Pilot Spotlight: Major Vermeil

Towards the end of 1.0 the TIE Reaper was released and it was a terror. During Store Champs season I played with and against it. The agility of a Striker and the health of a Punisher. Locking down anything with tokens and auto mods for days. It was broken. My last few tournaments I had to bring RACLO out to counter it, that’s how bad things were getting.

Now with 2.0 things have changed. All the Reaper’s turns are red and jam has been sufficiently nerfed. Can we turn it into a broken OP plz nerf ship again? Of course we can! 😈

I don’t take credit for this one. I saw it appear at my first 2.0 tourney and I’m sure you’ve seen it out there too. While Vader is an expensive upgrade he has so much value here as he interacts with Vermeil’s ability. It’s so good it feels like an auto include.

Stripping tokens with jam, auto damage with Vader, then auto modding your dice at a token less target feels very 1.0. Hell, you could be bumped on an asteroid and still force choke them. But surely with all that red on the dial it should keep him in check right? Wrong.

Same as with Ruthless I’ve been dead against taking upgrades that damage you. That’s what your opponent is doing. But having played with them I can appreciate the potency of cards like these. Consider this: after a close range joust your best move to stay in the fight would be to sloop, and the enemy ship will k-turn. At the end of the round you can shed your stress. They cannot. This allows you to sloop again and get behind them as they perform a blue move. This is what Defenders do that makes them so good, being able to k-turn over and over. What’s more they’ll find it hard to block you as you can adjust your flight path with ailerons.

For those of you who have been keeping up with this little miniseries might see a list forming. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Gideon Hask w/ Crack Shot. 31pts

Pure Sabaac w/ Ruthless. 45pts

Major Vermeil w/Vader, Baffle. 65pts

59pts left to spare for ship number 4 in this initiative 4 toolbox. I think we all know who that’s gonna be. :D