With Manaroo becoming more and more prominent in the meta, mostly with her part in the dangerous Dengaroo combo, and her similarities to the Palp shuttle, its seemed very possible that Manaroo with two Scum Aces would become a thing. As a fan both of Scum, and of Palp Aces, I’ve decided to do some theoretical work on this possibility.

There’s a few ways to approach this. Personally, I like to give her recon specialist and use focus as my action whenever possible, meaning she costs 30 points and hands off 2 focus tokens per turn. Compare this to the Palp shuttle who, for 29 points, adjusts 1 die. Sounds about even. So what’s holding back Scum from having what the Empire does?

Simply put, the Empire is designed specifically to have great arc dodgers. Soontir, Vader, Juno, Whisper, Echo, The Inquisitor, Vessery, Ryad, Bren, Omega Leaer, Jax and two variations of Steele all come to mind as viable ‘Aces’. Scum have Xizor and TalonBane Cobra, both of which needs specific upgrades and lack a great dial. But now, Scum has something new coming out.

As soon as I saw this was going to be a thing, I got embarrassingly excited. Forget kid in a candy store excitement levels, I was kid in a candy mall and had just found $100 type excited.

So, I mentioned scum needed better dials for this. Let’s see what we got here.

Yes!!!! Hard greens! Exactly what we needed, it looks a lot like an Interceptor. It can also T-roll, for whenever you don’t put push the limit on it.

For actions it has boost, barrel roll, target lock and focus. Its starting to look like an aggressive interceptor, which would make it perfect for an Aces list. It also has a handy title.

So you may not have an evade action, but this helps cover that somewhat. Since this ship is designed to be on the aggressive side and needs a way to evade, this will likely be an auto include at one point. Add in our old friend autothrusters for 2, we’re at three points plus our elite pilot slot.

Now, given that this is Aces, we’re looking for named pilots. This package has 3.

Interesting. We’ll want to avoid Push the limit on this one, otherwise you won’t be using his ability much. What would work on him? Veteran Instincts pushes him to a much more threatening PS 8. I’d also want to test out stay on target. Given how green his dial is, he wouldn’t have much problem removing stress. If you’re feeling really gutsy, Predator or Lone Wolf might also be ideas since he could really use some re-rolls, but you’re leaving him at a lower PS with less re positioning than you might want. Up next we have this fellow:

With all this ship’s parallels to the interceptor, this guy looks a lot like Jax, who I mentioned earlier as a solid Ace in Palp Aces, so this looks promising. This guy however doesn’t get Jax’s large bubble, and can only effect 1 enemy. However, to somewhat make up for that, he removes the tokens. Is the opponent a HWK? Do they have juke? Too bad, you just wrecked their day. Having the title should make you less afraid of getting into range 1 as well, as you’ll be better protected. For your additional upgrade? VI would make him a solid PS 9, and PtL makes him act yet more like Jax. So we started with a good ability, and got better, what’s to come?

Yes!!!! Dear god yes!!! If Teroch is like Jax, this guy is like Soontir. PS 9, great dial, and ability that suits the ship just fine. Push the limit all day on this one.

So, let’s start building a list:

Manaroo with recon specialist-30 points

Old Teroch with VI, autothrusters, title -30 points

Fenn Rau with PtL, autothrusters, title-34 points

This gives us 6 points to play with, and only torps left on our Aces. You could use it on torps if you wanted, (someone needs to test seismic torpedoes, and it’s not like you’re lacking actions. You could switch out VI on Teroch for PtL, you could give Manaroo lone wolf or some bulk, or an astromech. It may also be a good idea to have 1-2 points left for initiative choice, as moving second with such a list is key. If you’re going with Solus, you have even more points to play with.

Anyway, I don’t have any games to report on as this ship hasn’t been officially released yet, but I look forward to using Manaroo aces with two Protectorates.

May the force be with you, pilot.