Ok, so I have been waiting to post this list until I had a chance to test it against some fresh opponents, and I had that opportunity last night.

I will be going to a different LGS tonight for my weekly game to give it yet another outing.

However, so far, against my personal playgroup and all comers last night, I had a lot of success against Phantoms using the following:

Han / VI / Gunner

Bandit / Failsafe / Ion Pulse

Bandit / Failsafe / Ion Pulse

Bandit / Ion Pulse

In two games, Han was NOT the main Phantom killer. In a third and final game, he did some / most of the heavy lifting against a non-Phantom squad. The Z's did, however, nearly ion a Firespray off the board before killing it.

Essentially, this is what I have been doing with the list -

You line up two Z-95's sideways, one straight ahead, about Range 1 distance from each other on whichever end of the board the Phantom lines up on. If However, as I have seen repeatedly (and generally do myself) the Phantom will line up in the middle or out to one edge as a flanker since they need space to work their magic, which means you have the rest of their list coming from behind. Flying Han slowly into the middle has repeatedly bought me enough time to roflstomp the Phantom and then move on.

If they play hard to get with Echo, don't lose focus. People are SCARED of the Pulse missiles with Echo or Whisper, like in a major way. They will tend to avoid the Z-95's at all costs, which usually drops them into range for Han or causes bumping / asteroid hits, etc.

You use turn 1 and possibly 2 to get the Z-95's in a roughly vertical line facing the opponents side of the board. They fly as an "|" until contact is possible. As soon as you have Target Lock range, all the Z-95's TL the Phantom. You fan out the Z-95's to get something resembling a 180 degree arc using slow banks. The one in the back of the "|" goes forward, the front two go left/right respectively, with the one you feel has a better shot making the maneuver towards the Phantom's expected landing point. This will cause them to GTFO of dodge.

People may get over this fear, but it seems that as of late, people in my local playgroup are scared to death of staying in arc with the Phantoms, even at range 3. If you can get them playing defensively with Echo, you have almost won the battle before it starts.

In both games where the Z-95's killed the Phantom, one came on the turn after the Target Locks, because obviously, once he got TL'd three times he bailed. But Han was waiting on the middle and really denied him a whole lot of movement options without a decloak. He chose to take his chances at range 3 to two Z-95's in arc, one of which landed Ion Pulse, and that was all she wrote. The three Z's laid waste to Echo with another lead off Ion Pulse just to make sure.

In the second game, I laid the fan out and like a lamb to the slaugher, the Phantom waded in, my assumption would be that he thought he would land JUST outside Range 3, but again, two Z's had him on Ion Pulse range, and one landed through cloak (ridiculous, I can feel the guys pain).

Anyways - it seems to be a fun list so far, and can put out a fair amount of damage with a splash of control if you hit large ships.

I know it will struggle against some non-Phantom lists, but the meta here is drenched with Phantoms, so I'll be using it for a while.

Hmm. This all seems very thought out. Something tells me that I don't think like your local group though. If I saw those missile carriers, I'd play long range for 1 turn, then jump into range 1 if I could to eliminate as many of the Missile carriers as possible before they got to use them. Did your opponents use low PS Phantoms for their cheaper costs? Or did they fly something like a fully decked out Whisper?

I think it may be early in calling a phantom killer. There's a rather steep learning curve on that ship, I think most players are just scratching the surface of what it can and can't do.

I'm assuming none of your opponents did something like:

2 Shuttles w/ HLC

Whisper w/ VI, Sensor Jammer, Recon Spec & Adv. Cloak

So decked out, whisper can easily laugh off two ion pulse missiles (given your formation, you can't shoot with more than 2 a turn) and flying aggressively, its unlikely you'd get another chance to fire more than one per turn (even that is assuming good positioning with your bandits) until she took out all the bandits. Meanwhile, those shuttles will really wreck Han if they are not dealt with...

Decoy works well when you have a high pilot skill ship. Who can pass it to other so they can shoot first.

I have used Wedge and han, both with Decoy. It works well, but I'm still tweaking my lists to find the best phantom stopped.