Working toward solidifying what my list for regionals will look like; I'm going to try out one of these lists at my local store this week, but curious to hear feedback from the community on them first.

List 1:

I 'get' that this isn't really going to win a regional, but it's the sort of list I like to fly best.

The second one looks stronger to me. Inflicts more stress, doesn't lose much by dropping Tarn for Airen.

I dont know why you wouldnt run Tarn without R7. Tarn + R7 is stronger than Cracken IMO because Craken wont last long as a priority target. Tarn will get ignored for higher threats and then becomes a great closer for you

I wonder if Swarm Tactics would be a better way to go with Cracken. Bumping someone else up to PS8, giving them an action, then hitting an opposing ship that has yet to fire sounds quite nice.

With FCS, your ships don't really need that much action support from Airen, so I don't think he's the best fit for a control list. In fact, even without FCS, your ships don't really need extra actions, especially if you are controlling the opponent effectively (denying them actions through stress and shots through ion tokens).

I'd also recommend the BTL-A4 title on your y-wing because then you can double stress if the opponent is in range 1 or 2.

How about:

Blue w/ E2 + tactician

Blue w/ ion cannon

Gold w/ BTL-A4, ion turret & R3-A2

Tarn w/ R7

You could always change the ion cannon to a 2nd blue w/ E2 + tactician...

Craken with Squad Leader does allow both B-Wings to barrel-roll to get range two shots much later than they would normally get to.

Craken with Squad Leader does allow both B-Wings to barrel-roll to get range two shots much later than they would normally get to.

True, although the benefit of that is situational. Not sure its worth the 21 pts for cracken (especially considering Tarn is 3 attack and much more survivable)

The reason I had for swapping out R7 to R2d2 on Tarn was that actually using the Astro's ability is hard to remember sometimes, and that the attacker can still use their tokens to modify the attack afterwards anyway. I felt that I'd get more value out of keeping the target lock and using it for attack while regaining shields with R2.