After my so-so tournament showing with The Flying Circus, I decided that I wanted to try something new. I’ve a whole new wave to explore, and while nothing new has come in for my favored faction, 3 of the other factions I play each saw a new release since I’ve been gone. The droids received the Hyena Bomber, the Republic has gained the Naboo Starfighter, and the Resistance got a double-bonus in the Resistance Transport and the Transport Pod.

I’ve played against this thing in one form before: my Round 2 opponent from my first tournament in the wave flew Nodin Chavdri and Cova Nell with some pretty neat upgrades. While I wasn’t impressed with the Nodin build, Cova really startled me with the Leia and red maneuver combo. Leia allows a red maneuver to be white while being executed, but it remains revealed as red, so it still triggers Cova’s ability. The R4 is a counter-synergy, and Justin has since removed it from his build.

I also read an awesome report by GreenDragon about his Paris System Open list, including Finn in the Transport Pod. This Finn is REALLY dumb. GD goes into detail about the entire list in another of his articles, but between the 2 Focus tokens, Finn’s ability, Heroic, and Advanced Optics, this guy is basically always putting down 3 hits. He’s not easy to kill either, since he can add a Focus result for a Strain, then immediately remove the Strain token at the end of the defense step.

As a fan of 4 ship lists, I threw these 2 together with a couple of my other Resistance favorites, and took it out for a spin.

The basic idea here is Finn and Cova do their thing toward the center of the board while Ello and Greer come up the sides, pincering the enemy list and giving my opponent no good options. Each ship can act independently of one-another, and each deserves to be nuked off the table for their own nefarious reasons. Greer is extremely action efficient, Ello can become a nightmare in a 1v1 endgame, Finn deals stupidly consistent damage, and Cova can backpedal or plant herself on the board and stay engaged pretty much forever.

I took the list down to Monday night at BlueSky, where I managed to get 2 games in against some pretty good sparring partners. Of note, I only own 1 of the Transport expansion for now, so I am flying both parts independently in these practice games, which absolutely nobody cared about. I’m aware that if I ever want to run this list in a tournament, I will have to buy a second.

My first opponent was Jeff Raiford, who brought 5 generic Jedi Knights with Calibrated Laser Targeting. He put everything down in one of his corners, so I placed Cova to joust (and eventually backpedal away) and set the others to come in on an angle.

The initial engagement goes my way, and the rear black Jedi goes down immediately. However, Ello takes a ton of damage in return, and Finn lost at least his shield. Ello dies the next round, and I start spreading damage around far more than I should, putting all of the Jedi low while Finn and Cova start getting worn down. Finn eventually takes enough damage to go down as well, leaving my remaining ships to tackle 4 Jedi at various health totals.

Cova’s ability to reverse or sit still every round proved immensely powerful, as she was able to kite the Jedi backwards and remain, if not unpredictable, then predictably hard to deal with. The above image shows the furthest forward she ever went, as she started backing up after this turn. Meanwhile, Greer had to disengage to start coming back around, and Cova’s 4-dice shot on the yellow Jedi kick-started my come-back.

She did the same thing on the next turn, finishing off the white/gold Jedi while the others tried to get past the generally immobile Transport. Both Jedi broke for the cover of the gas clouds to start coming back around, while my ships re-set and approached together. Eventually my duo finished off the remaining Jedi, ending the game 200-129.

My second game was against Joe Moore, who was flying Wullffwarro, Jan Ors (in the Crow,) Gavin Darklighter and a Bandit Squadron Pilot. I set up both parts of the Transport in the center, with Greer and Ello poised to swing in on what I figured would be an easy team to flank. The plan pretty much worked, too.

Unfortunately, what didn’t work were Greer’s defense dice – Jan gave Wullff a 4-dice Range 3 shot here, which downed Greer immediately. In exchange, I took the Bandit’s shields – not a good trade! I close in the following turn, and start throwing dice at Gavin after the Bandit goes down. Gavin dies the round after that, while Finn takes a Blinded Pilot and books it out of the scrum on 1 hull remaining.

Cova’s backpedaling and Wullff’s slow-rolling kept them in head-to-head combat the entire game, but Ello’s extra damage helped put me over the top. Between that and Ello’s white T-Rolls, I was able to contain the engagement in the center of the board and allow Finn the time he needed to get out of the fight, clear his crit, flip around, and come back in behind Joe’s forces.

The 4 ships that stayed in the center each took a beating, with Ello losing his shields (but staying above half) while everyone else was brought down to 1-2 hull. Cova probably should have gone down, but the final turn of the game had her bumped with both remaining ships, so Joe couldn’t get the kill. Ello put Jan down, and Finn’s triumphant return took care of the Wookiee, giving me a 200-92 victory.

Finn is amazingly consistent, but I don’t know if he’s as terrifying as everyone locally seems to be making him out to be. He may be a point or 2 under-costed, and his ability is pretty good, but he’s on a 4 HP ship with 2 native attack and defense dice, with a pretty moderate dial. A single round of somewhat concentrated fire should be able to put him down (as Jeff showed in our game,) but you can’t really afford to ignore him while he’s built for damage.

Another local player has started using a defensive Finn, packing Heroic and a Stealth Device, trying to levy as many dice into his defense as possible. He did pretty well with it at the Count Dooku Classic, finishing in the Top 4 with Poe and another ship (Cova Nell, if I remember correctly.) As my question to the readers today, if pressed into playing Finn, which way would you go with him? Do you think he’s balanced well, or does he need an adjustment? Let me know down below!

Next time: Send in the clowns!