Howdy all, I'm starting to branch out what i play a bit and want to learn to fly a tie swarm. Problem is, i can't seem to find the old articles that people keep telling me to look up. I know Doug Kinney wrote an awesome series on evolving the swarm and the drunken shark about a year ago, but I can only find broken team covenant links to that. I also want to read up on flying in traditional swarm formations as well, but again all I can find are links pointing me towards how to fight against traditional swarms.

Thanks in advance!

My buddy has a really good opening for 8 ties or z's and it can work with 7 obviously. Any way you make 2 groups of four. You'll put a group of 4 on the left side between the edge and middle facing the right side diagonally and the the opposite with the other group. I hope that makes sense! Anyway it really let's you react to how you opponent sets up. If they set up on the left side just do 2 or 3 hard turns with the left group and the right group just goes straight and obviously do the opposite if they set up on the opposite side. If they deploy right in the middle just start banking them in and you always have a swarm block going right at them. Hope that helps and makes sense lol it'd be easier to draw.

Unfortunately all of those articles were on the old Team Covenant site, so they're gone. All of the pictures and explanations are just broken links now.

I'll have to write some new ones, but it might not be for a while.

Glad you're branching out. Explore, have some fun.

My buddy has a really good opening for 8 ties or z's and it can work with 7 obviously. Any way you make 2 groups of four. You'll put a group of 4 on the left side between the edge and middle facing the right side diagonally and the the opposite with the other group. I hope that makes sense! Anyway it really let's you react to how you opponent sets up. If they set up on the left side just do 2 or 3 hard turns with the left group and the right group just goes straight and obviously do the opposite if they set up on the opposite side. If they deploy right in the middle just start banking them in and you always have a swarm block going right at them. Hope that helps and makes sense lol it'd be easier to draw.

Sounds like a Drunken Shark style opening to me.

Unfortunately all of those articles were on the old Team Covenant site, so they're gone. All of the pictures and explanations are just broken links now.

I'll have to write some new ones, but it might not be for a while.

Glad you're branching out. Explore, have some fun.

You mean this one?

https://teamcovenant.com/general/the-evolving-shark-chapter-2-the-drunken-shark-opening

I have a really old PDF (circa wave 2) that covers the basics of swarm movement. PM me your email address if you want me to send it to you.

Unfortunately all of those articles were on the old Team Covenant site, so they're gone. All of the pictures and explanations are just broken links now.

I'll have to write some new ones, but it might not be for a while.

Glad you're branching out. Explore, have some fun.

Dougs I don't know if I got to to tell you at worlds, but I tried the drunken shark right after you wrote those articles and it was probably the most fun I've had playing x wing. I hope the buisness is doing well

My buddy has a really good opening for 8 ties or z's and it can work with 7 obviously. Any way you make 2 groups of four. You'll put a group of 4 on the left side between the edge and middle facing the right side diagonally and the the opposite with the other group. I hope that makes sense! Anyway it really let's you react to how you opponent sets up. If they set up on the left side just do 2 or 3 hard turns with the left group and the right group just goes straight and obviously do the opposite if they set up on the opposite side. If they deploy right in the middle just start banking them in and you always have a swarm block going right at them. Hope that helps and makes sense lol it'd be easier to draw.

Sounds like a Drunken Shark style opening to me.

Thanks! What do you use as a reference for spacing between the two groups? Is it just eye ball our do you use a range or template?

My buddy has a really good opening for 8 ties or z's and it can work with 7 obviously. Any way you make 2 groups of four. You'll put a group of 4 on the left side between the edge and middle facing the right side diagonally and the the opposite with the other group. I hope that makes sense! Anyway it really let's you react to how you opponent sets up. If they set up on the left side just do 2 or 3 hard turns with the left group and the right group just goes straight and obviously do the opposite if they set up on the opposite side. If they deploy right in the middle just start banking them in and you always have a swarm block going right at them. Hope that helps and makes sense lol it'd be easier to draw.

I once challenged a Chewy Corran player to play a swarm, and he refused. I then offered to play a Turretwing squad and he then agreed.

My squad was 55 point Super Dash (no crew) with 3 Refit Prototype A-Wings and his was 7 Academies and Dark Curse.

He then spread out all 8 of his ships in one long line across his entire starting area. Once Dash committed to a direction the line collapsed on him and I was blocked for 3-4 turns in the same spot.

It's pretty easy to kill Super Dash this way.

Unfortunately all of those articles were on the old Team Covenant site, so they're gone. All of the pictures and explanations are just broken links now.

I'll have to write some new ones, but it might not be for a while.

Glad you're branching out. Explore, have some fun.

You mean this one?

https://teamcovenant.com/general/the-evolving-shark-chapter-2-the-drunken-shark-opening

Yep, many of the pics didn't survive, unfortunately. Still, thanks for finding that, and i'll get some new ones posted at some point.

My buddy has a really good opening for 8 ties or z's and it can work with 7 obviously. Any way you make 2 groups of four. You'll put a group of 4 on the left side between the edge and middle facing the right side diagonally and the the opposite with the other group. I hope that makes sense! Anyway it really let's you react to how you opponent sets up. If they set up on the left side just do 2 or 3 hard turns with the left group and the right group just goes straight and obviously do the opposite if they set up on the opposite side. If they deploy right in the middle just start banking them in and you always have a swarm block going right at them. Hope that helps and makes sense lol it'd be easier to draw.

I once challenged a Chewy Corran player to play a swarm, and he refused. I then offered to play a Turretwing squad and he then agreed.

My squad was 55 point Super Dash (no crew) with 3 Refit Prototype A-Wings and his was 7 Academies and Dark Curse.

He then spread out all 8 of his ships in one long line across his entire starting area. Once Dash committed to a direction the line collapsed on him and I was blocked for 3-4 turns in the same spot.

It's pretty easy to kill Super Dash this way.

Blocking is definitely the thing I'm looking to learn, I've been using stresshog and tactician to shut stuff down for a while and I want to try The Old Ways. The thing I've struggled with so far is getting the block AND quality attacks in. I'm trying youngerster with FOs, or a two group drunken shark featuring howl in one block with wampa and rage youngster in the other with Zen (epsilon leader). That list currently rounds out with an epsilon and omega squadron pilot with crackshot, but I haven't put them on the table against a human yet.

Howdy all, I'm starting to branch out what i play a bit and want to learn to fly a tie swarm. Problem is, i can't seem to find the old articles that people keep telling me to look up. I know Doug Kinney wrote an awesome series on evolving the swarm and the drunken shark about a year ago, but I can only find broken team covenant links to that. I also want to read up on flying in traditional swarm formations as well, but again all I can find are links pointing me towards how to fight against traditional swarms.

Thanks in advance!

Level 1: Formation Flying.

​Even in a world wherein you are not using Howlrunner, learning how to Fly in Formation is the first plateau of a budding Swarmist.

​See, your fleet is comprised of an absurd number of low-damage attacks. To get any work out of that, you need to concentrate fire.

Formation Flying means your ships are facing the same direction, with overlapping firing arcs, for the vast majority of the game. Ergo, it is by far the easiest means of ensuring your guns are all put to bear against a single target.

​You want a formation tight enough so that all of your ships are in Range 1 of the target (by far your strongest position), and theoretically in Range of any friendly buffing-ships (Howlrunner, Raging Youngster, Epsilon Leader....), but loose enough that you don't cause collisions in your own ranks while maneuvering.

You'll learn, thusly, that a Swarm in a single formation flies rather like a single unit, a school of fish, rather than as 6-8 individuals. Thus, paradoxically, the lvl1 Swarmist is often faster at setting their dials than a fleet with only 4 ships.

Level 2: Mobility Tactics

A benefit of the Swarm is its position in the pilot-skill ladder: Your ships will move before the board-state has altered.

In other words, you know that where you have planned will be exactly where you'll end up.

This brings several techniques and tactics to the table for you.

• Blocking: The one you're automatically thinking of, right now.

  Your ships move before theirs do, and therefore can prevent them from activating properly.

  ​Note that you do not lose significant firepower in so doing, can arrange to cover multiple possibilities, and can, with a little effort, show that even if you miss your "Block", you'll still be in that superior positioning (e.g. on their 6, at Range 1).

• Using Actions as additions to Maneuvers.

  ​In my early days on the forum, I started talking about what I referred to as a "Matador Turn", as an alternative to the Koiogran.

  That is to say, a 1 turn followed by a Barrel-Roll into a position that overlaps your starting square, essentially rotating 90* with as little forward momentum as possible.

  ​This allows a ship/fleet that has escaped your firing arcs, presumably one who is now pursuing you, to leap directly into your sights.

  ​Yes, it cost an action to achieve. However, it's a far closer range shot than would be achieved with a Koiogran, which would have also cost you your action for the round as well as constraining your future mobility.

  ​You can do similar shenanigans with Boost, and with different speeds and bearings.

  ​The point here is that you can perform these Action+Maneuver units as an extended dial, and do so with complete impunity; your opponents' PS is too high to prevent them, and therefore you've got more options than they do.

Level 3: Breaking Formation

Hey, remember all that great stuff I said about formations? Well, that's still true, but once you've learned its power, you can start breaking it down into a more fluid structure.

You'll have already started doing this as a Level 2 swarmist, when you start to use some ships as blockers for multiple rounds, or finding that you have to split around an asteroid.

Now, you can start doing it on purpose! Rather than one massive school of fish, you can start to have more semi-autonomous blobs (Classrooms?).

You'll need to learn how to do this, as by now your opponents will have developed anti-Swarm tactics and tech (such as flying more high-agility Aces, or using the dreaded Assault Missiles, or simply getting more outrageous with their own flying. A single TIE Fighter is far more nimble than a group of them, after all).

First, pincer maneuvers; a Swarm, divided into halves, that crash into the enemy simultaneously from their disparate angles of attack.

Second: triune maneuvers: a Swarm divided into 3 parts, wherein you have two flanking groups that are trying to funnel the fleet into the maw of the main body.

​And so on and so forth.

A true master of this category is able to land all of his shots on a single target, every round, despite all of his ships facing in different directions.

I do not hold mastery, but I've learned some multi-round tactics that occasionally grab that feeling of dread in my opponents with a multi-round set-up (the Star Crusher formation I often used in Wave III won me many a game).

There's theoretically levels beyond these, but I haven't heard of them.

I'm pretty fond of this current world we live in, where TIE swarms are able to thrive even without a strict focus on formations. It's nice and certainly helpful for the opening volley, but the bigger thing seems to be having lots of Focused guns overlapping the same target on the opening engagement.

"An elegant weapon from a more civilized age" - Obi-Wan Kenobi

[edit: I hit post and then saw DraconPyrothayan's summary, refer up a couple posts for that]

The classic swarm is certainly impressive, but requires lots of practice (at least in my experience) both on and off the battlefield. For formations, and to a lesser extent formation-breaks, I spent time flying on an empty table or a table with only obstacles before I would try it against an opponent.
Although I can see the merit of reaction capability with the split swarm I would only recommend using it if you are going full 8 and not also using buff pilots (Howl, EpsiLeader, etc. Maybe Youngster, but R1-3 would help) Because those guys become less valuable after you break formation. With my 7TIE Howl hex formation I hold tight until I lose Howl, usually 2nd or 3rd round of fighting, then break into the actual blocking part of the fight. Once I break for blocks though it's all about barrel rolls to get in just the right spots, which means 2 or 3 unmodified 2-3 die attacks per turn most of the time. If there's still something like Lone Wolf Luke or if I don't roll hits when i block stealth Soontir then I may as well concede because I need my opponent to blank their evade dice to get damage.

Formations are easily predictable and offer no advantage if you're not using Howlrunner. All that matters is that your ships arrive at the same place at the same time, not that they looked cool for the first 2-3 turns moving up the board in one Napoleonic brick.

Treat each ship as an independent actor that just happens to be near others. I suggest setting up your ships in a formation initially, and then turn one have them do varied straight maneuvers and barrel rolls to spread out into a lose blob. Drunken shark guy gets it. You get the massed firepower of a formation while not having all of your arcs dodged by a single barrel roll/boost or all of your K-Turns blocked by a single ship. You're less predictable, can fly around asteroids easier, and you block enemy ships - especially enemy large bases - much easier.

I'd agree you don't want to fly strict formations.

At the same time, you need to get multiple attacks to bear at once - that is, after all, the point of a swarm.

Flying in fours or pairs lets you reduce the 'brainwork' without being as predictable as a two-by-four 'box'. Getting hit by a TIE/ln two-by-four in the face is no less painful than getting hit by any other two-by-four but it's just as unwieldy and your opponent is unlikely to co-operate.

With 'elite' swarms of 6 PS4-5+ TIE fighters, you can afford to do this a bit more - because you can set up ahead of an opponent's generic heavy fighters and just joust - but with a 'proper' swarm, Paragoomba Slayer is right. You need to allow for someone setting up a squad entirely after you. Assuming they'll blithely accept a head-on pass with at least twice their numbers is kind of insulting to your opponent.

Pairs work well for me - similar comment about Dash - either spread four pairs of fighters evenly, or - if Dash's escorts are PS2 fighters you can out-play with obsidans - then spread three pairs evenly and 'double down' with a second pair to reinforce whichever pair ends up facing his support fighters.

The swarm is a **** good squad, and it's likely to get even better as people feel out the possibilities of the new TIE/ln and TIE/fo pilots. Particularly worth noting is Youngster with Rage - not that his ability is one you want to use all the time (it isn't) but because he can fit in an 8-ship swarm and still be a force multiplier.