Howdy! I'm trying to theory craft a fleet up and was looking for some criticism. I typically run Rebels, but I'd like to run Imperials for fun/learning my opponent.

Normally I'm a 2 Guppy, Salvation, and fighters with Garm guy (just added in a MC30 to get me in the 400 pt game). I'm thinking a similar utility like build with Tarkin would be fun. This is where I am, especially with all the Fighters hub-bub from Worlds...

Vic II w/ Tarkin, Warlord, and H9

2x GSD I w/ ACM and Flight Control

Raider II w/ Ordnance and PDR

2x T/F

2X T/I

2x T/A

Total of 396

I don't have any specific loves. Want to use the Raider as fighter support on the way to the ship fight. Glads doing what they do. I have been building Screed and Motti builds with mixed results. Not sure if Tarkin is the solution but I wanted to try it.

I guess I should state the only wave 2 I have is one Raider and one MC30. Hence why I'm not spamming ordinance experts. Haha

Just take all plain tie fighters. The tie advances and interceptors are both good but unless you have holwrunner or rhymer you are better off with just plain ties.

You'd be surprised how effective old trusty ties can be. Plus they are cheap.

Also i recommend dropping flight controllers. For two more points then FC costs, you can take another tie fighter.

I disagree on dropping flight controllers. Full disclosure: I play almost exclusively rebels, but I did the analysis on A-wings.

The difference between 3 and 4 blue dice is much more significant than it seems, specifically when attacking hero fighters. You should count on every shot you take against a hero being braced. Sometimes they get scattered, and nothing you can do about that but pray for an accuracy. But let's use Luke as an example: hull value of 5, and assume a brace on the first four shots.

The average damage for a blue anti-squadron die is .5, .75 on one of them with the swarm reroll. That means average damage for 3 dice including swarm is 1.75... . But damage doesn't actually come in halves or quarters. Most of the time you'll roll 1 or 2 damage with 3 dice. Either of those braces to 1. That means you're looking at 5 attacks to take down Luke, pretty much always. You could do worse, but you will definitely not do better unless you manage hit-hit-acc on your LAST roll against him (he'll have a redundant brace otherwise), in which case you managed to get lucky and take him down in only 4 turns.

But 4 dice are almost guaranteed to take him down in 4, and it could be 3. Your average with 4 swarmed dice is 2.25, which means you'll usually be rolling 1, 2, or 3. 1 and 2 brace to 1, but 3 braces to 2, which means you only need to roll hot once to get him down in 4 shots instead of 5. Also, 3 hits is not the only way to do this: you can also roll hit-hit-acc-acc one time, or hit-hit-acc-X on the fourth shot, proportionally increasing your chances of getting him in 4 rounds.

That's great in theory, what about on the table? I run FC + A-wings often, and in practice, 4 FC'd A-wings are basically guaranteed to nuke a brace hero in one turn. Significantly, they're also only barely guaranteed to do so, which tells me that a 3-die ship wouldn't be able to do it.

In my mind, 6 points is a small price to pay to be able to do that with vanilla TIEs.

I just look at it this way. Typical imp ship has 3 squadron. If you activate 3 squadrons that turn each get a bonus die, only vs squadrons. On the other hand if you take another tie, you get another squadron to activate giving you 3 more att dice, plus it can attack ships and doesnt require you to activate it.

One thing to note, the points. If you lose the ship vs if you lose the fighter. Its propbly easier to lose the points as a tie vs on the ship which is a negative to taking the tie, though it works vs all lists (especially against people who don't use squadrons). After worlds this doesn't seem huge, before it mattered more since most people played all ship lists.