Sure they are, just not as BOMBERS.

Howlrunner

5x Scimitar

-

98pts

That's alot of hull points.

True Marinealver.

Not sure that they are priced that well though, as cheap as they can be to put into play without ordinance Bombers are useless. If you look at the cost of a Scimtar Squadron Pilot (16 points), that's dirt cheap, just a notch above a Tie Fighter so it seems more then fair. But truth is that after you put a couple pieces of Ordinance on him he's going to be well in to the mid 20's points wise, probably more. So you have basically invested a fair amount of points into a pilot who really isn't really a particularly good tank since he's vulnerable to critical s, who can't maneuver for **** so he's always going to be getting shot at and worse yet carrying expensive ordinance that he is unlikely to ever get to fire off since he can't get into position. You have to struggle to stay in the green, so that you can get target locks, then try to maneuver using a crappy dial to get the shot off.

Compare that to simply getting a couple of Tie Fighters who don't have to worry about any of that, which combined have the same amount of hull, far more maneuverability which means they are going to get more shots off. Hell even in a straight dice contest if you roll 4 dice 3 times (2 Tie Academy Pilot Tie Fighters) and compare that to a 25 point fitted Scimitar Squadron pilot I doubt you would squeeze 12 dice worth of rolls out of it.

No Reason to Live Anymore

Ion torpedoes should be a nice addition. 5 points for 4 dice and splashing ions. Support with jendon and a fleet officer and fire away!

Sure they are, just not as BOMBERS.

Howlrunner

5x Scimitar

-

98pts

Or...

Go with

Howlrunner

Gamma x4

10 points for upgrades... seismic charges and swarm tac for Howl..

personally i think dedicated bombers ought to have a greater damage ability against large ships. just what that would be i don't know. to much to speculate on how..

No Reason to Live Anymore

Gamma Squadron Pilot (18)

Ion Torpedoes (5)

Flechette Torpedoes (2)

Proton Rockets (3)

Assault Missiles (5)

Proximity Mines (3)

Munitions Failsafe (1)

Captain Jonus (22)

Draw Their Fire (1)

Colonel Jendon (26)

Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Engine Upgrade (4)

ST-321 (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

I just wish something would happen. Even, being able to take FCS or some Lambda pilot that allows an ally that missed to fire again this round within range 2. Like "ally Gunner". (NOT RANGE ONE BECAUSE IM SO EFFING TIRED OF ALL THE IMPERIAL SHIPS HAVING TERRIBLE BUFF RANGES. THIS IS NOT OKAY.)

Drop the mine and pass out focuses with a fleet officer.

No Reason to Live Anymore

Gamma Squadron Pilot (18)

Ion Torpedoes (5)

Flechette Torpedoes (2)

Proton Rockets (3)

Assault Missiles (5)

Proximity Mines (3)

Munitions Failsafe (1)

Captain Jonus (22)

Draw Their Fire (1)

Colonel Jendon (26)

Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Engine Upgrade (4)

ST-321 (3)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

I just wish something would happen. Even, being able to take FCS or some Lambda pilot that allows an ally that missed to fire again this round within range 2. Like "ally Gunner". (NOT RANGE ONE BECAUSE IM SO EFFING TIRED OF ALL THE IMPERIAL SHIPS HAVING TERRIBLE BUFF RANGES. THIS IS NOT OKAY.)

Drop the mine and pass out focuses with a fleet officer.

BUT BUT BUT. I have vendettas to carry out! (Yes. I agree, good call).

I did very well in a couple of tournaments pre wave 4 with gamma sq pilots and a squint.

Signed up to a league and made the mistake of not changing the list. They are now not doing very well at all, either because people know what to expect or the new ships do seem to weaken the effectiveness of the bombers.

Totally agree with the crit weakness of bombers, the amount of times I've lost the flachette torps before they've been fired because of a crit is daft.

One ideas might be to give ordinance a special "general rule". For example treat all pilots firing ordinance as if their pilot skill was 12 for that turn. So after the move phase you have an ordinance token and you put it down before dials are revealed. If your target is still in range after movement, your pilot skill is 12 and hence get to shoot first. This would make flying at ships with ordinance a very dangerous affair.

I like that idea. Or maybe just introduce an 'Ordnance Phase' prior to the standard combat phase, in which only missile and torpedo upgrades are resolved.

Some pilots and upgrades would have to be revisited to work 'at the start of the ordnance phase' though...

I think they're utter toast. They seem just not really cost efficient enough to handle most threats nowadays and have a hard time versus really agile ships anyways.

I'm very sad about this.

Bombers are the only Imperial Fighter with a 1 forward, so they have value in being able to control their approach. This will likely be of value when looking to them with future upgrades. I still love the bomber. It is cheap, tough, and versatile. It's only problem is that it isn't particularly strong when naked, so it usually needs to be inflated to win.

I'm going to run 5 in an upcoming EPIC tournament. I don't think they are great for normal games, but could be OK. Most people don't like OK though.

Splish Splash

2 x Scimitar

Ion torps

Flechette torps

Seismic

Cap Jonus

Ruthlessness

Flechette torps

OGP

Ion cannon

Fleet Officer

Not optimal, but say as a third of an Epic list, the bomber wing?

I see a couple of sides here and that usually means that everyone on both sides disagree with me

First I love the bomber and I too wish I could field them more but... Some feel that all point cost should be equal. But I see synergies where some builds have components (upgrades/pilots/ships) that work better than others. So point for point a TIE Advanced may not be as good as equal points of X-Wings and HWK-290 (is it okay to call them Hawk 290s?) may not be as good as TIE Fighters. Points are, in my humble opinion, a rough estimate of how they fit in to a complete and rounded game as opposed to one for one. I know some disagree.

Why does this matter? Well some ships will, by the very basis of the game, always be better in smaller point games such as our standard 100 point game and other ships won't see as much play.

But Star Wars: X-Wing is more than just a 100 point game. There is escalation and Epic, also Epic has 300 and 400 point games. Some people like bigger games, etc... There you will see more specialization, Maarek Stele may see more use in Epic or against large ships. Bombers may be crucial in Epic against capital ships. But in a dog fight these specialized ships and pilots... maybe not.

I for one prefer and really like that there is this variety. Different uses for special teams. Oh I see Big ships call out the bombers; it's going to be a dog fight call out the fighters.

I think FFG did a fine job of making a game that fits so many tastes. But not all things are equal solely based on points.

Just my opinion.

Bombers are a nice cheap way of putting a Controller into your list, that is a ship that while on paper doesn't perform well but has a disproportionately big effect on how your opponent flies. A bomber with a bomb of some kind will cause your opponent to keep his distance and not get on your six, lest you drop it on them. This means you can keep a bomber at the rear of a big formation to prevent being flanked/sixed.

Really the issue with bombers is that people look at all those slots and feel they have to load them all up with munitions - you don't. The bomber is a versatile ship and carry one of the biggest array of munitions combinations of any ship (currently).

I ran 4 bombers quite a lot in wave 3 - I used a version that could unload 4 missiles in a single round. It could kill a full health falcon in a single round.

The problem was match ups vs higher PS positional ships - interceptors, EH falcons, etc.

In wave 4, with the phantoms, it is a pretty bad meta for bombers.

I do however, plan on trying them again after wave 5. Large ships will be very popular and bombers do fairly well against them.

I think Bombers are a solid ship, but not so great at carrying missiles/torps. I largely agree that missiles and torps are a bit overpriced and/or underpowered, though the new crop of cheap flechettes and ion pulse along with the nasty ion torp may change things.

The bomber itself is righteous. 16 points for 6 hull, 2 red, 2 green and a good maneuver dial for engaging as opposed to avoiding. I think bombs are really good too, be they cheap 'free damage' seismics or the area denial proton bomb or prox mine. I fly bombers alongside Vessery and they're incredibly useful. They can also clog up lanes and block Phantoms in before downing them with concentrated fire.

The biggest downsides to them are the crit susceptibility (Etahn, especially) and the general wimpiness of ordnance. Beyond that, I really like them.

Maybe I'll house rule how to drop bombs, like: when you reveal your dial you may declare you will drop your bomb. Place the bomb anywhere on the maneuver template, then execute your maneuver.

The Y-Wing is supposed to be a bomber. It's just never used that way in the game. I'd like to see that rectified in the Rebel Aces 2 pack (due out in mid 2017 probably!).

I love the TIE Bomber and the Y-Wing, I wish they would get their own special pack with an actual bomb run mission.

whoah Whoah WHOAH Urrgok DO NOT DISS THE Y-WING!!!!!! Need a phantom scared? boom Ywing. Need squints downed? boom Ywing. You underestimate the power of the ICT. Y-wings have NEVER been obsoleted. Now bombers are a whole different kettle of fish.

Okay, here goes with the wall of text. TL;DR: The conventional wisdom about Bombers is wrong.

Reading Major Juggler's statistic, nobody uses Bombers, or Tie Advanced, or HWK.

TIE Advanced are obviously struggling, but I think HWKs are victims of a reputation that doesn't match their actual performance. The HWK lineup leans strongly toward control and support, and that's actually a good thing if you're willing to incorporate those elements into X-wing play.

Competitive X-wing play, though, has for a long time placed a strong emphasis on numerical efficiency, and HWKs are bad at that. Or named HWKs aren't, at any rate; they pay too much for their abilities, and from the standpoint of pure mathwing that's hard to justify.

We're now seeing a general shift from low-PS pilots to higher-PS pilots, driven substantially by the Phantom, but--at least so far--the named HWKs have been left out of that renaissance in favor of Falcons and X-wings. I don't think they deserve it, given the degree to which a HWK can make the rest of your list more effective, but there we are.

And that points to a problem I've mentioned before, not with the Store Championship/Regionals/Nationals statistics but with the way people seem inclined to interpret them. What's important to remember is that those statistics are a subset of a subset: the second filter is from all lists fielded in competitive play to lists which are successful in competitive play, and the results of that winnowing are important. But the first filter, which too many people neglect, is from all possible lists to lists which are fielded in competitive play.

And that first filter is all about psychology and reputation. In my experience, people don't want to bring lists they're not sure about to a tournament, so they stick with what works; they play what they know until they have a strong reason to play something else. So while the X-wing metagame is demonstrably capable of sudden shifts in response to new game elements, overall I think there's a strong conservative bias--the system has a great deal of inertia.

Or, to be as succinct as possible: the Regionals (etc.) results don't actually tell us what the strongest lists in X-wing are. They tell us what the strongest lists are, out of all the lists people are playing--and that's very different.

I think right now that's the foundation problem of the core mechanic, the fact that in general, Ordinance is simply not an efficient way to spend points. I think this is mainly because having more dice, or some special effect on a single shot, is simply not as good as simply getting additional ships.

This is the conventional wisdom, certainly, and what it tells you is true--from a certain point of view.

If I had to guess (I'm not a mathematician and I don't play X-Mathwing)...

That last bit is a shame, because it's fundamentally a mathematical game. You don't have to be a mathematician to understand most of it, and I really think setting aside mathematical evidence is a mistake.

...but I think it comes down to the principle that its better to have 2 pilots with a 2 attack, then it is to have 1 pilot with 4 attack (in theory) because even if you get say 4 hits on something like a Tie Bomber, the next time you shoot at him (the following round) if you get 4 hits again, you got 2 too many hits and although he blows up none the less, 2 damage is wasted.

Two pilots with 2 Attack are sometimes better than one pilot with 4 Attack. But what if you're facing a ship with 3 Agility? In that case it takes something like five or six pilots with 2 Attack to equal the likely offensive output of the pilot with 4 Attack.

The alpha strike in X-wing used to be a weak proposition. Action-stacking was hard--in Wave 1, the entire set of options consisted of Vader and Squad Leader--and without action-stacking, ordnance wouldn't get you very far against TIEs. You could tear a TIE Fighter in half with an action-stacked Concussion Missile, but you probably wouldn't, and the Rube Goldberg machine you had to build didn't pay off.

Things changed a little bit in Wave 2, with the advent of Push the Limit, Deadeye, and Homing Missiles. Now action-stacking was easier, and you could change the way ordnance was targeted with Deadeye--and if you just wanted a missile that any ship could fire with reasonable assumptions about your red dice, you could bring along a Homing Missile. But 7 points for Concussion Missile + Push the Limit was still pretty expensive, and even with PTL equipped, Green Squadron Pilots had pretty woeful offense once the missiles were away. (Homing Missiles + Deadeye was, and actually is, a fun combo... for exactly one round.) Ordnance was still not a great choice: it could win your game for you, and quickly, or it could still do absolutely nothing.

Wave 3 brought us TIE Bombers, though, and they actually did change things. They're not the cheapest missile platforms out there (although they are the cheapest torpedo platforms), but they're still relatively inexpensive, and they have enough of a backbone that they won't wilt under enemy fire--you can equip a couple of pieces of ordnance and often get the chance to attack with both.

But Bombers also have Jonus, and Jonus makes an enormous difference.

Jonus single-handledly rescues Proton Torpedoes and Cluster Missiles from the compost heap. He makes it possible to run multiple bombers and actually trust that they'll do damage. Jonus is extraordinarily good, and I think one of the problems Bombers have is that people just don't trust Jonus enough.

So I would suggest, as an archetype for anyone interested in running a Bomber list, that you start with Jonus, and then add at least three missiles or torpedoes on ships other than Jonus. A list I've run with moderate success in competition is Jonus+Homing/2x Gamma+Proton Torpedoes+Clusters/Alpha.

I don't mean that they don't have any problems. Most ordnance still requires a target lock on the defender, and that can make life tricky for low-PS pilots. A lucky crit can wreck your day, as Blail Blerg observed, and an arc-dodging target can leave you with nothing to shoot at for the round. But the idea that ordnance is never cost-effective is a holdover from the game's earlier history, where it was admittedly justified; TIE Bombers are stronger than most players believe, but that disbelief is now getting in the way of innovation around how ordnance is used in the game.

Eldar Y-wings are based on the SB-3 Dauntless, a Dive Bomber/Multi-role Carrier fighter. They are more than just bombers. Personally I would like to see a BTL-S3 Variant upgrade card like the B-wing/E2 upgrade.

Wait, Vorpal, another math disregarder?? It's like the Z-95 thread all over again.....

What's the points and effects of two Y-Wings with two proton torps each. It's either 48 or 52 Right?

Two groups of 4shots in two rounds, that's 16 attack dice, if you can pull it off.

By my guess that'd be about 10 to 12 damage results.

Sounds like it should be enough to put some dread into the Decimator.