Played 3 games with a friend who has only played a few games before today. I usually take Rebels or Scum, so today, I took Wedge with BB-8 and 2 Prototype A-Wings against his Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse, Backstabber and Night Beast. It was like 64 or 65 points each, I can't remember for sure. We are sort of working our way up as he gets more familiar with the game.

Game 1
He set up in a line while I put Wedge on one side and the Greens on the other. First move, he split his forces to attack both my groups, while I converged mine with the help of some A-Wing speed. I isolated 2 of his and made short work. Then I regrouped and turned to his other 2 that were way out of the fight. He got some lucky rolls and a block or two to live for a while but when it was over all my ships were alive having taken 4 total damage.

So I thought, well he just didn't fly them right. He took focus every time, didn't use his barrel roll or evade actions. I said lets switch and rematch.

Game 2
I start with some razzle dazzle turns and banks with a few barrel rolls to set up some glancing angle shots for round 2. Then I burn some 4 and 5 speed moves to get Mithel and Dark Curse in range 1 and Backstabber is flanking perfectly. Wedge on Dark Curse, hit, hit, crit. DC rolls 1 evade, takes a card down and a direct hit, dead. Mithel takes a shield off an A-Wing. Night Beast misses and Backstabber takes a shield off Wedge. A-Wing 1 rolls hit, crit, crit on Mithel. Blanks his greens, dead. Round 3 a lot of bumping, everyone has at least one shot at range 1 on someone. Wedge one shots Backstabber, Night Beast misses a shot and the A's take him out.

So since that only took about 17 minutes we did it again.

Game 3
I played it a little slower, but made a mistake on a barrel roll with Backstabber and was just inside Wedge's arc. First shot of the game=dead Backstabber. My other 3 take shots on an A-Wing at range 2, one shield down. 2 A-Wings vs Night Beast, first one natural hits everywhere, I spend focus and evade token to live. Second shot, hit crit, greens blank dead tie. Next round, Wedge one shots Dark Curse again, A-Wing Blocks Mithel but he still gets 4 reds against Wedge, hit, focus, focus, blank, no tokens, Wedge evades. A-Wing #2 does 1 damage. Round 3, Wedge finishes Mithel.

In the last 2 games it took 12 attacks to kill 8 Ties, while the Ties managed only 8 shots for a total of 3 shields removed (and 12 dead Ties vs 7 total damage over the 3 games). Wedge has 4 consecutive one shot kills and 5 total kills against me and 7 kills on the day.


Then my friend said, "No wonder you always give me Tie's."

My friend is also my boss. When I got to work today he said he saw a flock of sparrows tearing up a Tie swarm on the drive to work this morning.

There may be a reason for flying that many named TIE Fighters, but this is one case where upgrades are rarely effective. At 66 points you could fly Howlrunner with 4 Academy Pilots. You would have a completely different experience. And don't separate them. They are a flock of murder crows that live and die by focus fire. You just want Howlrunner to live as long as possible.

If you want the stand alone TIE Fighters, then you need the TIE/fo models and spend some time reading about them as they are a separate beast, but still want to focus fire.

The hard part is punching through damage on 2 red dice ships while trying to survive with just green dice separating you from the vacuum of space. Regardless, they can strip tokens quickly and by the time the last one has fired can be very effective.

Also, against a list of Wedge plus 2 A-wings, wedge should be your first target. He has the highest offense and the lowest defense.

These were very casual games mind you and the dice were very much in the Rebels favor, but the A's had no trouble punching thru the TIEs 3 greens while all the Ties could do was take a couple shields off the As over 2 games.

Of course if this had been a 100 point competetive format I would have had 35 more points and a whole different strategy.

And this thread is a little tongue in cheek. I have had good luck with Ties in the past but wow did the dice let them down yesterday.

Green dice. Never trust them.

Just you wait! There are FO Ties and those things are something else.