When the phantom came out it was a massive power creep for ffg.

However since its nerf it has a substantial amount of counters.

First and foremost ps bid is the Main phantom killer which basically makes whisper the only real threat to most lists.

Next anything that does damage through shields or ignores most green die. Wampa, blunt, etc.

Fast and agile blockers such as awings help.

Phantoms are a pain with thier 4 atk dice but soontir is harder to kill.

Hate leads to the Dark Side...

But seriously, too cynical!

Here I was excited that the Phantom can sometimes even LIVE, let alone pull out tournament victories against all that TLT and VI Poe spam.

Hate leads to the Dark Side...

But seriously, too cynical!

Here I was excited that the Phantom can sometimes even LIVE, let alone pull out tournament victories against all that TLT and VI Poe spam.

All in the pilot, I'm 99% certain I'd have lost my first match regardless of his list. Second I think I can beat, the match against him could've gone either way.

Just today I fired a 3 dice unmodified shot at range 3 against a cloacked focused whisper and dealt 2 damage.

Green dice can really suck, a loaded whisper is allot of points for 4 hit points. It's a high risk high reward ship expect it to kick your ass until it randomly explodes.

All Acewing ships are like this. The way the game functioned in the golden age wave 3 meta where your ship moved once, maybe did one action, and maybe fired once are gone. It sucks but you can fly busted overpowered **** too.

Rose color is the best for viewing nostalgic memories. If you didn't have people doing this in your meta, I'm sorry it might come to you as a shock, but its been around since before wave 3. Interceptors, EU, and PtL were all wave 2. I've been flying interceptors since then, the fact that you didn't experience this around that time, shows that your player base was not as well adapted to this game as it should of been. Stop with your nay saying cause you can't even get your facts straight.

I am pretty new to X wing and the advice that I can offer is to watch you tube vids. They are very helpful with how to take on what. There are a few lists that can seem OP, but Phantoms are glass cannons and Decimators will take damage from every attack as long as you dont fluff the dice. Soontir with 2 Focus and an evade token, Auto thrusters and between 4-6 defence dice depending on the circumstances is a much harder prospect to pull down.

This is a Whisper/Chiraneau list taking on Cracken/Garnet/Blue Sqd Pilot and Rookie pilot in X wing.

Whisper/Chiraneau get smashed up.

The best way to kill a phantom you aren't a bigger ps than is the old fashioned throw dice at it. Sorry I'm sure its not what you wanted to hear. Green dice have a habbit of buckling so you just have to focus on it till it drops from weight of fire.

So not balanced then. Got it.

I dont fear Whisper all that much. What are you playing?

I like to fly phantoms. Phantoms are murdered by:

- Stress

- High PS aces (like VI Vader/Poe)

- Restricted manouvering space (use the edge of the board and asteroids to limit decloak options, do not engage Phantom in large open areas where it can decloak in all 3 directions)

If the above are not available, throw lots of dice at it, the greens just buckle under a couple of shots. SPECIFICALLY:

- The phantom loves its hard 1 turns. When dogfighting against the phantom, it is likely that it will decloak to one side or the other and do a hard right, often so that it faces its original position where its enemies are likely headed. Try to guess which decloak and hard right option is best for the phantom (what would you do?) and just cover that spot with firepower - a single barrel roll is insufficient to arc dodge if you keep some distance.

- If a phantom can't shoot, it can't use ACD (and whisper won't get free focus token), so it is left with one action for defense - cloak or evade. If all else fails, at least try to dodge its arc, even if you miss all shooting opportunities with everything except Deci. With a Palp PWT you have a good chance of hurting it badly if it is sitting on 2 dice + evade or 4 naked greens.

Cheers!

Practice beats phantoms.

This,

And if the OP could figure it out with the (imho excellent) resources at hand, practice more instead of calling something unbalanced.

What I don't like about Phantoms is that it's an extreme. It's either a paper tiger that folds up and gets destroyed easily by it's counters....or it's a beast that can single handedly **** your entire list. There are some very hard counters to it....but if your list doesn't have those counters, then you need to have a lot of experience against it to have a chance of winning. To me, it's a ship that takes the fun out of the game. I like to think that nearly any list has a decent chance to win if flown well. That theory is hard to say when facing a Phantom. It's one of those ships that forces you to take certain things in your list and reduces the variety of the game.

I think the worst aspect of it is the 4 attack dice. If it was just 3, then it would be not as bad. 4 red dice just makes it brutal.

Get it in arc at range 3. Declare it the target of your attack, give it a stress token from the stressbot. Fire. Miss. Use your title to fire your TLT, declare it the target of your attack, give it a stress using the stressbot. . . deal one damage. . fire again. . deal another damage. (Maybe).

Next turn, he performs a green move, cannot recloak or he performs a green move and stays cloaked and therefore cannot fire. Hit him again . .

Profit?

If you don't have a stress mechanic, then you need to smash them with high dice. Alternatively, so your options are:

Have Wes Janson fire to remove tokens. This is easily done with VI as you will be PS10.

Use Wedge to negate their agility. Again, VI will also negate their cloak. Its a sad day when Whisper rolls one evade dice.

.

Out fly them with Soontir or Vader.

Use Omega Leader to lock their dice and Juke them.

Hit them with Ten Numb using Calculation or a Mangler Cannon.

Fire Flechette Torps at them from Nera. (360 firing and do not need to hit to apply stress).

Fire ANY Flechette Torps at them.

Use Blount and Ion Pulse Missile them. . .

Use Kath Scarlett (Imperial) using Calculation and Tactician. Range 2 double stress with a crit. Triple stress at range 2 with Tactician, Flechettes and Guidence Chips.

Block their obvious moves with one or two ships and then pound them with another. HLC B wing anyone?

Use Dash (PtL, Kyle, HLC, Title and Engine), get the stress combo going and fire four red dice with Focus and Target Lock at them. You only need four hits and you KNOW they are going to just fly at you so hunt them with Corran.

Three Black Sqd with Crackshot and Howlrunner. Cover the areas, take no prisoners, crack their evade dice with focus/reroll/crackshot.

As mentioned at the beginning, Y wing with title, TLT and stressbot.

Any Y wing, E wing or X wing with stressbot. Range 3 is huge.

Rymer with PtL and Adv. Homing Missiles. Fire at range 3, pray for a direct hit.

Loads of options.

Hey OP, like many have said, it's a matter of practice. Everyone freaks out when they first face Whisper. Phantoms have a pattern of movement very unlike every other ship. Specifically, decloak and hard-1 in an open area gives them superb repositioning.

But I would say that most popular lists now have plenty of tools to kill Whisper. The number of stresshogs, vi vaders and poes, tlts, wampasand hi ps pwts means that she's a tricky ship to take to a touranement these days. To be honest, it sounds like your oppoenent shoudl be congratulated on their win against you.

More than anything, she needs a partner who presents more of a threat than her, and thus allows her to get into her preferred positions, from which no one is her equal...

it's very easy:

if you think it's -that- broken, fly the **** thing yourself

gras is always greener on the other side

The best way to kill a phantom you aren't a bigger ps than is the old fashioned throw dice at it. Sorry I'm sure its not what you wanted to hear. Green dice have a habbit of buckling so you just have to focus on it till it drops from weight of fire.

Exactly this, pre phantom change when they really were hideous i shot out whisper and echo in games with 'hero' xwings like wedge and luke.. i just made sure my arcs were spread out so i could catch them whereever they popped up or force them to stay covered.

They are tough ships to fight but dont be intimidated by them.

it's very easy:

if you think it's -that- broken, fly the **** thing yourself

gras is always greener on the other side

This makes a lot sense actually.

Built a list with that fighter and try to test its abilities to the max.

Once you have a feeling about what it can do, it will look less spooky, when you see it coming from the other side of the board.

The fact that it only has 2 hull and 2 shields and a base 2 green dice makes it balanced. Green dice are fickle. I have had plent of games where range 3 through an asteroid and I roll 5 blanks. Not every list is good against a phantom, high PS build will ruin a phantoms day.

Things that I've found do well against Phantoms

Gunner: Force damage through better.

Twin-Laser Turrets: Force damage through better.

Blocking: If you can block a Phantom, it's gonna die fast.

Focus fire with lots of ships: Green dice are fickle. Four B-Wings and a Z firing all at one cloaked Phantom will probably mess it up. It's hard, but if you can get the Phantom in multiple sights it will go down.

PS10-11: Whisper doesn't get to fire and cloak before you shoot her. Veteran Instincts is your friend.

Roark Garnet/Torkil Mux: These ships both seriously ruin Whisper's day.

You flew Kenkirk and lost? Fly Rear Admiral Chiraneau with VI and win. No cloak for you!

The best way to kill a phantom you aren't a bigger ps than is the old fashioned throw dice at it. Sorry I'm sure its not what you wanted to hear. Green dice have a habbit of buckling so you just have to focus on it till it drops from weight of fire.

So not balanced then. Got it.

You haven't seen anything yet. Shoulda been around when it first came out. THAT was unbalanced

Destroy the Decimator and try to block Whisper's decloaks. What list did you have?

I was running Kenkirk with Palp, Omega Leader, and Wampa. It wasn't a great list, and I didn't fly particularly well with the Ties, but Kenkirk did a lot of work.

The most frustrating part of both matches is that the Decimators were never an issue in either - they did almost no damage, and were never a significant enough threat except for Palpatine. It was all Whisper.

For the points value he has, he really should fall under the "half points for half damage" rule - he's far too tanky as is.

Wampa is a natural counter to Whisper. If Wampa rolls a crit, it doesn't matter _what_ Whisper rolls on Defense- Whisper is going to take a facedown damage card. Whisper can only take 2 of those before dying a terrible, pointless death.

That is how Whisper is balanced, incidentally: low health. Incredibly low health. The usual load out for Whisper is 44 points. One bad roll of the (ever so fickle) Green Dice and Whisper is dead.

Now, I'm not some amazing player, so while this is a rant, it's also a legitimate question.

I did a local store championship recently, and I got destroyed, losing four of five matches. However, the first two matches were where I came against a real problem that I couldn't figure out a way to really stop it - the Tie Phantom. In both cases, it was a nearly identical list, a decimator with Palp, and a Whisper, I believe, though the loadouts were a bit different.

But the end result was the same. I wasn't running aces, so I had zero chance to really outmaneuver the phantom, unless they made a mistake - and without outmaneuvering him and preventing that cloak, I had no real chance to do damage to him because of the ridiculous four agility. I can't stay out of his arc, because his maneuverability is absolutely insane.

What are you supposed to do against him, if you don't have any real options to force damage through, or shoot before he cloaks?

This game is still far more about skill than list building. I mean, you need to make sure your list has the tools to take care of a variety of opposing ships, but assuming both players have well constructed/balanced lists, the better player is going to win most of the time.

The phantom in particular is a high skill/high ceiling ship. This means that players that are very good with it are tough opponents (and frankly are regardless of what they are flying) and if you haven't played against it, it is very tough to beat (by contrast, inexperienced players running phantoms lose it unbelievably easy). Once you do get good enough, though, especially after the changes, you can give yourself a decent chance even without a hard counter as you figure out it's best move and give yourself shots/block it, etc...

I ran my first tournament list ever over the weekend -- Whisper, Sensor Jammer/ACD. I can tell you, a Phantom doesn't last forever... Turrets get shots on it readily, and it isn't that beefy a ship. It was my main ship (alongside it Carnor Jax and Maarek Stele). Felt very balanced, I've never played pre-nerf, I think it is fair that it decloaks at start of activation phase. I also had a matchup against another Whisper, was interesting that I would decloak after it (initiative was his) which felt very helpful.

TL;DR feels right to me! If I had to say... y-wing's taking three shots... I was thinking "how is this balanced"! and Dash YT-2400 flying and barrel rolling and boosting like it was a tie fighter... "how is this balanced!!"

When I show up to a $5 entry 3 round event and 12-14 players show up, 6 of them with identical VI Autothrusters Regen Poe Damerons, I'm not over-exaggerating things.

I was told the phantom didn't ruin the game and didn't need to be nerfed, and to just, "get good and throw dice at it until it dies."

I was told that fat turrets weren't broken and required skill and didn't ruin the game.

Also: please don't confuse the Squint buff of AutoThrusters with a nerf to Large ships.

Now I'm being told I'm just over-exaggerating things when I say that TIE Fighters are just obsolescent soap bubbles or that the game right now is all about having higher Pilot Skill and boosting.

OP, many people on these forums want them to be an echo chamber of positivity, and will oppose people with valid complaints just because they're complaints, or because you didn't use euphemisms or a smarmy Alex Davy smile. An opinion being negative has no bearing on whether or not it's true.

Many people looked at OP's list and told him how he could fly it better to ensure that he would be able to take down Whisper in the future. You told him that he needed to change his entire list because the game was no longer in its "golden age" and now things were bad. You were negative and objectively wrong. Not objectively wrong about when the game's golden age is (I think you're wrong, but it's subjective). Rather: you're objectively wrong in what he could have accomplished with the list he brought.

Sensor Jammer Vader

I don't think this is a good loadout for Vader. If you really want to do a turtle Vader, I'd recommend Accuracy Corrector and Juke. You can Evade every turn, and Juke (+ PS 9) turns that into an offensive tool. Accuracy Corrector lets you never worry about what you roll- you're getting 2 hits. And the second action can be spent on either Barrel Rolling or Focusing, depending on what your needs are at the time.

I'd submit that murdering your opponent's ships is worth far more than 2 shields over the course of the match.

The best way to kill a phantom you aren't a bigger ps than is the old fashioned throw dice at it. Sorry I'm sure its not what you wanted to hear. Green dice have a habbit of buckling so you just have to focus on it till it drops from weight of fire.

So not balanced then. Got it.

The opposite actually. It's a great little ship that has a very big flaw (its easy to one shot). If you can't outmanoeuvre it then you just have to shoot it down with fire. So is Soontir Fel unbalanced just because hes hard to outmanoeuvre?

Fel isn't nearly as hard to take down, despite the autothrusters, and doesn't have the same damage output. The ability to take a crew and systems slot makes all the difference for Whisper.