Welcome to the club, defender love was mocked at first all people saw was the points cost and wrote it off without ever playing it, now we are getting threads asking how to counter it

Just goes to show ffg do playtest their products.

The phantom was kind of a flash in the pan because everyone and their dog rushed to buy falcons, the answer to that of course is rexler who can eat superfalcons with the right support.

Tru dat! My respect for FFG grows every day (except for C-3PO, which I still don't understand how they costed that card )

Actually, phantom is still my favorite compared to the defender, but now I realize how the defender and the phantom are almost made for each other if the right support is there. Tried the Echo + Bounty + Delta combo and its a beast. Only down side is the lack of PS on the defender (I wish I could upgrade to Onyx, but not at the expense of giving up FCS on Echo), but having 3 ships that are all hard to kill, evil when attacking, and all move in their own way really screws with the opponents!

Every time I lay the defender down now I know it is going to kick freaking butt! At gen-con I was playing Armada and as I am playing I got to start talking with the FFG guy that was running us through the game. It turned out this man was THE designer of the wave 2-4 ships! I immediately told him that he had freaking knocked it out of the park with the defender. It was a great time talking with the guy who as of now I can't remember his name but I do have a picture with him. It was a great time.

Played a small tourney today. I took Krassis with HLC, Rex with Predator and Backstabber.

Went 2:0 against Han+Chewie+Gunner and 4 xwings led by Wedge.

Did not really use Rex's ability but that Predator is brutal.

I used to only like non-uniques since I love running the 2 x Defender + HLC with Jonus, but now I'm warming up to the unique pilots as well. Something like the following:

Vessery + HLC + Outmaneuver

Jendon + Weapons Engineer + FCS + Gunner + EU

Night Beast

Target locks are flying all over the place, so you get to choose where you trigger Vessery's ability, it's extremely fun and quite potent.

I think Vessery is the deadliest of the bunch. He is a dead eye with a free TL and focus. At PS 6 he is sitting pretty good I think. He shoots after many elite pilots so they are likely to be out of focus tokens and he shoots before the scrubs. Being so tough it's not that big a deal to take a few hits before shooting so he can take some abuse from high PS attacks. With a free TL even if he has to use focus for defense he can still do some heavy damage. The defender really has no down side. Many people say it's the cost but if it was much cheaper it would totally screw up the 100 point games IMO.

Vessery is good against everything but rex has his uses against super falcons and large ships, but heck even the generics can really ruin someones day.

Played 8 games with Defenders the last 3 days. 5 times with Echo+BH+Delta, 3 times with 2 Onyx+HLC with Jonus.

Went 5-0 with the Echo+BH+Delta builds. Having 3 ships that are ALL target priorities really messes up the opponent. Also makes it very hard for them to catch all three since one has a rear arc so is flying away most of the time (with 10 HP), the other can zoom away and K-turn back to shoot at you. And Echo... well, she's Echo.

Took out a Falcon (Chewie) +2 Daggers (FCS) list twice, Etahn swarm twice, and two decimator (Chiraneau+Oicunn - proxied) list once without much sweat.

The 2 Onyx with HLC + Jonus is more reliant on who they face. I think against any lists with 1 large ship or fewer, this list is brutal. Was able to kill a Named BH + TIEs/Interceptors type list twice. Had a very bad 0-100 loss against 2 decimators though, since the pilot flew the decimators well and kept running away to take pot shots at Jonus or the defenders. With Ruthlessness/Ysanne on Chiraneau and Intimidation/Dauntless on Oicunn, I had to watch out for Oicunn while trying to chase Chiraneau. That was VERY tough.

I think the Echo/BH/Delta list did better (even though the Delta was killed in round 1 of firing because I landed him on an asteroid in R1 of both Decimators ) beacuse the BH can trade shots with Chiraneau well, and Echo is usually not R1 from BH to get the splash damage nor can be caught by Oicunn. If Oicunn tries to ram the BH, he'll get a damage every turn from Ruthlesness.

Anyway, definitely liking the defenders a lot better. Now trying to figure out if there's a way to get Vessery in there with Echo. Downside is I have to give up the BH and use 2 TIES or a named TIE or an interceptor. With 13-16 easy to kill HP, that's just a little too low for me.