Crack squadron (black squaron tie fighters with crack shot) is one of the gold stanards of swarm play right now. At PS4, they out-init any other swarm and generally have 4-5 blockers against ace lists, plus Howlrunner. They are the cheapest EPT slot in the game, using an upgrade as disposable as their ships are.

I'm trying to make a squad that can beat them to the punch. A PS5 swarm, pilot abilities all but ignored. This was the best I could come up with.

"Night Beast" (15)

"Winged Gundark" (15)

"Zeta Ace" (18)

Commander Alozen (25)
Wired (1)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
TIE/x1 (0)

"Fel's Wrath" (23)
Autothrusters (2)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Thoughts and suggestions? What other PS5 swarm lists can you put togther?

Fels wrath?

Having higher ps with a crappy ship doesn't matter for much - especially when in the case of fels wrath, the crappy ability he has is only useful against ships with a higher pilot skill, anyway.

I'd go with this:

Night beast

Zeta ace

Alozen

-title

-atc

Krassis

-Mangler

Still all ps 5, gets rid of the useless fels wrath, and I've never had any luck with winged gundark. A Mangler should punch holes in a swarm and Krassis Can act as a big blocker while the others use their agility to stay outside and pot shot.

The problem with the PS5 swarm compared to a bunch of crack dealers is that they don't have crack shot themselves. That increased firepower is a big part of the swarm's effectiveness. You'll shoot first, but may well not kill anyone - which just leaves you without focus tokens when they do shoot.

2-attack fighters struggle to hit 3-agility ships - it's why (back in wave 1) rebel-versus-rebel games were a bloodbath and empire-versus-empire games took forever.

A TIE All-Stars list - using some of the new aces - would work well.

Wampa (targeting computer), Night Beast, Backstabber, Dark Curse, Scourge and Howlrunner with Swarm Tactics gives you a swarm all firing before the black squadron pilots. But I'll warn you that - especially at range 3 - all 5 of them can fire and realistically not land enough damage to kill a focused TIE fighter.

A better plan to beat them to the punch is to try and deliver a lethal first turn that they can't reply to.

Even with crack shot, a TIE fighter will struggle to hurt a TIE interceptor at range 3 with autothrusters up, and the entire swarm may struggle to kill one.

If you can move into range 3 and 'bait' them into spending crack shot in a futile attempt to hit you, concentrated 3-dice attacks back should drop a TIE fighter in reply. I dunno. It's a thought; be nice if 5 Alpha Interceptors could be good at something...

Alternatively, take a Swarm Tactics swarm rather than a Crack Shot one.