the issue with sqaudrons in general is that a lot of players i have found are not amazing at placing them. If you know Rhymer is going to sit at medium range and pelt you then you need to position that he can only ever move and shoot and you then respond with an attack run on him. Flight Controller A-wings/Tycho/Wedge should make short work of him if there are not any TIE advanced. For this reason I bring at least 1 TIE advanced or Vader. you have to fight squadrons with squadrons and it somehow became the norm to not run squadrons. I love it when my opponents have minimal to 0 squadrons. I get a full run of the table with Rhymer and Co to just harass ships and slow take away your redirect options and use my ships accuracy for brace.

I do agree that Auto-Includes are "bad for the game" it often means that their may be a hole in design or something is a bit undercosted. I think even if rhymer was 25pts I would still make room for him. I only really play him when I am at a tournament or practicing for one. When I am playing fun, janky lists he often isn't there.

If your buddy repeadily plays rhymer against you, ask him what he thinks his weaknesses are. What he thinks the best counters are. If your opponent is a good sport he will tell you as he will also need the practice against seasoned players who can deal with rhymer.

In the Imp vs Reb game, I typically dont even use rhymers ability. It gives me one turn to hit at medium and then I typically stay at short range anyway to offset evade tokens. Plus the closer I get the more chance i have of my opponent overlapping my squadrons and then I can place them to shoot next turn which lets me move after attacking and reset the overlap predicument. Rhymer really enables me for the turn 2 attack instead of turn 3 and then lets me correct any mistakes I make. Can I not get to short range without him, but I can make it to rhymer? That was a positioning mistake on my part and hes a safety net. Yes he is brutal, but so is Yavaris/Gallant Haven ace builds. I would hate to deal with gallant haven without rhymer. It is almost impossible.

honestly, I think just having Firesprays means we'll be seeing much less of Rhymer

he just seems excessive when combined with the threat range already available to Rogue, and he actively works against the flexibility provided

basically, Rhymer + normal squadrons = yes; Rhymer + sprays = redundant

Firesprays should provide a nice alternative

Given the Firespray has a palty speed 3, I think Rhymer is still going to be just as useful to make sure those rogue movements don't fall short of their target.

I mentioned this in another post (see the IFF new episode thread) but I feel Rogue is kind of a trap. Rogue is great if you have 12 squadrons and only can activate 10 with carrier support. It means that you may still get those last 2 squadrons to have meaningful activations that same turn. However, if you do not support squadrons with carriers or simply squadron commands you are going to get alpha'd by enemy squadrons. and with enemies activating first and things like flight Controllers in the game. Either x-wings coming in with 5 dice or TIEs with 5 (howlrunner) or 6 with interceptors, your firesprays may never make it to the squadron phase. I think rogue is good for my previous mention when your opponent has other things to worry about, but if your goal is simply to have squadrons and not have to issue squadron commands you will most likely still find squadrons to be lackluster since a good opponent will either stay out of their threat ranges or coming hard and fast, swinging for the fences. The Rhymer TIE swarm does this well. It is designed to win dog fights with 9 stands of fighters outside Rhymer and once air superiority is established, Rhymer does what he does. Yes you have non-bomber blue dice, but out of 10 activation's you should still do 3-4 damage. That's an entire hull zone SOL, after 2 turns of it , now you have no adjacent zones to redirect too so my 1 accuracy can be used for your brace when my ship finally shoots you. It works surprisingly well.

this is still a lot of theory (the rogue part, not the Rhymer tie swarm, that works) but I won't be shocked to see people complaining that rogue isn't as good as they thought. maybe I am wrong.

not overpowered. Actually completely ******* neccessary after seeing what crazy Yavaris stuff you can do with Rebel Squadrons.

Speaking as a Rebel:

I don't think he's totally broken or anything, but what's frustrating is he's essentially an auto-include. He's one of those upgrades that you pretty much HAVE to have if you want to make your bomber list really pop. I've read some interesting thoughts that anything that's an Auto-include is essentially OP, so food for thought?

TL;DR - Not broken, but I'm sick of seeing him.

In my area he is almost never included, but the Gallant Haven is in every single rebel fleet. So by that logic the Gallant Haven is over powerful? Also not sure what TL;DR stands for. To me it is TL = Team Leader, DR is Doctor, but as that does not fit thinking it is something else.

As for all the people saying he is underpointed, if he cost more he would never be used in my area. As right now he is only used if there are some points left over to upgrade a bomber to him, make him cost more and no one would even look twice at him.

the issue with sqaudrons in general is that a lot of players i have found are not amazing at placing them. If you know Rhymer is going to sit at medium range and pelt you then you need to position that he can only ever move and shoot and you then respond with an attack run on him. Flight Controller A-wings/Tycho/Wedge should make short work of him if there are not any TIE advanced. For this reason I bring at least 1 TIE advanced or Vader. you have to fight squadrons with squadrons and it somehow became the norm to not run squadrons. I love it when my opponents have minimal to 0 squadrons. I get a full run of the table with Rhymer and Co to just harass ships and slow take away your redirect options and use my ships accuracy for brace.

I do agree that Auto-Includes are "bad for the game" it often means that their may be a hole in design or something is a bit undercosted. I think even if rhymer was 25pts I would still make room for him. I only really play him when I am at a tournament or practicing for one. When I am playing fun, janky lists he often isn't there.

If your buddy repeadily plays rhymer against you, ask him what he thinks his weaknesses are. What he thinks the best counters are. If your opponent is a good sport he will tell you as he will also need the practice against seasoned players who can deal with rhymer.

In the Imp vs Reb game, I typically dont even use rhymers ability. It gives me one turn to hit at medium and then I typically stay at short range anyway to offset evade tokens. Plus the closer I get the more chance i have of my opponent overlapping my squadrons and then I can place them to shoot next turn which lets me move after attacking and reset the overlap predicument. Rhymer really enables me for the turn 2 attack instead of turn 3 and then lets me correct any mistakes I make. Can I not get to short range without him, but I can make it to rhymer? That was a positioning mistake on my part and hes a safety net. Yes he is brutal, but so is Yavaris/Gallant Haven ace builds. I would hate to deal with gallant haven without rhymer. It is almost impossible.

Rhymer IS an auto-include if you're brining any number of ship-shooting imps. He's very obviously intended to be a rule-changing centerpiece. Just like GH is there to back up your Bracing Aces.

He's powerful, but the rebels have asymmetrically powerful things as well.

Yavaris is "broken" like Ryhmer, like Demolisher, like Gallant Haven, etc.

I'm not crazy how often we see those supposedly "unique" things on the battle field.. I'd have rather they'ed been more specialized so that people had to build odd lists around them that would have been more rare. Then all the basic stuff would have been used more and we might have seen more variety. But even seeing them as often as we do, I'm still pretty impressed how unique each game has been.

The big thing for me again is going from playing tie fighter and x wing games yo the squadron in this one. Yes a flight sim to a table top i know. But tie bombers yhat can move faster then a xwing. Just feels somethings got changed or nerf ie b wings being slower then y wings when the game had them as faster or same.

As for my games I lock rhymer down with a a wing then a x wing. But they dont lasy long with a flight controller tie swarm firing 4 blue with a reroll or 5 if howlrunner there.

I just feel thay if you imp rhymer should be included. But I been trying to build a set up that will help wiyh him

Just saying, but like, couldn't you just engage him and his flying circus?

the issue with sqaudrons in general is that a lot of players i have found are not amazing at placing them. If you know Rhymer is going to sit at medium range and pelt you then you need to position that he can only ever move and shoot and you then respond with an attack run on him. Flight Controller A-wings/Tycho/Wedge should make short work of him if there are not any TIE advanced. For this reason I bring at least 1 TIE advanced or Vader. you have to fight squadrons with squadrons and it somehow became the norm to not run squadrons. I love it when my opponents have minimal to 0 squadrons. I get a full run of the table with Rhymer and Co to just harass ships and slow take away your redirect options and use my ships accuracy for brace.

I do agree that Auto-Includes are "bad for the game" it often means that their may be a hole in design or something is a bit undercosted. I think even if rhymer was 25pts I would still make room for him. I only really play him when I am at a tournament or practicing for one. When I am playing fun, janky lists he often isn't there.

If your buddy repeadily plays rhymer against you, ask him what he thinks his weaknesses are. What he thinks the best counters are. If your opponent is a good sport he will tell you as he will also need the practice against seasoned players who can deal with rhymer.

In the Imp vs Reb game, I typically dont even use rhymers ability. It gives me one turn to hit at medium and then I typically stay at short range anyway to offset evade tokens. Plus the closer I get the more chance i have of my opponent overlapping my squadrons and then I can place them to shoot next turn which lets me move after attacking and reset the overlap predicument. Rhymer really enables me for the turn 2 attack instead of turn 3 and then lets me correct any mistakes I make. Can I not get to short range without him, but I can make it to rhymer? That was a positioning mistake on my part and hes a safety net. Yes he is brutal, but so is Yavaris/Gallant Haven ace builds. I would hate to deal with gallant haven without rhymer. It is almost impossible.

Rhymer IS an auto-include if you're brining any number of ship-shooting imps. He's very obviously intended to be a rule-changing centerpiece. Just like GH is there to back up your Bracing Aces.

On the other hand, if you build your list around Rhymer, he is not only your centerpiece but also your single point of failure.

Absolutely. But is he broken? No.

Overpowered/undercosted....yes. The sheer prevalence of him in any Imperial list with a modicum of squadrons pretty much shows this. He is so much of a no-brainer because his cost is low.

But then again, i've yet to see him win many tournaments. Over metas i know have seen a bit more, but he's hardly dominating most scenes.

So a bit OP? yes.

OP to the point of imbalance? Not really. He screws with internal faction balance more than anything, rather than win rate (which IMO is just as bad, but in a different way).

If he was 40pts i think id still be tempted to take him for what he allows me to do. I have been debating a list without him, heresy i know, but I wanna try 12 stands of squadrons.

If he was 40pts i think id still be tempted to take him for what he allows me to do. I have been debating a list without him, heresy i know, but I wanna try 12 stands of squadrons.

Let me guess ... 8 Tie Fighters and 4 Tie Bombers?

How would YOU complete this list?

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/191632-imperial-commanders-complete-this-list/

If he was 40pts i think id still be tempted to take him for what he allows me to do. I have been debating a list without him, heresy i know, but I wanna try 12 stands of squadrons.

Let me guess ... 8 Tie Fighters and 4 Tie Bombers?

How would YOU complete this list?

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/191632-imperial-commanders-complete-this-list/

something like 2 firesprays 3-4 interceptors and then TIES + Howlrunner. I havn't finished shaking it all out. I don't like tie bombers. I want my fighters to dog fight, Rhymer just makes them also harass ships. I may drop howlrunner for flight controllers on each ship and readd rhymer i need to play around and really test it all out.

Overpowered/undercosted....yes. The sheer prevalence of him in any Imperial list with a modicum of squadrons pretty much shows this. He is so much of a no-brainer because his cost is low.

But then again, i've yet to see him win many tournaments. Over metas i know have seen a bit more, but he's hardly dominating most scenes.

So a bit OP? yes.

OP to the point of imbalance? Not really. He screws with internal faction balance more than anything, rather than win rate (which IMO is just as bad, but in a different way).

Wouldn't that make him underpowered and overcosted?

So much bomber hate. They arnt that terrible at anti fighter, 3 blues get you typically what one black does. Sure there no spike rolls, but I find one damage hits on tycho gets very annoying, and two advanced 2 bombers can easily get their points back against a wings or imperials.

So much bomber hate. They arnt that terrible at anti fighter, 3 blues get you typically what one black does. Sure there no spike rolls, but I find one damage hits on tycho gets very annoying, and two advanced 2 bombers can easily get their points back against a wings or imperials.

The black dice has a 75% chance of getting a hit against another squadron.

A blue dice has a 50% chance, but also has a 25% chance of getting an accuracy (vs. aces, basically)

So a bomber will on average do 0.75 damage to a squadron whereas a TIE Fighter will do 1.5, twice as good (and that's without factoring in the reroll from Swarm).

This is not to say that TIE Bombers cannot whittle away at enemy squadrons through sheer perserverence and 5 HP, but they are the worst anti-squadron in the game currently. My most frequent opponent and I joke that all TIE Bombers are equipped with roll-down windows and cinder blocks for their anti-squadron weaponry, which they drop from the windows and hope that enemy fighters blunder into them.

Yeah, but even a two damage + accuracy roll is one damage on every ace in wave 1.

I just find unless I'm rolling 4+ dice bombers do as much as any other squadron. Now, wedge or howlrunner led swarmers are amazing, but at an increased cost. Not saying take 10 bombers as anti fighter, but never discount their die with minimal deterrent, ala a wings/ties.

Speaking as a Rebel:

I don't think he's totally broken or anything, but what's frustrating is he's essentially an auto-include. He's one of those upgrades that you pretty much HAVE to have if you want to make your bomber list really pop. I've read some interesting thoughts that anything that's an Auto-include is essentially OP, so food for thought?

TL;DR - Not broken, but I'm sick of seeing him.

In my area he is almost never included, but the Gallant Haven is in every single rebel fleet. So by that logic the Gallant Haven is over powerful? Also not sure what TL;DR stands for. To me it is TL = Team Leader, DR is Doctor, but as that does not fit thinking it is something else.

As for all the people saying he is underpointed, if he cost more he would never be used in my area. As right now he is only used if there are some points left over to upgrade a bomber to him, make him cost more and no one would even look twice at him.

By the school of thought I was reading about yes, that would in fact make Gallant Haven over powerful. I dunno if I think either card is ACTUALLY overpowerful, but running with the theory that any 'auto-include' is overpowered, yes it would make GH OP.

TL;DR means Too Long; Didn't Read. Short hand for a summary.

The big thing for me again is going from playing tie fighter and x wing games yo the squadron in this one. Yes a flight sim to a table top i know. But tie bombers yhat can move faster then a xwing. Just feels somethings got changed or nerf ie b wings being slower then y wings when the game had them as faster or same.

The X-wing games are very much the exception to the rule- Pretty much everywhere else, the B-wing is the slowest fighter around while the Y-wing is only slightly slower than the X-wing.

As for the bomber, my best guess is that if they made it speed 3, it wouldn't be able to keep up with its escorts, so functionality trumped lore, there.

Technically, according to the original instructions ILM was using during the production of Endor, X-wings, Y-wings, and Tie Fighters all had comparable speed and maneuverability, while B-wings and the Falcon were slower and ungainly (There were no Tie Bombers in any actual space combat scene, so we the sketch doesn't show them). The, "Tie Fighters are faster, but more fragile" thing came up from the expanded universe.

Source:

The big thing for me again is going from playing tie fighter and x wing games yo the squadron in this one. Yes a flight sim to a table top i know. But tie bombers yhat can move faster then a xwing. Just feels somethings got changed or nerf ie b wings being slower then y wings when the game had them as faster or same.

The X-wing games are very much the exception to the rule- Pretty much everywhere else, the B-wing is the slowest fighter around while the Y-wing is only slightly slower than the X-wing.

As for the bomber, my best guess is that if they made it speed 3, it wouldn't be able to keep up with its escorts, so functionality trumped lore, there.

Technically, according to the original instructions ILM was using during the production of Endor, X-wings, Y-wings, and Tie Fighters all had comparable speed and maneuverability, while B-wings and the Falcon were slower and ungainly (There were no Tie Bombers in any actual space combat scene, so we the sketch doesn't show them). The, "Tie Fighters are faster, but more fragile" thing came up from the expanded universe.

Source:

Now it may just be me, but I would trade one speed for one extra health on my TiEs.

The thing I'm curious about is why they made the TIE bombers so crappy. If Rhymer came out as a "fix" later, then I could see it, but they came out at the same time. I'm also worried that it will hamper future imperial squadrons because they can't make anything too good anti-ship or it will be abused with Rhymer.

The thing I'm curious about is why they made the TIE bombers so crappy. If Rhymer came out as a "fix" later, then I could see it, but they came out at the same time. I'm also worried that it will hamper future imperial squadrons because they can't make anything too good anti-ship or it will be abused with Rhymer.

I don't see a 9 point dedicated bomber with speed 4, a black anti-ship dice, and 5 HP as crappy. Left unopposed, they're probably the most cost-effective bombers in the game. Their main problem is if there are fighters trying to shoot them down, but that's just part of being a squadron in the Imperial navy - if you're not designed to do something, bring along a friend or two.

The thing I'm curious about is why they made the TIE bombers so crappy. If Rhymer came out as a "fix" later, then I could see it, but they came out at the same time. I'm also worried that it will hamper future imperial squadrons because they can't make anything too good anti-ship or it will be abused with Rhymer.

Eh, they're ok. Rebel Y-Wings might hold up a tad better in a fight, but that extra speed can be really useful to reach targets and stay out of engagements. They're not B-Wings, but they have their own problems (which can be worked around).

The thing I'm curious about is why they made the TIE bombers so crappy. If Rhymer came out as a "fix" later, then I could see it, but they came out at the same time. I'm also worried that it will hamper future imperial squadrons because they can't make anything too good anti-ship or it will be abused with Rhymer.

I don't see a 9 point dedicated bomber with speed 4, a black anti-ship dice, and 5 HP as crappy. Left unopposed, they're probably the most cost-effective bombers in the game. Their main problem is if there are fighters trying to shoot them down, but that's just part of being a squadron in the Imperial navy - if you're not designed to do something, bring along a friend or two.