Either: 4x Red Squadron, 4x R7 Astromech

or

3x Red Squadron, Tarn Mison, 4x R7 Astromech

Or replace one with Biggs.

Against a two ship list you could kind of just tank damage if you target locked the right ship. Against BBBB(Z) you'd have a pilot skill advantage.

Tarn is quite hard to kill, but if you correctly guessed which ship was going to fire at you, your Red Squadron pilots would in effect be your standard 25 point Tarn Mison.

What's the math on using a target lock defensively? How does it compare to just being a B Wing and having more health?

you can still be attacked from multiple different ships in a single round, which you won't have focus for defending any of those shots. The TL on defense is probably worth about the same as the focus. Since you won't have focus. The only bonus is that the atacker can't use their TLs on dice you've rerolled.

You're paying 2 points for this nearly neglible change. Also Focus can be used on any attack. Instead of only on that ship and only once per round.

Then you're paying 2 points more each for each Red. Whyy??

8 points on Red, 8 points on R7s. That's 16 points.

Is your list better than 4 Rookies, a Z and R2D2? Maybe. Its not bad I don't think. I just wouldn't take all the R7s. Reds are an ok choice i think.

Would this be better?

Luke should offer okay endgame "dice-averages/joust" versus other ships, however, with our current meta of arc dodging turrets, you are going to have many turns where the turret has a shot on you and you are not going to have a shot on them. I'd give the advantage to the turret.

So, your plan can be simply to melt the turret first: Han or Chirpy. Then go after Soontir or Corran later.

A 4X build made top 4 at the Malaga regional (51 participants), the list was: Biggs, Tarn, a rookie and Wedge with swarm tactics.

Luke 28

Swarm tactics 2

Porkins 26

Swarm tactics 2

Rookie X2 42

Gives you two ps8 and two ps7. It's won me more than one tournament.

The idea is to fly what on paper would effectively be 4x R7 Tarn Mison, not just to fly 4 X Wings because 4 X Wings. I do like the Swarm Tactics build though.

You would have to get good at correctly predicting which enemy ships are going to be shooting at which X Wings. I don't think you guys understand how powerful the ability to just decide that your opponent needs to reroll hits is. The window for the Defender to modify the Attacker's attack dice happens after the attack roll but before the attacker has a chance to modify dice. So when attack dice are rerolled with R7, those dice can't be rerolled with Predator/Lone Wolf/Target Lock. At least I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

The window for the Defender to modify the Attacker's attack dice happens after the attack roll but before the attacker has a chance to modify dice. So when attack dice are rerolled with R7, those dice can't be rerolled with Predator/Lone Wolf/Target Lock. At least I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

That's correct. You could choose to leave focus results if the opponent doesn't have a focus, or to re-roll them if he does, and will obviously make him re-roll any hits and crits. He can spend a focus token after you re-roll, and can re-roll any blanks you left on the table (or focus if you left those) but can't re-roll the dice you forced them to re-roll.

4x X-Wing is always going to be a decent list, regardless of the pilots. You've got 12 attack dice and 20 hit points, which is comparable to or better than a lot of good lists. The biggest issue as others have said is going to be the arc dodgers (but you can spread out and cover angles to mitigate this somewhat) and the turreted, tough to kill ships (Fat Han, etc.).

4x X-Wing is always going to be a decent list, regardless of the pilots. You've got 12 attack dice and 20 hit points, which is comparable to or better than a lot of good lists. The biggest issue as others have said is going to be the arc dodgers (but you can spread out and cover angles to mitigate this somewhat) and the turreted, tough to kill ships (Fat Han, etc.).

4X has been really strong and really popular in my local area since Wave 1. The lists that people have trouble with are a 3X list, as there's just not enough hits or manoeuvrability for the reduced hit point and firepower total.

My very first 4X list went a little something like this:

Luke Skywalker (28)

Swarm Tactics (2)

R2-D2 (4)

Rookie Pilot (21)

R2 Astromech (1)

Rookie Pilot (21)

R2 Astromech (1)

Rookie Pilot (21)

R2 Astromech (1)

Total: 100

Amazingly enough, this list or something similar still wins me a few games.

I mean, it's similar to BBBB, just moderately less optimal, so at the very least it's decent. 4x Starviper isn't half bad either.

If you use some of the pilot abilities and the astromech slot optimally you might be able to approach BBBB in power.

Hence Tarn Mison R7. People point to Biggs or Wedge as good X Wings, but Tarn with R7 is super difficult to kill. Any single attack thrown against him is wasted. Probably the best 25 points in the game IMO. Generic X Wings with R7 are meant to be ersatz Tarns.

Where this build might suffer is against BBBB(Z), but with Red Squadron you have the PS advantage to know which B's would have good shots on which X's and then you could TL accordingly. You might also be able to burn down a B in the opening engagement.

you can still be attacked from multiple different ships in a single round, which you won't have focus for defending any of those shots. The TL on defense is probably worth about the same as the focus. Since you won't have focus. The only bonus is that the atacker can't use their TLs on dice you've rerolled.

You're paying 2 points for this nearly neglible change. Also Focus can be used on any attack. Instead of only on that ship and only once per round.

Then you're paying 2 points more each for each Red. Whyy??

8 points on Red, 8 points on R7s. That's 16 points.

Is your list better than 4 Rookies, a Z and R2D2? Maybe. Its not bad I don't think. I just wouldn't take all the R7s. Reds are an ok choice i think.

Reds give you a PS advantage over most BBBB(Z) and swarm lists, which would give this list the most trouble.

'Negative' Target Locks used to reroll hits give you a .25 less chance to hit. What's good about them is that they prevent rerolls and don't need to be used if your opponent rolls poorly. Seems better than defensive focus on a mere 2 agility dice to me.

Against 2 ship builds this should have an easy time.

Against 2 ship builds this should have an easy time.

You're forgetting that 2-ship builds are going to have a PS advantage on you which means you won't get to Target Lock them before the first shots are fired, and that most 2-ship builds are built around arc-dodging, which X-Wings struggle against because they're so terrible at blocking compared to things like B-Wings and A-Wings which can position themselves in unpredictable ways.

Now consider that R7 can be easily counteracted by a focus token or Gunner, and that your 8 points of astromechs only affect one attack and not the other, and I think you'll see you're being a bit over optimistic here.

The problem I see with trying to use R7 enmasse like this is that you are spending 8 points and using up all of your actions just to affect 1 enemy attack. If you're playing against PS 1-3 ships, then you can't spend any of your Target Locks, or your opponent will just attack the X-Wing without a lock and all those points spent on R7s will be wasted. That just seems really bad to me. Sure once one of your X-Wings becomes injured it will be easier to figure out which ship they're going to target, but X-Wings don't stay injured for long, and your opponent can just choose to fire with the Target Locked ship last to easily deny you the R7 bonus. It works on Tarn Mison because the TL is free and triggers as soon as a ship attacks him, meaning he doesn't have to waste his action or guess what ship is going to be attacking him during the activation phase, nor can the opponent attack Tarn without triggering R7's ability.

Against a 2 ship list, if one of my opponent's ships gets out of position I could just dump Target locks on the one that can shoot at me. It only gets one attack off which is nullified, and then my X Wings get to fire.

Against a swarm an XXXX list is already kind of boned. You do have PS on them though with Red Squadrons. I'm the only swarm player in my play group though.

I understand how finicky it would be, and I agree with you that I'm a little too optimistic. I still have yet to try it out, this is just a hypothesis at this point. I also don't know if I should go Tarn and 3 Red Squadrons, or Biggs, Tarn, and 2 Red Squadrons. I'll be sure to make it my next list to fly though.

It seems better than just slapping an R2 on an X Wing and calling it a day at the very least.

If you use Biggs to protect Tarn hopefully you get Tarn closer to end game when fewer enemy ships are on the table. That's where he shines.

I played this tonight, did pretty good. Some tweaks though:

Biggs just dies. Biggs forces your opponent to focus fire an X Wing, which your opponent should be doing anyways. It isn't always possible to cycle turns where Biggs draws shots and turns where Biggs can't be. So if he's going to get focused down, having a mere focus on 2 agility is not a good spot to be in.

The PS bid to red squadrons didn't super help. Faced a predator firespray once. No one else plays BBBB(Z)/Panic Attack or swarms in my area.

So I think you'd be best off taking a red squadron down to rookie which gives you 2 more points, just enough for a shenanigans bot (r7) on Biggs. This way his defense is boosted to about the same as the rest of the squad. If I would have had an R7 on Biggs it would have made a huge difference.

Predicting which ships in a two ship build were going to fire on me was easy. Flying against hodge podge lists with a fire spray and a lambda and 2 ties is easy also. And if you managed to kill off one of the two ships, then it was simply a matter of target locking that one ship.

I played this tonight, did pretty good. Some tweaks though:

Biggs just dies. Biggs forces your opponent to focus fire an X Wing, which your opponent should be doing anyways. It isn't always possible to cycle turns where Biggs draws shots and turns where Biggs can't be. So if he's going to get focused down, having a mere focus on 2 agility is not a good spot to be in.

The PS bid to red squadrons didn't super help. Faced a predator firespray once. No one else plays BBBB(Z)/Panic Attack or swarms in my area.

So I think you'd be best off taking a red squadron down to rookie which gives you 2 more points, just enough for a shenanigans bot (r7) on Biggs. This way his defense is boosted to about the same as the rest of the squad. If I would have had an R7 on Biggs it would have made a huge difference.

Predicting which ships in a two ship build were going to fire on me was easy. Flying against hodge podge lists with a fire spray and a lambda and 2 ties is easy also. And if you managed to kill off one of the two ships, then it was simply a matter of target locking that one ship.

So predictinvs vs 2ship was easy, but was winning easy? Forgive me but i think a boosting fat han would be tough to pin down. expose EI chirpy might be a little easier.

Also, the Red ps bid was expectedly not that useful. Predator isnt that good. And 2 points each is too tough to swallow.