I know I want to toy with a squad with Vader and Squad Leader to help Kir Kanos to get Evade tokens.

Where is the evade version of recon? lol

Vader is soooooo much better than a pilot with PtL. Sure TIE Interceptors might have a better dial, but if you are PtL every turn then you are stuck with only greens. I am a huge Soontir+PtL fan, but the biggest draw back is when you can't do that K-turn when you want to. Even Night beast is often better than PtL.

Vader also costs more than a pilot with PTL, by a good margin. At the end of the day, Vader is not really comparable to a Interceptor with PTL. They're apples and organizes down to very simplest of things. Different dials, different ships, thus different attack values, hull, shields, actions, different pilots, different PS and abilities.

As long as Vader is PS9 in an Imperial ship that can go green 1s, comes with 2 free actions, a target lock and can sport missiles, he will be used. Period.

I guess you could say I am attempting to compare apples and oranges. But the whole argument was about how effective Vader will be with aces coming out.

I have seen some valid points but nothing that screams competitive at me.

Here was my reasoning in better detail.

Vader 29 Points (33 With engine Upgrade)

2 Shield, 3 Hull, 2 Attack Dice

TL, Focus, Barrel Roll, Evade, Boost

2 Actions @ No stress

PS9

Royal Guard Interceptor

22 Points (32 Points with Ptl, Hull, Shield)

1 Shield, 4 Hull, 3 attack Dice

Focus, Evade, Boost, Barrel Roll

2 Actions w/ Stress

Ps6

It's been shown that expose is not worth the points on vader, however if you do use it on him you now bump his cost to 37, or more commonly 35 w/ Squad leader or Swarm.

In my eyes, the interceptor has the advantage here, better dial and movement advantage over vader. Potential action denial if used to block.

The interceptor has all 2 Green, 3 forward Green, and 4 Forward Green. Giving the ability to remove the stress you acquired easily. You have 1 Higher dice which means that vader will probably need to save that focus and evade to avoid taking damage, you on the other hand could only spend 1 Evade token if shot at range 2.

You're not taking Vader to shoot with 2 dice though. You're looking for an opportunity to drop off some missiles.

As for the RGT config, why so expensive? PTL is the only thing you need on it. No point making him so expensive you can only fit 3 of those in a list. Dropping all those upgrades gives you enough for another ship, that's +25% firepower and the same amount of hull if you factor in the added PTL and evade dice.

3 Ship build won nationals last year, and I personally find interceptors to be greater than x-wings down to the wire.

As for dropping the upgrades, you open yourself up to being one-shot on a really bad roll. Aside from a 4 Crit, all blanks hit against the RGT you will have to get multiple shots on these guys if they are going to go down.