So I had a list idea that required six TIE/Int squadrons, which forced me to order two more (for a total of three) Imp Fighter sets. But now I also have twelve TIE squadrons, which is sorely tempting me to use all of them.

But how effective would twelve TIE squadrons be? I was thinking of running eleven generic TIEs plus Howlrunner for that bonus die. Against Intel clusters, maneuver to surround while engaging every enemy fighter from multiple angles plus have a few squadrons left over to block any direct flight paths to likely targets. It would be impossible to cover them all with Intel (or, at least, a single Intel ship), which would break up the enemy formation. I suppose it doesn't even have to win the fight - it would be able to take out enough to hopefully tie up the enemy bombers for the entire battle to keep my ships safe. And Ruthless Strategists would go a long way in destroying the enemy. After all, TIE pilots are expendable fodder.

And against an all-ship list or a list with a small fighter contingent, that's twelve blue dice to kick around, and you can spread those ships across the enemy flight path to guarantee a good amount of them will have range, then squadron command the ones that don't.

I've seen a few people mention TIE swarms here and there, but more as part of a battle report or a list build, and not as a specific conversation about their overall effectiveness. So, thoughts from the people that have tried this or had it fielded against them?

Its all about how they're positioned...

TIE Fighters, themselves, are wonderful in swarm against other Fighters... But against Ships, who can use a single activation to hit all fighters in arc, they are very very fragile. Ships with 2 Anti-Squadron Dice can feasably start dropping squadron bases with two activations... Less if they build for it.

So the onus is on you to make sure you're not making them easy targets for ships - because when they do start to fire on ships, those 12 odd blue dice do add up, even when only hits are counted - they tend to burrow through shields, or force redirects because people don't WANT their shields dropped...

For me, all 3 Hull fighters are very hit and miss... A lot of people started taking Big squads of Interceptors here, but my AFMK-IIA with Point Defense Reroute and Ruthless Strategists once let me send in a Single Y-Wing with a banked Squadron Token, and remove 5 Interceptors from play immediately... Granted, I rolled fairly well... But still, that was as good as it can be... Or rather, as bad as it can be for the user.

I don't have enough TIE models to do a swarm that large, but I often invest 90 or so points in Howlrunner plus a TIE Advanced to keep her alive, with all remaining points being TIEs or TIE/IN squadrons. They punch well above their point cost. A swarm like that seems to be able to handle any rebel squadrons thrown up against it. The primary weakness seems to be anti-squadron fire from ships. Those with 2 blue dice can kill off a lot of 3-health TIEs and cut you away from the critical mass the swarm needs to be effective.

@Drasnighta That's impressive

Do you do 1 damage the the Y-wing for each enemy targeted in the attack, or one total?

Do you do 1 damage the the Y-wing for each enemy targeted in the attack, or one total?

One for each. The Y-Wing was a sacrifice, for sure in this regard... It woul dbe better to spread that damage around different things... But I got the jump on them and traded 5/6ths of a 10pt Y-Wing for 55pts of Interceptors... And still managed to get a Round of Bombing off with the Y-Wing later before it got swatted.

And it is your choice wether it activates or not...

So you Fire your Ship at the Enemy Squadron... If you Bottom out and do 1 or 0 damage, you can decide if its worth putting a point on your Squadron to do a point to the Enemy... Sometimes its worth it, sometimes its not.

If you roll up the 2 Damage, then yes, you do, and it dies...

@Drasnighta That's impressive

Most impressive.

Thanks for the input, guys. The other question I'll find out is what the Armada scene looks like where I'm going. It hasn't taken off at my LGS yet, so I'm traveling a little over an hour south and don't have any contacts down there to ask. So I may find a lot of hardcore vets and get my teeth kicked in, or I may find out that I'm the only one gearing up for tourney play over fluffy play.

Do you do 1 damage the the Y-wing for each enemy targeted in the attack, or one total?

It's one damage per attack, and each shot at a squadron is a separate attack. So you can keep hitting a single friendly squadron until it dies provided you're doing so against different enemy squadrons.

Unfortunately, The real problem with RS "ruthless strategists" for the imperial player is that they take up the second most important slot for Advanced Gunnery--fist being the turbo laser slot for X-17s. Second, and I am sure someone mentioned it above, is Howlrunner will be dead in a heartbeat without 2x tie advanced as an escort. If you are going to run the swarm at least flank howlrunner on both sides with a Tie advanced or ditch howlrunner for an extra tie. I like interceptors myself. Recommnd boosted coms over expanded hanger bay on most ships in most situations.

I too like the AFa with RS, PDR, but not when I have Ackbar...then it is GT.

So is a viable anti-Fireball strategy to put ruthless strategist & point defense reroute on some Whales with Rieekan. Also take Tycho or Dutch. Then Shoot Tycho into the fireball, unload anti-Squadron and use ruthless every time. Keep putting damage on Tycho but he won't die. Do it with the second ship as well and you have done 2 for sure damage and a lot of probable anti-squadron damage on ever ship within engaged with Tycho.

Not a wise play, but hilarious.

nvm, got the answer

Its all about how they're positioned...

TIE Fighters, themselves, are wonderful in swarm against other Fighters... But against Ships, who can use a single activation to hit all fighters in arc, they are very very fragile. Ships with 2 Anti-Squadron Dice can feasably start dropping squadron bases with two activations... Less if they build for it.

So the onus is on you to make sure you're not making them easy targets for ships - because when they do start to fire on ships, those 12 odd blue dice do add up, even when only hits are counted - they tend to burrow through shields, or force redirects because people don't WANT their shields dropped...

For me, all 3 Hull fighters are very hit and miss... A lot of people started taking Big squads of Interceptors here, but my AFMK-IIA with Point Defense Reroute and Ruthless Strategists once let me send in a Single Y-Wing with a banked Squadron Token, and remove 5 Interceptors from play immediately... Granted, I rolled fairly well... But still, that was as good as it can be... Or rather, as bad as it can be for the user.

Does Ruthless Stategist put one dmg on all enemy squadrons?

No, you have a choice for every squadron you shoot with anti-Squadron; however, since named squadrons don't die until the end of the turn with Rieekan, you can just keep applying damage to the ship that will, in the end, die. This allows his death to get you TONS of damage on enemy squadrons.

I think a TIE Swarm with Howlrunner, Dengar and 2 TIE Advanced seems good.

Dengar gives all the TIEs counter and the ones with swarm can have that increased by 1 more with Howlrunner

Tie swarms, as mentioned, are excellent at anti-squadron work, but will get seriously mauled by well equipped anti-squadron ship fire. I like to fly mine with a few large pizza wedge shaped ships to frag the enemy, the Ties keep pesky bombers off of me whilst the pizza's go to work.

For me, they delay my enemy and wrack up some squadron kills as a bonus.3 Tie Int squads and 3 normal Tie squads is only 57 points and worth every single point.

I still like the idea of flying a Raider 1 with Ruthless Strategist and Impetuous escorted by either two tie advanced or two interceptors, or a combination of those two. The raider is protected from bombing runs by the escorts they can be used to soften the targets with the Raider cleaning up.

I used this Monday night to eliminate Howlrunner and an interceptor from a swarm.

Unfortunately, The real problem with RS "ruthless strategists" for the imperial player is that they take up the second most important slot for Advanced Gunnery--fist being the turbo laser slot for X-17s. Second, and I am sure someone mentioned it above, is Howlrunner will be dead in a heartbeat without 2x tie advanced as an escort. If you are going to run the swarm at least flank howlrunner on both sides with a Tie advanced or ditch howlrunner for an extra tie. I like interceptors myself. Recommnd boosted coms over expanded hanger bay on most ships in most situations.

Highly disagree about Gunnery Team being the most important upgrade for any Imperial ship that has access to it. Because the way the Imperial ships are set up organically draws them to focus entirely on 1 target and maximize dice coverage on that. If you focus your front on two targets, you're setting yourself up for never reaching blue/black range on both targets.

When I play Rebel, regardless of Gunnery Team, I'd really take my chances on the side arcs anyways rather than having two ships in front, and I've punished many Imperial players that tried to get 2 of my ships into their blue/black range by doing a well deserved flanking maneuver.

What happens is that most of the gunnery team ISD/VSDs I've played against were very vulnerable to a fleet that was slightly spread because they'd focus their movement in a vector that would take them in between the two ships they were trying to target.

Finally, it really deincentivizes double arcing on a single target, which is where I found most Imperial ships save from the Gladiator were most efficient.

Compare that to Rebels and their generous side arcs who want to kite the battlefield anyways : Gunnery Team only rewards them even more for doing that, while it directs the Imperial ship into a counter intuitive flight path to maximize coverage on multiple ships.

Ah, I tend to use VSDII only VSD I for side arc staggered pass through protection. If your running VSD I your high and dry regardless of Any up grade as they are a support vessel with boosted coms until the rebels flank...if I even ever take a VSDI. But I hear you.

I also hit the Nav button turn 3 and keep on getting that extra click for the turn and don't let go until the engineering token. Most people get outflanked because they want the extra dice, but with GT I am content with 6 extras on another flanker.

squadron turn 2-3 depending on setup then Nav Nav Nav Eng. well lately I have been taking navigation officer to avoid Nav altogether and choose when able with VSDs because they suck at pivoting. 6 points to maybe get that turn 3 squadron attack is only half a squadron afterall and he who attacks first there laughs last.

As much as I keep being tempted to field mass tie fighters, their three hull and reliance on squadron commands keep me from doing it.

Even when I write a list with say 6 TFs plus howlrunner, I find they just don't have the staying power. Sure they do damage on the way in, but even a mixed force of rebel fighters can generally absorb the damage and then roll them up.

I recently tried a rebel fleet with m80/independence and b-wings. I know a Howlrunner ball with tie bombers right behind wiiped all my fighter support and most of the bombers. then imperial bombers got to my m80..........the horror

Placement is vital with a tie swarm. Wrong placement gets you:

• Killed. They die easy.
• Outside of Howlrunner/Dengar's influence. Make sure you keep them together or they'll lose effectiveness.
• Wasted turns. with 11 - 16 squadrons on the board, you're likely not going to be able to throw enough squadron activations around to move AND shoot. So pick your positions carefully because you'll only want to be shooting the next turn.

I recommend running a Rhymer to make placement vs. ships a lot easier, especially corvettes/mc30's/raiders/glads with engine tech's who can run away at speed 4.

An advanced helps protect your named squadrons (howlrunner/dengar/rhymer) however, good placement can make up for it too. you've got a lot of squadrons to use, get creative.

Be aware of squadrons that will rip you a new one, such as Mithil. 12 squadrons = possible 12 damage a turn. They only have 3 structure. Then an anti-squad from an ISD could spell the end of 50% of your squadron fleet.

In terms of bomber ability, throwing 11 - 16 blue dice is nothing to laugh at. with a 50% chance of a damage icon, that's an average of 5 - 8 unbraceable damage.

If you're looking at a fighter swarm, my advice would be to go with a huge one, like in the 10-16 TIE range. 10 if you're running other squadrons (Dengar+TAs, for example), if not, gun for 14-16.

They're incredibly single-purposed, that purpose being anti-squadron murderers. 10 TIEs is a credible anti-squadron force to whittle down squadrons that are trying to attack your more valuable squadrons, and 16 TIEs will win basically any squadron battle through pure attrition, unless you run headlong into a clear trap (like Jan-backed X-wings in an AFIIA Gallant bubble... watch out for that) or have luck so bad it overcomes all your Swarm rerolls. But since you have up to 16 rerolls, we're talking about a legendary amount of bad luck. If you can find a way to couple Dengar's Counter 1 to your TIEs and keep him alive for a round or two, that's an awful lot of rerollable counter dice.

There are definite limitations: for a full swarm, there's no Intel squadron, so initial placement is key. Fortunately you have the raw firepower to kill most things that choose to engage you, through superior numbers and attrition, so you can still move the old fashioned way: by killing stuff in your way. On the flip-side, against fleets with only one Intel squadron (a lot of them), you have enough mobile fighters to get beyond Intel's range to tie up enemy bombers so they can't fire with impunity against your ships (or at least so most of them can't do so), and when a few inevitably fall, you have plenty of reinforcements in to plug holes. Heck, you have enough reinforcements that you can send in an alpha-strike force of 6-8 TIEs to burn down bombers in round 1, and have 8-10 in reserve to deploy as a picket fence around your ships for offensive or defensive use the following round.

Finding enough carriers to activate them is a potential issue, but is doable. Two Vic Is with Expanded Hangers, a Raider I with Expanded Hangers, and Tarkin is 243 points, with a base squadron activation count of 10 (boosts to 13 if you hand out Tarkin tokens), and pairing with a full compliment of 16 TIEs still leaves 29 points for potential upgrades. If you opt for Boosted Comms instead, singe-turn activations top out at 10, but your activation range is quite a bit larger, which is a big help when you have so many squads zipping around.

TIEs aren't great individually against ships, but taking 10-12 blue dice over the course of a round will hurt any ship. They're fragile when exposed to consistent anti-squadron fire, so clumping in multiple ship arcs is bad. At speed 4, this is usually avoidable with planning, and there's no real reason in a generic TIE swarm (where each squadron is equally expendable and you have radial fire) to clump in groups of more than 2-3 when stripping shields from ships, at least in the early game. If you're not playing a mirror match, the only devastating ships with withering anti-squadron fire are an Escort Neb (if one must clump, clump in its primary firing arc to force a choice between attacking a ship or your expendable 2-3 squadrons), an AFIIA (a rare breed these days; if it has Gunnery Teams, its base cost is 88, and if it doesn't just clump there and force a tough attack choice), and MC-80s (again, no gunnery team, so clump in its primary firing arc if you must). Even if you lose a whole clump of 2-3 fighters, you have 13-14 more to draw upon for another run. You don't want to be reckless with them, but you don't have to baby them, either. They knew what they signed up for when they joined the Imperial Academy.

There are definite advantages, though. If you get up to 12-16 TIE stands, that's 6-8 deployment stallers, which will match or exceed anything the Rebels can bring (13 Y's top-out at 6 deployments), if you throw caution to the wind you can concentrate an absurd amount of burst fire on a single target on the turn of a dime, you have a host of finishers available if an enemy ship gets behind your ships' primary firing arcs with just a hull or two left, and worst-case scenario you'll grind any fighter battle to a halt/draw through pure attrition.

Plus the fluff-value is through the roof.

TIEs perform as the cheapest squadron in the game should perform. They are very efficient on paper, but have difficult times with the overall increase in anti-squadron capability wave 2 gave us. It is really difficult to bring enough other worthy targets to keep your enemy from using their flak, especially when they see the chance to effectively decide squadron battle with just 1-2 activations, and freeing their own squadrons for anti-cap duty. Even a single HP lost means most other squadrons will mow them down easily, and in contrast to TIE/ints they lack the offensive power to really alpha-strike hard enough to minimize return fire. However, what to expect for 8 pts?

Very interesting choice of tactics, going for a huge swarm, it's definitely worth a try : overwhelming the enemy squadrons through pure numbers while the ships perform in ship to ship duty.

It would be interesting to see how a couple of TIE Advanced sprinkled in would do the job, just to add that extra resilience to the fighters.

Very interesting choice of tactics, going for a huge swarm, it's definitely worth a try : overwhelming the enemy squadrons through pure numbers while the ships perform in ship to ship duty.

It would be interesting to see how a couple of TIE Advanced sprinkled in would do the job, just to add that extra resilience to the fighters.

It changes the dynamic a bit, as you can't have the full 16-squad swarm with more than one TA (1 TA and 15 TIEs is doable, though). But if you take three TAs, you can fit another 12 TIEs for 15 squadrons total (which isn't shabby), and four TAs leaves room for 10 TIEs, which at fourteen squads is still a sizeable fighter force with a little more staying power. There's a minor downgrade in offensive efficiency since the TAs don't have Swarm, but if it buys a few TIEs another round of firing, that probably increases your offensive output overall, and you have something more resilient (and deadly) to throw at ships if the enemy's fighter screen is low. Same with mixing in some Interceptors with TAs, for a potent alpha-strike with staying power, while the rest of your generic TIEs set up for the killing move through overwhelming force.

Another alternative is to run 6 TIE bombers with 10 TIE fighters (exactly 134 points). Without Intel, they're only pegging ships if you send them on reaaaaaaaaaaly long flight trajectories, or if you overwhelm opposing squadrons early, but it's a more well-rounded fighter force to be sure, while still offering imposing numbers. X-wings are great, but Adar and Yavaris aside, they only shoot at one thing per round, so having more targets than they can shoot at is an advantage. Bombers have less brute power against squadrons, but including them gives the opponent more interesting choices to make when in combat, which is always fun (if I'm an X-wing, do I shoot at a TIE fighter and maybe remove it from play, or do I shoot at a bomber which is more resilient and dangerous, and risk that the TIE and his bros will overwhelm me next turn?). Mixing in Interceptors works the same way (14 TIEs and 2 Interceptors are also 134), does the opponent remove the Counter interceptors early and just stomach the fire, or does it ignore them and go after cheap TIEs first, leaving the more dangerous four-anti-squadron dice interceptors free range?

Definitely room to explore here. I've run 10 TIE, 14 TIE, and 12-squadron TA/Intel/TIE/Interceptor mixes so far, and the 14 TIE swarm was definitely the most effective. The 10/6 TIE/Bomber swarm is next.