I have to agree

If it's a generic Phantom pilot, a lot less intimidating than echo and Whisper.

2 agility and 4 hull is very very squishy

Skill three, stygium particle accelerator, recon spec. He was a skilled player, I'm pretty sure second place in the league I just joined, but I also just moved here so it isn't like I know all of them already. The third game (my loss) he adapted to my playstyle and replaced some interceptors with a defender that had HLC. I bumped it on turn two with my formation and after that I really had no chance. Maximizing the four dice shots for those first two turns basically stomped me down. But the previous two games, focused fire and action denial ensured I only lost one ship out of both games.

Yeah, i don't doubt he is a very good player and all. But that's not "the phantom" you should expect. I mean, you are making judgements out of 3 games, one of them against a phantom who is not called whisper or echo and has advanced cloak. Wouldn't you say you are going too fast on your assumptions ?

If you want to see rage then take echo against someone, that ship is nigh on impossible to preside thanks to using the 2 bank and if your careful the enemy will never have more than one ship with a bead on you, and if they are a lower ps they'll never get to fire.

Using the generic might work in epic games but in smaller games you want the higher ps.

I suffered against echo once. Then started focusing ion cannons with TL/F at phantoms. A predictable phantom is a dead phantom after all.

I have to agree

If it's a generic Phantom pilot, a lot less intimidating than echo and Whisper.

2 agility and 4 hull is very very squishy

It's not that intimidating. I used to bullseye PtL Interceptors at range 3 with my X-Wing and B-Wings back home; they're not much squishier than Phantoms...

I have to agree

If it's a generic Phantom pilot, a lot less intimidating than echo and Whisper.

2 agility and 4 hull is very very squishy

It's not that intimidating. I used to bullseye PtL Interceptors at range 3 with my X-Wing and B-Wings back home; they're not much squishier than Phantoms...

The 4 agility part of the Phantom is not the problem my opponents had with the ship (one of them even got a hit against a cloaked Echo at range 3 by rolling just one hit), it's all the arc dodging that you can do by decloaking every turn.

The 4 agility while cloaked is just icing on the cake for the Phantom, or the insult to the injury for the opponent. You hardly can get a shot on it, and when you do, it is generally under the Phantom terms.

Quite frankly, I stopped playing the Phantom because a)it is not as challenging and b)I don't want to be the one that drive my group to take turrets every times.

Quite frankly, I stopped playing the Phantom because a)it is not as challenging and b)I don't want to be the one that drive my group to take turrets every times.

+1

I have to agree

If it's a generic Phantom pilot, a lot less intimidating than echo and Whisper.

2 agility and 4 hull is very very squishy

It's not that intimidating. I used to bullseye PtL Interceptors at range 3 with my X-Wing and B-Wings back home; they're not much squishier than Phantoms...

1 extra agility dice is a world. But the important part is that phantoms have a much easier time to dodge arcs at range than interceptors do. Worlds apart. Yes, if you manage to fly your formation and get to shoot at him, you will eventually wear it down, but that just won't happen in the very first place because of the much bigger lateral movement (2 + 1 barrel roll)

So after playing against Echo at the Atlanta regionals twice and losing to him twice, I feel like I may have spoken too soon. Granted those were the first and second times I had faced Echo/ACD/VI, so I didn't have a strategy for it. The ACD basically allowed the Imp players to fly circles behind me. I think ACD had a lot to do with it coupled with me not knowing the Imp player had to declare which side and bearing Echo's de cloak would go without pre measure. (Not taking away from their piloting skills, they were really good at using the de cloak to stay on my side the whole time). Further testing is necessary, but for now, I think it is safe to say that Echo is a good hard counter to XXBB.

I personally never performed well with XXBB, but that is likely just due to my own mistakes. I haven't played a TIE Swarm in a few months, certainly not since Wave 4 and Threepio, but I think Swarms in general are alive and well. I'll start by mentioning that my favorite list to run for a while was the six named TIEs list. I tend to perform the best with large squads, and I liked a lot of what has been released for Rebels recently thru the Huge Ships and Wave 4, so I've been testing Rebel Lists of 4+ ships. I played in the Atlanta Regional, also, finished with a 4-2 record playing a BXXZZZ swarm. I made some obvious mistakes, but I did much better than I expected. I did not see a TIE Swarm or even a Rebel list of more than 4 ships thru the six rounds of swiss, but the Phantoms and Threepio Falcons I faced gave me little trouble. The Key against phantoms is wide arcs, but don't spread too thinly so that you lose too many attacks against it. And for Falcons, the strategy is similar to playing a TIE Swarm. Chip away at Range 3, then get in close and wail on it til it folds. Threepio couldn't defend against the 21 Range 1 Dice of my list.

So, again, I am not sure Swarms are going anywhere. Through the first several tests of my list, I was afraid of the low PS, but its large amount of shield and red dice helped me win several league games and 4 games at a major tournament.

I will also add that the new rule that says a 12 point difference gives you the full win encourages 2 things:

1. Larger squads with more, cheap ships.

2. Stalling Tactics, wherein you gain a large enough points advantage that you can lose another ship and still easily win, and then run until time is called.

playing a BXXZZZ swarm.

.

Lol hey Brandon, it's Brendan! I'll see you at FCB tomorrow. I decided to return to a 3X high PS. I will see how it does tomorrow I guess.

I believe there is a calculation on the average amount of shots you need to kill the phantom at 4 agi. I don't remember what the number is, that's for Major Juggler, I do remember thinking it was a high number and that it was unlikely to take that many shots in a game.

I did this somewhere by looking at the average damage numbers, but it wasn't a true "shots required to kill". I should be doing that in the next month though, for all the ships, it will be an epic MathWing post!

Basically, x/4/2/2 is about twice as durable as x/3/3/0, using statistical averages. So it's about as hard to kill as a pair of TIE Fighters, assuming you get the same number and quality of shots on both. For reference the Firespray is about the most durable ship in the game at ~2.5x as durable as x/3/3/0.

The obvious issue is getting shots on ACD Phantoms, it's like playing whack-a-mole with piranhas, with your bare hands.

The raw statline value of 4/4/2/2 is about 28.5 points at PS1. Whisper is 37 points at PS9, meaning you're paying 8.5 points for +8PS and 3 extra actions every round (pilot ability, free cloak action, decloak roll). That is an incredible value. A free action normally costs 3 points, so you are getting 8+9 = 17 points of value, and only paying 8.5 points for it.

I have the calculation somewhere:

A 4-agility TIE Phantom can handle 11.4 2-dice shots in average (assuming half of them are focussing or target locked)

That's a lot ... considering the return fire you should suffer while doing that. It goes done to 5.2 for 3-dice shots.

So you'd better try to have a bunch of range one shots.

I want to insist on another thing that swarms are very efficient at doing against phantoms : preventing them from decloaking.

Indeed, there is usually only two spots for decloaking (in general one is blocked by board edge, asteroid, ships traffic jam)

It is quite often not difficult to cover the other two spots, or at least cover one and know where the phantom is going to decloak.

And a phantom that does not shoot is basically useless. You'll tell me that echo does not suffer from that, but I am not a fan of echo, because it has so many bad match-ups ... (Whisper, Soontir fell, Wedge, even worth game against Han, etc ...)