/evade will rarely come up.
   2. Excellent ship to fly against token stackers.
      1. Unfortunately, the worse offenders are higher Initiative than Genesis Red and won’t have any tokens when she activates.
      2. And there are no Scum coordination ships with a higher Initiative to let her Lock later.
   3. Can be used on an ally who is a token stacker if you need multiple defensive tokens. Such as a Moldy Crow or a Perceptive Co-Pilot.
      1. Unfortunately, there aren’t any current Scum pilots that can stack focus and evade.
5. Serissu (I5)- While a friendly ship at range 0-1 defends, it may reroll 1 of its dice.
   1. A nice improvement over her 1.0 version, Serissu buffs herself.
   2. Defensive rerolls are relatively rare so this is a nice buff, especially on three agility ships.
   3. You do pay quite a premium for this ability though, currently 10 points more than the next pilot. Defensive rerolls are not quite as effective as offensive unfortunately, due to there being less paint on green dice. Range 1 is a narrow bubble.
6. G4R-GOR V/M (I0)– After you defend, each other ship at range 0 suffers 1 Crit damage. 
   1. A rare Initiative 0 pilot. He doubles down as a blocker as he definitely moves first and his ability plays off of bumping.
   2. Make contact with a valuable target and your opponent won’t want to shoot him.
7. Laetin A’shera (I3)- After you defend or perform an attack, if the attack missed, gain 1 evade token.
   
   1. This is a slight improvement of the 1.0 version as it now affects her attacks. If you can get lucky on defense, any follow-up attacks get less appealing. And if you miss your attack, you get a little compensation.
   2. At I3, the evade after missing an attack is only moderately useful. Many ships will have already attacked.
   3. Likes Juke as an upgrade. If you need to spend the evade to avoid damage, feel free, you’ll get it back to use for your offense.
   4. Overall, feels too expensive.
8. Inaldra (I2)-While you defend or perform an attack, you may suffer 1 damage to reroll any number of your dice.
   1. This ability just feels bad. Guaranteed damage for a chance at better dice results.  When you roll just as poorly it’s painful.
   2. As a defensive last resort it’s okay. If the damage will kill you, and you have more than one health, might as well use it for that miracle reroll.
   3. Like Laetin, feels too expensive for what you’re getting.
9. Tansarri Point Veteran (I3)– None
   1. You’re paying a premium for I3 and a Talent Slot.
   2. The main advantage of I3 is they pair nicely with several other named M3-A pilots.

All Wings Report In

What’s the ideal number of M3-A’s to buy? Two to three. You can fly up to eight of them, but aside from the swarm, you’re probably slotting in one to three to make a mixed list.

Cannon Crack (Extended)

• 3x Tansarri Point Veteran (M3-A)
  • Autoblaster
  • Marksmanship
• Tansarri Point Veteran (M3-A)
  • Tractor Beam
  • Predator
• Tansarri Point Veteran (M3-A)
  • Ion Cannon
  • Predator
• Tansarri Point Veteran (M3-A)
  • Jamming Beam
  • Crackshot

There are several ways to build this. You could go six Autoblasters/Tractor Beams. Or two Jam, two ion, two tractor. With any of the mixed versions, Jam first to clear a token. Fire an Autoblaster if you have one in bullseye. Tractor next to reduce agility, reposition for another bullseye Autoblaster. Then unload with the final Autoblaster. Finish off with an Ion shot if it’s still alive and needs to feel bad drifting forward. Or ion your next victim and 5k behind him.

You can also downgrade them to Cartel Spacers and get an extra ship with an Ion Cannon. Or keep them all with three point cannons and mix Sunny Bounder into the group.

Cannon Swarm (Extended)

• Sunny Bounder (M3-A)
  • Autoblaster
• 5x Cartel Spacer (M3-A)
  • Autoblaster
• Cartel Spacer (M3-A)
  • Tractor Beam

Serissu’s Ion Swarm (Hyperspace)

• Serissu (M3-A)
  • Ion Missile
• 5x Cartel Spacer (M3-A)
  • Ion Cannon

If you like swarms and want some defenses, you can add in Serissu.  A six ship formation is a classic formation for swarms to fly in. That places Serissu in the center protecting the others. With their five speed K-turn, the M3-A makes a perfect ion platform as it’s relatively easy to get behind their target after it’s ioned.

If you want to go Extended you can give Serissu Swarm Tactics instead to get two ships firing at I5.

M3 Jank (Extended)

• Genesis Red (M3-A)
  • Concussion Missile
• Quinn Jast (M3-A)
  • Crackshot
  • Afterburners
  • Advanced Proton Torpedo
• Sunny Bounder (M3-A)
  • Jamming beam
• Palob Godalhi (HWK-290)
  • Perceptive Co-pilot
  • Moldy Crow
• Overseer Yushyn (Mining Guild TIE)

This list is ugly looking. But it can do some funky stuff. Quinn Jast hangs back until he can fly in, boost and then unload with APT and a Crackshot. Yushyn lets him immediately reload the Afterburner and still fire. Next round, he can either flee and work on reloading everything or stay in close and continue to reload with Yushyn’s help. You could dump Afterburners and Perceptive Co-Pilot to give Genesis Red and Quinn Proton Torpedoes.

Palob is stealing tokens from your target. If you can position Genesis Red in prime position, she can Lock him and copy his accumulation of Moldy Crow focus. Or she can Lock an enemy and get a copy of their Focus for good offense.

Sunny just hangs out being Sunny. Why the Jamming Beam? Because it’s free that’s why.

Boba’s Guard (Hyperspace)

• Boba Fett (Firespray)
  • Maul
  • Slave-1
  • Fearless
  • Contraband Cybernetics
• Laetin A’shera (M3-A)
  • Autoblaster
• Inaldra (M3-A)
  • Autoblaster
• G4R-GOR V/M
  • Autoblaster

It’s tough finding a reason to take Laetin and Inaldra. But with this list, you have Boba Fett so it’s good right off the bat. Then you have three M3-A’s that work around your opponent not particularly wanting to shoot them. You can put them into tempting positions opposite from Boba. Then either they get shot, trigger some abilities and give Boba free reign, or they’re all coming in from behind with autoblasters. You could save 13pts and do much the same with the generic pilots, but the abilities do come in handy here. Laetin, when focus fired, can become really annoying to kill. If you’re good at causing bumps, G4R can cause some pain and Inaldra…exists.