I've been waiting a long time to give this a run (basically since the Defender was first spoiled).

Twin Gun Fun:

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender
+ Heavy Laser Cannon
- 37 pts

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender
+ Heavy Laser Cannon
- 37 pts

Captain Jonus - TIE Bomber
+ Squad Leader

= 100 pts

It's not a complicated idea, basically you want to abuse the white K-turn on the Defender and the simple fact that you don't need Jonus to add much in the way of fire, just stay within range 1 of the Defenders to get those HLC's doing their thing.

I'm also considering running Jonus and a Defender (likely Rexler Brath, for another way to abuse the HLC) along with a loaded Bomber.



What do you all think?

I think it's a good concept, but you might be running it in the wrong faction:

Dagger Squadron Pilot (24)

Fire-Control System (2)

Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Dagger Squadron Pilot (24)

Fire-Control System (2)

Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Jan Ors (25)

Squad Leader (2)

Ion Cannon Turret (5)

Nien Nunb (1)

Total: 99

I'm just not convinced by Deltas running HLC*. You'll typically have more survivability than the B-wing would on the Rebel side, but not that much more, and once you're down to a single HLC, Jonus is basically dead weight (since you'd get a lot more offense out of a ship with some offense than you do out of the rerolls).

[*But I could be wrong.]

If defenders had EPT's I'd say go with predator and save yourself te Jonus points. Since only the named do you're stuck with his crappy damage output.

Why not this:

TIE Defender Delta Sqdn - Heavy Laser Cannon - 37pts

TIE Defender Delta Sqdn - Heavy Laser Cannon - 37pts

TIE Interceptor Royal Guard Pilot - Push the Limit - 25pts

Total 99pts

The Defenders will focus on dealing and soaking damage early on. Take out the enemy high PS ships and then leave the RGP to do his thing in the late game.

Unfortunately I seem to have failed at basic math.

The original list was only 98 pts!

Silly Admiral.

I just ran it at our club night tonight and got two draws and a win (yes, two draws, yes, with the new "12 points to win" rules) as is, but I'd like to get it up to 100 pts.

Can anyone suggest a better way to spend the 4 points (I'm in two minds about Squad Leader on Jonus)?

I used the initial squad a few nights ago, using a naked Jonus and spending the points on Onyx Squadron pilots vice Deltas. The issue I had is Jonus can't really keep up with the defenders all that well after the first K-turn, and I ended up breaking the three apart and swining Jonus around to basically be a buff-monkey, not getting many shots with him. Defenders that are nearly always focused and roll 4 dice, reroll 2, are really powerful.

Twin Gun Fun:

Onyx Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender

+ Heavy Laser Cannon

- 39 pts

Onyx Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender

+ Heavy Laser Cannon

- 39 pts

Captain Jonus - TIE Bomber

- 22 pts

= 100 pts

That's not a bad alternative.

I might give that a whirl next week at club.

I just registered to reply here. I tried this list as well, but with a variation suggested over at boardgamegeek.com. I won 2/3, the first time I lost was due to silly maneuvering, I lost Jonus before the first round of fire.

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender + HLC (x2)

Captain Jonus - Swarm Tactics - Seismic Charges

It murders 3-ship rebel builds since 4 dice with re-rolls and focus amounts to an "alpha strike". Afterwards, I just try my best to keep jonus close to the defenders, every turn where he gives rerolls I have the potential to blow a ship out of the sky.

Swarm tactics is nice to give you the occasion to shoot with a defender really quickly, and once one defender falls, you fire with all ships at PS6 (provided you maintain distance). Seismic Charges is there for any ships that survive the first two rounds of fire with 1hp.

If you don't want to drag Jonus around you could do:

Vessery + HLC + Predator + SU

Brath + HLC + Predator + SU

You'd shoot sooner for both, but have one less ship for offense/drawing fire, but could be fun.

With the original list give Jonus a Flechette and failsafe rather than squad leader.

If you don't want to drag Jonus around you could do:

Vessery + HLC + Predator + SU

Brath + HLC + Predator + SU

You'd shoot sooner for both, but have one less ship for offense/drawing fire, but could be fun.

I have thought about this list, and I just don't like their pilot abilities. Sure if you have Vassery TL, then Brath can get a free one, but that makes your predator worthless. I think it is odd that Predator only comes with the Defender, and they need it less than almost any other Imperial ship.

But as we have proved with the Firespray, High PS and EPT upgrade can be worth the extra points even if the pilot abilities aren't that great.

If you don't want to drag Jonus around you could do:

Vessery + HLC + Predator + SU

Brath + HLC + Predator + SU

You'd shoot sooner for both, but have one less ship for offense/drawing fire, but could be fun.

I have thought about this list, and I just don't like their pilot abilities. Sure if you have Vassery TL, then Brath can get a free one, but that makes your predator worthless. I think it is odd that Predator only comes with the Defender, and they need it less than almost any other Imperial ship.

But as we have proved with the Firespray, High PS and EPT upgrade can be worth the extra points even if the pilot abilities aren't that great.

That said. Two Defenders is far from viable, but this can be played to work. Predator is just awful on Vessery.

I was thinking about running the same build but with jonus + predator to make his damage a little more consistent and that would put the list to 99 points

Something to think about as its not possible yet:

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender
+ Heavy Laser Cannon
- 37 pts

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender
+ Heavy Laser Cannon
- 37 pts

Omicron Group Pilot - Lambda-Class Shuttle

+ Fleet Officer

- 24 pts

/98 points, so 2 points to flavour as you see fit. Range 2 will allow a little more flexibility to the buff range, and you have an effective blocker with a decent amount of HP (and a 3 dice attack) to tank shots for the defenders. But not going to happen until the Decimator comes out.

I got to give the original list a pretty good run, and I'm feeling fairly confident that with some practice I'm going to be able to make it pretty deadly.

The one thing that it was really missing was some "control". The combination of Ion and stress delivery seems like the way to do that, and given we have a Cannon carrier and a Bomber on hand the game has recently offered the opportunity to put that combination onto the table.

Twin Gun Fun v2

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender

+ Heavy Laser Cannon

37 pts

Delta Squadron Pilot - TIE Defender

+ Ion Cannon

33 pts

Captain Jonus - TIE Bomber

+ Flechette Torpedoes
+ Flechette Torpedoes
+ Predator

29 pts

= 99 pts

Jonus becomes more dangerous with Predator, and the combination of an Ion Cannon with Flechette Torpedoes seems to be made in heaven to cripple a target.

At the same time the double HLC proved as deadly as I expected and I'm a little reluctant to give it up.

I have been coding a simulator of sorts for X-Wing and the defender looked like it was worthy of a try when I crunched the numbers. I put together a list that is very close to the ones you are discussing here.

Jonus+predator and double defenders with HLC 99 pnts. I call it "Jonus Bonus"- after the frequent call for rerolls on your HLCs.

I put together some plans for optimal target lanes (to be able to use the white k-turns properly) and then entered my first tournament. I got third place in the warm up tournament yesterday and then 4th in the real Nordic tournament today.

As soon as I got into jousting position the defenders performed very well.

I can strongly recommend the set up. I took out two opponents running Han+3 Z95, and one set of 4 B-wings and some others notorius squads piloted by good players. And a bunch of different phantom lists. Lost in the semi finals to the third Han set up of the day, but I write that off as inexperience on my part, it was only my 15th game ever (11 of those games in these two events) and I was very tired. Theorycrafting and forum lurking will only take you so far, one need to actually play the game to become good at it. I played slow, made some mistakes, got outmaneuvered and still this squad list carried me through. Simplicity is one of the reasons I picked this list, both maneuver wise and ability wise. :-D

When I got home I decided to google for my set up and see what other people have done with this ship list, but Defenders are scarce indeed. Just remember that low PS will keep you from doing stupid mistakes like wasting Focus tokens for a potential extra damage, when they most of the time are better spent on defence. A Defender on range three rolls 4 defense dice and usually have their focus token (they are almost never stressed) and can take alot of punishment. During the return fire they kick like a mule and no extra defense die for the opponent even if it is range 3. Jonus shots first of course and often makes them remove a focus token or gets rid of an evade and with 6 hull he usually survives long enough. And once he is dead the defenders are usually at range 1 half the time, k-turning like mad, and can't use his bonus anyways.

Once you begin to k-turn, the match is often over since you get an action advantage. Just try to keep Jonus at range 1 behind your Defenders. But even if he dies early on to focus fire, your Defender should have killed something in return. With the point spread rules you only have to kill one big ship or three small ones to compensate for the loss of Jonus at 25 points + 12 points spread. Only one of my opponents targeted my defenders first (once they had both them and Jonus to shoot at). He is kind of like Biggs, he draws enemy fire and takes a while to kill, but with a bonus - The Jonus Bonus. :-)

Ion cannons and FLechette torpedoes sounds interesting, I will try them out, but my gut instinct tells me that a squad should do one thing and do it very well. Trying to do everything at once usually ends up a little bit meh. But I will give it a try.

This squad is also very resillient to stress builds. Even with stress you can still k-turn every turn and use the Jonus Bonus, so you just keep going. It is also pretty resistant to ion builds, since high agility and focus tokens means they often miss you, and even if they do hit you usually are in your k-turn line and can get right back into the back and forth moves afterwards.