Rogue Squadron- Scyk Swarm

Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series, we will be looking at different squadrons you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We give you the squad, what expansion pack all of the upgrades come from and then give you the low down on how best to fly it. Strap in and get ready to fly.

All Wings Report In

M-3A Scyk Interceptor “Serissu” (Scyk Expansion) (24 pts) (PS 8)

When another friendly ship at Range 1 is defending, it may reroll 1 defense die.

Elite Pilot Talent- Attanni Mindlink (Punishing One Expansion): Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one.
Title- Heavy Scyk Interceptor (Scyk Expansion): Your upgrade bar gains the Cannon, Torpedo, or Missile upgrade icon. Increase your hull value by 1.
Cannon– Tractor Beam (Imperial Veterans, Mist Hunter Expansion): Attack (3, range 1-3): If this attack hits, the defender receives 1 tractor beam token. Then cancel all dice results.

M-3A Scyk Interceptor “Genesis Red” (C-ROC Expansion) (32 pts) (PS 7)

After you acquire a target lock, assign focus and evade tokens to your ship until you have the same number of each token as the locked ship.

Elite Pilot Talent- Attanni Mindlink (Punishing One Expansion): Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one.
Title- Heavy Scyk Interceptor (Scyk Expansion): Your upgrade bar gains the Cannon, Torpedo, or Missile upgrade icon. Increase your hull value by 1.
Cannon– Heavy Laser Cannon (Hound’s Tooth, Slave-1, Lambda Shuttle, YT-2400 Expansions): Attack (4, range 2-3): Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your Crit results to Hit results.
Modification- Stealth Device (Scyk/Slave-1/U-Wing Expansions): Increase your agility value by 1. If you are hit by an attack, discard this card.

M-3A Scyk Interceptor “Inaldra” (C-ROC Expansion) (14 pts) (PS 3)

When attacking or defending, you may spend 1 shield to reroll any number of your dice.

Elite Pilot Talent- Attanni Mindlink (Punishing One Expansion): Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one.
Title- Light Scyk Interceptor (C-ROC Expansion): All Damage cards dealt to you are dealt faceup. You may treat all bank maneuvers as green maneuvers. You cannot equip Modification upgrades.

HWK-290 “Palob Godalhi” (Most Wanted Expansion) (30 pts) (PS 5)

At the start of the Combat phase, you may remove 1 focus or evade token from an enemy ship at Range 1-2 and assign it to yourself.

Elite Pilot Talent- Determination (Original Core, TIE Fighter Expansion): When you are dealt a faceup Damage card with the Pilot trait, discard it immediately without resolving its effect.
Crew- Greedo (Most Wanted Expansion): The first time you attack each round and the first time you defend each round, the first Damage card dealt is dealt faceup.
Turret– Twin-Laser Turret (K-Wing/TIE Aggressor Expansions): Attack (3, range 2-3): Perform this attack twice (even against a ship outside your firing arc). Each time this attack hits, the defender suffers 1 damage. Then cancel all dice results.
Modification- Pulsed Ray Shield (C-ROC Expansion): During the End phase, you may receive 1 ion token to recover 1 shield (up to your shield value). You can equip this card only if your shield value is “1.”

Lock S-Foils in Attack Position

First, this squadron is not of my own creation. I encountered it during a recent store championship tournament and wanted to discuss it. Partially because I found it interesting and was nice to see Scyk’s on the board now, and partially because of the sheer ridiculous odds that happened in the match I watched.

This squadron is built around Genesis Red being your heavy gun. She’s protected by a Stealth Device and Serissu’s reroll. Meanwhile, Palob causes trouble by stealing Focus and Evade tokens from your target after Genesis Red’s ability has a chance to proc. And Inaldra is ensuring she receives even more Focus from Mindlink.

The general order of operations has Inaldra focusing, giving Serissu and Genesis Red a Focus as well. Then Genesis Red gets a Target Lock, hopefully also gaining some more Focus or Evades from her target. Palob ends the activation round by stealing a defense tokens from Genesis Red’s target. In combat, Serissu lowers the target’s agility with her tractor beam and then Genesis Red can unload her heavy laser cannon against a target with reduced agility, no defense tokens, and while having target lock and a focus to modify her shot. It can be a pretty vicious combo.

In the match I watched this squadron fly it went up against a First Order Aces (few different upgrades to the one I’m linking. Coincidently, I was also flying a variant of that which had swapped Omega Leader for Inquisitor). The Imperial player unloaded an amazing shot of four Crits into Palob. Everyone thought, okay, goodbye HWK. But no. The first crit went against the shields. Second, turned out to be one of the few pilot crits so was ignored thanks to Determination. The third was also a pilot Crit and was also ignored. The fourth one got through but just dealt a stress. Out of four critical hits that landed, only one did hull damage. Thanks to Pulsed Ray Shield, Palob continued to regen his only shield. Over the course of several more attacks, Determination saved Palob from two more Crits and the regening shields even more damage. That one point elite pilot talent essentially wiped out a ship’s worth of incoming damage. It was ridiculous to witness. A HWK-290 that just wouldn’t die.

Variations

You could easily swap out Determination for another copy of Attanni Mindlink. You aren’t likely to see the crazy set of circumstance that happened in this match ever again so Determination may never do anything for you. But, Mindlink isn’t necessarily the best fit for a HWK. It has a lot of red maneuvers on its dial and not many green options to clear that stress.