I don't see how rage is good on TIEs unless it has 1 HP left and it's at range one. Have fun 2 banking out of the fight for 2 turns.

Epsilon Leader makes it somewhat workable.

And guess who will be the first target of all the return fire? Knock him out and a Rage-equipped Youngster suddenly becomes far less useful.

For now, the two best are Expert Handling and Expose, but neither is particularly thrilling.

Once Wave 8 drops, RAGE is incredible on him.

Note that Youngster + Rage is 16 points, so you can run him in an 8-tie Swarm at that point (or drop to 7 ties to upgrade one to Epsilon Leader, a second to Wampa, and throw a hull upgrade on Youngster while you're at it.)

Rage will be all the...uh...rage.

I'm sure there will be more of these in the pipeline.

Expert handling and nothing but expert handling ... so every unique pilot ability that requires a target lock is rendered useless against your squad.

Players running lists with Omega Leader, Omega Ace, Lt. Colzet, or any ships with munitions that rely on target locks will HATE Youngster handing out Expert Handling to an entire squadron of TIEs or TIE/FOs. Similarly any ship that gets free target locks suddenly cannot benefit from those free target locks.

Colzet takes his target lock after most generics move, which negates that. FCS Colzet gets the lock no matter what, and will usually spend it in the end phase anyway. EH isn't much of a defence against that.

Expert handling and nothing but expert handling ... so every unique pilot ability that requires a target lock is rendered useless against your squad.

Players running lists with Omega Leader, Omega Ace, Lt. Colzet, or any ships with munitions that rely on target locks will HATE Youngster handing out Expert Handling to an entire squadron of TIEs or TIE/FOs. Similarly any ship that gets free target locks suddenly cannot benefit from those free target locks.

Colzet takes his target lock after most generics move, which negates that. FCS Colzet gets the lock no matter what, and will usually spend it in the end phase anyway. EH isn't much of a defence against that.

It is pretty decent against most of the other TIE Adv. pilots and wasting a higher PS ship's action to target lock again is not the worst. That's a focus token they're probably not taking or a fully modified ordnance shot that's not going to happen (now that that's gonna be more of a thing).

It's also a token action the EH Fighter isn't taking either. On balance, I'd still give the upper hand to the Advanced.

Rage will be all the...uh...rage.

I'm sure there will be more of these in the pipeline.

Are you channeling Goldbloom here?

It's also a token action the EH Fighter isn't taking either. On balance, I'd still give the upper hand to the Advanced.

Low PS TIE Fighters usually BR to get around obstacles or block higher PS ships. EH is more a bonus for doing what they'd be doing already. Since it's a relatively cheap elite talent to spread around it's not terrible.

Rage is definitely gonna be the thing to use with him though.

I tried a swarm composed of Youngster w/ expose, Howlrunner w/crack shot, Wampa, 4 TIE AP. Two games so far, both clear victory. Exposing on the first contact, at R3. That's 5 - 7 TIES with 3 dice each and Reroll from Howl. That does some real damage. Then close in and do the normal swarm work. Whenever a good opportunity arise use Expose for another 3 - 4 dice attack. I used to play 8 TIE swarm in the past (before Wave 6, played Scum for quite some time then), and that new one is much stronger! Wampa is not utterly strong here, but with 3 dice and the Howl reroll you see crits often enough ;-)

I think I'll be picking up a Gozanti next month for the extra pilots