What If… Armada Had a Scum Faction?

19th Feb 2025

Barry

10 mins

Rosco and I have often discussed new content for Armada, and I invariably end up lamenting my wants for a Scum and Villainy faction. I’ve seen it raised in other forums, and discussion typically steers towards what medium and large ships would be available as a constraint. That’s not something I want from a Scum faction – it’s a rag-tag group made up of pirates, syndicates, smugglers and bounty hunters. So no, they don’t have something equal to a Star Destroyer. They have something better.

Greed and a distinct lack of scruples.

For me, a Scum faction in Armada should be distinctly asymmetric against something like the Empire from whom they would seek to raid, steal, and assassinate to meet their ends. Another consideration I have though is being able to recycle content – specifically cardboard bases and miniatures wherever possible to help assist in getting it on the table.

Building a Faction from Scraps

The main problem with Scum as a faction is when they’re set – these characters exist across all three trilogies and wax and wane with influence. This also mean the ships available to them is a bit of a mixed bag of recycled or upcycled scrap. There’s also Legends vs Disney canon – and I’m trying to stick to what’s in the Disney canon because it’s generally content that has been more widely consumed compared to the older Legends content.

Which is a shame because I really like Shadows of the Empire, and while Black Sun does clearly exist in the Disney’s canon, it hasn’t yet been explored to include Xizor or his compatriots. With all that in mind – these are my top picks for converting ships and squadrons to a Scum faction that look won’t look completely out of place for them.

I am not going to be coming up with any specific abilities or points per se - as there is a lot of QA that (should) go into just the wording of those abilities to make sure they are concise and coherent – though I will indulge in the idea of what works thematically.

Easy to imagine pirates getting hold of these.

CR90 Corvette B - The Corvette B is something I’ve picked out over the other variant as the Corvette A is very much a Rebel staple. The B variant always seems a bit more niche for Dodonna’s Pride but it can and should be in the Scum faction, it offers a speed 4 ship that would be characteristic of pirates and smugglers – especially since the points errata makes some ion cannons tempting.

Nebulon-B Escort & Support Refit - If you’ve ever played the old X-Wing or TIE fighter games, Nebula class frigates seem like a dime a dozen. It’s also a ship that needs a bit of love and this could give it a second chance as a workhorse in the faction.

Hammerhead - Come on just look at it. It’s also the perfect ship for ramming and boarding bigger capital ships. It’s cheap, it can be nasty, and it could really hurt. The perfect ship for pirates looking to score.

Modified Pelta-Class - After seeing the pirates take over Nevarro in the Mandalorian Season 3 I think a Pelta is good inclusion to give the Scum faction the opportunity to coordinate the fighters with the Command Ship, while the Assault Ship also suits their needs.

Look if some Mando’s can take it over why not? Sure Luke…kinda helped…

Arquitens Light Cruiser - Again looking at the Mandalorian, these ships can fall into the hands of others despite the Empire’s efforts otherwise. Arquitens provide the Scum faction the vital gun range

C-ROC/Gozanti - We all want a support ship – and this should be somewhat obvious pulling titles like Broken Horn, Insatiable Worrt and Merchant One from X-Wing Miniatures. It’s also an opportunity to leverage more thematic Fleet-Support for a Scum faction like Jamming Fields and Slicer Tools to further frustrate their opposition.

Squadrons

There’s a lot of cross pollination with the squadrons already available in the Rebel and Imperial factions already available that we can draw on from X-Wing, such as Z-95’s, Y-Wings, and technically TIE fighters (of the Mining Guild Variety).

Borrowing from X-Wing, the Z-95 unique pilots could include N’Dru Suhlak and Kaa’to Leeachos. Generics there’s Black Sun soldiers or Binayre Pirates – so why not both with different key words for variety.

For the Y-Wing’s there’s Kavil and Drea Renthal as well as generics such as Crymorah Goons. The Mining Guild Ties can include Foreman Proach, Captain Seevor and Overseer Yushyn as well as some cheeky generics in the form of Mining Guild Sentry’s.

My boy Bossk!

But volume of fighters isn’t really the strength of the Scum faction – it’s the bounty hunters, smugglers, pirates and other hired funs that they draw in with the reward of credits and credibility. Again there’s the Aggressors, HWKs, Scurrg bombers, Lancers, YV-666, Jumpmasters, Firesprays, Gauntlets, YT-1300 and 2400’s and their famous pilots - all who have a place established in the Scum sub-factions.

Is there enough there to make them work? I can imagine some saying no but consider GAR and CIS who definitely are operating with less options and some of those squadron balls are brutal.

Commanding the Scraps

When it comes to commanding figures of the Star Wars underworld there are a few, leading different factions such as the Hutt Cartel, Red Dawn, Black Sun, and the Pyke Syndicate.

Crimson Dawn

· Maul – Ultimately at some point in time all the cartels and syndicates came under Maul’s Shadow Collective which aligned most of the syndicates together. This organisation does of course crumble eventually, even so Maul seemed to continued with control of Crimson Dawn.

QED.

· Dryden Vos – As the public leader of Crimson Dawn, Vos was feared within the underworld and was fighting a proxy war with the Rebellion without even knowing it.

· Qi’ra – Vos’s top lieutenant within Crimson Dawn, she’s a bit of a realist and see’s things for what they are – and trained by Maul to fight the Sith.

Where people would suggest Maul as the Commander, I’d flip it since he was always using others as the public face of the Crimson Dawn (he is after all referred to as ‘The Shadow’ by the Inquisitors). Dryden and Qi’ra would be double-sided commander card both with Crimson Dawn as a keyword, and have Maul as a Fleet-Command with the same keyword to build that theme.

So when Dryden Vos isn’t doing it for you anymore? Discard Maul’s Fleet Command card and now you get Qi’ra instead to represent her takeover as the public face of the organisation (or vice versa, if it suits). This creates a fair bit of design space, and if you don’t take Maul you can stick with one of the two offered up.

Hutt Cartel

Ready to make an example of anyone…

· Jabba the Hutt – Seems kind of obvious really to include Jabba as a Commander. He has his own little court of bounty hunters like Boba Fett and smugglers like Han Solo, as well as the broader resources of the Hutt cartel.

· Bib Fortuna – He served Jabba for a long time as majordomo and after escaping the Great Pit he sought to take over Jabba’s organisation, though how effective he was compared to Jabba is questionable.

I think it is clear that Jabba is a Commander, with a Cartel key word and Bib is a unique crew member; other members of Jabba’s court could make an appearance – though I can’t help but think he needs a Fleet Command card about making an example of someone like Solo to…motivate his employees.

Pirates

He’s a plant apparently…

Gorian Shard – A pirate king no less! His corsair haunts the Outer Rim with its small detachment of snub fighters, raiding outposts and harassing the small colonies as demonstrated in the Mandalorian. He’s also one of the in-universe demonstrations that pirates may actually have significant resources behind them.

Vane – As a member of Gorian Shard’s crew he’s proven one thing, that he’s a coward looking out for himself. Though he seems to be a half-way decent pilot, it’s not clear if he’s command material or if they would follow him.

Hondo Ohnaka - My friends! A pirate of such a storied past absolutely must be included. Though he occasionally seems washed up doing bit jobs scrapping over the score split, we must remember he had his own gang that held its own.

“Oh the stories I could tell! So many of them true!”

Gorian Shard seems to me the factions best chance to take and hold territory thematically, with Vane helping to pin down enemy squadrons.

In my mind I imagine him taking the station and converting it to an Armed Station whilst Vane pins down fighters around asteroids and debris - but we must remember that Vane is a coward without his wing-mates or a ship nearby.

Hondo on the other hand is always about the score, no matter how trivial. To that end, Hondo would be eyeing off those shiny objective tokens you have on that ship with a smile and negotiate an even share. Therefore, I think maybe that as first player Hondo simply ignores the objective text and gets the same benefits of second player.

Upgrading the Scraps

The recent points changes has already opened a lot of options, so there’s no need to repurpose anything unique in that regard. Beyond the obvious opportunity for crew and titles, I think boarding teams is where the faction can carve out its identity.

Pirates plundering wares from the enemy, sabotaging their ships, or claiming bounties. This is another way to undermine an opponents ability to conduct operations, and gives the faction a fighting chance against larger more powerful ships and there’s plenty of characters

The junk will do…

It is comparatively easy to just sit here and come up with the idea of something whereas there is a lot of work that goes into actually making something like this fit into the game properly. Though it’s fun to think about what it might be and how it might play.

Let us know in the comments or on socials what you’d like to see in this fantasy faction.

Stay salty!

- Barry