A Nym By Any Other Name…
A very brief exploration of Nym past, present and future. Like A Christmas Carol but not.
Something awesome happened to me last week. I awoke one morning to a message from Christian Hooper in response to my last article with a picture of his own Lego Scurrg.
As a new player to the game, Christian didn’t yet have his own Engine Upgrade mod card and was using his Lego creation as a reminder of the card. This is, by far, the best proxy I have seen. Christian, you well and truly deserved one of my EU cards and the alt art Predator and Veteran Instincts cards — you’re a dude! I hope your games went well at Dark Sphere.
For me, Nym is the stand out pilot in Wave 11. I read the Thrawn trilogy at school and then The Courtship of Princess Leia, that was enough to put anybody off of reading the Expanded Universe. Don’t even bother trying to track a copy of it down — it’s turgid.
Whilst I watched the prequel trilogy from a safe distance, the space pirate Nym was a character that passed me by.
I’ve since gone back and started to read Nym’s history in the comics. For anybody interested, his first mention outside of the Starfighter games that hints at his backstory is in Star Wars Tales #7 in a short called Single Cell. It’s a quick and easy read that shows a history of betrayal and villainy.
There’s then a three part mini-series, Starfighter: Crossbones. The easiest way to read these is through Comixology, I found all comics for £1.50 each.
So, aside from being a pirate that is no longer canon (although, Defenders and the YT-2400 both appeared in Rebels — so I’m sure they’ll work the ship in at least) Nym’s cross faction capabilities and the different approaches to him really capture my imagination.
Jesper Hills put it best recently, describing bombing and X-Wing as creating a sort of cognitive dissonance. I completely identify with this.
Since my last article and the dawning of #whatmeta, the (crashing) flow of a new wave is something that allows us to think about shaping our own metas. Put simply: Nym and/or the Scurrg H-6 are going to make a splash. For competitive players, this is a meta changing ship, so how you apply it to your play and approach the (#what)meta can be something really pivotal.
The Dark Sphere Store Championships took place two weekends ago and this was my first opportunity to fly the ship. At this point, the Scurrg was barely appearing on Meta-wing.com and Luke Berry of the Womp Rats had written an article about flying Nym with two Hwks (you can read it here) where he reports on the DeNym initiative race going as low as 95 points in order to have control over the bid.
95?! I mean that’s like
You can indulge in that if you want. If it means that much to you. Or you could be like
I went for the second option.
Life gets in the way, no more so than in the summer holidays. What I mean to say, dear reader, was I meant to write this post last week, if not two weeks ago. By now, the data that I wanted to use to justify my list decision making has disappeared into the nebulous ether of the interweb.
Let me simply say — I wanted to play Ketsu and I wanted to play around with tractor beam mechanic when faced with potentially lots of small ships.
I flew this.
That’s 100 points in total.
That’s probably the most expensive Nym, coming in at 49 points. I didn’t intend to, but once you realise you have no hope of taking an initiative bid, the thinking is make your ships stronger.
How did I do? I came 13th out of 32 (3 and 2), my best Store Championship this season. I lost my first game to a quad Aggressor TLT list flown by Sam Davies, who then went on to win the tournament. Despite the help from Countermeasures, Ketsu melted under the persistent clock of TLT, with me only managing to take out one Agressor.
Game Two was the reverse result, with a win of 100–25 against Sean McCherry flying Deathfire, Vessary and Quickdraw. Sean was a relatively new player and his Quickdraw was missing FCS — I donated a spare to him. I hope this helps your list.
Notably, I managed to beat Richard Moore’s Bro-bots, both with HLC and VI. It was incredibly close ay 100–74. Had I not caused the last IG-88 to explode in the final round, he would have won on points.
The most significant match for me was against Tom Duncan’s Store Champ winning list of two Contracted Scouts and Torkhil Mux. Things were looking great when I killed Torkhil in the second round of combat and when I had one of his Scouts to half points. Everything changed in the last 25 minutes when he dropped two separate Rigged Cargo Chutes. The game ended at 46–100. I loved every minute of it, but it was still a crushing loss. This is the closest I’ve ever come to beating Tom.
Where do we go from here?
I really enjoyed playing something different. Despite being in Rob Kane’s London Regional winning list, Ketsu is rarely seen around these parts. The title and VI work really well together.
Nym’s Ion Cannon Turret is well underated and successfully helped with moving small ships around.
The combination of Bomblet Generator and the Genius Droid mean the bombs are continuously dropped no matter what. For a newbie bomber like me, this was useful but it did feel a little dirty.
Would I stick with it? Well, this is 42 points
and can be partnered with these two easily to come in at 100 points
Doesn’t it just feel right going back to Rebels? Taking out Jake and making the most of him? Until the (P)Rockets have gone and he becomes an incredibly expensive, and possibly inefficient, blocker.
The list is bang on 100. That actually does leave Jake fairly vulnerable. The stress-hog at PS9 could well melt if firing last, especially if coming across a Tie Aggressor TLT block of four. The problem is, dropping something leaves Fenn at a really sub-optimal build. Yes, the Minefield Mapper can be a really excellent form of board control and manipulation, especially with Rebel Nym’s ability but…
I can’t help but feel I can get a more efficient build from Scum — that’s points wise, fire power, mechanics and bomb(lets).
This Nym build comes in at 44 points
It still allows the control from the Ion Pulse Missiles, whilst the Autoblaster Turret allows you to fire at range 1. There is also a magic interaction between Extra Munitions and Bomblet Generator that leaves you immune to an obvious target for Boba Fett crew (not that I see him very often in the London and Greater London Meta).
Crucially, I still have Advanced Sensors, so I can have Nym activating actions before moving.
The problem is Fenn and his actual need for an initiative bid. Fenn wants to move after other PS9 ships. I’m not in any way able to compete with the possible 95 of DeNym, but it helps with most other PS9 match ups.
Is the threat of the bogeyman bid more worrying than the actuality?
I took this from the X-Wing Meta Analyser earlier today
Dash is back [shudder].
List totals in ascending order (taking the top list from each archetype) 100, 100, 100, 100 and 98.
In comparison, if I look at the top five Nym builds
Some observations:
- The top list is 100 points, as are two more of them (Miranda/Nym from Relentless Dragon and Dash/Nym). The other Miranda list is 98 and the other Dengar list is 99.
- Three Rebel and two scum — if you then widen this to the top 10, it’s an even split between Rebel and Scum.
- The most popular partner amongst the top 10 is Dengar being used 5 times, followed by Miranda (3), then Dash and Leebo (each with one).
- The most popular turret choice in the top 10 for Nym is TLT, with Autoblaster being used three times and two pther builds opting out of using a turret. No mention of the Ion Turret.
- Three of the builds in the top 10 used Engine Upgrade, two of those were in the top 5 — both of those top 5 lists were in the Rebel faction.
This does not mean that Rebel Nym must take EU or Scum Nym must take Bomblet, the above are simply observations that show links across a possible international meta.
In comparison to other lists, the top triple Contracted Scout list has a (Cad Bane and Clusters) and comes in at 100 points.
The top Fenn Rau list comes in at 99
I’ve seen variations that drop to 97, usimg Inspiring Recruit.
Finally, how might this compare to my preferred Scum Nym list?
Nym, Fenn and the Gunrunner weigh in at 97 points. That’s respectable for a Fenn bid but I want to play with more new toys. Which then leaves me with 3–4 possible options. I could put Intelligence Agent on the Quad or an Ion bomb for that extra element of control, or one of these two
Which to go for?
Whilst Cad is not a carbon copy of the Sabine Wren crew card, his re-rolls certainly make the bombs much more efficient, increasing the probability of a hit by 25% per dice. With the bomblet generator, that’s unlimited bombs with 1.5 expected hits for as long as Cad is alive. It does take me to 99 points though.
How about Ketsu? Well she saves me 1 point and keeps me in at 98, and her ability may only activate once or twice per game, but reducing agility dice is super effective, as is the bid. I’m playing at a Store Champs tomorrow in Essex — I’ll let you know how I get on.
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You can also read some of my older posts at https://itsgettinghothinhere.wordpress.com
