I've gone 5 and 0 with this list so far against a variety of opponents on Vassal, so I figured I'd share. Roark letting Keyan attack first is a great counter for phantoms, the Z-95s have proven to be great at tearing up big ships, and the Ion is nice for disrupting formations. So screw all that rock paper scissor talk, Rebel Aces is gunna shake things up.

Keyan Farlander (39)
B-Wing (29), Heavy Laser Cannon (7), Push the Limit (3)

Roark Garnet (25)
HWK-290 (19), Ion Cannon Turret (5), Nien Nunb (1)

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12)

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12)

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12)

100 Points

Sounds pretty solid to me. I like that it has a good answer to phantoms without being a yt-1300.

EDIT: out of curiosity what roughly were the lists you've faced?

Also serves a useful purpose vs Han/Dash where you have a ship with very little HP left that will almost unquestionably get killed by the higher PS turret ship that turn. There's really no way to maneuver to get out of their firing arc but you can at least use Roark to get them a shot, even against Han with VI

Roark with Ion is phantom hard counter, it was and itwill be. I wonder how this list does vs swarm type oponents

One notable game for me was against Whisper & Chiraneau. Fairlander and Whisper traded punches for a few rounds taking each other out and I really thought the game was lost going against an unharmed Chiraneau, but the Z-95s managed to stay alive just long enough to get the job done, which really surprised me.

Another was against Fel + Howl swarm. In this one I pulled a bit of a fake. I slowly banked in on the swarm, then did a hard turn at the last minute and threw the entire squad at Fel so I wouldn't have any flankers coming in behind me while the Ion turret put Howl out of formation.

I've also used this against a couple rebel lists, but don't remember the details. One was BBAA, I think with a Nera in the list.

Roark with Ion is phantom hard counter, it was and itwill be. I wonder how this list does vs swarm type oponents

It's worth remembering that Roark can't give PS12 to itself. A PS12 ion cannon turret would definitely counter a phantom hard.

My other quick question Souladin is did you find the lack of advanced sensors hard to work with? Generally with the b-wing it seems pretty essential, and with push the limit blocking could become a big problem for keyan.

It did get a bit tricky when I flew too near a swarm, but then I could usually see the block coming and set a 2K red move and get the stress for the reroll still. The fact that you are flying a ship that actually wants to be stressed took some getting used to, but then it also lets you be pretty unpredictable too.

The biggest problem I see is Keyan is like half your firepower. That puts a huge target on him, and it's not like it's that hard to kill a bwing quickly. Roark would be target two because of his ion and ps boosting. Once you're down to your 3 z's, gotta hope you did enough damage to your enemy's squad that the z's can pull off the win.