while i love me some jake and the tala band, i always had problems accepting the lack of oomph of post procket Jake. I still consider the 5 tala escort to be one of the strongest in the game so i have set out to find something else for the 35 points that are left after getting the talas.

Yesterday i tried to run poe, VI, r5-regen droid. It was brutal. Poe generally just soars around with focus and tries to mop up after the tala hammer. He is pretty sturdy and can take some hits. PS 10 makes him a serious threat for whisper, xizor, wedge, and to some extent soontir too. I guess it has a chance vs 4tlt, but I'm not sure. It tore through royal escort and a 2tlt list with some z´s yesterday.

I like how lean the design of poe is, but I'm not sure he's better than jake. feels sorta like a cheap skate version of corran. pretty good in the late game.

what do you guys think?

I like it, you could however go for keyan with advanced sensors and VI or PTL depending if you want initiative or a bit more brute.

5 Z95s and anything can be very strong. I like R5-D8 it gets under rated a lot. my first thought was to put BB8 and Lone Wolf or R5-P9 with Crack Shot.

Wouldn't recommend running Lone Wolf alongside 5 other friendly ships. R5-P9 seems made for Poe, though. Adrenaline Rush might be an option, to make the most of those sneaky Tallon Rolls.

I think VI is a good call for budget Poe. He is just shifty enough to make good use out of it, and sturdy enough to railroad the shiftier ships out there (that can no longer respond to him). Wave 8's Integrated Astromech just makes it better, of course. He gets some PS kills in, and can take a punch or two before going down. I would say his main worry is late-game tanks, as I don't think he has the inherent firepower to crack some of the tougher action-stacking high-defense ships. That mostly just means that you might have to put your Talas on blocking duty early against some lists.

That is a rock solid well build list. A consideration could be dropping either a Tala and VI or two Talas to Bandits to add Autothrusters, but I don't think that would be superior for sure, since equal PS across the board really helps taking some pressure of the mind, which is valuable when playing for a long time like you do in a tournament. Autothrusters are really good, though, especially with TLTs being a part of the meta.

That is a rock solid well build list. A consideration could be dropping either a Tala and VI or two Talas to Bandits to add Autothrusters, but I don't think that would be superior for sure, since equal PS across the board really helps taking some pressure of the mind, which is valuable when playing for a long time like you do in a tournament. Autothrusters are really good, though, especially with TLTs being a part of the meta.

But if you're thinking TLTs, having Talas helps kill them before they fire. Throw in the free Integrated Astromech, and I don't really mind the loss of Autothrusters all that much. 4 Talas counters a lot of what Autothrusters is also good for. VI is pretty essential to the build, I think. You're trading overall punchiness for Arc Dodger denial + some points. If you lose Arc Dodger denial, you don't have a lot left to hang your hat on.