What if instead of Expose, you just flew Crackshot ships that effectively have 3 attack dice? That can be modified.

I'm telling you guys, Expose is a huge waste of time.

I rolled two hits. Your range 3 cloaked Phantom rolled two evades. Crackshot. Second attack, get semi lucky and roll hit focus, which I convert to hit hit. You roll 2 evades again. Crackshot.

Now compare to the same situation, except with Expose.

I rolled hit focus blank. You rolled 2 evades. I fire off a second attack, rolling hit hit blank. You roll 2 evades again. I don't have Howlrunner because she died turn ******* 2.

Unmodified dice are horrible, don't rely on them. You want to know how you're not good at the game? You think Expose is good on TIE Fighters that have no other way to modify. Except you Dracon P.

I feel like a huge misunderstanding is that people are going to use Expose action every turn on every ship.

You simply wouldn't. You would rarely if ever Expose on Howlrunner.

Your swarm would focus like any other swarm on the first pass.

After a TIE is injured; you have an opportunity to start exposing with your fresh ships because you know the odds of getting shot are lower.

It's a gamble, I agree; but I think it's a bit of a reach to completely dismiss Expose Youngster when it hasn't seen any play.

And yes, Crack Shot is great. As is Howlrunner. But you can run Howl, Expose, and Crack Shot together as I've previously posted.

Wampa is actually the only reason to take Marksmanship on him. You ccan use this pretty well to get rid of Stealth Devices

Wampa's ability doesn't get rid of stealth devices.

Is that confirmed? Because to me Wampa's ability, unlike an asteroid crash, Vader crew's ability, or some of the mines and bombs sounds like an attack that hits, even if you cancel dice in between and just "deal" the damage card.

Not that i wouldn't want to believe you it if it has been discussed and clarified somewhere else, but reading the text from FAQ:

"A ship equipped with Stealth Device only discards Stealth Device if it defends against an attack and is hit. Damage suffered from other game effects (such as Seismic Charge, asteroids, Feedback Array, or damage Received for being at Range 1 of a ship hit by Assault Missiles) does not cause a ship to discard Stealth Device."

Now is Wampa one of these other game effects for sure? The part where i would say yes is "defends against an attack" because the other ship does not actually get to defend itself by rolling any dice. But Wampa's ability still says "When attacking", so there is an attack at the end of which he seems to hit someone.

For my part, this is not clear enough that i would be able to decide whether it's discarded or not. And i don't want to sound biased in any direction here. I thought it would work initially, but now i am just not sure, nor convinced that you are right.

Wampa's ability deals damage without hitting. It's the same way that suffering splash damage from an assault missile doesn't count as being hit.

Okay. So here's a thing:

Could you field Squad Leader Youngster to supercharge a ship of choice?

Example:

SQ ldr. Youngster

Howl runner

Scourge w/VI

Whisper w/ ACD, fire control, and Kallus

You can effectively throw Focus and Evade on Whisper every turn who can later have TL. You could even Expose whisper if you put Expose on him to throw a possible 6 attack with TL+focus and an evade left over to help your now 3 defence.

Or supercharge your Decimator of choice equip with expose but with a TL+Focus.

Or how about a Bomber that can get the higher PS ship to allow it to TL a ship that was out of range when it moved at lowly PS 2 and focus to shoot some ordnance.

Okay. So here's a thing:

Could you field Squad Leader Youngster to supercharge a ship of choice?

You could, but every ship that uses Squad Leader will be vulnerable.

Don't forget that high Pilot Skill isn't free either, so you're investing a ton of points to make that chain reaction work.

Fleet Officer or Recon Spec are more cost-effective options in my opinion.

If you run Squad Leader Youngster, then Omega Ace could benefit greatly. Opportunist, then focus/TL for 3-4 crits.

I wouldn't take Expose even if it was free.

I see a lot of debate on the subject of Expose on Youngster. I'll be helpfull and open Expose vs Focus in numbers. The mathematics are below, but I will give you the results first, if you don't want to stress your brain too much.

1. If a ship has Attack value of 2 or more, it benefits more from Focus than Expose, just attackwise. Not taking into account the reduced Agility.

2. If you use Howlrunner, Expose gives your Tie slightly more hits on average than Focus. But the difference is barely noticeable.

3. Still, with Howlrunner, the Expose action does give a Tie 31% chance of rolling 3 hits, which could be more important than the mean damage, if your target has high evade expectation (like a C3PO on board).

Then the long rants...

1. Expose looses value with increasing Attack value. The more attack dice a ship has, the less value Expose has. 1 extra attack die would be a 50% increase for attack 2 ship like a Tie, but only a 33% increase for attack 3 ship like X-wing.

2. On the contrary, Focus gains more value with increasing Attack values. Each dice has 2 "eyes" out of 8 possible results, so on average you get 0,25 extra hits per die, when focusing. So Attack 2 gets 0,5 more hits on average, and Attack 3 gets 0,75.

With this established, we are going to study an Attack 2 ship.

On average

* if you Focus, you will get 2 x 0,75 hits = 1,5 hits per dice roll.

* with Expose, you will get 3 x 0,5 hits = 1,5 hits per dice roll.

So the average result is the same, but Expose has drawbacks, when Focus does not.

The odds of scoring at least 2 hits:

With Focus: The chance of scoring a hit is 6/8 per die, so probability of scoring 2 hits with 2 dice is 6/8 x 6/8 = 36/64 = 56,25%.

With Expose: This covers scenarios of getting 2 hits and a miss and getting 3 hits. Easiest way to calculate the odds for this is to calculate the odds of getting 3 misses or just 1 hit and 2 misses, and subtract it from 100% that covers all probabilities.

* The chance of rolling 3 misses is 4/8 x 4/8 x 4/8 = 1/8

* The chance of rolling hit with the first die and 2 misses is 4/8 x 4/8 x 4/8 = 1/8. Same if you roll miss-hit-miss (1/8) or miss-miss-hit (1/8).

* The combined chance of rolling less than 2 hits is the sum of these: 1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8=4/8 = 50%.

* So the chance of rolling at least 2 hits with Expose is just 50%. (100% - 50%)

* This also covers the rare scenario of rolling 3 hits, 1/8 = 12,5% (same as for 3 misses)

Results: With Focus you have 56,5% chance of rolling at least 2 hits, but with Expose only 50%. The only thing that Expose is good for is to score that elusive 3-hit roll, which happens only 1 out of 8 rolls.

What about Howlrunner? Let's assume she is leading the swarm. Should you Focus or Expose?

Howlrunner lets you reroll one of your dice. With a reroll the basic chance of scoring a hit is anything else than rolling two misses in succession. For one die that is 1-(4/8x4/8)=3/4=75%. If you had also a focus token the odds for scoring a hit with reroll were 1-(2/8x2/8)=15/16=93,75%.

Let's calculate the average expectation for Tie making an attack roll:

Focus, 2 dice, and Howlrunner allowing 1 reroll: 15/16 + 6/8 = 27/16 = 1,69 hits.

Expose, 3 dice, and Howlrunner granting 1 reroll: 3/4 + 4/8 + 4/8 = 1,75 hits.

So in this scenario, Expose gives slightly better attacks than Focus, but only by a very small margin. 1,75 hits is only 3,6% better than 1,69 hits.

Let's do one more calculation. What is the chance of scoring 3 hits with a Tie, Expose, and Howlrunner. This is done by first calculating the odds for rolling 3 hits: 4/8x4/8x4/8=1/8. Then the scenarios, where you roll 2 hits and a miss, but the reroll turns that to a third hit: 4/8x4/8x4/8x4/8=1/16. There are three of these (miss-hit-hit, hit-miss-hit and hit-hit-miss). So 3 times 1/16 = 3/16.

Sum of these is 1/8 + 3/16 = 5/16 = 31,25%.

31,25% is not bad! If you are up against more agile targets, that tend to usually evade 1-2 hits, then you could benefit from Expose. As long as you still have Howlrunner along, that is.

And remember, that the value of Expose goes down with increasing number of attack dice. If you got your Tie into short range, Focus would become stronger option.

For me it is a clear no for Expose. I would choose it over Focus only in very specific situations. Investing points and an EPT slot into something that you don't want to use most of the time, is not a good idea.