I played a game last week that, given the lack of anything better to do right now, I've decided to write a short report on. There was a ton of discussion last week about the TAx1 title and what it does to the lowly tempest Squadron pilot, flying 4 of them with accuracy correctors and Dark Curse, calling the squad AC/DC, etc. and eventually the thread brought up Cluster Missiles. Average expected damage is a flat 16 for these things (maybe a tiny bit more with probability on 3 dice making 3 hits), if you've got them all on target at range 1-2, and it sounded like a really fun way to burn down a PWT, so I figured I'd put it on the table. I was up against a friend of mine, a somewhat newer player, who primarily plays imperials, but today he wanted to try out scum. He brought a Kath IG-88B combo, and for the life of me I can't remember all the upgrades. I know he had autothrusters, advanced sensors, and mangler cannon on the IG, and a recon specialist on Kath (I think she had a mangler as well) with no engine upgrade (that was important at the end of the game,) while also having room to squeeze in a PS3 headhunter. I, of course, brought Thunderstruck (4x Tempest Squadron Pilot with Accuracy Corrector, TAx1 title, and Cluster Missiles.
I set up in a loose box looking down an alley in the asteroids we had set out, a bit left of center of the board, while he put his headhunter on my far left, IG roughly across from me diagonally, and Kath closer to the board edge on the other side. First couple turns had us moving toward each other, Kath falling behind. The first turn of combat, only my front 2 Tempests have shots, and only at range 3, so I do the expected 0 total damage while he stripped shields from one of them.
The next turn, all 4 Tempests get target locks and IG puts himself right in the blast zone, me having blocked his expected boost escape route. Kath is still too far to make a difference, she blows her range 3 mangler shot through a rock and whiffs, IG puts damage on a different TIE (the damaged one was out of arc) and it was cluster missile time. Over the course of 8 attacks, I used accuracy corrector 7 times and rolled a natural hit-hit-crit once, for a total of 17 damage. He evaded 9 of it with green dice and another from the evade token, leaving IG shieldless at 1 hull remaining and pilot skill 0 to boot. Not quite as good as I had hoped, but the Aggressor was adequately Clusterf***ed.
The following couple of turns saw me K-turning to keep shots on IG, Kath avoiding some rocks and coming around, and the headhunter finally engaging the turn IG finally takes the last shot (5 or 6 accuracy corrected shots into 3 dice evade later.) The headhunter explodes after just two attacks, leaving a full health Kath against all 4 Tempest, all of which have taken some damage, only one of which had a damage card on him. Kath makes a running fight of it, but only manages to eliminate one TIE before going up in flames to the horrendously accurate fire of my Advanceds.
The TIE Advanced, in playtesting, appears to be every bit as durable as expected. The nearly permanent evade token, coupled with 3 agility and 5 total hit points, makes for a hard ship to bring down without steady, concentrated fire - exactly the sort of thing that 2-ship lists often have trouble bringing to bear. Additionally, with the 3 agility, they should perform admirably against swarms, especially if Howl eats a cluster or two early and goes down. This list has it's weak points, low PS being the most glaring, but should do pretty well in most matchups. The two glaring exceptions I see are Triple Interceptor, who can evade the death killzone that bigger ships get trapped in more easily; and Dual-IG, as 16 hits into 24 evade dice + tokens is not as guaranteed a kill as a low-agility fat turret, and even if eliminate one, it just puts me in a cat and mouse with the other.