When I first started trying to really lrn2squadrons, I focused on avoidance: I'd try to use a single fighter to lock down as many of my opponent's squadrons as possible to allow my bombers to slip through and get off early shots on target. What I found was that this ended up getting my fighters killed quickly, releasing those enemy interceptors to go pick off my bombers at their leisure (pronounced leh'-zhər).

As a result, I find myself moving toward a very USAFesque doctrine of first establishing space supremacy, and then going all-in on the attacks once my fighters have free rein on the board. I'll very happily throw my B-wings at TIE interceptors if they let me.

Going for the fighters first gives you the added advantage of allowing you to rapidly decrease your adversary's power inincrementally. For example, rather than trying to take down the big ship over three turns, I can take down a third of his fighters each turn for three turns, reducing his ability to hit me back by a third per turn. I hope that makes sense: it's basically taking the concept of the alpha strike to the next level and applying it to the battle overall.

So I'm curious: is this the commonly accepted tactic? Do you do it differently? Or am I just stating the obvious for you, and everyone in your community does this?

I realize that since you and I play quite often, posting about my squadron tactics may be moot, but... for the benefit of the forum...

With my much more fragile but more numerous TIE fighters, I try to engage squadrons piecemeal. That is to say, for each move I try to give the enemy as few possible focus fire opportunities as possible. By engaging a ball of squadrons in a selective circle, you can engage just one of the squadrons with two of yours, making it impossible for them to fire twice and wipe out my three hull squads, while still letting them benefit from the Swarm keyword.

Now, I've played both highly aggressive anti-squadron and more defensive. The nice thing about TIEs is they can be rapidly redeployed to do either.

In the case of aggression, the idea is to overwhelm lone squadrons with focus fire while limiting your own engagement. Letting some squadrons go un-engaged and shoot past me is fine so long as I'm picking them off, since my TIEs can totally catch up to almost anything on the board.

For more conservative play, I'll move my squadrons around the board, carefully measuring engagement distances, letting my opponent move his bombers in for the kill before engaging them. This can be difficult, having to dodge interceptors for 2+ turns, but if you can shield your ships on the turn that bombers WANT to be firing at them, you have effectively nullified all the points spent on bombers with a minimal 8 pt TIE investment.

A strategy I've been working on for 400 pt games where I can run a REAL swarm of TIEs involves placing my squadrons in a spread out field ahead of my ships to create as wide an engagement zone as possible. Testing this on the kitchen table, it can prevent bombers from even moving into range to engage the ship on the next turn, since no matter where they move within ~ medium range of a ship, they will be engaged and fighters WILL converge on them.

Also working on: TIE formations that are spaced to physically block any other squadrons from being placed between them. This idea is very much a work in progress, and requires a LOT of TIE fighters.

I prefer to sacrifice my Rebel fighters to tie up Imperial squadrons. I tend to keep my Imperial units clumped as I prefer to run a Howlrunner crew.

I really like plain old tie fighters. I dump them in a blob around a front firing arc and ping away. You'd be surprised how deadly 7 or 8 ties can be.. ive actually avoided enemy bombers before and just went for the ship kill instead. Its a battle of attrition!

That's really interesting, Stasy, as it's kind of the opposite of the direction we've gone around here. I see the Imps covering large areas to leverage their overall higher speed while the rebels hunker down to try and concentrate their fire around their slower, but more survivable, fighters.

You're definitely right though, the synergistic imperial squadron paradigm does also lend itself to a single-cluster deployment (ref: Rhymer ball). What I've seen my opponents do is hedge their bets by avoiding committing the enablers (howl, Rhymer, etc) until after the battle is joined and then dropping them into it. Seems to work well... at least against me.

Hehehe I'll hold Howlrunner for last move. Decide what scrum to join if multiple ones occur.

I realize that since you and I play quite often, posting about my squadron tactics may be moot, but... for the benefit of the forum...

With my much more fragile but more numerous TIE fighters, I try to engage squadrons piecemeal. That is to say, for each move I try to give the enemy as few possible focus fire opportunities as possible. By engaging a ball of squadrons in a selective circle, you can engage just one of the squadrons with two of yours, making it impossible for them to fire twice and wipe out my three hull squads, while still letting them benefit from the Swarm keyword.

Now, I've played both highly aggressive anti-squadron and more defensive. The nice thing about TIEs is they can be rapidly redeployed to do either.

In the case of aggression, the idea is to overwhelm lone squadrons with focus fire while limiting your own engagement. Letting some squadrons go un-engaged and shoot past me is fine so long as I'm picking them off, since my TIEs can totally catch up to almost anything on the board.

For more conservative play, I'll move my squadrons around the board, carefully measuring engagement distances, letting my opponent move his bombers in for the kill before engaging them. This can be difficult, having to dodge interceptors for 2+ turns, but if you can shield your ships on the turn that bombers WANT to be firing at them, you have effectively nullified all the points spent on bombers with a minimal 8 pt TIE investment.

A strategy I've been working on for 400 pt games where I can run a REAL swarm of TIEs involves placing my squadrons in a spread out field ahead of my ships to create as wide an engagement zone as possible. Testing this on the kitchen table, it can prevent bombers from even moving into range to engage the ship on the next turn, since no matter where they move within ~ medium range of a ship, they will be engaged and fighters WILL converge on them.

Also working on: TIE formations that are spaced to physically block any other squadrons from being placed between them. This idea is very much a work in progress, and requires a LOT of TIE fighters.

This.

One way to draw the enemy out and enable this circle of doom is to move Rhymer and a few pals forward, not too far, but far enough to threaten/tempt. When the enemy does engage, surround him like described above. Now he has another difficult choice to make: does he try to kill the bombers (might be protected by escort) or try to get rid of the surrounding fighters before they kill his squadrons? Add Chirry or Intel for more fun. Add Mithel if feeling evil.

Hehehe I'll hold Howlrunner for last move. Decide what scrum to join if multiple ones occur.

But... if you hold Howlrunner for last, NONE of your initial moves will benefit from her extra die.

What's the point?

It's a waste of 8 pts.

I really like plain old tie fighters. I dump them in a blob around a front firing arc and ping away. You'd be surprised how deadly 7 or 8 ties can be.. ive actually avoided enemy bombers before and just went for the ship kill instead. Its a battle of attrition!

Love plain TIEs...except vs. A-wings. Without boosters they are crap vs. A-wings.

Hehehe I'll hold Howlrunner for last move. Decide what scrum to join if multiple ones occur.

Howl must surely go first, no?

(or right after her Escort)

Quality or Quantity?

My first serious game with squadrons, I jumped them on the enemy for a glorious alpha-strike. I didn't read Gallant Haven first, and I didn't have a ship in position to activate them the following round. It went about as well as you would expect (which is to say, not at all).

For large squadron groups (6-10), I tend to go for air superiority when playing empire, like Ardaedhel suggested. Usually a 2:1 ratio of fighters to bombers. Flight Controllers on TIE bombers makes them serviceable anti-squadron threats, though I usually can't bring myself to take it over gunnery teams. I was big on interceptors when they first came out, but they feel so much more fragile than an A-wing. When running Rebels, the strategy depends on the type of squadrons I'm running (usually all A-wings or all B-wings). For A-wings, I tend to go for air superiority first, then getting some hits on ships in the late game. For the B's, I'm pretty much waiting for the enemy to fly into me, and hopefully cut them down with anti-squadron fire from my ships + Yavaris double-taps for burst damage.

When facing enemy squadrons, I usually plow into them. Almost always with a Vic. I would not suggest this strategy. It does not end well.

Rebels - Mosty X-wings, some bombers. Bombers hold back with Yvaris, and only move in when uncontested. I tend to be more sparing on squadrons with rebels.

Imperials - Trick out a dedicated carrier to follow a maximum pack of TIEs. Always Howlrunner, then fighters or interceptors depending on points. stay close to ships as a shield, then move in using dedicated commands and flight controllers to bludgeon the crap out of enemy formations one by one. If the enemy throw all their squadrons at you, they have a chance. If not, they get slaughtered by 20+ blue dice (with re-rolls) per turn.

Hehehe I'll hold Howlrunner for last move. Decide what scrum to join if multiple ones occur.

But... if you hold Howlrunner for last, NONE of your initial moves will benefit from her extra die.

What's the point?

It's a waste of 8 pts.

I typically don't squadron command until turn 2/3 if I do at all. If I do go for the engagement, I will Howlrunner first.

Also, I stopped building a dedicated carrier. I'm expecting them to die as pawns rather than a sustained damage output.

My question above is largely because that is the issue I am toying with at this time. Would 10 Tie Fighters be better than 6 Tie Advances? Am I better taking 1 Ace at 20+ points or 2-3 smaller fighters at the same cost?

As for the tactics of the fighters there are three "phases" to our games, the coming together, the engagement and the disengagement. Each can be brief or almost non-existent. You need to predict and plan for each phase.

While coming together you can bank tokens for later use, and otherwise get ready. The risk during this phase is you'll fly too far ahead of your ships. I feel that you need to fly fighters ahead of your ships and bombers just a bit behind. If your opponent engages your squadrons make him engage fighters consider activating and engaging his fighters if he is hanging back and you can get them all. The general idea is to make a hole for your bombers to fly past, so if you can't achieve that be patient and wait. Going ahead of your fleet helps as you may end up flying your ships into your squadrons in a turn or two. During the Squadron phase, move the squadrons that are not going to be moved into engagement range first. Let your opponent commit to his plan if he has fewer squadrons. When you are moving your fighters maybe more those that are the furthest from your opponent, that way if he engages them you can create an advantage of numbers.

During the engagement phase you want to get your squadrons ahead of your ships and start to engage ships and squadrons but remain close enough as to be given squadron orders where needed. During this phase realise that a squadron given a command can shoot and move or move and shoot. So you can start to free your fighters and engage bombers if you hadn't in earlier turns. Depending on token availability, you can give orders to quite a few squadrons with just 2 ships, nor do you have to activate everything each and every turn. At the start of this phase you may be wanting to give priority to fighters to tie up his fighters or bombers, later in the phase your fighters will become less relevant, and your bombers will take priority. Two Nebulons with 2 Squadron (each), and a token each will probably cover this phase adequately.

At this point the odd token will produce a fair result, allowing you to get a shot or two into a damaged but fleeing ship. If you managed to kill a few ships early in the game you may even find that you can afford to play squadron commands and keep pressure on the enemy ships.

Things to watch during the game, hit your opponent where your ships will, if your ships are in range of his ships put your squadrons in two arcs (if you are to the starboard of your opponent front and right arcs will probably have him fly into your squadrons in the following turn and maybe allow them to get shot at over a ship, conversely if your ships are not in range don't give your opponent two arcs unless the risk is worth the gain. Also consider that if you are coming at your opponent from the starboard side that putting the squadrons in his front and starboard side arc may then cause him to overlap those squadrons or move away to a less effective path.

Always shoot at something, if you have nothing else to shoot at shoot squadrons. Even your fighters can shoot at ships, so if they have no squadrons to shoot at give the ships every last dice you can. Understand the dice and how your squadrons benefit for being a bomber or not. A blue bomber will do as much damage as a black fighter, a black bomber can do 2 damage but also miss. A black dice fighter is better than a red dice bomber....

Consider the timing of activation, just as squadrons have an advantage in doing little amounts of damage to a squadron, ships can be activated to shoot at a squadron with counter or scatter which buy off the effects on these when your squadrons shoot later in the squadron phase.

Finally, keep in mind that some of this works and some of it may not, your opponent will be trying to make it not work. So you have to be ready to adjust and change plans and expectations quickly.

When I first started trying to really lrn2squadrons, I focused on avoidance: I'd try to use a single fighter to lock down as many of my opponent's squadrons as possible to allow my bombers to slip through and get off early shots on target. What I found was that this ended up getting my fighters killed quickly, releasing those enemy interceptors to go pick off my bombers at their leisure (pronounced leh'-zhər).

As a result, I find myself moving toward a very USAFesque doctrine of first establishing space supremacy, and then going all-in on the attacks once my fighters have free rein on the board. I'll very happily throw my B-wings at TIE interceptors if they let me.

Going for the fighters first gives you the added advantage of allowing you to rapidly decrease your adversary's power inincrementally. For example, rather than trying to take down the big ship over three turns, I can take down a third of his fighters each turn for three turns, reducing his ability to hit me back by a third per turn. I hope that makes sense: it's basically taking the concept of the alpha strike to the next level and applying it to the battle overall.

So I'm curious: is this the commonly accepted tactic? Do you do it differently? Or am I just stating the obvious for you, and everyone in your community does this?

I've come to similar conclusions, although it really depends a lot on your opponent's squadron composition. If you can't expect to win out in the inevitable dogfight, you may need to settle for local superiority (by concentrating your fighters in one area) or for simply feeding in your fighters piecemeal to make his squadrons waste their time, diluting their effectiveness against your ships overall.

My question above is largely because that is the issue I am toying with at this time. Would 10 Tie Fighters be better than 6 Tie Advances?

I've actually found a mixture of the two to be superior. Say 1 TIE Advanced for every 2-3 TIE Fighters. If you spam Advanceds, you run into the same problem as spamming X-Wings: you're spending points on a trait (Escort) that does absolutely nothing because all your squadrons have Escort.

Am I better taking 1 Ace at 20+ points or 2-3 smaller fighters at the same cost?

It depends on squadron saturation. If youre getting to a point where you have more squadrons than you can comfortably activate in a turn, then aces are more useful because command-activated squadrons are generally superior (when necessary). If not, I prefer generics. This also disregards the combo-centric nature of some squadrons (mostly Imperials). Howlrunner is worth considering once she can combo with several TIE Fighters, for example.

This is to say nothing of meta considerations. If you're primarily worried about fleets with few to no squadrons featuring slow ships or those with predictable attack vectors (which vs. Imperials right now in wave 1 is fairly true), then you may not need to lean on Squadron commands that much. You can simply use squadrons as mobile mine fields.

Generally: Superiority first. Though usually any B-Wings or TIE Bombers don't engage.

TIE up the enemy squadrons, which eliminates the threat to your ships, and just keep pounding on the fighters. If possible, use AS fire to assist. (In one game, which was fighter heavy vs fighter heavy, my TIEs looked like they were over matched, but my ISD was about to hit the swarm, so, I whittled fighters down, as opposed to going for kills. The ISD finished off a ton of rebel fighters at 1 or 2 HP. (Before crashing the party when it moved.) I find that if for no other reason gunnery teams are really good to allow the most favorable shot, and on something with 2 dice, that 7 points is more than worth it. (Plus you can whack ships with it if the fighters aren't a problem! BONUS!) That's basically like adding half a TIE Interceptor for everything in medium range. So if there are 4 fighters, you'd need 2 Interceptors to match the firepower, and it ignores Escort.

Once fighters are cleared, it's time to whack the ships.

There is only one way to play "with" squadrons: Stack squadron commands until your squadrons are in position.

Players who aren't issuing constant squadron commands are playing despite squadrons, not with them.

I'm going to talk about the counter-example to this: I've used 2 or 3 As to simply hold off my opponents bombers for 2 turns. That gave me enough time to blow up the carrier and one other ship. Giving me a moderately easy victory.

There is only one way to play "with" squadrons: Stack squadron commands until your squadrons are in position.

Players who aren't issuing constant squadron commands are playing despite squadrons, not with them.

That's limiting. I've shown in another thread it's quite possible to get 4 rounds of A-wing attacks without a single squadron command. If you run the same list and spam squadron commands you get exactly 1 extra attack over the course of the game (assuming no 1st turn contact) from each squadron. Is that worth all those squadron commands? Particularly when the opponent is focus firing on the ship issuing those commands?

Properly timed squadron commands can be killer. Other squadron commands can be near useless (your opponent is 1st player and engages your squadrons first meaning they get no substantial effect from the command)

There is only one way to play "with" squadrons: Stack squadron commands until your squadrons are in position.

Players who aren't issuing constant squadron commands are playing despite squadrons, not with them.

Why???

When it comes to the Empire my basic Tie fighters play a screening roll out front of my fleet. Generally my bombers are on the flanks as that is where the Rebel ships usually end up. Having 2-3 bomber flights on each flank adds a credible threat to most flank actions with small ships. For kicks usually each group of bombers has a single Tie Interceptor squadron mixed in so they are not total pushovers when the A-wings come to play. And although many use a central carrier I tend to use my Gladiators as my fighter movers as they are generally out of range until later in the game so they serve better in that role.

When I build my squadrons for the Imperials I take Howlrunner and a mix of Interceptors and Fighters. I usually take 3 Interceptors as my front line. I will let them get alpha'd, counter, and then bring in my TIEs. If my opponent doesn't have any aces it works really well. If my opponent has some aces I may lead with TIE fighters as the bait/screen and then counter in with the Interceptors for the harder hit. Generally speaking I just lead with my Interceptors to set the line of engagement.

I always squadron command. Even if it gets me 2 squadrons activating, I find its worth it. Now as for placement and stuff, always be cognoscente of where your squadrons are going and where your ships are going. The last game I played I forgot how to use my squadrons. They went left while my ships when right and I completely muddled the game up. Letting a 1 hp AF escape.

I will be doing my squadron article tomorrow for my blog. I will probably re-post it here since its a hot topic. Squadrons are likely the most intricate part of the game currently. Ships are very limited in their movement and attacking so you don't really need to make a lot of decisions outside of command dials and moving. Even then the moving is determined by speed so you have a finite number of options. Squadrons can go every where, attack everything. Knowing when to dog fight and when to harass enemy ships only comes with experience.

There is only one way to play "with" squadrons: Stack squadron commands until your squadrons are in position.

Players who aren't issuing constant squadron commands are playing despite squadrons, not with them.

I don't find this to be true at all. It partly depends on the list you run and the opponent you face, but let's say I'm running some token A-wings as cover for my ships (1-3 squadrons). I usually let the enemy approach, then engage them in my turn. Even if that means letting them get shots on my ships first.

Once they've engaged the enemy, their job is complete. They've prevented the enemy from damaging my ships for hopefully long enough for my ships to have killed the enemy ships. My fighters still get to shoot in the next few turns, and if there aren't too many squadrons, may still come out on top. If not, they'll have disrupted enemy plans.

There - effective fighter support without a single squadron command issued.