Fear The Reaper (Again)

I took my Reaper list to 4tk last week and went 3-1 with it, and then  I took it to Ace today but tweaked it. I swapped out the Inquisitor for Pure Sabaac:

Maarek Steele
 - Fire Control System
 - Marksmanship
Pure Sabaac
 - Shield Upgrade
 - Marksmanship
Major Vermeil
 - Darth Vader
 - Agent Kallus
 - Angled Deflectors
Academy Pilot
197 points

Game 1 - Stephen Cooke
Howlrunner
Mauler Mithel
Iden Versio
Seyn Marana
Wampa
Academy Pilot

I made a number of bad decisions in this game, only the first of which was that in the first round of engagement Maarek didn't have a shot. I then went on to take bad positions with Sabaac and Vermeil that led to me losing them. In the last round Maarek did take out Howlrunner but it was too little, too late.
Loss 70 - 200

Game 2 - John Cooves
Emon Ezzameen
 - Proximity Mines
Guri
 - Advanced Sensors

I managed to distract Guri with the Academy Pilot while my other three ships went to work on Emon. I knocked the Firespray's shields off but left myself in a position where a bomb would have hurt at least one of my ships. But fortunately for me, Emon didn't drop a bomb. And then Maarek put three crits into him. Which with Maarek's ability to pick them meant Emon suffered a Fuel Leak, followed by another Fuel Leak, followed by a Direct Hit. One shot, three crits, six damage cards and one dead Firespray. And then I could just mop up Guri...
Win 200-51

Game 3 - Austen Green
Dutch Vander 
 - Ion Cannon Turret
Garven Dreis
Benthic Two-Tubes
Edrio Two-Tubes

I made a mistake with my approach here that meant that both Maarek and Academy Pilot ended up making their first engagements through a gas cloud and then having to move through it. I was able to take out Garven, but a combination of Maarek getting ionned by Dutch, the U-wing's stop and a limited set of available maneuvers meant we spent two turns in what I can only describe as a massive shamozzle. I should have punched out the U-wing with Sabaac, but the dice let me down... When we broke out of our traffic jam, I was able - eventually - to destroy the U-wing, and get half points on Dutch and Edrio, but I lost Vermeil and the TIE Fighter, and with time called I really wasn't sure I'd done enough. One of the closest results I've ever had.
Win 152 - 149

Game 4 - Paul Dane
Kylo Ren
Lieutenant Tavson
Starkiller Base Pilot

My problem in this game was not appreciating that getting in front of an Upsilon is a massive, massive problem... And maybe I should have picked the Upsilons as the biggest threat and not Kylo. In the first turn of shooting, Kylo not only broke Sabaac's ability but to add insult to injury put a Weapons Failure crit on him too. But I wiped out the Silencer and was able to start on the Upsilons. Paul transferred the Hunted condition from Kylo to the Starkiller Base Pilot, making him my second target. I was, as I mentioned, in front of the Upsilons, and although I killed the Starkiller pilot it was at the cost of all my ships except for the Academy Pilot. As my TIE Fighter ran away from Tavson's guns, he took two hits. So, a one-health TIE Fighter versus a full health Upsilon, with 30 minutes to go. I had to run... for a couple more turns, until I could engineer a way to get behind the shuttle. Once I was behind it, I was able to chip away at the shuttle, chasing it all round the board until it died, appropriately with me putting two crits into it.
Win 200 - 188

So where does this leave me and the Reaper? I've now played three tournaments with these two lists and gone 8-4, or 66%. Not earth-shattering, but in terms of my results since 2.0 came out, it feels like a significant step forward. I do think I'm going to revert to the Grand Inquisitor as I really like him as a knife-fighter (I just wish he had an extra point of hull or Force though...)

All glory to the Emperor!

(Don't) Fear The Reaper?

The TIE Reaper was a mainstay of my game in the late-1.0 timeframe, but Lightweight Frame was an essential upgrade for it. So when Lightweight Frame ceased to be a Thing in 2.0, I tried the Reaper once but found with only 1 Agility it died far too quickly. 
But now in Wave 4, Angled Deflectors gives the Reaper access to the Reinforce action  - can this make the Reaper more viable? Handily, there was a tournament this weekend at Alpha Games for me to try it out, so I put a list together and took it along.

Fear The Reaper
Maarek Steele
 - FCS
 - Marksmanship
Grand Inquisitor
 - FCS
Major Vermeil
 - Darth Vader
 - Agent Kallus
 - Angled Deflectors
Academy Pilot
200 pts

Game 1 - James Ritter
Ric Olie
Sinker
104th Battalion
Gold Squadron Trooper x 2

Yes, you're right - that is a lot of health I need to burn through... And ultimately I didn't manage it, though I did take down both ARC-170s - I wanted to take down Sinker first to stop his re-rolls but James holding him back meant the 104th was the first one in my gunsights. I stripped Ric's shields but couldn't get a hit to get half points on him. Had I realised that the Torrents have no shields, I'd have turned my fire on one of them instead. Lesson learned - what you don't know can hurt you; know what your opponent's ships stats are. I got a lot of good mileage out of Maarek's ability before he died - James told me after the game that I burned through over half his damage deck just on the two ARCs. And the Academy Pilot shone - three times James had three hits on him, and three times I rolled three natural Evades. (Those who've played against me previously will attest that that's more Evades than I've rolled in some whole tournaments...)
Loss 102 - 177

Game 2 - Declan Stephens
Thane Kyrell 
 - Swarm Tactics
Garven Dreis
Cassian Andor

 - Baze Malbus 
Arvel Crynyd

 - Intimidation
Thane having Swarm Tactics made him the early target (although I'd put Hunted on Cassian) and a pair of K-turns from Maarek and the Inquisitor dropped them neatly behind him. Scratch one X-wing. However the Reaper was stuck on a debris cloud where I'd misjudged making a bank with the ailerons. With the Reaper moving into position, I was able to take down Garven and Cassian at the cost of Maarek and the Inquisitor. And so it came down to Arvel Crynyd, and I thought I had him cracked when he bumped my Academy Pilot - until I remembered his ability (although as Philip Boyes pointed out, canonically he should only be able to attack at Range 0 once...). And he had Intimidation. But once again, the high-quality flight training of the Imperial Academy paid off and the TIE survived, leaving the Reaper to finish off the A-wing.
Win 200 - 135

Game 3 - Shaun Riley
Han Solo
 - Greedo
 - Lando's Millennium Falcon

 - 0-0-0
Old Teroch
Fenn Rau

Academy Pilot FTW! In the first turn of shooting, the TIE Fighter put two hits on Fenn Rau! Maarek set Old Teroch's flight console alight, leaving him to die a fiery death the next turn. Han was coming in on my left flank as I engaged Fenn, ending up trading him for Maarek. I knocked the shields down on the Falcon but this left Academy Pilot out of position. Next turn the Falcon took 2 hits from the Inquisitor and 4 from the Reaper, then did a 3-speed hard right turn which meant the Inquisitor had no shot. But the Reaper finished the game out for me and left me at 2-1 going into the final game.

Win 200 - 88

Game 4 - Robin Farndon

Poe Dameron

Nien Numb

Cova Nell

 - Leia
I've never played against Resistance Leia but I've played against Rebel Leia enough times to know that if you can take her down it limits your opponent a bit, so I put Hunted on Cova. We set up for a joust down the left-hand side of the board with me bringing the Reaper and TIE Fighter in from the centre. After the first turn of shooting in which Cova lost her shields and one hull point and I lost Maarek, I did a neat little sloop with the Reaper which gave it a Range 1 shot on Cova. In one fiery turn of shooting Nien Nunb and the Inquisitor killed each other, and then Vermeil killed Cova, leaving me with the Academy TIE and a slightly-damaged Vermeil to kill Poe. Between them they put one damage on Poe before the Academy Pilot's luck finally ran out and it was down to one ship apiece. What followed was twenty minutes of some of the most intense flying I've ever done, trying to get Poe in arc. One good shot from the Reaper would finish him, but the double-reposition of the T-70 was too much to cope with and ultimately Vermeil got whittled away. 
Loss 165 - 200

So 2-2 in the end, which is about my best competitive showing for ages... Academy Pilot was, I think, my MVP, which isn't a sentence I expected to write. I want to try something else in place of the Inquisitor, possibly a Striker, but otherwise I like this list a lot.

What do I think of the Reaper now? With Reinforce it becomes much more survivable into the late game, it's definitely a much more viable ship (Robin told me after our game that when it's Reinforced, that actually has a deterrent effect on whether to attack it or not, which is something I hadn't expected). So much so that I'm now considering getting a second one! Fear the Reaper meta!

All glory to the Emperor!