With R5-P9 in the transport pack (At the end of the Combat phase, you may spend 1 of your focus tokens to recover 1 shield (up to your shield value). cost: 3) it got me thinking about 3x again.

Luke Skywalker w/ PTL, R5-P9, Shield Upgrade(or engine upgrade) (38)

Garvin Dreis w/ R2D2, Shield Upgrade (34)

Biggs Darklighter w/ R2-F2 (28)

Need testing and possible tweaks, but I was thinking something along those line might work.

I think Oso has the right of it. If you're going to do 3 X's, you need to have serious firepower to overcome your limited attacks. If you're not rolling 10+ red dice every round, I think you may be in for a hurtin'.

But "serious firepower" does you no good if you lose a ship in the opening engagement. The goal of my list is to survive the early game and win the battle of attrition in the end game.

I don't think 3 X has to be all about the firepower to win, even though the OP has 'proven' his list works by placing well in a tourney (good job with that, by the way!)

I too have been considering a way to make a 'tanky' 3 X build that works. I had to shelve my playtesting for the time being due to Imdaar Alpha coming up and I don't have the time to get a 3 X list ready on such short notice.

However, I did manage to playtest R5-P9 on Luke in a 4 X build:

Luke w/ R5-P9 & DtF

Garven

2 Rookies

It works okay while Garven is alive, but once he goes down, R5-P9 becomes tricky to use effectively on Luke. This compounds even more in the end game when Luke is the last one alive. Basically, if you save your focus to regen a shield, you are limiting Luke's ability to reliably take out opposition, but if you use it and you don't manage to wipe out a ship when you need to, Luke could go down. Long story short, I think R2-D2 is still a better fit on Luke because the shield regen is 'guaranteed' - you just have to reveal a green manoeuvre.

Not trying to shoot down your idea though; just sharing my experience with R5-P9 so far (admittedly somewhat limited).

Love the math. My first exchange against a four rebel build, usually has Wes at range 3 and Wedge and Luke at range 2. The only time I fire all 3 at range 3 is vs. imperials that fly 5 straight. You also have to consider only the first shot from Wes allows the defender a chance to spend that Focus or Evade tokens. After that figure in Wedge's reducing the agility dice plus opportunist and Luke with opportunist. It will sway your numbers much more then you have them.

My suggestion is to play the Squad as i have it a couple of times. it may surprise you at how much damage it rolls off, as it did for most of my opponents Saturday. Dealing face up cards happens quite often. Its almost as if it's Halloween and Im handing out Crits and all your ships do is stand there with a plastic pumpkin.

Interesting build, for sure. I like the idea because it goes against the meta.

You've admitted that it struggled for you against swarms, and I can see that being true, especially a swarm tactics chain build that uses howlrunner and an initiative bid (because it means 2 or more of his ships will shoot before Luke).

Love the math. My first exchange against a four rebel build, usually has Wes at range 3 and Wedge and Luke at range 2. The only time I fire all 3 at range 3 is vs. imperials that fly 5 straight. You also have to consider only the first shot from Wes allows the defender a chance to spend that Focus or Evade tokens. After that figure in Wedge's reducing the agility dice plus opportunist and Luke with opportunist. It will sway your numbers much more then you have them.

That's already calculated into my math. It made it twice as hard to have Wes' shot against a focus token, and the others against a tokenless defender, and then Wedge's -1 agility was accounted for in total # of dice rolled. I will say that I didn't calculate each attack individually, instead I just added up all the dice. I should have done it with Wes at R3 and the rest at R2, but I didn't think that through to early enough to do that, and I didn't really want to run through the math again =P.

Very interesting read Oso. I've tried this particular list a few times but so far it has mostly ended in failure for me. Not sure what I'm doing wrong but reading your posts has helped me to understand how to fly it a little better.

That being said, what do you do when you face a flanker like Fel, Jax or Royals? Do you turn to face them or stay on course?

First of all you never want initiative. My strategy is to force a joust. Since we have P.S. 8,9 and 10 you get to see their set up. No flanker is ammune. If they grant you the gift of putting one of their ships to one side and the rest to the other you have to decide target priority. If it's a mini swarm and one flanker go after the flanker. Force your opponent to fly the Astroids to get to you. ( this was my mistake in the top 4). Against rebels if you are setting up on the opposite corner of their ships your doing it wrong. It may feel like your going to get slaughtered and your opponent is thinking the same thing. After the first exchange and they are down a ship, their only chance of havering a fighting chance is to kill one of yours. Remember they only get to shoot with 3 ships, the likely hood you'll survive is very high. On the next they will have 2 and you will have 2.

Love the math. My first exchange against a four rebel build, usually has Wes at range 3 and Wedge and Luke at range 2. The only time I fire all 3 at range 3 is vs. imperials that fly 5 straight. You also have to consider only the first shot from Wes allows the defender a chance to spend that Focus or Evade tokens. After that figure in Wedge's reducing the agility dice plus opportunist and Luke with opportunist. It will sway your numbers much more then you have them.

That's already calculated into my math. It made it twice as hard to have Wes' shot against a focus token, and the others against a tokenless defender, and then Wedge's -1 agility was accounted for in total # of dice rolled. I will say that I didn't calculate each attack individually, instead I just added up all the dice. I should have done it with Wes at R3 and the rest at R2, but I didn't think that through to early enough to do that, and I didn't really want to run through the math again =P.

I guess I'll take luck all day. But I've flown this list 19 times now with 3 loses( counting the 2 from regionals). I truly believe my mistakes cost me the title. Jousting with a 6- Tie swarm Dumb! Not clearing out the Ion Turret equally as Dumb! That cost me my two matches. The ones I won were not even close matches. I was routinely the first match over and twice I never lost a ship. Now here is an interesting fact of the 16 wins I have with this squad, 2 are against swarms and 8 of them I never lost a ship! My 3 loses are Vs 3 tie 3 interceptor swarm, y-Wing and 3 B's and a shuttle + Mini swarm of ties.

So... I was thinking about what pilots would work. The one thing I don't like about your build is that it requires VI on Wes so he shoots before Wedge, but your PS is so high anyways, that it's the only reason to put VI on him to begin with. But if you dropped Wedge, who else could you put in? Once Rebel Aces comes out, Keyan will be great. But in the mean time, you could put Ibby in instead. The biggest down side to this is her PS is only 6, and while her ability doesn't allow her to do the same max damage that Wedge's does... it actually increases her average damage.

Agi Ibby Wedge

1 3.14 3.00

2 2.77 2.63

3 2.40 2.26

4 2.04 1.91

Now, you have 2 extra points, and an open EPT... and since you don't have Wedge, you don't have the R2, for a 3rd extra point. You can now put PTL on Wes if you want, to give him F+TL to maximize his damage. With the remaining 4 points, you can add 2 R2s and 2 points for... FCS?... Or you could add a R2D2 to Luke... Or Proton Torps to Wes, so everyone rolls 4 dice w/ a F on the opening turn... Lots of options for those last 4 points.

Or, if you wanted to keep Wedge, you could drop Luke for Ibby since she has a better offensive ability, though Luke's defensive ability is a good closer. Just a few thoughts.

Keyan will make it into my list. This idea of target lock use opportunist to get the stress and have a 4 attack dice with target lock and focus seems really good. Of all this talk about the "Opportunist Knocking" list, what I'm trying to champion is the upgrade Opportunist. It seems to be ignored so far in the meta. My list is just built to try and maximize the use of Opportunist. Here is another Squad I've been brain storming aft seeing your work with Hobbie.

Garven Dreis (26)

"Hobbie" Klivian + R2-D6 + Opportunist (30)

"Dutch" Vander + Ion Cannon Turret (28)

Prototype Pilot + Chardaan Refit (15)

Could be interesting.

Very interesting read Oso. I've tried this particular list a few times but so far it has mostly ended in failure for me. Not sure what I'm doing wrong but reading your posts has helped me to understand how to fly it a little better.

That being said, what do you do when you face a flanker like Fel, Jax or Royals? Do you turn to face them or stay on course?

First of all you never want initiative. My strategy is to force a joust. Since we have P.S. 8,9 and 10 you get to see their set up. No flanker is ammune. If they grant you the gift of putting one of their ships to one side and the rest to the other you have to decide target priority. If it's a mini swarm and one flanker go after the flanker. Force your opponent to fly the Astroids to get to you. ( this was my mistake in the top 4). Against rebels if you are setting up on the opposite corner of their ships your doing it wrong. It may feel like your going to get slaughtered and your opponent is thinking the same thing. After the first exchange and they are down a ship, their only chance of havering a fighting chance is to kill one of yours. Remember they only get to shoot with 3 ships, the likely hood you'll survive is very high. On the next they will have 2 and you will have 2.

Awesome tips! Thank you so much. Glad to know someone is rocking with Rogue Squadron:)

I tried out a similar 3 Rebel list and it didn't go well against a modified swarm. It was:

Wes + VI

Wedge + Opp

Ten + FCS + Opp

I faced Carnor Jax w/ TC, an Alpha, Howlrunner and 3 Academies.

I could have done a better job prioritizing targets but I didn't think the decisions I did make were that poor. I had a bad opening exchange where Howlrunner canceled all of the hits from Wes and Wedge (she would have taken 2 hits if I had a focus instead of a TL) and finally Ten put 2 crits on her but she stayed alive that round.

Dice were definitely a factor but that happens throughout the course of a tournament. I'm not sold on these lists yet (granted the Wes, Wedge, Luke list is probably superior).

It was a lot of fun to get multiple 5 dice attacks at range 1 throughout the game but I see too much risk especially if Swarms or modified Swarms are going to be as strong a factor in the current meta as I think they will play out to be during Regionals.

No argument her on that. My list is very Meta dependent. Currently, we see a lot of 4 ship rebel builds. My list owns all of them! It will struggle against a swarm and I plan on hashing out my strategy versus the swarm. It is very paper rock scissors. I win over the 4 rebel builds, 4 rebel builds win over the swarm and the swarm win over me. I know there are more variety of builds, but that is the meat in a nutshell.