Scavenger Swarm (X-Wing)

At the 2019 North American X-Wing Championships, held at Gencon, Richard Hines managed a 6-1 record with the CIS faction, which made the cut and put him at 10th place int he swiss rounds. It's a pretty impressive achievement because the event was around 196 players, but more so because Richard doesn't own CIS. I showed him the list a week before he was set to go, handed it off to him the day before he left (although he might have messed around with it on TTS some) and that was the extent of Richard's experience with this faction. This was the first major outing for my Scavenger Swarm build, and I'd rate it as a resounding success.

Scavenger Swarm was the only CIS list to make the cut. A large part of that is Richard's ability to apply the limited information I could give him in such a short time frame and translate that into a variety of match-ups and board states. Another component is the general flexibility and capabilities of the list. We're going to look at the Scavenger Swarm, why the list looks like it does and go into some of the oddities associated with the list specifically and CIS in general.

What is Scavenger Swarm?

Art by Emily Sampson @EJS Creations

Many archetypes in X-Wing have very poorly defined parameters for what qualifies for that archetype, so here, let's just establish a basic definition:

Scavenger Swarm- Any CIS list that is composed exclusively of Hyena and Vulture class droids (differentiated from a Vulture swarm by the addition of Hyenas). A scavenger swarm, significantly, has no support ships and relies on the organic way in which droids can support each other (more on that later).

The Theory

The start of the list was with the points change and the introduction of the Hyena. Playing with a lot of ideas (and using experiences from playing the faction basically since inception), I mostly settled on the 2-5 split. It's hard to get a third Hyena without trimming the Vultures too much and a single Hyena is a bit of a waste because the points are always awkward to work with, so you'll either have 6 bloated vultures, or 7 Vultures that are far too lean. Let's look at everything in the list and why it's here.

Techno Union Bomber

First, we have to talk about the decision to Go with Initiative 1 vs 3. All Drones basically have 2 programs, normal at I1, and better Seperatists with I3, so you can pretty easily have all I1's or I3's (404 is the exception, but 404 is more of a pocket ace/damage missile). Now, I can almost hear people in the comments slamming their keyboards about all the matchups where I3 is relevant or even required, but seriously and critically evaluate why. Try this list into any match-up where you think I3 is necessary or important, then run it with a similar I3 swarm. Did the I3's do better? They didn't, did they? I'm not actually psychic (although I am raiding your refrigerator for yogurt right now...), but there's a lot of subtle things that happen and specifically that you want to do with a swarm like this that you just can't do at I3.

#1 your losing 2 points on each Vulture and 3 points on each Hyena, so assuming you could bump them all up to 3 (you can't because you lose the Baktoid Prototype), that costs 16pts. An I1 Vulture is only 19, so you're almost losing an entire ship...which is interesting if your justification for going up to I3 is to not lose a ship before it shoots because you already functionally lost a ship for that jump.

#2 The average droids lost on a joust is 1 with damage on a second when you're shooting last. The average droids lost on a joust when you're shooting first or mostly first is 1 with a damage on a second. This is because you have to spend tokens first (and tokenless Vultures are easy targets) and the I1's can buy more damage so even a lost ship barely hurts your overall output. (incidentally, zero droids lost is far more common than 2 which is another compelling argument for I1's)

#3 You're not going up to 3 to beat aces to the punch, you're doing it to beat generics, but in a generic fight, they aren't arc dodging you. Having higher initiative gives you a better opening salvo, but a much weaker maneuvering encounter. A swarm that can move all of it's pieces first without interference is really hard for the enemy swarm to deal with. If you're moving first, you only get blocked or lose actions if you do it intentionally or just mis-guess your landing point. The I1 always get to choose their actions and the pace of the fight, the I3's don't and losing those calculates is fatal for drones (we'll talk about Calculate economy later, but it's HUGE for any drone swarm)

Short of a major meta shift where killing at I3 is super essential or cost increases that do not allow the current level of firepower at I1, I see no compelling reason to bother with I3. With that understanding (and all of that understanding was gained through a butt-ton of games with I1 and I3), we're going to settle with the humble Techno Union Bomber (TUB for short). The primary reason for this ship to exist is to carry the DRK Probe Droids (we'll just call them "dorks" to keep from confusing them with the droid ships...also they just float around and stare at things, so it seems appropriate). If you read the cards carefully, you'll notice that the Dork is dropped in the end phase, then moves in the device phase before anyone moves, meaning your opponent gets no real opportunity to get out of the way. Here's an example of how far the Dork moves before any ship gets the chance to move (it was launched from the camo bomber):

By turn 2, his entire squad could be target locked. This is not hard to do and for 5 pts is pretty bonkers. The Plasma Torpedoes are more questionable. They are specifically there to be the opening salvo against beefy targets. Now, Plasma Torpedoes might be overcosted (I'm mulling it around). They lose value rapidly for a few reasons:

#1 against an unshielded target they are worse than Concussion Missiles (-1 charge and crits are cancelled first). Concussion Missiles are 6pts to Plasma's 9pts.

#2 as the game goes on, less targets have shields

#3 Trying to get full values out of Plasma's i.e. shooting against shielded targets can be antithetical to your win condition because usually a target that has shields is not a wounded target that it will be critical to remove, therefore, your best choice will be to use your 9pt torpedo as a crappy version of a 6pt missile.

that being said, as a shield-breaking missile, they form a compelling threat on the initial joust and against most shielded targets, they function as better Proton Torpedoes (The +1 damage is guaranteed on hit vs. rolling another die) and Proton's are 13pts. Saving 4 pts for equivalent damage is pretty sexy and, realistically, if you launch the Dork and fire a single plasma at a shielded target, this droid's value is probably through the roof already, so who cares if your second missile is a little wonky. Also, and this is really understated, having a lock based weapon in a Networked Calculation swarm is really beneficial because you can easily spends it's calculate for whatever without losing a shot like you would with something like Energy Shell Charges (again Calculate economy, it's almost like it's important). I'm not in love with the Plasmas, but they work.

Trade Federation Drone

We already talked about why we're using the I1 droids. To briefly address DFS-311 and the reason why its kind of bad, is that the ability to shuffle around a single calculate when we can already spend calculates from any nearby droid is questionable to begin with and we don't have any effects like Captain Sear or TV-94 where a specific token in the right place is going to be any more useful than any other calculate. Paying 4 points for the privilege of doing so is just a straight up "no". Obviously Haor Chall Prototypes become even more questionable than normal because of the locks generously provided by the Dorks. So, here, we're just running the basic Trade Federation drone, the cheapest ship in the game of X-Wing at 19pts.

Energy Shells are the top pick for missiles for a few reasons. the biggest one is just flexibility. Yes, we can get locks easily, but taking a lock-based weapon removes options. For the basic drones, those options can make or break games. The functional difference between an energy shell and a concussion missile on the joust (assuming you have both a lock and calculate) is pretty inconsequential in terms of damage, but if you suddenly see something you want to remove and have a concussion missile, you're SOL, if you have a Energy Shell, you can still just chuck 3 dice at that poor ace that was just barely in range 3. Discord Missiles are actively bad for this setup. You have to spend a calculate to even launch them at the start of engagement, so you're just down on calculate economy right off the bat. What's worse is that Discord Missiles mostly just do 1 damage and only rarely do more than 1 whereas a shell needs a calculate to fire, but you don't actually have to spend that calculate and if you really want keep a drone alive you have that option for the spend, which you don't have for Discords. also, Energy shells are reloadable when you see a lull in the fighting or if aces are dumb enough to disengage and let you reset all your ordnance.

Struts, both grappling and landing varieties (they have the same text, just one is for Vultures and one for Hyenas), are an insanely dumb upgrade for 1pt. It's bizzare becase they were definitely overcosted at 3, but undercosted at 1. 2 is probably the sweet spot ebcause there's a massive difference between every ship being able to stand on a rock whenever it wants and only being able to do it with select ships (or paying a points premium for doing so). We could literally talk about all of the obscure interactions with struts for an entire article, but let's just keep it simple here and say that a swarm of seven ships being able to actively benefit from a dense collection of rocks and debris is ridiculous.

This is a great opportunity to talk about calculate economy. Droids are the only ships in the game that will naturally increase their own economy and effectiveness by simply having more of them in one place. Let's look at a simple example:

the enemy shoots 3 times and rolls the following in order:

3 hits, 2 hits, 2 hits

You roll on defense:

focus evade, focus blank, focus evade

A single drone with a calculate will die to the second shot, a Z-95 with a focus will die to the 3rd shot and a V-19 with a focus will still be alive at 1hp. If a drone has a friend nearby who also has a calculate, he survives the second shot, but dies to the third. If he has 2 friends nearby with calculates, he actually survives at 1hp. conversely, a Z-95 with infinite friends nearby, still dies to the third shot and a V-19 with infinite friends nearby still survives at 1hp. The presence of 2 other droids in this example allows the targeted droid to last as long as a 5hp ship. This is also why the statement that "droids just pop" is like Shrodinger's statement because it can be true and false at the same time. A single droid just pops, but a droid with buddies nearby can be remarkably obnoxious to kill. This is obviously a bit simplistic, but the ability of droids to have these "floating mods" that can be used on any die roll in an area is incredibly powerful and is the reason why players who have only ever run small numbers of droids have a much more negative opinion of their combat capabilities. It's also why you'll see repeated mentions to "calculate economy" because it is super important to be aware of having calculates accessible. This is also one of the reasons why struts are so bonkers because there's no way to really deny the action of a droid on an obstacle, so you can use the obstacles as basically nodes that have guaranteed actions to pull.

Baktoid Prototype

If you had told me how good a Diamond Boron Baktoid Prototype was at the points drop, I probably would've looked at you like you were an idiot because I didn't like either of them. My opinion has massively switched on both. The key thing I missed on the Baktoid Prototype was the Dorks. I didn't realize how casually you could spread locks around. This turned it from "situational" pilot ability to "shoot whatever you want at whoever you want". What really changed my opinion on Diamond Boron Missiles was one specifically the number 0. That means the additional damage on the Diamond Boron's effect also potentially hits the ship you just tagged with the missile basically turning your 6 pt concussion missile into a 6pt Proton torpedo that also hits nearby ships. That is a crazy amount of burst damage on a 6pt missile, in fact this is one of the most damaging missiles in the game, for at least the first shot. What's more, the worst case scenario is that it's just a concussion missile (same range, damage and charges without the concussion's wonky and mostly useless secondary effect). The Concussion's are 6 and the Diamond Borons are 6, so your delta of randomness has a massively favorable skew with a ludicrous high end and a still acceptable, if unspectacular, low end. In short, I've never regretted taking them and Richard's own experience was the same. While I'm still undecided if Plasmas are overcosted, I'm actually undecided if these are undercosted (but I am leaning on "yes")

The Practice

I didn't have enough time to give Richard a full tutorial, but I did give him a few key pieces of advice:

1. Always spread your target locks around-- You do this for 2 reasons, firstly it gives the Baktoid more options on what to shoot at, so you can pick whatever just happens to be the best target for the burst. Secondly, this list hits like an absolute freight train. If you lock everything on the same target, that target probably dies with 2-3 locks on it (maybe more). The only weapon that needs a lock to fire is the Palsma, so that's the only ship that has to commit to a target. It doesn't hurt you have locks lying around for use later and unlike most missiles, if you spread your locks and a key target survives the locked shots, you can still chuck Energy Shells at them to finish the target off and just store those other locks for later.

2. You only need 1 rock-- a single rock is enough to provide you with a sizable advantage and you out-joust everything anyways, so don't get greedy trying to set up lots of rocks, accept whatever gives you best joust that is close enough to a rock and that gives you that key action node. If your opponent wants to joust you in the middle of 3 rocks, that's their funeral, but remember, one good rock is more than enough.

3. You always lose the late game--early game is your joust where you trade shots, mid game is the maneuvering fight, but late game is usually the last 1-2 ships per side. In this scenario your calculate economy is garbage and almost anything beats a lone drone and a lot of tings can beat 2. Focus everything on winning the joust and maneuvering engagement and pretend that if it goes to the late game, you just lose.

Other Options

Support Ships

As of typing, the point costs on support ships and tactical relays, in relation to how much economy you lose via dropping drones for those support ships, are excessively high tot he point where you shouldn't bother or consider support ships to be important or even really that viable. In fact, the entire basis of the list was finding a way to buff economy without sacrificing droids for support ships. Support ships cost you damage, cost you hp and because your losing calculate economy by dropping droids, the first bit of added economy a support ship may provide is just getting you back to the point you would've been at had you simply taken more droids.

People who focus too much on support ships in CIS are from other, more sane, factions where generics don't naturally buff themselves just by taking more of them. CIS is like X-Wing wonderland where everything is completely insane. Generics buff themselves, you target lock from almost infinite range, hitting a rock is actively beneficial, you don't even have to execute maneuvers and the new Nantex fighters actively tractor themselves. Just forget all that normal X-Wing stuff and adapt to your new environment. In this analogy, I'm definitely the Mad Hatter: someone who's been dealing with the weirdness for so long that it doesn't even register as unusual "Why wouldn't you just hard 1, then Barrel Roll into a calculate and blue hard 2 next turn to clear stress instead of just doing a bank?"

More Sustain

An alternative build that I don't hate is swapping the Plasmas and Diamond Borons for Concussion Missiles and Barrage Rockets (and 1 more point for that last strut). This gives you more damage over the course of 3-4 shots, but a good bit less burst on the initial joust. It's not bad, but I usually find the decisive joust to be more important and don't commonly shoot enough missiles to care about the greater sustain of the Barrage/Concussion variant.

That being said, there are a ton of ways to build a TUB and substitute a second TUB for the Baktoid with certain loadouts, so there's just a massive amount of options to tailor the Hyenas for specific threats, and most of them won't be distinctly "wrong", just trying to do different things, so feel free to mess around with the specific ordinance on the Hyenas.

Conclusion

I'm just going to close by saying, I love playing this list and the CIS playstyle in general. I'm happy Richard was about to take the little guys out for a spin and found good success. Talking with him afterwards, he was basically afraid of nothing with this list. Congrats to Richard, great job and thanks for the help with this little experiment, and I hope this has been useful or at least an entertaining read for the rest of you.