3 TIEs = 2 Adv when it comes to anti-ship dice. So the best way for an Imperial to match 8 A-wings is 12 TIEs and the TIEs should win. They'll take a beating, but they should win.
But at that point you will have a hard time supporting 12 squadrons with commands, and ties are much worse after an engagement since they'll likely be left with 1-2 hull after counters and be easy pickings for anti squadron ship fire, if they beat the a sings in the first place. Not to mention 12 ties is 96 points
3 TIEs = 2 Adv when it comes to anti-ship dice. So the best way for an Imperial to match 8 A-wings is 12 TIEs and the TIEs should win. They'll take a beating, but they should win.
You are going to need 3 VSDs to activate them. And still they would suck against ships compared to A-wings. And there is a great danger of being killed by ship AA after the damage counter does.
So for my taste Tie Fighters are not a good counter to an A-Wing spam.
Actually there are not good answer to A swarms :-).
Well not soo good as most players only own 1-2 copies of the squadrons exp (as myselft) and can't abuse the cheap cost and multirole of the A. Have to work a combined arms fighter presence.
Sorry if don't understand some of the more subltle explanations but I'm not native english either.
News flash!!!
You don't need carriers. And spamming 8-12 T/F is absolutely a valid way to counter the 8 A's (or anything Wave 1). All your TIE needs to do is to engage and lock up the opponents fighter. It will die and you will be fine with that. You prevented that fighter from hitting your ships and you may even take a few with you.
What does MVP stand for?
Either you are trolling or you honestly dont know...either way it stands for Most Valuable Player.
Since this info is not stored in human DNA and I havn't heared or read about it before whatsoever, no Im not trolling.
I think you picked up the opportunity to troll me for asking a question.
He probably assumes you're American. If you were, it would be truly amazing if you hadn't heard the term: it's used in every major spectator sport over here. I know this and I don't watch sports at all. I assume it's not used elsewhere in the world.
Ok thank you.
So assuming Most Valuable Player is the correct term. Does it refer to the player that uses A-Wings, like the forerunner, or the A-Wing itself as the most valuable game element ... like the best player in the team?
And to all the others: No there are not only Americans in the forums. I may have some skills in your language but I don't watch American sports TV.
It refers to the A-Wings themselves in this context.
At the loss of points. Which is what determines who wins. The reason there's a question is there's really nothing imperials can do that is better than 8 a wings other than 8 interceptors which are very vulnerable to ships after engagement.
If you take 96 points of fighters to neutralize 88 points of a wings, then how is that a reasonable answer? Even if you kill all of his what is left of your ties will likely die to ships if you bomb with them.
In the context of a wave 1 tournament, where imperials can't make a 3 ship carrier build, there isn't an easy answer to a wings, which can be supported by a 3 ship build without losing either ship activation or squadron assistance. At 96 points of ties your looking at 3 glads or 2 Vic, or 1 Vic 1 glad, which all suffer from dice at range and hull point counts, while being unable to support that many fighters.
Actually there are not good answer to A swarms :-).
Well not soo good as most players only own 1-2 copies of the squadrons exp (as myselft) and can't abuse the cheap cost and multirole of the A. Have to work a combined arms fighter presence.
Sorry if don't understand some of the more subltle explanations but I'm not native english either.
Yeah I encountered 2 or 4 A-Wings max so far. Still pesky in small numbers but you can afford to ignore them. But 8 A-Wings seem to be a real issue.
News flash!!!
You don't need carriers. And spamming 8-12 T/F is absolutely a valid way to counter the 8 A's (or anything Wave 1). All your TIE needs to do is to engage and lock up the opponents fighter. It will die and you will be fine with that. You prevented that fighter from hitting your ships and you may even take a few with you.
News flash!!!
You are not winning games if you bind that much points in squadrons just to engage A-wings and to die 2 rounds later on. If his is your plans, you might consider a couple of Tie Advanced and Soontir instead.
To counter the A-Wings while having the same anti-ship capability is a whole different story.
As some people have pointed, the problem for imperials it's counter the A wings for less points or the same points being on par with the As in the antiship capabilities.
Empire don't have and answer as interceptors have blue dice and 1 less hull (very important to survive ship AA after kill oposite fighters).
Rebels can fight fire with fire (more As).
Don't if it will work but a concept for AA ship that could only target 4 hull or more with consistent AA fire will improve the tie meta.
Lately I see almost no tie fighter as are cheap points unless it's a carrier build around howlrunner and the upgrade that give extra blue dice to activated squadrons (and even then will die to poor ship AA).
At least in my zone.
Dead fighters are insignificant (Especially at 8pts each) vs losing a ship.
Does the Empire have a direct parallel to the A? Eh, not really. But if you don't want them chucking black dice at your ships, swarming a bunch of pawn fighters is a solution.
Maybe not one you like however.
Dead fighters are insignificant (Especially at 8pts each) vs losing a ship.
Does the Empire have a direct parallel to the A? Eh, not really. But if you don't want them chucking black dice at your ships, swarming a bunch of pawn fighters is a solution.
Maybe not one you like however.
Like I said, the raider should've been a wave earlier, since that would alleviate the ship activation issues, while giving imperials a solid anti squadron ship.
Wave two this shouldn't be as big an issue, with the isd and raider both having solid anti fighter power and better ship parity. Meaning imperials don't have to sacrifice half their list to run more than 4 squadrons
Just played a 4 player game last night, 300 points each, I was forced to play rebel to make a 2v2 rebel vs empire team and since I don't normally play rebels I just used that worlds winning list (for the same reason most people slavishly follow the "meta", They don't want to engage their brains). The empire players saw I was doing this and fielded a ridiculous number of ties. In total it was 10 A-wings vs 10 ties and 2 Tia Advanced. Only 8 A-wings actually participated in the fighter swarm battle, the Imps used a ISD carrier to activate and attack first and I found the real advantage of A-wings vs Ties is those counter dice. I was rolling hot and even tho after the first unanswered attack from 5 ties I had lost 2 A-wings more than half of his stands were hurt and limping. On my next activation I activated 4 A-wings (whale + Garm token) and easily wiped 4 ties (22 vs 24 pts) and with judicious activation and average rolling throughout the rest of the fighter engagement the 8 A-wings handily won the battle with 2 or 3 stands of the 8 left along with the other players 2 stands (that did good work pinging down an ISD in the meantime and actually getting the last shot and killing it).
From my analysis of that match I would say that tie fighter spam is ineffective vs A wings, BUT using slightly less ties and swapping out the advanced and using Howlrunner and Mauler to synergize with the swarm IMO would have been vastly superior. If the a-wings mass 1 good activation with Mauler can wipe out 25% health on most of the swarm, if they don't you can outnumber a group and shred it. Add in the Howlrunner swarm die and they would go down much quicker stopping more counters. Vanilla Tie swarm is NOT a counter to A-wing swarm but I believe with a couple of named pilots and a little skill, you can spend less points and still effectively counter the A-wing Cluster-F strat.
Im using Howlrunner with a bunch of TIE-Interceptors, usually 3 TIEs to be controlled by a single VSD carrier which has flight controls. That means I get 21 blue dice and a few re-rolls! Maybe you already know that benefit from Howlrunner and how mighty it is, then just let me show it again:
Howlrunner (going into fight first): 3 dice, no re-roll
Each Interceptor: 4 dice basically + 1 from flight controls + 1 from Howlrunner + 1 re-roll from swarm = 6 dice + 1 re-roll for each Interceptor
In total 21 dice and 3 re-rolls. If we suppose 50% of that blue dice will be hits, we got a potential damage of around 10! So that means 2 complete A-Wing squadrons instantly out of game, and still a few hits and re-rolls of imperial firepower left
Edited by Jimbo2142Dead fighters are insignificant (Especially at 8pts each) vs losing a ship.
Does the Empire have a direct parallel to the A? Eh, not really. But if you don't want them chucking black dice at your ships, swarming a bunch of pawn fighters is a solution.
Maybe not one you like however.
Agreed. Actually, I'm not sure any fighter on either side has a corollary.
For the Empire, the new Aggressor seems to be the closest thing the Empire has to an upgraded A-wing in terms of role performance (squadron pinner, chip away at ships), though even there, there are significant differences (5 hull instead of 4, 3 speed instead of 5, four anti-squadron vs. three, counter 1 vs. counter 2, Rogue vs. non-Rogue, 16 points vs. 11).
If the question is how to neutralize an A-wing swarm (8 A's), the most direct answer seems to be 8 A's of your own in a mirror match, and get the first alpha strike in. On the imperial side, while simply spamming the same amount of points in TIEs (11 vs. 8) is one solution, my suspicion is that a few A's would probably emerge in the end, thanks to the TIE's fragility and the A's counter. 8 TIEs and 2 TIE Advanced stands a better chance (escort to soak up a few initial shots, to buy a couple extra Swarms), though the TIEs are still taking Counter damage even with the Advanceds floating around. Four TIE Advanced and Five TIEs is a better balance for the same amount of points, but at that point, you've basically neutralized the Empire's greatest advantage in the fighter game, superior numbers.
Wave II will offer the Raider as a counter. A Raider I + Ordnance Experts + 5 TIEs is 88 points. The Rebels still have a numerical advantage, but it's not as drastic as you'd think (8 rebel squadrons vs. 5 imperial squadrons and one ship). The TIEs are still paper thin, so they're going to go down (counter is still nasty here), but the Raider is safe from being peppered by the A's as long as the five TIEs hold on, and has two rerollable black dice that it can shoot against each A-wing as the TIEs are going down. That's between 1-2 more damage on each A-wing, with no counter dice being thrown back, on top of what the TIEs are doing. Once the TIEs give way, the Raider has the advantage of speeding off at speed 4. The A's will need a squadron command to reliably pursue, and even if they do, there's more rerollable black dice in reserve for them. Add more fighters/Raiders to the mix (again, the above is only 48 points worth of ships (12% of 400), and 40 points worth of squadrons (30% of 134)), and you have a flexible high-damage counter to Rebel squadron swarms.
Tie interceptor with dengar becone counter 3. With a reroll of 1 dice for swarm. Or jumpmaster with rhymer and bomber means your a wings locking him down are heavy and the bombers can fire at triple their normal range on your ships.
Fighters alone aren't the best solution. We Rebels have known the value of AA flak for a while ... And I predict you'll start to see more use of the two blue dice Gladiator (a perfectly fine wave 1 anti squadron ship!!). Take ~40 points of TIEs or Advances, and support with a round or two of ack-ack. No more A-wings!
Entire flotillas of TIEs have evaporated to my Escort Nebs in games past...even when my fighters are outnumbered 3-1.
It's not that hard folks. The 12 TIE example was simply to show a better anti-squadron attack than TIE adv.
The goal, have an equal anti-ship damage to 8 A-wings, that still has a reasonable chance at beating 8 A-wings and costs as much.
So 8 A-wings has an average:
6 damage vs ships.
12 damage vs squadrons.
.5 damage each time they are attacked.
32 hp
Start by recognizing that you need a mix of Imperials. The Imperials DON'T have good all-rounders, they have specialists. So take several specialist anti-squadron squads, and then mix them with a few TIE bombers to keep the damage output up.
for example
At 87 Points:
3x TIE Bomber
2x TIE Int
3x TIE Fighter
Howlrunner
6 damage vs ships.
17 damage vs squadrons.
2 damage each time the Ints are attacked
18 fighter hp, 18 Bomber hp, 2 Defense tokens on Howl
I'd take the Imperials.
It's not that hard folks. The 12 TIE example was simply to show a better anti-squadron attack than TIE adv.
The goal, have an equal anti-ship damage to 8 A-wings, that still has a reasonable chance at beating 8 A-wings and costs as much.
So 8 A-wings has an average:
6 damage vs ships.
12 damage vs squadrons.
.5 damage each time they are attacked.
32 hp
Start by recognizing that you need a mix of Imperials. The Imperials DON'T have good all-rounders, they have specialists. So take several specialist anti-squadron squads, and then mix them with a few TIE bombers to keep the damage output up.
for example
At 87 Points:
3x TIE Bomber
2x TIE Int
3x TIE Fighter
Howlrunner
6 damage vs ships.
17 damage vs squadrons.
2 damage each time the Ints are attacked
18 fighter hp, 18 Bomber hp, 2 Defense tokens on Howl
I'd take the Imperials.
The issue moreso lies with the list options you're stuck with afterwards. I'm not 100% sure how your stats add up, as it should be 1 damage when attacked for a wings, and 1.75 for interceptors assuming howlrunner. Each blue = .5, reroll on one die gives .75 for one blue.
But again, ship count really needs to be at 3 for dealing with a large spread of ships. For your imperial list, you'd likely be forced into a 2 Vic list, which won't last too long against a 1 Vic 3 glads. That's the issue with wave 1 carrier builds, just not enough points to take a hardy enough list.
I forget Obi Wan's quote in ANH when he tells Han to stop fighting the tractor beam. But I think it applies here.
Basically there are some fights you will not win. So I think if someone wants to spam fighters, and your force is not able to win a straight up brawl, then you need to come up with a plan to mitigate their advantage. Anti Squad fire is one option, holding off on engaging them is another one. Even turning tail to prevent the fighters from engaging at all is an option.
I think the Raider can help. The R&V pack helps too. Right now as an Imperial, I'll pack 70pts of fighters and hope I can slow the opponent best I can. Maybe a mix of Advanced and Fighters or Interceptors is the best answer. I'm predominantly a Rebel player.
you've got plenty of options wave 2
even if you dedicate to anti-squadron squadrons, there aren't any rebel ships that can outfight you outside Akbar. If Akbar, he's not going to have 8 A-wings (otherwise, he won't have enough Akbar)
with the ISD out, you have two star destroyers that can annihilate rebel ships if left uncontested. Then, you have the VSD and Raider for their select support capabilities (+ VSD's very intimidating damage potential)
for Rebels, my solution is the same as it was against Interceptors. B-wings + Neb Escort shredding, only now we get Jan Ors added to the mix 
Imps with Dengar will quickly show the fragility of the A-wing, if they choose to bother with fighting them at all (yay Intel!)
It's not much help until Wave 2 arrives, but a pair of Raider-I with Ordinance Experts have 2 black dice with rerolls and don't cost a lot more than the 8 A-Wings we're talking about here.
Could even just take one of them with Ordinance Experts, Quad Lasers and Instigator. Damage the whole flock, lock them down with the Raider and get your Counter. You'll lose your Raider against a swarm this size, but you're talking just shy of 2 damage on each of them, and closer to 2.5 damage against any of them that fire on you (at least 6 if they roll perfectly against an undamaged Raider). After that they won't want to risk getting near anything with anti-squadron dice.
Of course you've got to get those black anti-squadron dice into range, but if they're throwing As forward with squad commands you should be able to pounce after they've moved.
Tie interceptor with dengar becone counter 3. With a reroll of 1 dice for swarm. Or jumpmaster with rhymer and bomber means your a wings locking him down are heavy and the bombers can fire at triple their normal range on your ships.
...and counter 4 with howl runner nearby as well.
Tie interceptor with dengar becone counter 3. With a reroll of 1 dice for swarm. Or jumpmaster with rhymer and bomber means your a wings locking him down are heavy and the bombers can fire at triple their normal range on your ships.
...and counter 4 with howl runner nearby as well.
I feel like at that point you've invested a huge pile of points into a squadron blob that just lurks around yelling "come at me, bro!" at which point the Rebel player can either choose to engage you or more likely ignore you as best he can. That super blob does not do very well against ships and so if your two fighter clouds go their separate ways, his will have the better end of the deal.
I'd much rather use something more cost-effective such as TIE Fighters+Howlrunner+Flight Controllers. That puts a dizzying number of dice on the table and while Counter will hurt, I've found it can generally get a pretty speedy resolution to the dog fight, particularly if you can spare a bit of anti-squadron firepower to help push 1 HP A-Wings over without having to attack them again with TIEs and suffer the Counter 2. Raiders will help here, as will ISDs with their better anti-squadron batteries.
I have to add that the speed 5 of A it's a huge advantage to mitigate combined arms combos. Soontir it's very dificult to use compared to the at range x do z.
You don't know how many angry imperials becouse thanks to speed 5 and good positioning can't use the special of it's ace.
And the hull battle it's very important as rebels ships pack good AA and that adds quickly to low hull targets.
The raider it's not very good AA. Black dice it's very short range and fighters will avoid them or could move after the ships. If you engage them near the position will be the raider will have a day but I'll avoid as much as posible.
Regular ties are where it's at. Super cheap, yet still effective. Opponent didn't bring fighters? No prob, stick em on the ship arcs he/she will want to shoot from and ping away. Opponent has clear air superiority? No prob, slowly sacrifise ties to keep enemy fighters off your ships, plus you will take some off the board while doing so. I just dont see a downside on bringing plain ol' ties.
In every game i play i find a use for them and earn their points back two fold.
@oddeye well said
So many people think they have to dominate an exchange to win, sometimes all you need to do is get an advantage in points negated/TIEd up (lol sorry), or a few shields removed from an arc that's going to get hit.