Yep, once auto is out it and SD are good options against the turret, but not so much against standard ships...

They give pretty much garuentee that the first range 3 engagement misses you by a mile, allowing you to safely set up your interception proper. That's pretty valuable.

ding ding

though we'll need an actual mathematician to help sort out exact values, the one blank to evade at range 3 may well cancel the same amount of damage as your shield upgrade

jesus mary and joseph, what happened with all these posts?

You mean 3 (or 6) de-cloak options and only 4 green maneuvers. Unless you hit that stress before ACD kicks in, you're going to be dealing with that decloak. Unless you have two stress piled on, the phantom's just not going to care because even if you block it the bugger's getting a free cloak and, most likely, focus unless he also doesn't have a shot.

So sure, relative to a Tie Fighter or a B-wing Phantoms might not deal as well with stress or getting blocked as a result of limited manuevers. Compared to an Interceptor, aka the 25 point+ Tie Fighter? It is like an Olympic athlete racing a paraplegic who's also a double amputee.

Besides, as any veteran phantom player knows (going by the numbers, that really should be everyone by now ) you're not going to keep your 39+ point ship in the fight every turn because there are times when getting out of harms way to reposition is a much better bet.

Giving that they're partnered 99% with a VT, running away is basically half their game plan (since they can do it with losing so little relative to a whisper that would leave its mini-swarm in the lurch). When you're up two ships regardless of how much damage either has suffered and the opponent has lost even the equivalent of a single Tie, they're in the losing position when you break away.

Yep, once auto is out it and SD are good options against the turret, but not so much against standard ships...

They give pretty much garuentee that the first range 3 engagement misses you by a mile, allowing you to safely set up your interception proper. That's pretty valuable.

ding ding

though we'll need an actual mathematician to help sort out exact values, the one blank to evade at range 3 may well cancel the same amount of damage as your shield upgrade

True, although what the maths is unlikely to tell us is how often you'll be getting shot at range 3 (which is of course somewhat within your control). 1 shield is just for Christmas, Autothrusters are forever.

True, although what the maths is unlikely to tell us is how often you'll be getting shot at range 3 (which is of course somewhat within your control). 1 shield is just for Christmas, Autothrusters are forever.

I almost always see at least 1 range 3 shot in the opening salvo, so that's (maybe) your money back on the shield

Afterwards...well, it's not like this ship can 5k or boost

Minimum cost 5 HP TIE/In is Royal Guard Pilot. 29 Pts for - PS6, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 4, Shield 1. Delta is 30 pts for - PS1, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 3, Shield 3. Unless you really want mid-range PS then the Defender beats the In, and we all the know the Defender is sadly a bit overpriced.

On Soontir, maybe it works, but honestly I'd rather use those 7 points towards another full ship, or spreading upgrades around the list rather than focus on just a single ship.

Once Autothrusters hit then Thrusters + Shield, or Thrusters + Stealth is my go-to.

Minimum cost 5 HP TIE/In is Royal Guard Pilot. 29 Pts for - PS6, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 4, Shield 1. Delta is 30 pts for - PS1, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 3, Shield 3. Unless you really want mid-range PS then the Defender beats the In, and we all the know the Defender is sadly a bit overpriced.

It doesn't really, though. Put PTL on that royal guard and it is at 32 points. Combined with PTL and a better dial (even when the interceptor is stressed). That Royal is a far more resilient ship than the defender (provided it makes use of PTL for focus+evades). Adding health to PTL interceptors tends to increase their life more than the linear increase of one health because of that.

I ran one and occasionally two interceptors with that loadout (most often Jax, sometimes Soontir) in a heavy turret meta after a Wave 4, in probably 4 or 5 tournaments, and didn't lose more than a game in any of them. The main reason I stopped running them is not because of the turrets in Wave 4, though people did get better at flying those, but because players got better at flying phantoms, and then Wave 5 introduced some very heavy firepower ships in the HLC outrider and crit happy Admiral. Not to mention the increase in the use of R2+3PO (shortly after wave 5 hit) meant that a falcon could be impossible for an expensive interceptor to take down on its own unless it moves into R1, pretty much exactly where it doesn't want to be.

When you say "still get two actions", do you mean "action + focus token", or something else?

I mean an action of your choice during activation phase and then get a focus with the stress given by the rebel captive.

Imo, Red Castle has the PTL Soontir plus incoming prevalence of stress issue covered, but I have been personally interested in trying to find interceptors that did not need PTL to be effective.

Unfortunately, the only named pilots that (imo) are any good are Soontir, Jax, and Turr. I think Lorrir would have found a place as a 25 point auto-thruster...but stress. I would not run royal guards without PTL because of Tie Fighter durability unless turrets remain incredibly prevalent (because auto thruster + evade? Good god **** luck).

Prior to Autothruster, it's harder to make them effective without PtL. You definetly have to fly them differently, more in a unpredictable way than a reactive way. Instead of relying on the action economy, you rely on the dial. Strangely enough, flying with Defenders improved my game with Interceptors without PtL.

For Soontir and Jax, I can't resolve myself to run something else than PtL. Soontir feed on stress and PtL is the easiest and deadliest way to benefit from his ability, while Jax go into range 1 as often as possible, so being able to turtle up with F+E can greatly boost his survival chance.

For Turd Ferguson, I personally prefer Veteran Instinct, especially in the current high PS meta we are now, being able to shoot first greatly improve his survivability by boosting or barrel rolling out of sight after the shot. If the PS calm down a little, I also had success with Predator: it keeps his dial open by not getting stress and you can play more aggressively or defensively since you'll always have a little boost in attack, regardless of the action you took. I have yet to try him with Lonewolf (because of lack of time and well, it came out in the current high PS meta) but in a low ship build, it could be very worthwhile.

For Tetran Cowell, Predator, Veteran Instinct, Lonewolf or maybe Outmaneuver. To benefit from his ability to the fullest, you should try to never be stressed so you can pull your K-Turn whenever you want. If you plan on playing him with PtL, you should just downgrade to a Royal Guard Pilot and save 2 points.

Hull Upgrade's definitely worth taking but I don't know if Shield is too. Hull Upgrade and Stealth Device is usually my choice for heavily modded interceptors, or Autothrusters and Stealth Device come Wave 6.

It's probably worth it on Carnor Jax who's right in the melee though.

Pretty much this, ones definitely not bad, but anything that will give you trouble with one extra hp will give you trouble with two.

Minimum cost 5 HP TIE/In is Royal Guard Pilot. 29 Pts for - PS6, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 4, Shield 1. Delta is 30 pts for - PS1, Attack 3, Defense 3, Hull 3, Shield 3. Unless you really want mid-range PS then the Defender beats the In, and we all the know the Defender is sadly a bit overpriced.

It doesn't really, though. Put PTL on that royal guard and it is at 32 points. Combined with PTL and a better dial (even when the interceptor is stressed). That Royal is a far more resilient ship than the defender (provided it makes use of PTL for focus+evades). Adding health to PTL interceptors tends to increase their life more than the linear increase of one health because of that.

Two counter points from my personal experience:

Defenders with ion cannon for 1 point more

Sigma Phantom with FCS, intelligence agent, and Stygium for 2 points less.

And, of course, good ole soontir with one of the current stable of defensive modifications will come in at 1 to 2 points more.

More than likely a difference in playstyle, but I would take the reliability of ionization or the scouting potential and raw damage of the sigma (four dice + free target lock potential stacked against 3 dice and focus at most)

While the royal guard with those loaded upgrades is indeed harder to kill, you will be heavily restricted if, for whatever reason, you lose access to your actions. There's also the problem that HWK health, while greatly improved by 3 agility and the evade action, leaves it incredibly prone to crits.

I would, however, be very interested to try that set-up on Mr. Jax. He's expensive and just as risk prone, but his ability synergizes directly (most of the time) with his mini-aggressor profile and makes him all the more difficult to kill for it. He's not as offensively powerful as some of the 36 point rebel ships I'm used to flying (especially SoT Keyan or Stress Wess), but he offers a very cruel "support" to his squad by potentially removing a portion of the enemy's (or multiple enemies) defensive and offensive potential.

Would still drop either mod for thrusters once it came out, though, because then you have a Mr. Jax that flies it smooth at every range but 2

No question that Autothrusters is a better option, but the original question was without them included.

You're right that the ships you mention are, IMO, different ships with different roles. I really have hard time with a 33 pt ship sporting an ion cannon, but I don't fly defenders without an HLC and the sigma trades offense for defense. It hits harder but will be even more vulnerable to turrets.

No question that Autothrusters is a better option, but the original question was without them included.

You're right that the ships you mention are, IMO, different ships with different roles. I really have hard time with a 33 pt ship sporting an ion cannon, but I don't fly defenders without an HLC and the sigma trades offense for defense. It hits harder but will be even more vulnerable to turrets.

Throw away your reservation and slap some ions on some deltas pronto

They don't perform much better against fatties than normal defenders (unless you can run a fattie aground on a space peanut) but against everything else? Hoooollllllyyyyyy hell. All the very legitimate griping about its incredibly janky dial? Irrelevant. The white 4k that apparently constituted its price? Justified.

Though I will never not wish that the 1 and 2 hards weren't red (seriously, a freaking B-wing has less trouble) or that it was cheaper, the ion Defender is just worlds apart from the base cost. Sure, the one damage does not seem great (which is why it took me so long to try them out) but then you have to think about all the times you're really only expecting one damage max (especially at range 3 vs high agility) and how much more you're getting out of ion. Forcing almost any ship that is not a turret or a swarm ship into a 1 white is basically a death sentence. If that ship is stressed? Ohhhh boy. You can really punish push the limit and all those poor sods born without the privilege of a white k turn

Having played both it and ion cannon B-wings, I have to say that the Defender (while much more expensive) is much better suited to abusing ionization. The 4k gives you so much more movement than the 2k, as does just having the option for higher speed maneuvers, making it almost trivial to get behind or out of the arc of an ionized target. At that point, well the opponent better have more ships because that one is almost certainly dead.

What it comes down to, basically, is that I will trade the potential 3 to 4 dice getting lucky and punching through the likes of Corran/Soontir/Whisper for the potential to just get one damage past and shut them down to an astonishing degree and then sentence them to a death by a thousand stings or by being mobbed by the rest of the squadron. It is, in my experience, a far safer bet.

The Ion Defender is a pricey bugger but on the table is a whole lot more than the sum of its parts, ditto with the int agent Sigma. The amount of flexibility you get out of controlling your opponent's movements can't really be translated into simple numbers, but believe me you will notice the impact. Best of all, they both mitigate the high PS and hyper-mobility glut of the wave 5 environment by checking its advantage with the knowledge of where the opponent is maneuvering (Either because you saw it or you forced their hand). Any squad can block (especially the int agent ones ), sure, but unless you're running a swarm blocking will never be as likely as having a range 1-3 shot or being in range 1-2 of an enemy.

With all that said, I will get back to the RGP:

In my personal opinion, I don't feel the RGP with PTL and hull + shield can claim the same as the Delta/Sigma in the current environment. It is an excellent ship in terms of exchanging dice, but the solid PS means so little in this horribly skewed meta, which really cuts down on its ability to abuse its maneuverability effectively. Furthermore, the stress involved in maximizing its defensive capabilities is still heavily limiting despite the excellent dial.

When Wave 6 rolls around and S&V hopefully re-introduces us all to a more varied range of pilot skills, I can definitely see the RGP taking off in a new way, but by then we'll also have auto-thrusters which will give it even more claim to fame and slot it right alongside the other two in my eyes

TL,DR: I hope that made sense. When I look for 30 point+ ships, I personally look past only raw dice-related stats/mods for a little je ne sais quoi. The Defender and Phantom provide massive movement related benefits from the cannon and crew slot respectively (or the firespray's 2nd arc + large base movement/blocking potential, which I criminally forgot). The Interceptor's PS 6, across the majority of lists I've encountered, does not. So Wave 5, I'll pass on them. Wave 6, they'll get more ships to bully and auto-thrusters to potentially skyrocket their durability (dependent on their maneuvering, not dice ).

The main problem for the token-stacking heroes of the empire is blocking, turrets, and crits.

We can soon reduce the effectiveness of one of those.

The main problem for the token-stacking heroes of the empire is blocking, turrets, and crits.

We can soon reduce the effectiveness of one of those.

Well, technically all of those provided you're a range 3 wizard

Auto-thrusters are going to be amazing for the interceptor not just because "**** turrets" (although that certainly helps) but because it gives them a potentially renewable source of durability that is not action dependent