Alright, I've been playing a Victory/Gladiator list with around 80 pts of fighters/bombers for the last few weeks and seeing middling success.

I'm finding that I'm not using the Victory II's blue dice anywhere near as much as her red dice, and a lot of upgrades like leading shots/Dominator are going to waste.

Also, Rhymer and two bombers, while potentially damaging, is just not as potent as I'd like, even when the opponent runs no fighters and I can toss in four blue dice thanks to anti-fighter squadrons, so i've done a little tweaking. Let me know what you think the weaknesses are BESIDES there only being two ships.

(299/300 pts)

Victory-I (122 pts)
- Screed
- Warlord title
- H9 Turbolasers
- Intel Officer
- Flight Controllers

Gladiator-I (76 pts)
- Demolisher
- ACM

Squadrons: (98 pts)
- Howlrunner
- Major Rhymer
- TIE Fighter x1
- TIE Interceptor x2
- TIE Bomber x4

Objectives:
Precision Strike
Minefields
Hyperspace Assault

At present, I'm thinking of losing a few points and adding Flight Controllers to my Victory for that extra punch on the initial engagement (Six dice from an interceptor with Howlrunner + FC)

EDIT: Edited list to reflect the final build I took to tournament, planning on modifying it to use again later this month.

Demolisher runs well with engine techs. Personally I'd drop bombers for Tie Advanced. I don't see much advantage in the Bomber keyword and Advanced are much better against fighters so it makes your swarms more versatile.

I don't know know about stacking cards on a VSD to make it a better carrier. I usually do the simple thing and stack my VSD with one nav command and 5 repair commands. I use my fighters as landmines instead of making bombing runs. That works well especially with objective position based objectives.

Demolisher runs well with engine techs. Personally I'd drop bombers for Tie Advanced. I don't see much advantage in the Bomber keyword and Advanced are much better against fighters so it makes your swarms more versatile.

I don't know know about stacking cards on a VSD to make it a better carrier. I usually do the simple thing and stack my VSD with one nav command and 5 repair commands. I use my fighters as landmines instead of making bombing runs. That works well especially with objective position based objectives.

Having run Advanced, I don't see the point in them. The Bomber keyword is going to let me land those hit-crits for faceup damage cards or simply drop two damage on shields, something Advanced can't do while simultaneously costing more points than a bomber, and the protection they grant is minimal, considering my bombers are already sitting at five hull each.

Besides, if my bombers are engaged, I haven't played my anti-squadron screen very well. TIE Bombers are speed four. If I'm playing well you shouldn't be able to catch them before my interceptors catch you. Advanced are also, in my experience, pointless against fighters as they lack all the nice Imperial fighter synergy. I'd much rather run more TIEs WITH swarm than the one REALLY expensive TIE that DOESN'T benefit from either normal swarm OR Howlrunner's ability.

As for Flight Controllers, I'm thinking of adding it because it's a force multiplier for the regular TIEs and Howlrunner.

On a squadron command Howlrunner moves in, takes four dice. TIE Fighter moves in, takes five dice with a re-roll. Two Interceptors move in, take SIX dice with a re-roll each. That is a LOT of hurt on basically any anti-bomber group, which is all those TIEs are meant to do. Take it forward a turn and the Interceptors are doling out three-die counters with re-roll and five-die attacks with re-roll, with the basic fighter getting four dice. Six points is a small price to pay for an alpha strike that can conceivably wipe out VASTLY more points in rebel squadrons.

Squadron commands are great on bombers because they'll let you get in an extra round of shooting before your ships move into engagement range, softening up their shields. You only need the one command with Rhymer and he (With all his compatriots) will be taking shots for the next three turns. This is assuming of course that your opponent has interception capabilities. If not then yeah, you can just lazily fly your TIEs into engagement range with impunity and skip the squadron commands altogether.

I've also run Demolisher with Engine Techs plenty, but ET is expensive and situational on a ship that's already sporting a title and ACMs. Admittedly it's one of the upgrades I'm closest to taking, but honestly the Demolisher is still incredibly dangerous without it, assuming you know how to wrangle a navigation command at the right time (And Vet Captain helps when I need to either drop or raise speed by two).

All that said; thanks for the input!

Having run Advanced, I don't see the point in them. The Bomber keyword is going to let me land those hit-crits for faceup damage cards or simply drop two damage on shields, something Advanced can't do while simultaneously costing more points than a bomber, and the protection they grant is minimal, considering my bombers are already sitting at five hull each.

Statistically you are only missing 2 hits in 10. You are gaining anti squadron capability and the ability to protect Major R from enemy fighters. My thoughts are similar on the rebel side: I would rather fly Awings than Ywings.

Having run Advanced, I don't see the point in them. The Bomber keyword is going to let me land those hit-crits for faceup damage cards or simply drop two damage on shields, something Advanced can't do while simultaneously costing more points than a bomber, and the protection they grant is minimal, considering my bombers are already sitting at five hull each.

Statistically you are only missing 2 hits in 10. You are gaining anti squadron capability and the ability to protect Major R from enemy fighters. My thoughts are similar on the rebel side: I would rather fly Awings than Ywings.

With the way I run this list, I'm really not gaining much from that single die, and those 2 in 10 hits are potentially criticals, which can shift the balance of a game MASSIVELY.

I gain vastly more anti-squadron capabilities running cheaper squadrons that benefit from swarm.

If Rhymer is engaged with enemy fighters, I've done something horribly wrong in the preceding turns, and simply giving him a meatshield isn't going to sort that issue.

I can't look at Advanced as adding anti-squadron dice either, because those dice are going to disappear in one turn of focused fire. Five hull isn't that much. Honestly I'd rather they waste their time plinking down my bombers health while my TIEs return fire with impunity.

I think a lot of people underestimate the control you really have over engagement if you move your squadrons well. I don't run Advanced for the same reason I don't run Liaisons: I'd rather not spend points planning to screw up. I prefer just making better choices.

Having run Advanced, I don't see the point in them. The Bomber keyword is going to let me land those hit-crits for faceup damage cards or simply drop two damage on shields, something Advanced can't do while simultaneously costing more points than a bomber, and the protection they grant is minimal, considering my bombers are already sitting at five hull each.

Statistically you are only missing 2 hits in 10. You are gaining anti squadron capability and the ability to protect Major R from enemy fighters. My thoughts are similar on the rebel side: I would rather fly Awings than Ywings.

With the way I run this list, I'm really not gaining much from that single die, and those 2 in 10 hits are potentially criticals, which can shift the balance of a game MASSIVELY.

I gain vastly more anti-squadron capabilities running cheaper squadrons that benefit from swarm.

If Rhymer is engaged with enemy fighters, I've done something horribly wrong in the preceding turns, and simply giving him a meatshield isn't going to sort that issue.

I can't look at Advanced as adding anti-squadron dice either, because those dice are going to disappear in one turn of focused fire. Five hull isn't that much. Honestly I'd rather they waste their time plinking down my bombers health while my TIEs return fire with impunity.

I think a lot of people underestimate the control you really have over engagement if you move your squadrons well. I don't run Advanced for the same reason I don't run Liaisons: I'd rather not spend points planning to screw up. I prefer just making better choices.

So you never ever get in a situation where your opponent might hit Rhymer?

Not even a situation where they might threaten to hit Rhymer if you move him so or so?

I think an Advanced as an escort is quite nice (two is better if you actually wont him covered). If it isn't escorting it can throw a black (non-bomber dice), which isn't too shabby. Rhymer + Bomber + 2xAdv is a decent little ball IMO.

Having run Advanced, I don't see the point in them. The Bomber keyword is going to let me land those hit-crits for faceup damage cards or simply drop two damage on shields, something Advanced can't do while simultaneously costing more points than a bomber, and the protection they grant is minimal, considering my bombers are already sitting at five hull each.

Statistically you are only missing 2 hits in 10. You are gaining anti squadron capability and the ability to protect Major R from enemy fighters. My thoughts are similar on the rebel side: I would rather fly Awings than Ywings.

With the way I run this list, I'm really not gaining much from that single die, and those 2 in 10 hits are potentially criticals, which can shift the balance of a game MASSIVELY.

I gain vastly more anti-squadron capabilities running cheaper squadrons that benefit from swarm.

If Rhymer is engaged with enemy fighters, I've done something horribly wrong in the preceding turns, and simply giving him a meatshield isn't going to sort that issue.

I can't look at Advanced as adding anti-squadron dice either, because those dice are going to disappear in one turn of focused fire. Five hull isn't that much. Honestly I'd rather they waste their time plinking down my bombers health while my TIEs return fire with impunity.

I think a lot of people underestimate the control you really have over engagement if you move your squadrons well. I don't run Advanced for the same reason I don't run Liaisons: I'd rather not spend points planning to screw up. I prefer just making better choices.

So you never ever get in a situation where your opponent might hit Rhymer?

Not even a situation where they might threaten to hit Rhymer if you move him so or so?

I think an Advanced as an escort is quite nice (two is better if you actually wont him covered). If it isn't escorting it can throw a black (non-bomber dice), which isn't too shabby. Rhymer + Bomber + 2xAdv is a decent little ball IMO.

It happens, but it can be countered by making well-considered moves better than it can be patched-over by the inclusion of a 12 pt squadron with no other utility.

That escort isn't going to let me disengage Rhymer. The most it'll do is prevent Rhymer from taking damage for a turn and then leave him there twisting in the wind.

Those 12 pts would (I believe) serve me better in an 11 pt interceptor squadron that can move in to hammer the squadrons engaging Rhymer.

That's a very valid point.

I use Rhymer primarily in a mini-ball to complement my VGG fleet... so not a lot of room for a powerful anti-fighter component.

Took this list to a local eight man tourney today and managed to pull off first place.

There were two rebel lists in the rotation with small squadron complements, but somehow I got matched up with nothing but various combinations of Star Destroyer.

The game against four Gladiators was probably the most tense, with no ships going down but scoring lots of points via Precision Strike victory tokens.

Still, considering I was at a points disadvantage in each round with my anti-squadron complement, five TIE bombers in one place is nothing to sneeze at. On at least one occasion they downed a full strength Gladiator in one round of shooting.

A bit more detailed write up on the tournament:

Round one saw me face a VGG list with no squadrons. Victory was fairly minimalist with both Gladiators tricked out with ACMs and Engine Techs, one Demolisher and one Insidious. He was at 300 pts so I took initiative and chose Hyperspace Assault from his list since he had me beat on activations for Opening Salvo and I didn't want to deal with the black dice, and Dangerous Territory seemed like an auto loss against his twin gladiators.

My opponent left his Insidious in hyperspace and planted all the objective tokens along my deployment zone, so I planted my ships in the far corner from his and crept forward at speed one, careful to never turn my back on an objective token.

We traded some shots, the Insidious jumped out of hyperspace on turn three or four and didn't have much chance to hurt me while dealing with my five bomber strong rhymerball. My Demolisher and his killed one another, and it ended on turn six at roughly 150 pts of his fleet down to 73 of mine destroyed.

Not the best victory, but my TIEs performed well knocking shields down even if Flight Controllers was totally wasted.

Second round was against a GGGG list featuring Screed, Demolisher, and a couple of nearly naked Glad Is sporting Engine Techs. Basically a nightmare for my two ship build. In this round my opponent underbid me and took initiative, choosing Precision Strike from my objective list, I assume planning to use his ship's dice to rack up victory tokens while surrounding me.

This match was going from the moment we started deploying obstacles, as he took the station first and dropped it near his side, I used my obstacle choices to try and "wall off" one whole area to the left of the setup area. During deployment I put my Gladiator toward the middle and started dropping fighters, causing him to spread his forces wide, not sure where my big ship would end up, then finally planted my victory on the very edge of my deployment zone, tilted out to immediately fly out to the edge of the mat. I kept my ships as far away from his as I could, luring his Screed flagship out to try and flank around my victory by flying dangerously close to the edge.

This match the ONLY thing that died was one of my 11 pt Interceptor squadrons that went down to the combined anti-squadron dice of two gladiators. I won 60 pts to 11 pts by dealing and flipping damage cards to his Gladiators. I NEARLY destroyed his flagship with a rear arc shot off my VSD. I KNEW one of his facedown cards was a Structural Damage which would have finished him off, but on the random flip choice I picked a less damaging critical.

VERY close game.

Round three was against ANOTHER zero squadron VGG list, this one who had me underbid actually gave me initiative, trusting in his superior activation and objective cards. I chose minefields and he created a diagonal passage across the board, obviously intending to herd me into the middle.

I again ran my Victory far off to the left, hooking around the far edge of the minefield and forcing him to chase me through it while throwing out my bombers to harry his gladiators and supporting them with my own Demolisher for the death blows.

His Demolisher went down to a single good round of firing from my bombers, and his other ACM Gladiator caught a double arc from my Demolisher.

The next turn, my Demolisher went from full shields to completely destroyed after the most absurdly good Dominator front arc shot I've ever seen.

In retribution, Rhymer surrounded and pummeled the Dominator while my Warlord finished him off from afar.



Over the course of the entire day, the extra 20 pts spent on Howlrunner, the Interceptors, and Flight Controllers was a real weight around my neck, but if I'd faced even ONE list with a few interceptors of its own they would have been valuable, so I'm going to hang on to them, but I'm thinking another VSD-I will be a better choice than the Demolisher, considering how two ships really need more HP, and since my engagements all end up being slow-rolls I may as well have a heavy hitter for when the enemy finally makes it into range. Demolisher wants to be forward, but he also draws a lot of fire and the Warlord never seems to be close enough to support him.