Except most ordnance alpha lists hit at PS2 just like the TLTs so you're either taking a round of shooting first, or they shoot you back anyway.

Gamma squad Vets with Long Ranged Sensors or Deadeye (19 or 20 points respectively). Both options move after and shoot before most TLT platforms. You could go Gamma Squad Pilots with LRS if you are not bothered by the EPT. Still PS4 and can fire as soon as they enter Range 3.

Lead 2 of them with Tie-shuttle Jonus carrying a Fleet officer and you get 4 dice from most Ordnance with a Focus token and rerolling up to 2 dice. Who needs Chimps?

But when you've shot your load and Soontir's still alive, you're screwed.

(And also, LRS isn't out for another 3 to 6 months).

I can also see BSS swarms doing well against TLTs, but the trouble with any ordnance alpha list is what to do once you've shot your load and not killed everything.

If you're thinking of putting a Stealth Device on a Scyk you're wasting your time.

Good Sir, have you ever heard of our savior Lord Laetin? He will deliver us all from the menace that is TLT. He is the promised Scyk. Laetin A'shera; First of his name, King of the broken ships. Protector of the 3'X3' realm.

You made my day:D

The TLT Math's a little sticky - because if you don't spend focus on the first attack, you have it for the second. Most of the time, TLT has at least 1 shot modified - and only some of the time, the defending shot is modified. So TLT is pretty high variance.

Unmodified, it's 1.5 expected hits to 1.5 expected evades. - so expected damage = 0, but the 4 agility dice have a higher variance than the 3 attack dice - so the stealth device is probably going to break. eventually you'll roll 2 hits when I roll only 1 evade.

it becomes much harder for the TLT to do if you can increase the evade floor - via modifications or abilities.

I can also see BSS swarms doing well against TLTs, but the trouble with any ordnance alpha list is what to do once you've shot your load and not killed everything.

I am not saying that ordnance-heavy lists will suddenly become dominant. As you point out, they have their own weaknesses. But hopefully by providing a wider variety of list archetypes, the game will be made more fun for everyone. In an ideal world, there would not be a "meta" and all lists would be equally playable, based only on the skill of the player and the luck of the dice.

Obviously we are a long way from this idyll but if FFG provide a counter to each strong archetype, it encourages diverse list building since any player who put all of his eggs in one basket will risk running into his worst opponent and getting soundly thrashed. A balanced list will not excel in any single area but will have tools to deal with a variety of threats without being unduly vulnerable to one specific build-type.

But when you've shot your load and Soontir's still alive, you're screwed.

True enough but even Soontir will need to be careful against lists that can reliably put 3-4 hits per shot at Range 3. If he Focuses and Evades, the risk of a hit getting through is not too great but if he is PTLing while still at Range 3, it restricts the speed and angle he can close at and Soontir really needs to be up close and personal to make his points back. No agility bonus against ordnance at Range 3 so 4 greens and an Evade token on their own could easily let a damage through, even with Autothrusters.

At range 3 against 4 dice all showing results Soontir has about a 5% chance of taking at least one damage, if he's fully turtled with focus/focus/evade. Obviously this gets lower the more shots he takes that force him to spend tokens, but it's not exactly good odds, and if the odds are even slightly in his favour he retains more tokens and gets roughly the same odds against the next shot too.

With 4 dice, focus/focus/evade, and autothrusters he only needs to roll 2 of any result to guarantee defending against a 4 dice attack (spend a focus and/or an evade plus autothrusters) and the chances of rolling at least 3 blanks are about 5% by my albeit inexpert calculations. Worse against Homing Missiles, of course (goes up to about 15% chance to take a hit withpout being able to spend the evade - but that leaves him able to spend his other action dodging another arc or ducking behind a rock or whatever), and Flechettes can properly screw with him.

I'll take those odds. You need to be able to at least stop him using Autothrusters to get through him, usually.

With 4 dice, focus/focus/evade, and autothrusters he only needs to roll 2 of any result to guarantee defending against a 4 dice attack (spend a focus and/or an evade plus autothrusters) and the chances of rolling at least 3 blanks are about 5% by my albeit inexpert calculations.

In that scenario Soontir has PTLed at long range meaning it limits his options for next round which is the vital closing round. Either he goes straight 3 or 4 (which makes him very predictable) or he is stuck with speed 2 maneuvers which is not what he wants to be doing while sitting in front of enemy guns. If he uses a white move he will retain the stress meaning no actions. Soontir does not really want to start PLTing that far out from the enemy. Yes it gives him extra tokens but at the cost of seriously limiting either his moves or his actions on the following crucial turn when the fleets close to Range 1.

With ordnance alphas, he only has to survive one round, and he only has to close to range 1 to dodge most second firings of torpedoes.

It's not certain, by any means.

And it doesn't answer the central point which is that unless your alpha list has some way to answer 'well I've shot all my ordnance and something's still kicking, what now', it will face that problem sometimes, and it will lose out because of it.

I don't want to take this thread completely off topic from the original question of high-agility survival, but the obvious missile swarm that comes to mind as a "TLT killer" is a scum swarm of 5 Z-95 Black Sun Soldiers (pilot skill 3), each with Homing missiles, Guidance Chips, and Glitterstim.

If your opponent is like most multi-TLT players then they will use Y-wings with pilot skills of only 2, meaning your swarm shoots first.

Move at least two or three Z-95s from the swarm into range three and target lock on one TLT (Y-wing, K-wing, HWK, Attack shuttle, or Ghost). During the attack round, pop Glitterstim on the ships that target locked and fire your homing missiles. If you roll focus with the attack dice you can automatically roll them to hits thanks to Glitterstim, and if you roll a blank then you can flip one to a hit thanks to guidance chips. If you roll really bad you still have a target lock to reroll the remaining dice. Chances are good that each Z-95 that fires its homing missle will inflict 3-4 damage from that one attack (that means your swarm's homing missiles will dish out 15-20 damage -- not including crits -- as long as they are backed up by the target lock, guidance chips and glitterstim).

The much-talked-about 3 Contracted Scouts with double protorps would make quite a dent in a quad stresshog list. The opening salvo would destroy 1 hog and possibly damage a second. The second salvo would take out a second and probably damage a 3rd and they shoot ahead of the stresshogs. So by the end of the second round of shooting the opponent will be down by at least 2 Y-wings with the possibility of some damage on a 3rd. 2 TLT Y-wings vs 3 contracted scouts who have spent their ordnance might last a while but my money would be on the Scouts.

The much-talked-about 3 Contracted Scouts with double protorps would make quite a dent in a quad stresshog list. The opening salvo would destroy 1 hog and possibly damage a second. The second salvo would take out a second and probably damage a 3rd and they shoot ahead of the stresshogs. So by the end of the second round of shooting the opponent will be down by at least 2 Y-wings with the possibility of some damage on a 3rd. 2 TLT Y-wings vs 3 contracted scouts who have spent their ordnance might last a while but my money would be on the Scouts.

There's no such thing as a quad stresshog list. A TLT y wing is a not a stresshog, stresshog is TLT Y wing with R3A2 and the title - the one that deals two stress per round with three attacks, but is arc-locked.

Quad TLTs is just quad TLTs.