My suggestion would be to purchase 4 paint pens They should be between $3 and $5 each. You'll want blue, green, red, and pick another bright color that will stand out...say purple or orange. These are to paint the sides of your cardboard items. Blue is for your blue tokens: shields & cloak. Green is for focus, evade, reinforce. Red is for crit, stress, ion tokens. Use the 4th color for the sides of your maneuver templates and, if you want, your bomb/mine tokens. That will make everything stand out more on your black background. Oh, and for target locks, I like the idea of blacking out one side. I personally love my acrylic upgrades and highly suggest saving money for them. You can get some nice ones for reasonable prices. I use Daft Concepts for my general play tokens and target locks and use Cog-o-two for my maneuver templates. My suggestion would be before getting acrylic, pick up a play surface you're happy with. Do some research and find something that appeals to you that others have said work well. I use a cloth mat from Corsec Engineering...but that was expensive and probably not a good fit for your situation.

Excellent points StevenO. Thanks again.

I like it StevenO. Thank you. It does put a bigger target on Kyle's back; but let's face it, he's the primary target here anyway.

Thank you for all of the insight. This is what I've summarized the advice down to: Kyle Katarn Moldy Crow Recon Specialist Blaster Turret Hull Upgrade Wedge Antilles Swarm Tactics Shield Upgrade R5-P9 Garven Dreis 2 points left over. Here, I'm thinking an astromech for Garven is my best bet. I'm thinking either R5-K6 or R7. Since Garven will likely be shooting at 9 with Wedge, he probably won't still have a target lock out there when he has to defend. So, R5-K6 is likely his best bet.

Thank you for the feedback folks. I really appreciate it. I see why the torps and failsafes are overkill and will definitely sub them out for some of the upgrades mentioned above. Just to address a couple of the questions that came up regarding my choices for a few of the upgrades: Kyle has the blaster turret as an answer to my three ship build facing a Phantom, it feels to me like a cheap way to get the field of fire coverage of a fourth ship for far fewer points. I also felt the need for a turret with some teeth so that the HWK is less of a flanking target. I'm aware of the focus eating requirement of the blaster and don't intend to use it unless forced to do so or if Garv is able to pass a focus back to Kyle. By slow playing early, I generally have a good pool of focus ready. Regarding decoy, you're right, it was purely a positioning play. I'm not sure what the meta looks like where I'm about to play and have some concerns that I may need to spread out a little if faced with Phantom builds. I'm probably over-compensating on this fear with decoy and the turret and should grab swarm tactics instead.

I'd have to drop the R2s as well. I'm ok with that as I've not found them to be critical to the success of this build anyway. Thanks for the tip. I can see where another ship would be beneficial particularly with Phantoms likely hitting the table at this tourney.

I'm preparing for a local tournament and am considering bringing the following build. I've had some good luck with it of late but am curious if there are any 'gotchas' that I might not have thought of. Kyle Katarn Moldy Crow Blaster Turret Recon Specialist Garven Dreis Proton Torpedoes R2 Astromech Munitions Failsafe Wedge Antilles Proton Torpedoes R2 Astromech Munitions Failsafe Decoy The idea here being obviously passing around that focus. Kyle becomes a little less of an easy target with the blaster turret. Wedge lets Garven take the focus from Kyle and then pass it back to either Wedge or Kyle after he uses it. The R2 units will let the X-wings to have flexibility coming out of their k-turns to stay on target. In the event that Garven doesn't use his focus on attack, Wedge still doesn't need the focus as much because he lowers the enemy's evade dice by one.

When I was looking into cases, I was debating between LT and BF. I really liked the flexible ship cut-outs on the LT, but went with BF because I liked the expand-ability of the PACK system. My only real beef with the BF comes from the 'kits' that they sell. Other than the set for the 216, the other kits don't seem to allow for room for all of the bases, pilot cards, etc that you get with all the ships that the foam will hold. Consequently, I'd recommend either using their custom foam tool and getting exactly what you want. I now have a 216 with a PACK Plus riding under it for my standard gaming sessions and a 432 that houses my Tantive, my 2 transports, and all of my spare gear. Regarding tokens/templates, I have template sets from Daft Concepts, Team Covenant, Cog-o-Two, and Applied Perspective. My favorites are the Cog-o-Two and the Team Covenant sets. It's worth noting that the quality of all four sets are fantastic; I just happened to like the way light plays of the particular acrylic that Cog-o-Two and Team Covenant use. For the standard tokens, I went with Daft Concepts and have been thrilled with how they look. Daft does not make tokens for bombs/cloak/etc. So, I'm still looking for a source for those. Carlos at Mechanical Warhorse is putting some together for me and I'll report back how they come out. I guess to round out this comment, I'll add that I've been using a Corsec Engineering cloth mat and have been very happy with it. That graphic isn't quite as sharp as I was hoping for, but it's definitely a high quality item and I would purchase it again in hindsight. Hope that helps.

As requested, here is an image of the custom HWK that ZombieHedgehog did for me. The intent was to have a custom HWK that still looked like an HWK. This ship donated its blaster cannon to the Solar Flare YT build and ZHH replaced it with a sensor array; with the though that it would represent the recon specialist upgrade often seen paired with the HWK. My request for the paint scheme was that it look like a ship that would be part of the Rebel fleet, so a standard issue base with red markings. I don't have a picture of the sensor array, but here is an image of the completed ship. As you can see, he clearly knocked my request out of the park. This ship is exactly what I asked for.

Don't sell yourself short. Those Z-95s would do any smuggler fleet proud and your HWK looks sharp.

I just want to pipe in and mention that I'm the customer on ZombieHedgehog's latest two YT conversions and thought it worth mentioning that he has been phenomenal to work with. He's been great to collaborate with and bounce ideas off of and have been outstanding at keeping me in the loop as to the progress on the three builds he signed on for. I simply couldn't be happier with the experience and the results have been spectacular. Worth noting, the blaster cannon on the Solar Flare conversion came off of a custom HWK that he also did for me. That ship came out equally amazing.

Ha ha! Nice. I can only respond with "Shut up and take my money!"

I have started painting my tokens, ship cards, and other cardboard cut-outs with paint pens and they look so much better. Thank you for the idea!

Very sharp looking fleet. I love the idea of a fleet theme. Great job! How is the durability of the paint job with paint pens? Did you need to add a finishing layer or does the paint dry and stick well to the models?

To be fair, I appreciated the comments about only using one peg. I hadn't considered that and will see how the models look and perhaps convert to that method myself.