Has anyone tried this yet?

5 x Saber Squadron Interceptors with Autothrusters.

Friend of mine says he saw it played on some video Batrep and it cleaned house.

5x Saber Squadron (w/ AT) is 115 points.

Did you mean 5x Alpha Squadron w/ AT? (100 points)

Clearly. Something I've long wanted to fly gfor a laugh, but doubt it'll work n practice.

Sorry. I meant 5 Alpha Squadron.

I've seen 4 flown with decent upgrades on them. Not sure 5 interceptors would work.

5 alphas w/ autothrusters are probably not going to win any tourneys. They have some strengths but also weaknesses that are going to result in one or more bad matchups (more than likely anyway).

5 ships with 3 attack each is powerful (their main strength). They have an excellent dial and action bar (another strength, but savvy player required to leverage these effectively). They are really, really good blockers. Best small-base in the game in fact (only thing better would be a PTL interceptor).

Autothrusters means they have decent protection against turrets and are fairly durable at R3 against anything. But at PS1, they have a bit less control on engagement range (at least against things that can choose to boost/BR after they have finished moving).

So based on this, their ideal engagement would be a first turn of shooting at R3 followed by another turn of shooting at R1 where their primary target has been blocked by one and gets shot up by the remaining squad. That 2nd turn of shooting, if pulled off successfully, will devastate anything (assuming you haven't lost one of them already----possible considering their fragility).

After that, you probably don't want to joust----it being better to circle around to avoid getting focus fired on and blocking to deny actions whenever (to reduce effectiveness of enemy fire and allow your remaining shot(s) to get through agility).

I haven't actually run 5 though, but that's how I'd do it (I've run 3 and 4 plenty of times, but never been that keen to try 5)

The worst part about flying 5 is needing to buy 5 Interceptor packs, which have crap for upgrades.

What about 4 x RGP with VI and Autothrusters, or 4 RGP with PTL?

Fly in formation. Make the initial joust count:

What about 4 x RGP with VI and Autothrusters, or 4 RGP with PTL?

VI kinda blows, frankly. Going from PS 6 to 8 just isn't meaningful 95% of the time...

Push the limit is awesome. I used to run 4 royals with push back in the day and it was great fun and effective against a bunch of things. Except Han Solo with gunner/luke. He just tore through the list like a hot light sabre through a hutt. Of course, Han solo (and big base turrets in general) are less common these days, so that's something.

Autothrusters make a huge difference, such that turrets can no longer do terrible things to your interceptors' back ends...

CBMarkham's list above is a good idea, but to keep the interceptor love more pure, you could also try:

2 royal guards w/ PTL, title, autos & hull = 30 x 2

2 alphas w/ autos = 20 x 2

100

I haven't gotten around to running it yet, but its on my 'to-do' list.

I ran a 5 Avenger Squad list for awhile. It did alright (15 attack dice behind 3 agility and a good dial), but it was in a meta where there was a lot of low PS spam. They'd really struggle against an Ace list, but at least the AT Alphas would be solid against a TLT spam.

The worst part about flying 5 is needing to buy 5 Interceptor packs, which have crap for upgrades.

Any imp worth their salt already should have 3 between the pack and aces (necessary to make full soontir). My personal collection picked up a second aces pack as a recent torny prize which if you were going to do it isn't a bad idea anyway just for the upgrades and cost effectiveness in there. The pain in the butt is needing 3 starvipers for the autothrusters.

As for the list, it should go alright as casual fun however it gets overshadowed by the 8 tie/ howlrunners black tie ball.

The interceptor have an offensive advantage despite being a red dice down (less green die rolling oppertunity) and dials but is that + the at's really worth the extra 6-9 hull ?

Now I want to fly four interceptors. Trying to see how I could realistically squeeze good ol' Lt. Lorrir in there.