My FLGS has finally set the date for its Store Championship. Given the current meta - Fat Han and Hammer & Anvil, in my area - my question is, "is the the TIE Swarm still a competitive list to run?

I've been playing X-Wing since it's inception and my go-to list has been "Sinister Six." I've had a ton of success with it in the past but haven't really run it lately. Instead I've been running Buzzsaw Phantom/Mini Swarm.

With the Store Championship in the near future, what would be the more viable option? Opinions?

The pure TIE Swarm is still viable, but you'll have to learn some new tactics to outpace the Phantoms.

Specifically, Death Blossoms: the art of, at a given notice, being able to cover as much real estate as possible with your firing arcs, and then collapsing back into the single-target phalanx to which you are well accustomed.

They are viable against Phantom builds in 60 minute rounds. Focus down the decimator, then once it's dead run away. Since you're flying 8 ships it'll take forever for you to move so the Decimator Phantom player might not be able to kill enough TIEs to win in the handful of rounds he'll get. If it's a Phantom mini swarm, your full swarm can vaporize their mini swarm and then you run until time. Whatever you do, do not shoot at the Phantom, 2 attack dice do nothing against it and you'll waste the movements of all of the ships that chase it because it will outflank you no matter what. Trying to block it is futile also because since decloak functions like barrel roll half the time they'll be able to just barely pull one off and decloak a sliver past the ship that meant to block anyways.

If it's double Phantom you might as well concede because you're not getting a win unless you luck out and your opponent parks on an asteroid.

Against everything else you have great chances. I brought 7 z95's and a refit a wing to a tournament. First round someone jousted my swarm with their Lambda. 8 Target Locks LOL. You might be able to just outright win by blowing away everyone's big dumb fat turret. Double Phantom is autolose but barely anyone plays that because of the turrets.

Phantoms are scissors, dumb fat turret builds are rock, and swarms are paper. Right now the meta is like 66% rock, 33% scissors, so fly paper and just ignore scissors when you see them in a list.

of course it is.

i've just played 5 tournament practice games in a row against the following:

Echo/Deci

Echo/Deci

FatDash/Awings

ChubbyHan/Awings

Whisper/Boba

despite being absolutely convinced before i started that i couldnt beat them, i won them all with my swarm. of course, this doesnt prove anything really. i could have had good luck, or played bad players, or any number of other things. the point is, i half believed the internet rage and proved to myself that it isnt actually grounded completely in reality.

i will say that i dont believe a single howlrunner swarm still works very well. it is too predicatable and can easily be avoided and then outflanked. i've been played a 7 swarm but with two groups, which makes it much tougher for two ship lists to avoid. just focus on one target first, try to remove it quickly, and then eliminate the second or play for time.

of course, two named phantoms will still ruin you

Phantom hard counters swarms as well as a Roark 12 PS swarm tactics Y wing ion turret build hard counters a named phantom, you just can't deal with it. So ignore the phantom in a list, even with boosting his decimator he's still going to be taking a ton of damage. Z 95 swarm allows you to stack all your target locks on something big and then spend them as needed and stack then with focus, whereas howl can die first or second round and that's it.