I get the feeling that boost should have been native on the defender, for at least the same cost. It seems overpriced and the boost gives it the option of adding some slight change in direction to it's green straights. I also feel that the system upgrade was misplaced on the phantom and much more fitting to the "top of the line" defender allowing it to use advanced sensor to BR or Boost either before or after it's long green straights, or white K.

I'm pretty sure I would almost always want to use engine upgrade on a defender and it just makes it horrendously expensive.

If the E-wing is a combination of the X and A-wings I would have expected the defender or TIE-ultimate as I like to call it, to be a mix of Interceptor and Advanced, but it falls a way short on the manoeuvrability. It's a very unique dial, but also extremely limiting.

I forsee people using cards from the set a lot, but no actual ships.

Huh, Vessery can make use of cluster missiles!

Not sure if someone said this already but i'm not reading the whole thread just to go and forget what i wanna say:

Rexlor Brath is gonna rip Chewbacca to pieces. And, really, everyone, but especially Mr. I'm Not Used to Dealing With Critical Hits Chewie.

Sigh..... very underwhelmed with FFG's decision on how to represent the Tie Defender.

I am usually of the attitude of "don't knock it, till you try it" but in all honesty I can't helped but be disappointed. Especially for the same cost as the base E-Wing with Hull Upgrade, you can get a base Tie Defender but have a lot more utility through upgrade options, an evade action, and what will mostly likely be a better stress-shedding dial. Don't get me wrong I have no idea how the white Koiogran will pan-out but the lack of green maneuvers leaves a lot to be desired on the Tie Defender.

It also appears that there isn't anything that the Defender can do that can't couldn't already be accomplished with the Firespray or Interceptor. I appreciate that FFG is trying to introduce more playing styles and sure the Defender might have some advantages in this same role when compared to other ships but I'm not sure if it would be enough to justify the points cost.

• The TIE defender is a straight-forward fighter with strong shields, weapons, agility, and a maneuver never before seen on a dial.
• The E-wing pairs the X-wing’s firepower and resilience with the A-wing’s speed and agility.

It might be a my imagination, but I find it funny that FFG might have been hinting as to how the dial would have turned out in the initial reveal.

Also as another "observation", I think this ship was really meant for the Epic game type as an Imperial counter to the Huge ships, especially since most of the pictures we have of it are shooting against Capital ships. I might even go as far to speculate the the new X-Wings included with the Transport were really meant to counter this ship, which might explain why we didn't simply get a X-Wings centric Aces pack.

Sorry if this turned into a rant, I'm still very excited to try this ship out either way.

You are right that PtL is always going to be a great option, but Stress looks like it might not be the best opportunity cost to pay as the meta advances.

Turrets will still be turrets, but being stressed isn't as big a problem if you aren't in front arc. I really think the Defender will be a good flanker due to its dial. A different flanker than interceptors, but a good one.

I am just excited to field a defender and 2 interceptors.The look on my opponents face when I drop them and when I crush them with it, will be quite enjoyable. All the hate for this ship actually just makes me want to play it more and show that it isn't the black sheep every one thinks it it. I can already see how FFG envisioned the use of this ship, and I can honestly say I like how they think. Personally I am with a lot of people on the 3s should of been green just for the sheer fact that it limits its available stress removing maneuvers. Now the one thing I will be disappointed about is if the Onyx doesn't have a EPT, that would hamper a lot of my idea's for building a list.

I'm sorry but with that Dial i won't be buying this, maybe i'll get a free one

I think that a lot of people put off by the dial are going to buy into the Defender for the rest of the pack.

But particularly it's a good point that the Defender is going to work VERY well with a pair of Interceptors.

I look forward to testing this dial. Yeah, it's different, and will be a bit difficult to use. But the Ion Cannon white K-turn combo looks fun.

It occurs to me that Outmaneuver on a ship with a white Koiogran is going to be really powerful. If I threaten to K-turn behind you, you have two unpalatable options: get your action but lose a defense die, or K-turn to face me and keep the defense die but lose your action.

Yup. Seems like they found a number of clever ways to emphasize the Defender's zoom and boom style of play.

How are people feeling about the point costs?

Its jousting efficiency, as calculated in my Lanchester's thread, is essentially the same as the TIE Advanced. Before considering the dial and upgrades, it is about 5-6 points overcosted relative to the TIE Fighter.

Hey, could you please give a calculation of how good it's jousting is when it Always has a token? Because it will pretty nearly always have a token.

Also I think Outmaneuver will be devastating on the TIE Phantom...

Green Squadron Pilot + A-Wing Test Pilot + Outmaneuver + Predator = 25 points, and a very annoying ship.

It occurs to me that Outmaneuver on a ship with a white Koiogran is going to be really powerful. If I threaten to K-turn behind you, you have two unpalatable options: get your action but lose a defense die, or K-turn to face me and keep the defense die but lose your action.

Yup. Seems like they found a number of clever ways to emphasize the Defender's zoom and boom style of play.

How are people feeling about the point costs?

Its jousting efficiency, as calculated in my Lanchester's thread, is essentially the same as the TIE Advanced. Before considering the dial and upgrades, it is about 5-6 points overcosted relative to the TIE Fighter.

Hey, could you please give a calculation of how good it's jousting is when it Always has a token? Because it will pretty nearly always have a token.

Sure. I'll give you some background too, and for others reading. You can dig up the Lanchester's thread for the gory details if you really want to. I assume that the attacker has focus 2/3 of the time and the defender has focus 1/2 the time. If you then use a mix of ranges and defense agility that are reasonably representative of game combat, you get aggregate "average" damage numbers. They are:

2 dice: 0.6936

3 dice: 1.2070

4 dice: 1.7896 <---- Phantom Math here for reference

Normalizing that to the TIE Fighter's 2 attack dice, we get:

2 dice: 1

3 dice: 1.7401

4 dice: 2.5800

The jousting value is simply:

12* ((attack) * (shields*1.25 + hull)/ 3 ) ^ 0.52

• 5 PS1 Academy TIEs: 15 hull at 3 agility, 5 attacks at 2 dice (worth normalized 5.0 from above math), OR,
• 2 PS1 Defenders: 6 hull, 6 shields at 3 agility, 2 attacks at 3 dice (worth normalized 3.48 - 4.07 from above math)

Howlrunner's ability scales with the number of ships she can buff, so TIE Defenders are extremely anti-synergistic with her.

Another edit: For reference, a standard TIE Fighter is 100% efficienct at jousting since I use it as the baseline. A TIE Fighter with 1 Howlrunner reroll available is 117% efficient.

he he, I wonder if the forum will explode when they spoil the E-wing dial... ... ...

It occurs to me that Outmaneuver on a ship with a white Koiogran is going to be really powerful. If I threaten to K-turn behind you, you have two unpalatable options: get your action but lose a defense die, or K-turn to face me and keep the defense die but lose your action.

Yup. Seems like they found a number of clever ways to emphasize the Defender's zoom and boom style of play.

How are people feeling about the point costs?

Its jousting efficiency, as calculated in my Lanchester's thread, is essentially the same as the TIE Advanced. Before considering the dial and upgrades, it is about 5-6 points overcosted relative to the TIE Fighter.

Hey, could you please give a calculation of how good it's jousting is when it Always has a token? Because it will pretty nearly always have a token.

Sure. I'll give you some background too, and for others reading. You can dig up the Lanchester's thread for the gory details if you really want to. I assume that the attacker has focus 2/3 of the time and the defender has focus 1/2 the time. If you then use a mix of ranges and defense agility that are reasonably representative of game combat, you get aggregate "average" damage numbers. They are:

2 dice: 0.6936

3 dice: 1.2070

4 dice: 1.7896 <---- Phantom Math here for reference

Normalizing that to the TIE Fighter's 2 attack dice, we get:

2 dice: 1

3 dice: 1.7401

4 dice: 2.5800

The jousting value is simply:

12* ((attack) * (shields*1.25 + hull)/ 3 ) ^ 0.52

So treating the Defender the same as everything else, we get:

12*(1.7401*(1.25*3+3)/3)^0.52 = 24.4 = 81% of its 30 point cost

For reference the TIE Advanced clocks in at 82.3% of it's (PS1) cost (20).

So now onto your question. I reran the averages this time always giving the attacker focus. For 3 dice, that gets a damage of:

3 dice: 1.4123

So using these assumptions, getting focus 100% of the time instead of only 67% of the time, the average damage should increase by about 17%.

Normalized to 2 dice (with the original focus only 2/3 of the time), that's:

1.4123 / 0.6936 = 2.0362

So now the jousting value would be:

12*(2.0362*(1.25*3+3)/3)^0.52 = 26.5 = 88.2% of its 30 point cost.

That's basically the same as the TIE Interceptor's jousting efficiency, which is 89.0%. You can change the assumptions a little and nudge the numbers slightly in either direction, but it won't change the final numbers by more than a couple percentage points.

But that's all before we consider the rest of the dial, other than the white K-turn. The problem is, the rest of the dial is really bad at turning and clearing stress. So you've got a ship that has the same jousting efficiency as the TIE Interceptor, IF it can have an action 100% of the time. Even that is ideal, and won't happen in practice. You will get bumped. And you will need to occasionally pull a red turn to keep a target in your sights.

It has no boost, and its dial (other than the white K-turn) is in my opinion one of the worst in the game, so I seriously doubt that it will ever see much [edit: successful] competitive use. I called this back when the statline was revealed, and wanted to be wrong then. Unfortunately the dial spoil, and lack of evade token spoil, don't give it much upside from my original predictions. Time of course will tell.

Au Contraire: I think its dial is potentially the best in the game.

Yes, it has 2 red turns. However, it's the first ship in the game with all 3 turns and all 3 banks!

It's also the 2nd ship in the game with a Green Forward 2-5.

And there's that "White Koiogran" thing.

All in all, this is the most unpredicable dial that FFG has yet produced.

It doesn't zig-zag well, but since everything BUT its 1-2 turns are White and Green, it still chases very effectively.

Moreover, it can disengage at will.

I think I have found my quest: making a 2 Defender squad viable.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

Au Contraire: I think its dial is potentially the best in the game.

Yes, it has 2 red turns. However, it's the first ship in the game with all 3 turns and all 3 banks!

It's also the 2nd ship in the game with a Green Forward 2-5.

And there's that "White Koiogran" thing.

All in all, this is the most unpredicable dial that FFG has yet produced.

It doesn't zig-zag well, but since everything BUT its 1-2 turns are White and Green, it still chases very effectively.

Moreover, it can disengage at will.

I think this is a fantastic point many have missed out on. +100 pts!

I think I have found my quest: making a 2 Defender squad viable.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

If that manages to work, it'll be exactly in keeping with the feeling of seeing two Defenders hype into the combat zone. "Oh crap..."

I think I have found my quest: making a 2 Defender squad viable.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

Meanwhile, I want to do a 150 fleet of 5 of them, or possibly a 3-D list for 100.

For the latter, I gotta wonder whether I want to go 3x Stealth, 3x Ion Cannon, 3x Hull Upgrade, or have 1 pilot that's simply 10 points more expensive than his compatriots...

Au Contraire: I think its dial is potentially the best in the game.

Yes, it has 2 red turns. However, it's the first ship in the game with all 3 turns and all 3 banks!

It's also the 2nd ship in the game with a Green Forward 2-5.

And there's that "White Koiogran" thing.

All in all, this is the most unpredicable dial that FFG has yet produced.

It doesn't zig-zag well, but since everything BUT its 1-2 turns are White and Green, it still chases very effectively.

Moreover, it can disengage at will.

This is an interesting point, because I have been considering how to better reflect dial value in the Lanchester's calculations (that go beyond the simple jousting numbers above). I have been toying with breaking it down into several categories:

• minimum turn radius
• stress clearing
• K-turns
• slow-speed maneuvers
• special moves

The Defender comes out very far ahead on the K-turn category, and very far behind in everything else.

I think I have found my quest: making a 2 Defender squad viable.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

Meanwhile, I want to do a 150 fleet of 5 of them, or possibly a 3-D list for 100.

For the latter, I gotta wonder whether I want to go 3x Stealth, 3x Ion Cannon, 3x Hull Upgrade, or have 1 pilot that's simply 10 points more expensive than his compatriots...

Ha, you have to stop tempting me to get 5 Defenders! I thought that getting 4 would be enough!

Seriously though, 5 Defenders vs 12 TIE Fighters (Howlrunner + 11 Academies) is not going to be pretty for the Defenders.

Au Contraire: I think its dial is potentially the best in the game.

Yes, it has 2 red turns. However, it's the first ship in the game with all 3 turns and all 3 banks!

It's also the 2nd ship in the game with a Green Forward 2-5.

And there's that "White Koiogran" thing.

All in all, this is the most unpredicable dial that FFG has yet produced.

It doesn't zig-zag well, but since everything BUT its 1-2 turns are White and Green, it still chases very effectively.

Moreover, it can disengage at will.

It zig-zags.

It zig-zags by K-turn->barrel rolling, then K-turn->barrel rolling the next turn, then K-turn->barrel rolling the next turn...

It's a pretty useful zig-zag.

I think I have found my quest: making a 2 Defender squad viable.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

I don't think we will see viable two ship builds until we get legit extra attacks . Defenders firing 2x per turn might work

For epic play I can see TIEs scattering escorts and Defenders/Bombers tearing in on the capital ships. Bombers bring the escorts out wide, Defenders zoom past to strafe up close (like their art shows), and the escorts get separated -- denying them focus fire and making them easy pickings for TIEs. Even if the escorts make a bee line for the Defenders, Defenders will get through due to their robust total HPs.

Au Contraire: I think its dial is potentially the best in the game.

Yes, it has 2 red turns. However, it's the first ship in the game with all 3 turns and all 3 banks!

It's also the 2nd ship in the game with a Green Forward 2-5.

And there's that "White Koiogran" thing.

All in all, this is the most unpredicable dial that FFG has yet produced.

It doesn't zig-zag well, but since everything BUT its 1-2 turns are White and Green, it still chases very effectively.

Moreover, it can disengage at will.

This is an interesting point, because I have been considering how to better reflect dial value in the Lanchester's calculations (that go beyond the simple jousting numbers above). I have been toying with breaking it down into several categories:

• minimum turn radius
• stress clearing
• K-turns
• slow-speed maneuvers
• special moves

The Defender comes out very far ahead on the K-turn category, and very far behind in everything else.

It comes out very well with the minimum turn radius assuming it doesn't need to do so twice in a row without a Wingman or Captain Yorr nearby.

Its got the 1 Turns and 1 Banks in the slow-speed maneuvers. All it lacks here is the 1 straight.

Its got 4 stress clearing maneuvers. Yes, all of them are straight, but as far as the Red to White to Green ratio goes, at its worst it's a 4:9:4 ratio (slightly whiter than a 1:2:1). At its best (counting Left and Right variants as a single maneuver) it becomes a 2:5:4 ratio. The B-Wing, on the other hand, has a 6:5:4 / 4:3:3 ratio, and is not considered to have a bad dial.

As far as "Special Moves" go, I think the White Koiogran and the having all of the Turns and Banks definitely qualify as more useful than a Stop or a 2 Koiogran.