My thinking comes from American WW II pilots that flew bigger, less mobile fighters against smaller, faster, more mobile Japanese fighters.

(sound familiar?)

With a Biggs list:

Luke

R5-D8

WingMan

Biggs

R2-D2

Shield Upgrade

Wedge

R2 Astromech

PTL

The idea is to add a bit of survivability to ships that have good firepower, but not great maneuverability.

so Biggs is the target - he turns INTO the hook pilots and they do the jousting.

It was executed either by two fighter aircraft side-by-side or by two pairs of fighters flying together. When an enemy aircraft chose one fighter as his target (the "bait" fighter; his wingman being the "hook"), the two wingmen turned in towards each other. After crossing paths, and once their separation was great enough, they would then repeat the exercise, again turning in towards each other, bringing the enemy plane into the hook's sights. A correctly executed Thach Weave (assuming the bait was taken and followed) left little chance of escape to even the most maneuverable opponent.

Been playing around a bit - but would like better players than I (and there a LOT of you) to let me know if you think this is applicable to X-wing.

The Thatch Weave does work - having two ships (or two groups of ships) on a converging course, it's hard to go for one without falling into the sights of the other. I used to use if with Ork Kroozas in Battlefleet Gothic, and it worked well.

There are a couple of problems in practice in X-wing:

• If you're splitting Biggs off, you risk an opponent going for the other two and trying to get a kill on....probably Wedge. Yes, I've got to shoot at Biggs if I can, but the problem is that if he's not flying in close proximity, an attacker going full bore for Wedge will probably not have Biggs in arc - at which point Wedge is likely to take a kicking before Biggs can move in to cover him.
• Letting one, relatively low pilot skill X-wing on your tail is....survivable, probably. If we're talking a significantly more manoeuvrable opponent, then it's probably something with agility 3 like a squint, maybe autothrusters - so a single shot at range 3 isn't going to do that much.
• Your problem space isn't so big as the US fighters - an X-wing board is only 2-3 turns move on each side, and has 'hard edges' that enemy ships can't come at you from - securing your flank against the board edge to reduce the directions you have to 'watch' makes things a lot easier
• If needs be you can do an instantaneous end-around with a Koiogran turn, rather than a slow 180^o turn that a faster fighter can follow you through.
• There's a slightly random set of upgrade choices - R5-D8 does potentially repair damage but he consumes your action to do so. Wingman is good when paired with a stress-using buddy, but (a) with an R2 Astromech Wedge has little trouble clearing his own stress, and (b) lacking an engine upgrade, torpedoes, R5-P9, or similar, he doesn't have much to use the extra action on. Focus-Target Lock every turn is nice, but if you're explicitely worried about more agile foes, keeping your dial open is more useful, and you could do that by taking Predator instead of a Push The Limit target lock. That means you don't need Wingman so much.

If I wanted to do a 'Thatch Weave' pair, I'd probably go for Biggs + Wedge as one pair, and Luke as the other. Take Lone Wolf and R2-D2 on Luke, and your opponent will have trouble 'pouncing' on luke when he's alone, as he's got a reroll and a permanent focus-to-evade. If he takes too much punishment, run for the cover of wedge and biggs, and use R2 D2 to recover shields. If he goes for wedge....gotta get through biggs first, and luke comes in from behind with a high PS shot and a reroll to hit.

The idea of the thach weave is cool and there's some parallels in x-wing to WW2 certainly (japanese vs american fighters at least). However, x-wing doesn't 'simulate' the way fighters would actually fly (not exactly) so I don't think you could 'copy' the maneuver per se. That said, you can apply the principle. Use one ship as bait, hope the opponent shoots at it and then have your other ships get shots without return fire. The usefulness of this is dependent on a few things though: for example if the bait ship gets destroyed, even if you destroy an enemy, you haven't gained much unless the bait ship was really cheap relative to the enemy you killed.

Now its not exactly a special maneuver or anything, but I use the idea of bait all the time when I fly wedge, luke & biggs. Due to Biggs' ability, he's not really good bait because he's the least valuable ship you have. Luke is also not good because your opponent would rather kill your other ships given a choice (since they are easier to kill). That leaves Wedge. Who is excellent bait because he is not only your most expensive, but has the most powerful ability and your opponent really wants to get rid of him fast.

Its win-win for you, because as long as Wedge loses only shields, he can regen it with his droid, and Biggs will take less damage and therefore survive longer allowing your aces to deal more damage over time....

The problem with baiting with Wedge though, is the x-wing is squishy and he could die. You can only 'half-bait' with him, and you really need to put a regenerating droid on him to recover any damage he takes (because he will!). Here's the list I use:

Biggs w/ R5 + integrated astro = 26 (or R2 or R4-D6, doesn't matter, really you just want integrated astromech)

Luke w/ predator, R5-P9 & integrated astro = 34

Wedge w/ predator, R2-D2, integrated astro & proton torpedo = 40

100

So Wedge is a really desireable target here! Hard to resist shooting at if given the chance, so I try to give my opponent that chance on the first round of shooting, by 'accidentally' moving him too far away from Biggs. This works best at R3 so Wedge is less likely to take much damage. Also, you want to place Wedge so only one or two ships can shoot him, or alternatively position Biggs so that some of the opponent ships can hit Biggs (but not all, so the remainder will be tempted to shoot at Wedge).

Now that is a sensible plan. One thing that a lot of people do with Biggs is to draw all the fire onto him - this is good as he sucks up fire intended for more important pilots, but bad as he explodes very quickly.

What's better is using Biggs to split up the incoming fire - if you can arrange it so that only one ship can fire at a target that's not Biggs, you can afford to expose them - because evade/focus tokens will cut the worst of the incoming fire - and/or you can keep the damage that 'gets past' within what you can regenerate using R5-P9, R2-D2 or Miranda Doni's abilities.

It also means that you get to use Biggs to mess with your opponent for an extra turn - and you never know, he might even get an extra shot off - and he's still a 3-attack, PS5 heavy fighter, after all, despite people generally just thinking of him as a flying bunker.

Having a wingman with Draw Their Fire is nice for the same reason.

Integrated astromech >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. (to infinity and beyond) Shield Upgrade

All the upgrades (engine, hull; shield) are intentionally overpriced as **** to prevent them from being autoinclude; they're only worth it in very specific scenarios (large ship boosts and Royal Guard Ties)