This weekend I got the pleasure of testing Tie Defender Colonel Vessery and the new, unreleased Tie Advanced: Commander Alozen

The two pilots have the following skills:

• Vessery: When attacking, immediately after you roll attack dice, you may acquire a target lock on the defender if it already has a red target lock token
• Alozen: At the start of the Combat phase, you may acquire a target lock on an enemy ship at Range 1.

Finally there is a ship that unlocks Vessery's potential. Quoting from memory, Major Juggler's math indicated that Vessery's jousting efficiency would be at 100% with or without a heavy laser cannon if he could activate his skill every single turn. With Commander Alozen that can finally become a reality! Here is what Alozen brings to the field:

1. A fast, competent ship that has a target lock.
2. Can acquire target lock even if bumping or stressed.
3. Has very similar dial to the Tie Defender and can fly in formation: both ships have the 5 forward, don't have hards 1 turns but have 1 banks. You can have a formation of T/D and T/A and have them all 1 bank and barrel roll backwards to execute a near formation stop, or you can have all ships pull a 5 forward to jump over an enemy formation.
4. Alozen has a choice: move away from the battle and target lock someone for Vessery, jump over a target in range 1 and auto target lock, or my favorite, if you think you have the power for a kill, move forward towards a target at range 1, focus, auto-target lock, have Vessery fire at PS 6 and strip shields, then fire Alozen with either Adanced Targeting Computer or even better, a proton rocket (heavy rocket in Tie Fighter comp game)! The important thing is that you have the choice to engage or not to engage!
5. Alozen and Vessery mesh perfectly without the use of any elite pilot talent slots or modification slots, giving a lot of room for flexibility or saving the points for something else.

In conclusion, there is finally a way to run a Tie Defender at very high level. I don't think that Alozen and Vessery lists will have much difficulty finding their way into top slots on the tournament scene!

Note: for this write-up I used Vessery with a Heavy Laser Cannon and Alozen with Advanced Targeting Computer and a proton rocket. The third ship in the list was another named Tie Advanced but I haven't found one that meshes perfectly in the list yet.

EDIT: added featured image

Vessery pairs well with any Advanced with ATC on it. They're not spending that TL when they focus fire on targets anyway. I like Vader, Vessery with VI and Maarek Stele myself.

Vader does his thing at PS9 for easy TLs, maybe throw squad leader on him to help keep others alive.

Vessery shoots at 8 with a boost from Vaders kept TL.

Stele with Calculation and ATC, shooting last after shields have been stripped for a potential of 2 crits that you can choose the cards for (ahem, maybe two direct hits?). I like calculation over marksmanship because he's only rolling two dice and I want to save the points for Hull. Think Stele will be the one focused upon.

Vessery pairs well with any Advanced with ATC on it. They're not spending that TL when they focus fire on targets anyway. I like Vader, Vessery with VI and Maarek Stele myself.

Vader does his thing at PS9 for easy TLs, maybe throw squad leader on him to help keep others alive.

Vessery shoots at 8 with a boost from Vaders kept TL.

Stele with Calculation and ATC, shooting last after shields have been stripped for a potential of 2 crits that you can choose the cards for (ahem, maybe two direct hits?). I like calculation over marksmanship because he's only rolling two dice and I want to save the points for Hull. Think Stele will be the one focused upon.

I like this too! The thing that impressed me about Alozen the most is that he can bump or be blocked and he still gets a target lock! I have always had trouble with Vader being blocked, my opponents can usually easily guess where i am going and block me (which is a short coming of my own skill) but Alozen completely removes that problem for me : )

I mean yes, defenders love new advanceds a lot, but I've found that fire control systems is vessery's real best friend, especially on a named phantom like whisper also sporting a weapons engineer. It's a nasty combo, and if the tie upgrade adds green to dials so will ptl rexler with vessery.