Played last night with

2x royal guard interceptors PTL

2x sigma phantom

Holy smokes their good.

Messed up with first decloaking, ended up facing backwards from enemy. But after that it was an onslaught. Too my favour my opponent was fielding

3 Xwing

2 Ywing

So no turrets to worry about.

Biggest thing for me was not so much the cloaking but the 5 attack at close range with using Royal guard to strip tokens/shields 10 attack in formation makes a lot of kill.

Just need to buy another 2 phantoms for the ultimate game of Pin the Donkey

Royal phantoms is a fun list

I used two defenders and a phantom in my first wave four game last night, the defenders did most of the killing but I was really impressed by the phantoms movement, the game ended after three turns because I'd killed wedge and etahn with no loses and got behind his remaining ships so rather than make my friend play a game already lost we called it.

But I'm looking forward to using it in future games.

Royals and Phantoms? Nice. Keep the Phantoms at range for 4AD sniping and the Royals gambling up close for 5AD goodness.

See I don't think the phantom is all it was hyped to be.

Either that or I'm an awful pilot.

I played 2 games with echo, outmaneuver, tactician and adv cloaking.

The first game, it was the first ship to die. Double teamed by a defender and an interceptor.

The second game I faired better, but I was relentlessly hounded by a firespray that kept me out of the main fight.

With the named pilots your almost want to go with veteran instincts.

Especially if your using advanced cloaking.

Thars the point of it. Shoot and cloak. Which is why veteran instincts is a must.

I've never bothered with Tactician on the Phantom. I've used it in the Firespray.

Echo is a beast

I was looking at running two sigma's. So did you keep them in formation as best you could or did you have them in groups of two?

Royal guard and Phantom?

I have to agree about veteran instincts.

I also feel people don't recognize how valuable being a heat score is. With the event focused on Phantom, your friendly ships can do their work in peace. Drawing aggro is a pro rather than a con.

I tend to keep Echo lean with only VI and ACD. Sometimes FCS if Vessery is involved.

I will try Whisper, an even better prepared heat score, but I'll put Recon Spec on her.

Was trying to outflank with both types of ship. RG together and Phantoms as a pair. Asteroids got in the way so in the end just let the RG's go separate ways which forced opponent to decide which target to go for.

It'll take some time getting used to decloaking but apart from lack of health think phantoms work better as jousting buddies. 10 shots together at close range will hurt. Would have to pick targets carefully as if my opponent had a higher PS level think might have lost a ship before chance of firing.

One thing I really want to try is

Echo

Veteran instincts

Advanced cloak

Whisper

Veteran instincts

Advanced cloak

Omnicron pilot

Tactician

Engine upgrade.

99 pts

Just looks like fun

Also considered taking engine upgrade and put vader on there just to really create havoc

Question on the build using lower PS phantom... I've only flown mine with high PS so I know where everything is going to be before I decloak. How was flying them when you're likely to be moving before your opponent? Would you consider downgrading the Royals to Sabers in order to put an Intel Agent on the Sigmas?

One thing I really want to try is

Echo

Veteran instincts

Advanced cloak

Whisper

Veteran instincts

Advanced cloak

Omnicron pilot

Tactician

Engine upgrade.

99 pts

Just looks like fun

Also considered taking engine upgrade and put vader on there just to really create havoc

I just cooked up that same list (with Vader) last night. Great minds...

I don't understand "Whisper" she has a rubbish ability as far as I can tell.

I won a game last night against EEZY with "Echo", Vessery and an Omicron. "Echo" was outstanding, she's great.

I don't understand "Whisper" she has a rubbish ability as far as I can tell.

You HAVE to use advanced cloaking device with her.

She attacks - then gets to both cloak with a focus for defense. probably give her Veteran Instincts to bring her up to a 9 so she's always shooting first.

I've been running this:

2 x sigma, particle accelerator and intelligence agent

1x basic defender with HLC and shield upgrade.

In 4 games I've lost 1 ship and been against a vader swarm, xxbb, defender/phantom 2 AP and Han w/ a wing/ 2 z95s.

I'm really rather enjoying them! So many dice at any range!

Whisper - decloak, move, take evade, fire, cloak, get focus.

With Recon Spec, you've got 4 agilit, an evade, and 2 focus for defense. The opponent will likely ignore her.

Whisper - decloak, move, take evade, fire, cloak, get focus.

With Recon Spec, you've got 4 agilit, an evade, and 2 focus for defense. The opponent will likely ignore her.

Is Whisper's ability take a focus action or assign a focus token? because iirc recon spec only triggers off of focus action but I could be wrong

Sorry, I know its off topic, but how do we know all the named Tie Phantom pilots are women? Everyone on this forum keeps mentioning them using female pronouns. Is that stated somewhere and I missed it? More on topic, so far I have only used Whisperer so far and "she" has done very well running along with my bombers. I always use VI and ACD and "she" gets "her" poinys back and is fun to fly.

Here's a list I've been messing with:

Whisper - vet instincts, ACD, rebel captive (40)

Echo - outmaneuver, ACD, recon spec (40)

Mauler - predator (20)

In every game so far, Mauler is the distraction that can't really be ignored, Echo is the annoying flanker, and Whisper is an absolute killing machine.

Lessons learned?

1) Whisper is a precise assassin. VI/ACD is an autoinclude. Rebel Captive allowed him to take out Chewie single handedly, without so much as a scratch.

2) Echo is very easy to keep away / out of arcs, but relatively difficult to put exactly where *you* want. Outmaneuver synergizes pretty well, as a result.

3) It's not terribly difficult to prevent Whisper from decloaking. With Echo, it's a different story.

I have to say, going into recent games, I've been soiling my pants worrying about the Phantom. Thus far I've faced it twice in games that I've lost.

BUT, both of those games have been against players that are a lot better at this game than I am, and I killed the Phantom both times.

So, I am no longer afraid. Sure, it's an annoying ship, but you can kill it.

Sorry, I know its off topic, but how do we know all the named Tie Phantom pilots are women?

We don't. In fact, FFG specifically called echo a male in one of the preview articles. However, there is a female echo in Greek myth and some board members have latched on to that and insist on the feminine. Whisper is actually completely unknown, just everyone seems to prefer the feminine pronouns.

Royals and Phantoms? Nice. Keep the Phantoms at range for 4AD sniping and the Royals gambling up close for 5AD goodness.

Just curious where 5 AD comes from with the squints?

Whisper - decloak, move, take evade, fire, cloak, get focus.

With Recon Spec, you've got 4 agilit, an evade, and 2 focus for defense. The opponent will likely ignore her.

Is Whisper's ability take a focus action or assign a focus token? because iirc recon spec only triggers off of focus action but I could be wrong

you are correct.. whisper only gains the additional focus if he took focus as his action; not his pilot ability that gains him a free focus after a successful hit, so recon specialist won't trigger for the free focus

but it does not matter anyways.. focus is better to have on 4 defense dice over 1 evade anyways

can't tell you how many times i've rolled 2-3 focus on 4 defense dice before

it far outweighs the evade action

I've loved the VI on the named Phantoms and Intelligence Agent on the lower skill versions. Its nice that you only need to add 1 point upgrade either way to know where you need to go. As tricky as they are, I feel like their best trick is their huge 4 attack. Its sooo much damage. I would play them without cloak.

I played my first wave4 today with this squad:

echo: VI + ACD

Vessery

Kagi: ST-321

I really wanted to see how the phantom and defender flew, so I cobbled this together. Having 2 flankers and a slow shuttle seemed like suicide, but I just wanted to fly my new ships. But as it turns out, kagi was quite excellent. He didn't get to fire very many times as he didn't have EU, but all he had to do was stay within range 3 of the enemies to prevent target locks. The ST-321 title worked very well when paired with Vessery.

Echo and Whisper are an exciting opportunity to bring gender balance to the force. These aren't movie characters or from the existing EU, they are blank slates and i greedily, eagerly claim them as representative of my gender. SO much of star wars is male, there's really no reasonable argument against us referring to these fictional characters as women. I love the Greek Echo connection as well, and it might be said there's something inherently feminine about the agile dance the TIE Phantom makes. I mean how often are women in action roles given guile and finesse as tools rather than tanks, n'est pas?

Sorry, I know its off topic, but how do we know all the named Tie Phantom pilots are women?

We don't. In fact, FFG specifically called echo a male in one of the preview articles. However, there is a female echo in Greek myth and some board members have latched on to that and insist on the feminine. Whisper is actually completely unknown, just everyone seems to prefer the feminine pronouns.