Somebody else playing it ? I am having a blast with it lately.

I'd say the reason why you want the B is to have a beefy ship in there that will be more likely to stick around and dish out some shots before going down, or it can be a pseudo bullet-magnet people will shoot at fist since it has such low agility. Your formation will also break eventually so having a B-Wing dial in the mix shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Xwings are better when you need to break formation due to the 4K turn and longer movements. Naked b-wings tend to get bumped until the end of times against other swarms.

I really like the idea of a list like this. Have you been successfully flying against Phantoms? I imagine Falcons are no problem for this list.

I've wanted to try it for awhile, but I will have to win a free Z first.

I've played it 6 times and am 4-2, with both losses being very close. Of the wins, three were against phantoms. You throw enough dice that they're likely to whiff a defence roll eventually and you have a lot of arcs to spread around as well as a lot of ships to block with.

I quite like the sound of this and now I have my third Z I can do it!

Do you fly them all in one formation or do split the Z's and X's??

I have been starting them off in 2 rows, with the Zs in front to take the worst of the attacks in a joust.

ZZZ

XXX

With 2 ruler widths betweeen ships, and the Z's as far forward as allowed and the Xs on the baseline, the formation can bank using 1, 2 & 3 banks without crashing, or they can all do a 2 or 3 turn and keep formation. The best thing is that they all have a 1 forward though, meaning you can prolong the initial pass if you think you're going to get a lot of shots in, something TIE swarms can't do.

Make sure you think about their flight plan when placing asteroids. Putting them on my side and going 4 forwward on the 1st turn has been working quite well. I also tend to hug one edge to begin with to avoid getting flanked and to give a large space after I turn in before I need to k-turn or break formation.

The trickiest part is trying to koiogram as the Zs in front have a 3 k-turn but the Xs have a 4. You have to either just koiogram one type of ship or prepare the round before by moving the Zs 3 forward and the Xs just 1.

You also have a low PS and no boosts or barrel rolls so cannot reposition at all, meaning you have to carefully think about where you think enemy ships are going to end up when planning your moves...

vs

You can have a tighter formation when you fly like this and start in the left corner;

Z Z Z

X X X

When banking right go 1 with the X and Z on the right, go 2 with the ones in the middle and 3 with the ones on the left.
If you want to start in the right corner and bank to the left, mirror the formation and manoeuvres.

This way you need less room, but also have less options.

XXXZZZ is a pretty solid list. It's hard to chew through all of that and it's got a lot of firing arcs. It needs a good name though. I dub it:

"Sleeping After Sex".

I've never played it, but played it against it a few times. Have both won and lost against it.

Actually, now that I think of it, one of my games against it was when I got my highest hit count with a seismic charge. I think I hit 4-5 out of the 6 ships.

Actually, i place them this way :

XXX

ZZZ

I do it because X have a 4K turn, and Z's a 3K turn. I took my first tournament this weekend with it, since i had been playing swarms due to the current meta, and decided to bring something most people haven't seen (or think of) in my gaming zone.

Phantoms can be problematic if you don't know how to deal with the support, have a solid game plan, and use asteroids, if not, they are doable. Fat Falcons obviously you are favored, but if you screw up and lose your X's too soon, it is going to get rough quickly. Then again, have a solid game plan.

About name. I just call it ZergX. Uninspiring, i know.

BXXZZZ and XXXZZZ are both very good squads. Believe it or not, they both actually have slightly higher raw jousting power than even 5 X-wings, although it will depend on what you are shooting at. If you're shooting at 4 agility Phantoms then the 3 attack dice of the X's and B's may be paying the premium over Z's.