StressWing is here. OrdnanceWing and TractorWing are lurking on the horizon. The filthy lurkers.

Surely TractorWing is just the YV666.

You better not be dissing the magic space bus!

I said nothing about DISLIKING tractors.

I love the Giant Space Tractor/Bin Lorry.

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.

Sometimes... when the enemy goes blind. Twice.

If your not running high PS ships, then you must use stress. You don't need to hit, just shoot, which is amazing because you are ignoring the phantoms agility and cloak. Always take at least one stress dealing device in your list in case of phantom. (Tactician, Flechette(Torps, cannon etc). It's sole purpose is to hunt the Phantom or at least deter it.

If your not running high PS ships, then you must use stress. You don't need to hit, just shoot, which is amazing because you are ignoring the phantoms agility and cloak. Always take at least one stress dealing device in your list in case of phantom. (Tactician, Flechette(Torps, cannon etc). It's sole purpose is to hunt the Phantom or at least deter it.

You can also:

block by anticipating where the phantom will go

use turrets (w or w/o Vader),

mass Crackshot

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.

The old TIE phantom would still have been an industrial strength wrecking ball without either. Its strength was its decloak: it had unparalleled reactivity because it decloaked when it activated. If you guessed correctly where it was going to go, it'd just go somewhere else. It drove the interceptor out of the game it was so good at reaction.

Now it decloaks after dials are set. It still could end up just about anywhere but where it's going is locked in. You guess where that phantom wants to go and it can't suddenly go somewhere else. One of the most forgiving ships in the game just became one of the least forgiving, and it now lives and dies by the skill of the player using it. If you predict where it wants to go and aim your Wampa at it, it's not going to have a good day.

Is the TIE phantom balanced? In it's original form it's the only ship ever to receive an errata. In its current form, it's quite uncommon to see any more. A broken ship is not abandoned in droves.

This is my plan. I'm going to pretty much copy the winning list(with some modifications) to understand it better forr the next store championship.

That's called netdecking, and it's a very easy way to get utterly discouraged because it usually doesn't work. People tend to believe that the list is everything and forget the player. They pick up Paul Heaver's Worlds winning list, expect to win constantly with it and get annihilated. While a bad list will doom you, the difference between a good list and a great list has very little impact. You need to go with something you like and are good with.

I was running Kenkirk with Palp, Omega Leader, and Wampa.

Your problem there in general is you have a grand total of five attack dice. The damage output of that squad is terrible, so unless you have a way to compensate for that you're simply outgunned. Against the phantom specifically the matchup isn't terrible, but it's going to struggle against anything that goes for brute strength.

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.

The old TIE phantom would still have been an industrial strength wrecking ball without either. Its strength was its decloak: it had unparalleled reactivity because it decloaked when it activated. If you guessed correctly where it was going to go, it'd just go somewhere else. It drove the interceptor out of the game it was so good at reaction.

Now it decloaks after dials are set. It still could end up just about anywhere but where it's going is locked in. You guess where that phantom wants to go and it can't suddenly go somewhere else. One of the most forgiving ships in the game just became one of the least forgiving, and it now lives and dies by the skill of the player using it. If you predict where it wants to go and aim your Wampa at it, it's not going to have a good day.

Is the TIE phantom balanced? In it's original form it's the only ship ever to receive an errata. In its current form, it's quite uncommon to see any more. A broken ship is not abandoned in droves.

This is my plan. I'm going to pretty much copy the winning list(with some modifications) to understand it better forr the next store championship.

That's called netdecking, and it's a very easy way to get utterly discouraged because it usually doesn't work. People tend to believe that the list is everything and forget the player. They pick up Paul Heaver's Worlds winning list, expect to win constantly with it and get annihilated. While a bad list will doom you, the difference between a good list and a great list has very little impact. You need to go with something you like and are good with.

I was running Kenkirk with Palp, Omega Leader, and Wampa.

Your problem there in general is you have a grand total of five attack dice. The damage output of that squad is terrible, so unless you have a way to compensate for that you're simply outgunned. Against the phantom specifically the matchup isn't terrible, but it's going to struggle against anything that goes for brute strength.

I think it's seven attack dice.

Yeah, I can't count today. It's still low, and on ships that struggle to up that with Range 1 bonuses.

Yeah, I can't count today. It's still low, and on ships that struggle to up that with Range 1 bonuses.

They're good dice though; OL is likely to be Juking which makes up for the dearth, and Wampa don't care as long as Palpatine is alive.

The Deci would be better as Chiraneau, but I don't know enough about the rest of the build to know for sure.

Small numbers of dice aren't problematic as long as they're well-modified. One of the lists I have most trouble with right now is VI Chiraenau/Palp/EU/Gunner and VI Vader/EU/x1/ATC. Both of them very likely to get into range 1, and therefore end up with 8 dice, averaging boom/boom/kaboom/kaboom, shooting first.

But out of the box they only have 5 dice between them.

Quality of dice is SO much more important than sheer number, unless you're talking TIE Swarm levels of sheer number.

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.

This is just flat out not true. Fel with SD and AT is much more difficult to take down than a phantom.

What you're doing here is mistaking subjective opinion for objective truth. With the sort of lists I run I'd rather face Fel than Whisper most of the time, because Fel is much, much easier to block and a blocked Interceptor is a dead Interceptor.

Ill accept that.

how insanely powerful decloak is, even with the nerf.

Just like anything else in this game, with experience comes the ability to better predict what your opponent is going to do. predict the decloak+dial correctly. they both have to be decided without knowledge of your moves.

From my playing experience, I don't think the nerf hurt the named phantoms THAT much.

And if they have Intel agent it's even less of a problem dealing with the nerf.

Havnt seen a whole lot o phantoms apart from one staunch imperial ace player

Much like Vader, I found they fold rather quickly to TLTs as four agility (eventually unmodified) don't really offer all that much protection. Therefore, they have to be played REALLY well

They hurt like the dickens (if using fire control system) but just one mistake and you're praying to the fickle gods of green dice to not get utterly annihilated.

They're high risk, high performance little ships with some glaring hard counters (rebel captive, higher PS and stress stacking; the later two of which are fairly common through vi Vader and stress hog respectively)

Plus force help you if you're caught staring down the arc of a IG 88-crackshot

This is my plan. I'm going to pretty much copy the winning list(with some modifications) to understand it better forr the next store championship.

That's called netdecking, and it's a very easy way to get utterly discouraged because it usually doesn't work. People tend to believe that the list is everything and forget the player. They pick up Paul Heaver's Worlds winning list, expect to win constantly with it and get annihilated. While a bad list will doom you, the difference between a good list and a great list has very little impact. You need to go with something you like and are good with.

Netdecking is fine if you're using it for inspiration, and devote time to actually practicing a list and understanding why it works. You can't just expect to bring it to a Store Championship and automatically walk home with a trophy, but you can certainly take it to league nights and see what it does well and where it struggles. That will teach you which actions to do in which situations, and that understanding will ultimately bring you to a win.

Heck, if you have the time, it can be worthwhile to netdeck lists you don't plan to fly but expect to face. That way you can gain that same understanding of what the list doesn't do well.

Yeah, I can't count today. It's still low, and on ships that struggle to up that with Range 1 bonuses.

They're good dice though; OL is likely to be Juking which makes up for the dearth, and Wampa don't care as long as Palpatine is alive.

The Deci would be better as Chiraneau, but I don't know enough about the rest of the build to know for sure.

Small numbers of dice aren't problematic as long as they're well-modified. One of the lists I have most trouble with right now is VI Chiraenau/Palp/EU/Gunner and VI Vader/EU/x1/ATC. Both of them very likely to get into range 1, and therefore end up with 8 dice, averaging boom/boom/kaboom/kaboom, shooting first.

But out of the box they only have 5 dice between them.

Quality of dice is SO much more important than sheer number, unless you're talking TIE Swarm levels of sheer number.

Palp on Kenkirk is a solid combo, and probably my favorite Decimator to run him on. Kenkirk with Determination, Palpatine and Isard is absurdly tough to kill, capable of two guaranteed evade results per round and a 1/3 chance to discard a critical hit without resolving it.

Last year I ran 3 Blue Squad B-wings with Luke plus VI, R2D2 and didn't have much trouble with Phantoms after the errata.

Use the asteroids to reduce some of the Phantom's decloak options, space them more like range 2 apart rather than 1 so the asteroid field takes up a larger portion of the board. Make the fight happen near the asteroids.

Take a little extra time to consider what the de-cloak options really are. You really have to give it some thought, but often times you can eliminate some decloak options that won't put your opponent in a position to fire, or would have put your opponent on an asteroid.

Don't be afraid to take 3 red on 4 green dice attacks. Phantoms don't have many hits. More often than not the phantoms I played against would avoid Luke only to be shot down from a couple of attacks from my PS2 B-wings.

Also, spread your fire arcs. Careful piloting can leave the Phantom nowhere it can get a shot without taking one or two in return, and that adds up quickly especially if you've got some hit points to sacrifice to the cause.

You guys all know a 26 point stresshog just ends phantoms, right?

You guys all know a 26 point stresshog just ends phantoms, right?

If it gets them in arc, yes. As many of us mentioned on page 1 of the thread

Fair point. Still that shouldn't be so hard. My current list has deadeye blount with an ion missile, the stress hog. Roark with Jan and Biggs.I figure if i split arcs enough either the phantom gets ioned then stressed, or stressed then ioned. Same goes for Soontir (though most likely both in a turn hahahah).

Determination, Palpatine and Isard is absurdly tough to kill, capable of two guaranteed evade results per round and a 1/3 chance to discard a critical hit without resolving it.

1/4

To add to the stress hog: vi poe

"Nice four attack z95 you got there..."

I haven't read all 6 pages of this, but surely Rebel Captive is mentioned multiple times, yes? Stick that thing in your Decimator and watch the Phantom pilot cry.

Along with a tactician maybe...

how is it this thread still going...?

(halfway) seriously - we need a "the sky is falling" subforum, where ~these~ threads should be moved ASAP..

please wake me up once phantoms start to drown the meta in cloak-tokens, like they (n)ever did ..

When wave 4 happened the sky kinda fell a bit. It was all Phantom Menace and the Fat Hans (DIBS ON BAND NAME!)

To add to the stress hog: vi poe

"Nice four attack z95 you got there..."

Poe's ability also helps make Sensor Jammer even less useful, which at least can sometimes protect a Phantom from other enemies. His popularity is part of the Phantom's downfall.