From the first days of X-wing, I have always loved flying a bunch of named TIEs. Now with the Assault Carrier I have more named TIEs to play with. I am particularly excited about "The Youngster". Other than the obvious (Give him Marksmanship) what other upgrades are you thinking to put on him.

Actually Expose is the obvious upgrade. Marksmanship doesnt do much than waste points and act like a slightly better focus but only on offense.

The only two good upgrades for him are Expose and Expert Handling.

its really just Expose.

I guess nothing new came with it? Bummer, I'll get it when I can but I like the FO ties. It is cool we have swarm options.

Expose, for the appx 1/4 chance of rolling 3 damage vs otherwise untouchable enemies (like Soontir Fel)

Expert Handling, for the breaking of Target Locks (the TLT's favorite action)

And for the bad ones...

Marksmanship, for when critting enemies with 2 attack dice is needed?

Squad Leader, if you truly want to chain one character's action through the rest of your list, in descending order of PS

Daredevil, if getting a stress and risking killing yourself if you're not at full hp is worth getting a 1 turn action.

If Youngster applies to the TIE F/o, Daredevil might be worth reconsidering, given the extra HP.

Expose really isn't very good with him either.

Expose's problems have always been a combination of how many points it is, the Agility penalty and the fact that an extra die isn't really any better than having a focus token (beyond the slim chance of rolling ALL hits. Youngster's ability mitigates the point cost, but does nothing for the other 2 problems. Back before Experimental Interface, when Expose was THE WORST card in the game, by a big margin, whenever the subject would come up you would get some of the experienced players commenting how Expose would still be a bad card, even if it were free. Well, on Youngster it still isn't free just cheaper, and nothing else has changed. It won't be terrible. Having it on all your ships does allow you to pick and choose who activates it each round, which can mitigate the Agility penalty a bit. It won't be terrible, but it's not going to be good either.

youngster is, atm, utter garbage

keep him in a binder for when they release an ACTION: card that's worth half a ****

expose nonsense is inferior by leaps and bounds to crackshot

Expose really isn't very good with him either.

Expose's problems have always been a combination of how many points it is, the Agility penalty and the fact that an extra die isn't really any better than having a focus token (beyond the slim chance of rolling ALL hits. Youngster's ability mitigates the point cost, but does nothing for the other 2 problems.

The reduction of agility doesn't matter in a Swarm either, though. Youngster and/or Howlrunner will be acting as Biggs, so until they're dead, your agility is effectively infinite.

Also, lowering the agility of one ship makes it a more tempting target (obviously), which can draw fire from higher priority targets (like the wounded guy that's at Range 1 of you)

The average damage of the Expose action is identical to the average damage of a Focus action at Range 2 for a TIE fighter.

It's lesser at Range 1

Notably, the Expose action has better expected damage than Focus at Range 3 for a TIE fighter, where the enemy's improved damage mitigation forces you to have a higher damage ceiling to hit (so the possibility of rolling 3 hits has a greater weight here).

And, as previously mentioned, some ships simply refuse to get damaged by anything less than 3 damage.

A ship with 4 agility will ignore a TIE Fighter's best possible result 48.12% of the time without needing to modify dice!

This, in particular, is why Expose+Youngster is worthy; it gives the swarm a fighting chance against lists that previously forced it out of the metagame: Phantoms and Aces.

So, yeah. A pedo-swarm (feat. exposed youngsters) has actual advantages.

expose nonsense is inferior by leaps and bounds to crackshot

Crackshot is also overpowered, but costs 3 to put on an Academy Pilot.

Howlrunner, Expo-Youngster, and 5 academies fit in a list of 100.

Howlrunner and 6 Crackheads don't.

Is crackshot worth the loss of an entire ship? Perhaps. I'll certainly give it an edge in the mirror-match.

I'd argue the Pedoswarm is better vs Fatness, while both have gained substantial ground vs Aces.

Either way, its a good time to be a swarmist, aye?

Marksmanship will trigger Wampa's ability more regularly if you pair him with Youngster.

Marksmanship will trigger Wampa's ability more regularly if you pair him with Youngster.

So good luck to all of you running Expose. I honestly am looking forward to hearing if my thought process is flawed and Expose really is worth a dang, because my brain tells me it is still 100% an awful, awful upgrade.

i'm still not sold on Expose on him. Just played a tournament with a significant number of TIE Fighters, and even with three green dice they run a nasty risk of getting blasted off the board in a single shot. Remove one dice and have zero defensive actions, likely early in the movement phase, and you're asking for a lot of TIE Fighters to get one-shot long before that third dice matters.

Maybe if you can guarantee they aren't getting shot at, or maybe if you're just incredibly cautious about when you use it. And against a list that's mostly/completely lower PS than you and you can know **** well who is and isn't going to get shot at, then it'll definitely shine. But by and large? I'm not seeing it. A lot of lists will be in good position to plink two TIEs off the board in one turn of firing, which is absolutely worth it to prevent them from shooting (rather than try to shoot Youngster or Howlrunner, who would be pretty necessary to modify all those Expose shots).

Expert Handling I still like. Shrug off FCS locks, prevent ordnance from being deployed against you (poor ordnance...)... maybe combine a mini-Youngster swarm with Carnor Jax and make your opponent pull their hair out trying to make use of actions?

Maybe... maybe with high PS TIEs? I don't think an "Expose Swarm" would fair well (again, asking a bunch of low HP, low PS ships to drop a defense die is suicide), but if you could find a way to get Scourge and Mauler Mithel reliably throwing four dice a turn and get some modifiers on em', them moving late enough to know when they're safe...

I remember hating Markmanship when it came out. It's only slightly better than a focus and only useful on attack. But I have seen it used to pretty good effect. The point is it is better than a focus on an attack, even if only a little bit. I think Howelrunner + youngster w/ marksmanship backing up 4 or 5 more TIEs.

If you think two dice can't get it done, you haven't seen a swarm work before. High defense dice ships hate going up against TIE Swarms. You will get bad rolls, if forced to roll enough, against TIEs with their forward arcs, and speed and manuverability to get close autothrusters don't help much.

I remember hating Markmanship when it came out. It's only slightly better than a focus and only useful on attack. But I have seen it used to pretty good effect. The point is it is better than a focus on an attack, even if only a little bit. I think Howelrunner + youngster w/ marksmanship backing up 4 or 5 more TIEs.

If you think two dice can't get it done, you haven't seen a swarm work before. High defense dice ships hate going up against TIE Swarms. You will get bad rolls, if forced to roll enough, against TIEs with their forward arcs, and speed and manuverability to get close autothrusters don't help much.

I would say, in a TIE Swarm, getting the Focus is so much better than the Marksmanship.

See, your PS 1 pilots have to make their call before seeing where the enemy's coming. So all of them could be the ones shot.

The TIE that's shot at wants a Focus over Marksmanship, by a lot.

The TIEs that aren't shot prefer Marksmanship, by a little.

Since each TIE could be defending, the preference of the defender outweighs the preference of the undefended.

I think Youngster with daredevil, with 4 interceptors might be fun. Tournament winning, probably not, but fun.

I think Youngster with daredevil, with 4 interceptors might be fun. Tournament winning, probably not, but fun.

Youngster doesn't give his ability to Interceptors, just TIE Fighters.

I remember hating Markmanship when it came out. It's only slightly better than a focus and only useful on attack. But I have seen it used to pretty good effect. The point is it is better than a focus on an attack, even if only a little bit. I think Howelrunner + youngster w/ marksmanship backing up 4 or 5 more TIEs.

If you think two dice can't get it done, you haven't seen a swarm work before. High defense dice ships hate going up against TIE Swarms. You will get bad rolls, if forced to roll enough, against TIEs with their forward arcs, and speed and manuverability to get close autothrusters don't help much.

I would say, in a TIE Swarm, getting the Focus is so much better than the Marksmanship.

See, your PS 1 pilots have to make their call before seeing where the enemy's coming. So all of them could be the ones shot.

The TIE that's shot at wants a Focus over Marksmanship, by a lot.

The TIEs that aren't shot prefer Marksmanship, by a little.

Since each TIE could be defending, the preference of the defender outweighs the preference of the undefended.

Actually I think you can often tell which TIE is going to be shot at, and when you can't, I always like it when my oppoent shoots at an academy pilot instead of Howelrunner.

On any given shot, marksmanship doesn't seem much better than focus, but when over the course of a game it can be pretty big. More so with the new damage deck, there are no crits that you can just shrug off.

The real value of Expose is apparent when you have a TIE that is already damaged. You Focus/evade that ship, but Expose with all your fresh TIEs.

If I had more Crack Shots, I would run:

Howlrunner [Hull Upgrade]

Younger [Expose]

Black Squadron Pilot [Crack Shot]

Black Squadron Pilot [Crack Shot]

Black Squadron Pilot [Crack Shot]

Black Squadron Pilot [Crack Shot]

100 points

I suppose you could drop the Hull Upgrade for a 5th Crack Shot and upgrade a BSP to Scourge for full offense.

But this list will pump out a ton of firepower.

Marksmanship will trigger Wampa's ability more regularly if you pair him with Youngster.

Youngster + Marksmanship

Scourge + Predator

Colzet + x1 & ATC

Wampa

Works well as a squad core. I really like Youngster and Marksmanship is probably the best option. Expose is a terrible idea unless you can't be shot that turn.

Fly Mauler Mithel, Scourge, Backstabber, or Zeta Leader in these squadrons, you can have TIEs throwing 5 attack dice.

He's a 15 point PS6 pilot with an EPT. This is highly playable even without a pilot ability. Youngster on Crack is easily on par with Backstabber and Dark Curse.

Why do people keep trying to use expose can't we just accept it's a terrible card.

Rolling more dice with no way to modify them is worse than rolling less with a focus or TL.

Why do people keep trying to use expose can't we just accept it's a terrible card.

Rolling more dice with no way to modify them is worse than rolling less with a focus or TL.

That's what Push the Limit and Howlrunner exist for.

1.) You go Daredevil. I'm serious. Sometimes getting that extra distance to block say, a Super Dash and risking 2 damage on a TIE Fighter is preferable to losing the game. Sometimes you just need to turn around /that badly/ and have a shot THIS TURN and a K-Turn can't happen.

Expose is a waste of time.

I'm of the opinion that Marksmanship is a good option. Still meh though.

Expert Handling, eh. The problem is that it doesn't interrupt the broken FCS + double attack combo and at low PS you can do EH to ditch a TL at PS 1 and have someone's broken Acewing ship roll up on you and get a TL + Focus with PtL and one shot your TIE anyways.

Squad Leader for chaining actions and feeding an extra action to a TIE at range one doesn't seem half bad. You'd need a varied assortment of PS which brings along with it much more difficulty on flying the swarm.

But Daredevil? Do a 5 straight and do a hard 1 boost. Take a stress and roll a hit focus and take a damage. Worth it, you got a significant positional advantage for a single damage. Not something you do every turn with every TIE Fighter but it's there if you need to.

2.) You're going about Neo-Swarms all wrong. You want each ship to be an independent actor. Stop trying to base TIE Fighter lists off of synergy, it's a bad idea. 2 attack dice ships are obsolete, jousting is dead and took formation flying with it, Howlrunner is dead, Acewing and Turretwing ships can just kill off a TIE a turn, and flying at PS 1 is dead because of the prevalence of PS 2.

So what list allows your 2 attack ships to actually hit something, isn't reliant on formation flying or jousting, has some FO's in it for durability, and can wipe PS 2 ships before they can fire? That's right, 3x Black Squadron, 3x Omega Squadron, 6x Crackshot.

Youngster and markmanship is worth it for Wampa.

Having run FOs a bit now, I could see trying to make him work with them combined with Expose. It's not something you use every turn, but you get the TL a turn early and the expose when it makes sense to do so. The FOs can take a punch so you don't even have to do it when you're 100% safe. It's not a list I'd likely run but I could see it being worth a try.

youngster is, atm, utter garbage

keep him in a binder for when they release an ACTION: card that's worth half a ****

Here's the thing: I feel like by printing Youngster, they've essentially given up on writing a good "action" EPT that would be broadly useful and cost effective. If they release one that would be useful, it would break TIE swarms with Youngster.