Colonel Vessery - Random Thoughts

Colonel Vessery, Tie Defender, 35 points, Special ability: when attacking, immediately after you roll attack dice, you may acquire a target lock on the defender if it already has a red target lock token.

I am an Empire player in X-wing, but curiously enough there are still some kinds of ships that I have not taken to the table. Not because I lack motivation, mainly because I do not have time to play as much as I wish. Two of the ships I still have to try and by try I really mean that I have never used then before are the Tie Phantom and the Tie Defender even if I have them since they were released.

Two weeks ago I tried the Decimator with Soontir Fel as companion basically because I didn't want to try two new ships at the same time. Someone said that the real trick on playing x-wing is to know the list you are flying, and I must say that I agree totally. A decent list that you know is on your hands much better than an incredible good list which you do not have any experience and cannot exploit to its limits.

That said and after the Decimator experiment I was listening to some podcast doing a review of Wave 4 and talking very good of this fellow, Colonel Vessery. So I decided to take a second look to him.

I have already read the card when I got the Tie defender expansion, but it is one of those cards that I read, I do not really understand and that I put to side for future reference.
There are fantastic reviews out there about every single card in the game, this entry on my blog does not intent to go so far, it is only a couple of ideas and random thoughts that I got when I was wondering about this Colonel guy.
Let's take a look to his special ability on detail:

1. when attacking, 
2. immediately after you roll attack dice, 
3. you may acquire a target lock on the defender 
4. if it already has a red target lock token.

point 1, when attacking; no surprises here, a special ability which can be use when Vessery attacks some one, nothing strange here
point 3, you may acquire a target lock on the defender; ok, this sounds similar to Fire Control Systems; Vessery attacks some one and get a target lock onto this some one, so far so good
but
point 2, immediately after you roll attack dice; yes, that is before you modify those same attack dice; in silver, Vessery can attack some one, roll dice, target lock on that poor some one and use that target lock to modify those same dice
however
point 4, if it (the target) has a red target lock token; which means that some one else on the side of Vessery needs to "mark" the target for him.

In short, as long as Vessery has some ally spotting targets for him, he will be able to use his incredible special ability.

Two main lines of thought here:

1. how can Vessery become more formidable?
2. who is going to spot for him?

Upgrades
Colonel Vessery has an Elite Pilot slot, so in theory he can get some extra power here. He also has, as each defender does, the Cannon and the Missile slots. I have read that the "current" meta goes about Vessery with Heavy Laser Cannon, which really sounds scary to anyone but I was looking to Vessery and was only able to think, missiles, this guy needs to get some Cluster Missiles.
Cluster Missiles is 4 points and according to the FAQ is treated as two separate attacks against the same target.
In my imagination this goes:

1. Someone targets lock an enemy ship
2. Vessery targets lock the same enemy ship
3. Vessery fires the Cluster Missiles by spending his target lock and discarding the Cluster Missiles card
4. Vessery rolls attack dice, gets a free target lock and uses it
5. Vessery rolls attack dice again and gets, again, a free target lock 

So, you are rolling twice 3 attack dice with reroll against the same poor guy. True, you can only do this once, but what a nice strike if the dice are with you.

On this trend of thoughts, some people always complain about the dice being bad with them, so I was thinking maybe get Vessery Marksmanship, to ensure some impacts, but this will add 3 extra point to the cost of Vessery, raising it to 42 points in total. Which, by the way,  will be the same cost as Vessery with Heavy Laser Cannon and some schools of thought in the xwing community think that Marksmanship is not really useful.

Now the question is: the possibility of rolling twice 3 attack dice with reroll on them once in a game is worth 4 points?

Not sure about the answer yet.

Other upgrade I was thinking about in this context was Engine Upgrade, actually I always consider Engine Upgrade as upgrade for my builds. I really like the flexibility that the boost action offers. In the case of a Tie defender I think that this upgrade can surprise an unwary opponent as who has seen a boost action after a K-turn?
Usually,this manoeuvre is red but not in the defender, for a defender this manoeuvre is white, which makes possible to take action(s) after it. I think this can be nice to try, feint an entry into the asteroids on the centre with a white K-turn and a boost action and see if my opponent missed the spot I was supposed to be but I am not :)

Spotter

Ok, Vessery needs red target lock tokens on his intended enemy. Who can give them to him?

First answer which came to my mind was, anyone with Targeting Computer, a 2 points Modification available to anyone.
The cheapest option for this approach will be standard Tie fighters, either the black or the obsidian squadron, depending on the local meta concerning Predator.
Second idea was a Lambda shuttle with the title which allows it to target anyone anywhere. This can be very juicy. Adding Weapons Enginer to be able to have two target locks with only one ship (the shuttle) and using only one action sounds even better. This on an Omicron will amount to 27 points.
Third idea, someone who already has target lock action in its action bar, like Tie Advanced or Tie Bombers. The current consensus is that until the release of the new Raider huge ship for the Empire, the Tie Advanced is overcosted, however the Tie Bomber amounts to the cheapest and robustest ships of the Empire's arsenal.
Some web search showed that, again, there is nothing new under this Sun. There were plenty of entries on the FFG forum about Vessery and lists based on him combined either with Scimitar Tie bombers or shuttles or Firesprays. One particular list was basically Vessery and three Scimitars,which sounds very scary on paper at least.

My current list
At the end I settled for this:
- Vessery with Veteran Instincts and Engine Upgrade (40 points)
- Omicron with ST-321 title and Weapons Engineer (27 points)
- Scimitar Tie bomber x2 (32 points)
for a four ships list with a total of 99 points which will allow to try to get the initiative to be able to fire first at PS 8 with Vessery.

More on this coming soon (I hope so at least ;D )