"You will never find a more wretched hive of Scum & Villainy"- Obi-Wan Kenobi.

If you love Star Wars, or you love X-Wing, or BOTH- then you should be very excited about the Scum & Villainy faction coming out for Fantasy Flight's, X-Wing. With any villainous additions, you have to expect some underhanded moves and plays and this faction is sure to deliver.

Fantasy Flight Games has offered a peek at the Illicit Upgrades & Salvaged Astromechs that will be available for this meddlesome faction and they are sure to bring a whole new dimension to the world of X-Wing! These upgrades represent the array of technologies that the Empire has chosen to outlaw, so it's only fitting that we see them in the Scum & Villainy faction.

How about the treat to fire at a ship OUTSIDE of your firing arc? With "Hot Shot" Blaster, you can do just that- but only once. That being said, just think of how you will get into your opponent's head when they have to consider that threat for every move they make not knowing when you will activate that ability!

What about those defining instances where you need to get just one more hit of damage on a ship to end them? Feedback Array allows you forego a regular attack and assign 1 point of damage to a ship in range "1". This one does come at a price, since you have to assign 1 ion token to your ship as a penalty- but it could be the best move you make in a game!

If the ion token to yourself isn't a steep enough price to assign damage, then why not step it up a notch and use, Dead Man's Switch? This ability is used just after your ship is destroyed and assigns 1 damage to EACH ship within range 1! If you are being overpowered, this is a perfect way to have the last word, especially if ships are left with only 1 damage point before this happens!

Wish you had the ability to avoid a move that puts you in harm's way? Then Inertial Dampener has you covered! This ability allows you to add maneuver to your ships dial as well as avoid taking maneuvers that would place your ship in a spot more treacherous than the place you started.

I mentioned Astromechs before. For just 2 squad points, you can use the Salvaged Astromech to give you the ability to avoid even the most damaging critical hits by avoiding the effects of a "ship" trait card. There are no less than 10 cards with the "ship" trait in a game.

Droids can play mind games too, so perhaps the "Genius" ability would fit nicely into your game? With this ability you can deploy a bomb either before you reveal your maneuver, or after it's complete!

And last but not least, you can alter the speed/agility of your ships with Unhinged Astromech, where for just 1 squad point, you can treat all your speed "3" maneuvers as green maneuvers, which could totally screw up your opponent's strategy for how to deal with your ships.

Will it be good, the Dark Side or Scum & Villainy on your side in your next game?