With the rebels getting another turret in thier arsenal and the imperials getting thier first, more stress inducers, and ion turrets and missiles and torpeados on the horizon, it feels very skill rewarding to win with the phantom. You beat the odds, you outbuilt your opponent and outflew them. There are a lot of hard and soft counters and more coming soon, I worried that cloaking wasn't going to do enough to protect an upgraded phantom but the movement shenanagins reward skilled plays... The opposite of thier one counter, turrets, that don't reward poor play but mitigate a lot of maneuvering errors.

Well, yes we will be getting all this new stuff in the future that will hurt the Phantoms, but what about right now at the current moment? Obviously, they haven't hit shelves yet, but you're talking about stuff in the future and probable outcomes against the Phantom based on x, y, and z.Also curious, Rakky: how much have you played with the Phantom?

I will be patient with you and give you counters already out right noe again.

1) Roark Garnet. You can give any ship PS 12 for firing so no matter who gets the phantom in his arc he can fire at it with agility 2. Also Roark is not exactly expensive and with an ion turret he is a PITA for Phantoms.

2) Lt. Blount or any Bandit Squadron plus Munitions Failsafe with Ion pulse Missiles. Granted the Phantom might oneshot you but Z-95 are cheap and Blount will hit you 100% while the Bandit would hit you sooner or later. If you get 2 ion tokens you are so dead in a phantom...

3) Flechette torps, R2-A3 or any other mechanic that will give you stress tokens reliably. If you get those the turn you have decloaked you either go green and people just know where you will be next turn or won't recloak which makes you... dead! While cloaked you still have your defense up but you still need to go greento get a boost to your attack unless you have a TL on them already. Or you need to go green afterwards which is even worse like i described already

4) Wedge, or anyone with outmaneuver or both... You can't dodge every arc but those make you a 3 or 2 agility ship. You know how you name that? A tie Fighter! They go SPLAT quite often.

5) Well i know you said turrets are a counter. Yes, indeed.

6) Gunner or Luke crewmembers (especially on turrets again)

7) anyone that can reliably have more PS than you with VI or has 9 and initiative over you.

8) Mines and bombs interdicting zones for you. Especially Proton Bombs (2 hull plus direct hit... Ouch)

9) Autoblaster, easy to dodge usually but if it gets close, it's bad for any ship with high agility.

10) Ten Numb, pretty much for the same reason as Autoblaster but more difficult to dodge.

On another page: As for your discussion with Rakky, never mind, he is usually against anything and anyone on principle, will insist on his point of views no matter what, and intolerant against anything else. Just ignore that guy if he annoys you. Even if like in this thread he is right he usually fails to explain himself in a way that does not provoke unneccessary arguments. That being said, this time Rakky after your initial rant pulled together and wrote smart stuff.

But Vorpal on the othet hand usually has good points to make even if we don't always agree.

It makes the current strong builds no longer viable.

Some of them, but not all of them. A more appropriate statement might be "it makes the current strong tactics no longer viable." This mostly applies to formation flying, which won't be able to address both a flanking Phantom and other ships at the same time. So, Biggs and Howl might not be as effective, but low PS lists aren't going anywhere in the near future. I think Blue Squadron Pilots will remain fairly ubiquitous, given their ability to a) equip cannons (both of which will be extremely relevant against Phantoms) and b) barrel roll, 2-K, and otherwise turn on a dime. It has everything you need to keep the super-Interceptor in arc, provided you don't try to fly them in a strict formation.

I disagree. You are going to have to make hard choices on Pilot Skill. Predator is a thing. A Jonus like effect on primary weapons is going to add up quick. Honestly, the 7 TIE swarm is dead as it was. It can't take the onslaught of more Assault Missiles, the Phantom, and Predator. Now, the TIE swarm will evolve, sure. Which is good.

By strong builds I refer to the big TIE swarms, the low PS rebel swarms, low PS builds in general. They all still work, just not as well.

I disagree. You are going to have to make hard choices on Pilot Skill. Predator is a thing. A Jonus like effect on primary weapons is going to add up quick. Honestly, the 7 TIE swarm is dead as it was. It can't take the onslaught of more Assault Missiles, the Phantom, and Predator. Now, the TIE swarm will evolve, sure. Which is good.

That's more a consideration of the overall meta than it is the Phantom. Yes, PS will be relevant, but not exclusive one way or the other. Meta variance is a good thing, and I embrace it. That doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly stop using perfectly viable lists just because Predator is floating around out there. It just means I'm going to have to adapt my strategies, and realize that some opposing lists will be an uphill battle.

With the rebels getting another turret in thier arsenal and the imperials getting thier first, more stress inducers, and ion turrets and missiles and torpeados on the horizon, it feels very skill rewarding to win with the phantom. You beat the odds, you outbuilt your opponent and outflew them. There are a lot of hard and soft counters and more coming soon, I worried that cloaking wasn't going to do enough to protect an upgraded phantom but the movement shenanagins reward skilled plays... The opposite of thier one counter, turrets, that don't reward poor play but mitigate a lot of maneuvering errors.

Well, yes we will be getting all this new stuff in the future that will hurt the Phantoms, but what about right now at the current moment? Obviously, they haven't hit shelves yet, but you're talking about stuff in the future and probable outcomes against the Phantom based on x, y, and z.Also curious, Rakky: how much have you played with the Phantom?

Ribann i am inclined to believe that you wrote this topic with no bad intent, because you feel something's wrong. And i admit i have done the same in the past. I usually was wrong, just like you are now (except back in wave 1 when i said Howlrunner swarms were OP as hell, got flak for it and was absolutely right with it considering the limited options back then) and people in threads were absolutely mean, just like they are with you atm.

I will be patient with you and give you counters already out right noe again.

1) Roark Garnet. You can give any ship PS 12 for firing so no matter who gets the phantom in his arc he can fire at it with agility 2. Also Roark is not exactly expensive and with an ion turret he is a PITA for Phantoms.

2) Lt. Blount or any Bandit Squadron plus Munitions Failsafe with Ion pulse Missiles. Granted the Phantom might oneshot you but Z-95 are cheap and Blount will hit you 100% while the Bandit would hit you sooner or later. If you get 2 ion tokens you are so dead in a phantom...

3) Flechette torps, R2-A3 or any other mechanic that will give you stress tokens reliably. If you get those the turn you have decloaked you either go green and people just know where you will be next turn or won't recloak which makes you... dead! While cloaked you still have your defense up but you still need to go greento get a boost to your attack unless you have a TL on them already. Or you need to go green afterwards which is even worse like i described already

4) Wedge, or anyone with outmaneuver or both... You can't dodge every arc but those make you a 3 or 2 agility ship. You know how you name that? A tie Fighter! They go SPLAT quite often.

5) Well i know you said turrets are a counter. Yes, indeed.

6) Gunner or Luke crewmembers (especially on turrets again)

7) anyone that can reliably have more PS than you with VI or has 9 and initiative over you.

8) Mines and bombs interdicting zones for you. Especially Proton Bombs (2 hull plus direct hit... Ouch)

9) Autoblaster, easy to dodge usually but if it gets close, it's bad for any ship with high agility.

10) Ten Numb, pretty much for the same reason as Autoblaster but more difficult to dodge.

On another page: As for your discussion with Rakky, never mind, he is usually against anything and anyone on principle, will insist on his point of views no matter what, and intolerant against anything else. Just ignore that guy if he annoys you. Even if like in this thread he is right he usually fails to explain himself in a way that does not provoke unneccessary arguments. That being said, this time Rakky after your initial rant pulled together and wrote smart stuff.

But Vorpal on the othet hand usually has good points to make even if we don't always agree.

Generally, I think you'll find the only things I'm pretty intolerant of are personal attacks, offensive language, and trolling. That and people who think the Empire were the "bad guys". All other things I will generally discuss and consider and play test. I even usually post back my findings.

I am also wondering when we'll either see bomb tactics evolve or get better bombs that will want us to evolve our tactics.

Generally, I think you'll find the only things I'm pretty intolerant of are personal attacks, offensive language, and trolling. That and people who think the Empire were the "bad guys". All other things I will generally discuss and consider and play test. I even usually post back my findings.

I am also wondering when we'll either see bomb tactics evolve or get better bombs that will want us to evolve our tactics.

I'm intolerant of your intolerance.

Of course you are Waahg. Of course you are. But at least you agree with the rest of stuff I said. Or at least are tolerant of it.

I'm tolerant of all but intolerant of the intolerant!

With so much discourse about the Phantom I am going to make phantom kill stickers and slap them on my bag every time I smoke one lol

(actually that's a good idea for the league I'm creating hmmmmm)

I would like to say and it may be abnormal but low PS can still be used

I ran in the Assault finals, Coran with 2 Prototype A's and a Bandit....absolutely demolished the Phantom and Defender....while losing a single Proto

I think the trick is no longer just all low PS but a high PS thrown into helped make the phantom go "uhhhh"

Precisely. Run aces only and you'll die to lower PS squads with more gun. The trick is to balance it between the two, as you did. Have an ace that their aces can't dance around, and lower PS ships to bring firepower. I think two attack ships such as the A-wing and Z-95 are going to be very useful in the new meta, especially the high PS ones (which are still cheap) wielding upgrades like Predator and Outmaneuver that increase their punch.

I for one think Airen Cracken definitely has a place in the new meta.

I don't think I have to have a good representation of the aggregate in order to talk about the Phantom.

Talk to the people on here who have played a lot with the Phantom (at least I personally know they have) like sozin or bmf. There is no changing it now, but at least the people who have played with it a lot are in my boat and the people who haven't are not.

I don't think I need more than 2-3 games to figure out how the Phantom works, especially considering the fact that it's little more than a super-Interceptor, and we've been playing against those for what, well over a year now? But that's just a humble estimation of my own abilities, and I don't expect you to know me from Adam.

Again, it's a good ship, but not so good as to take operator skill out of the equation. If you're having issues, my recommendation would be to git gud.

Current strong lists will have a chance. The maneuvering needed to fight the Phantom is just going to take some time to become ingrained. Trust me, I saw what happened when the Phantom single handily killed a squad. But, it was fairly obvious to me that the Rebel player was flying business as usual against the Phantom. You CANNOT fly the standard formation against the Phantom.

That's fine, but then you still have to deal with the "Echo Support"...like a Howl + 3AP mini swarm. If you split fire, Echo's support ships will most likely completely destroy the split formation fighters.

So I don't agree with you...there are currently strong lists that will get completely decimated by Echo. The viable builds in this game are shrinking as a result of Echo and Whisper.

Your argument hasn't been dismissed by your play count, it's been dismissed by the number of other persons who have disagreed with your assessment, your opening presentation, and your response to those who have disagreed with you.

Dismissed is also a strong word on your choice, it is your word though.

Invite Sozin and Bmf to join in: more info and more observations are key to understanding and adapting. I'd love to learn from more successes and failures.

That's fine, but then you still have to deal with the "Echo Support"...like a Howl + 3AP mini swarm.

Builds no longer work in a vacuum (setting nonwithstanding). What are you taking this on with?

One counter that everyone seems to have missed, although it has been alluded to in the breaking of formation flying is staggered approach flying. This will help lower skill pilots get shots (at the very least) on phantoms which while they'll still be cloaked...even landing a single hit per ship is going to seriously damage that 4 health ship.

Here's an example with a typical 4 ship rebel build

- -

- -

Or with a Tie Swarm

- -

- - - -

- -

Or with a soon to be popular 5 rebel ship build

- - - -

- (big hitter)

In these ways you can ensure that you will almost always have the phantom in arc of certain ships. The only thing this changes for the meta is that formations simply aren't feasible when you have ships that can completely avoid those 4 ships' arcs, so you have to stagger your approach.

Has anyone tried this? How does it work?

I readily admit that i haven't faced a phantom, but i believe that smarter initial maneuvers mitigates greatly the possible effect of the Phantoms unpredictability.

So my argument is dismissed because I've played with and against the Phantom more than the naysayers who have little to no experience flying the Phantom. I understand my observation of the Phantom is limited to my own experience and not representative of the aggregate. I don't think I have to have a good representation of the aggregate in order to talk about the Phantom.

Talk to the people on here who have played a lot with the Phantom (at least I personally know they have) like sozin or bmf. There is no changing it now, but at least the people who have played with it a lot are in my boat and the people who haven't are not.

I'm not dismissing anything, I just find your analysis rather lacking on the details. I can see the Phantom severely outmatched what you were playing with or against, but I still don't have much of an idea what the Phantom's opposition really was. Without those details I can't draw any conclusions. What if that 15% the Phantom lost was against lists with several high-PS pilots? That changes the conclusions of the entire analysis.

I am curious how Arvel with the ability to get an EPT will affect a phantom....

Also I may be wrong in this but it's how we all agreed upon it at the store.....if the phantom can't ever decloak as an action due to it being unable to legally complete the maneuver, you effectively make the phantom just sit there in cloak unable to shoot!

I don't think I have to have a good representation of the aggregate in order to talk about the Phantom.

Talk to the people on here who have played a lot with the Phantom (at least I personally know they have) like sozin or bmf. There is no changing it now, but at least the people who have played with it a lot are in my boat and the people who haven't are not.

I don't think I need more than 2-3 games to figure out how the Phantom works, especially considering the fact that it's little more than a super-Interceptor, and we've been playing against those for what, well over a year now? But that's just a humble estimation of my own abilities, and I don't expect you to know me from Adam.

Again, it's a good ship, but not so good as to take operator skill out of the equation. If you're having issues, my recommendation would be to git gud.

strangely, I cannot agree with this line of thinking anymore. Yes, it did work out fine for the TIEint and Falcon and nearly all other problems with perceived imbalance in the past, but with this new Phantom thingy there simply is a problem with the point balance. For 37 points, Echo + advanced cloaking device + recon spec ALWAYS defeats 3x Academy TIEs, regardless of how many rounds you want to play this matchup. For that matter, you MUST field somethin that is a turret, or is at least PS8 + initiative to combat it, and it really restricts decklist building. At least when it comes to the problems we previously had, all you needed to do was "oh you should change your flying a bit and you'll be able to catch him"

look at all the recommended options to combat the Phantom now. All of them requires you to bring in a specific weapon that simply isnt feasible in all lists. If you don't have that weapon, you are screwed. And as for simply widening your firing arcs, no I really do not think 8 Academy TIEs can hit the phantom's 4agi double focus. No, I really do not think 4 Xwings will be able to cover enough firing arcs against an Echo that can attack from 2 different directions by simply assigning it a forward maneuver.

Like someone else mentioned earlier, yes the Phantom has its own counters, but the problem here is that you are forced to pack these counters, and if you dont have your ghostbusting equipment, the fight is simply unwinnable

Also I may be wrong in this but it's how we all agreed upon it at the store.....if the phantom can't ever decloak as an action due to it being unable to legally complete the maneuver, you effectively make the phantom just sit there in cloak unable to shoot!

Yup. Effectivly neutered for a time.

Its even more ineffective if it is ion'd and/or stressed; much more so than it would be for a standard ship.

I don't believe in no win situations

You guys do know about the upcoming release of the Decimator and Outrider right?

I'm still on the fence. It is a game changing ship, that is no doubt. I was, an am still, surprised that it has 4 attack dice. My initial reaction, and then modified reaction after a number of games, is that it is overpowered. My biggest fear is that we're going to end up in a "Falcon or Phantom?" meta, which would suck. All of that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Phantom ends up being just another interesting list type to bring out of the bag, and not the meta crushing thing I initially (and still) think it is.

I don't believe in no win situations

Wrong franchise Kirk. You're drunk, go home!

strangely, I cannot agree with this line of thinking anymore. Yes, it did work out fine for the TIEint and Falcon and nearly all other problems with perceived imbalance in the past, but with this new Phantom thingy there simply is a problem with the point balance. For 37 points, Echo + advanced cloaking device + recon spec ALWAYS defeats 3x Academy TIEs, regardless of how many rounds you want to play this matchup. For that matter, you MUST field somethin that is a turret, or is at least PS8 + initiative to combat it, and it really restricts decklist building. At least when it comes to the problems we previously had, all you needed to do was "oh you should change your flying a bit and you'll be able to catch him"

look at all the recommended options to combat the Phantom now. All of them requires you to bring in a specific weapon that simply isnt feasible in all lists. If you don't have that weapon, you are screwed. And as for simply widening your firing arcs, no I really do not think 8 Academy TIEs can hit the phantom's 4agi double focus. No, I really do not think 4 Xwings will be able to cover enough firing arcs against an Echo that can attack from 2 different directions by simply assigning it a forward maneuver.

Like someone else mentioned earlier, yes the Phantom has its own counters, but the problem here is that you are forced to pack these counters, and if you dont have your ghostbusting equipment, the fight is simply unwinnable

I've already mentioned it a couple times, and I'll mention it again. I am supremely confident that I can beat a Phantom list with XXBB + HLC. There is no match up where that "specific weapon" "isn't feasible."

I don't believe in no win situations

Wrong franchise Kirk. You're drunk, go home!

Yes but it's an awesome quote and that scene is one of my favorites in the whole movie...the apple and hand gun gesture is perfect!

Not drunk, just on pain meds