Hope everyone had a good X-Wing Christmas. I ripped through a decent chunk of the Scum & Villainy conversion kit yesterday and can report that, yes, Boba with Perceptive Copilot and Han gunner is great. Palob with Moldy Crow and Lando crew wrecks. The initiative-1 Quadjumper is, for some reason, a monster.

But despite the rise of Mr. Fett, I am obsessed with his nemesis: Han Solo.

I love the Scum Millennium Falcon. And I didn’t particularly like Solo! The ship is an idiosyncratic mess of unique abilities, rarely-coupled upgrade slots, and a docking escape craft. Think the Ghost expansion, if it had come out in a world without Twin Laser Turret and pre-nerf Biggs Darklighter.

It’s the perfect list-building challenge: Can you make a two-attack-one-defense-dice ship viable given a low starting cost and lots of customization options?

I’m almost exclusively interested in Han at the moment as he: 1. Is the rare i6 Scum ship; 2. His ability provides red and green dice, the ship’s biggest need; 3. He’s still relatively cheap at 54 base points.

Han also typifies obstacle placement and manipulation becoming a big part of the S&V faction identity with the Mining Guild TIE on the way. Turns out Scum’s home court is in asteroid field. They’d be crazy to follow us, wouldn’t they? (Famous Han Solo line in blog post about Han Solo.)

I tried three approaches to building Han yesterday. They all sucked in enlightening ways:

Fat Han, skinny Escape Craft (flown with lean Boba Fett)

Han Solo (Scum) — YT-1300 (Scum) 54 Trick Shot 1 Perceptive Copilot 10 Lando Calrissian (Scum) 8 Agile Gunner 10 Rigged Cargo Chute 4 Engine Upgrade * Lando’s Millennium Falcon 6 Ship Total: 102 Autopilot Drone — Escape Craft 12 Ship Total: 12

My first instinct was to treat the Escape Craft like the Ghost’s Phantom I: Who’s the Zeb? The Escape Craft, however, does not provide a single game-breaking ability like double-tapping Twin Laser Turret, which you want to access as cheaply as possible. Since the Falcon can use the escape pod’s shields AND pilot ability, there’s actually incentive to invest in a good nose cone or skip it entirely.

As for the Perceptive/Lando combo…it’s underwhelming if you still only get the native two-attack dice. I rarely used Agile Gunner, rarely boosted, and never dropped the Rigged Cargo. The action efficiency of this Falcon was great, yet I couldn’t do the only thing I wanted to: Boost behind a rock and get re-rolls.

Really Fat Han (flown with Lone Wolf Fenn Rau)

Han Solo (Scum) — YT-1300 (Scum) 54 Trick Shot 1 Perceptive Copilot 10 Lando Calrissian (Scum) 8 Greedo 1 Rigged Cargo Chute 4 Engine Upgrade * Lando’s Millennium Falcon 6 Ship Total: 93 Outer Rim Pioneer — Escape Craft 24 Shield Upgrade * Ship Total: 30

With all due apologies to Thweek/Dengar, the ace/turret archetype never really existed for Scum in first edition. I had two ships moving after Darth Vader in this game!

Greedo is an obviously great one-point option for Han. Darth Vader, however, will get three crits on you if your charge is active. Then a fuel-leak-into-a-direct-hit will lead to an emergency undocking of the Outer Rim Pioneer.

Before his untimely exit, though, the Outer Rim Pioneer’s pilot ability was a blast. I parked the corner of Han’s base on a rock and blasted some TIE Fighters with five dice. These shenanigans unfortunately turned off the Lando/Perceptive combo. Again, I craved action-independent dice mods. Is Bossk gunner the answer? Lando Escape Craft?

Skinny, thematic Han (flown with Boba and Moldy Palob)

Han Solo (Scum) — YT-1300 (Scum) 54 Trick Shot 1 Qi’ra 2 Greedo 1 Ship Total: 58

If those other two builds were Christian Bale in Batman Begins and American Hustle, respectively, this was definitely The Machinist. Qi’ra provided a pseudo-Outter Rim Pioneer effect and Greedo/Trick Shot brought the fireworks. Again, I felt totally at the mercy of my red dice, but at least now Han’s obstructed shots felt like a great return on my points, and not my build occasionally working as intended. Han was too dangerous too ignore, and he took the heat off other, more consistent heavy-hitters.

The new idea

In every game I played with Han, opponents cornering my big rocks was really annoying. I always wish I had Beckett crew, so he’s definitely going to get a look. 0-0-0 synergizes with the Lando’s Millennium Falcon title, but I don’t want to have to fly Han like Boba Fett. Without the requisite fifty garbage dump tokens, Jabba the Hutt seems like a non-starter. I also don’t like how one-note that build is, though it may prove good.

As far as things that worked go: Trick Shot and Greedo seem like too strong a value at one point each to ditch.

Han Solo (Scum) — YT-1300 (Scum) 54 Trick Shot 1 L3-37 4 Tobias Beckett 2 Greedo 1 Rigged Cargo Chute 4 Engine Upgrade * Lando’s Millennium Falcon 6 Ship Total: 81 Lando Calrissian (Scum) (Escape Craft) — Escape Craft 26 Ship Total: 26

Lando gives Han a much-needed baked-in dice mod. Engine Upgrade and L3-37 help make the Lando stress manageable when maneuvering. Might be O.K.?

Well I’ve only got 6,132,091 more permutations to try. If I missed something obvious, let me know. I’ve got a good feeling about this! (Less famous Han Solo line. Everyone groans.)