Spain (Madrid) just had a 7 TIE swarm win a 186 player Regional, and it had *some* crackshot in it (four):
Deroche....this guy should teach a swarm flying clinic: WOW!
I know! I've watched good Swarm pilots (Dallas Parker, Dom Cairo, David Pointer) both live and streamed and think to myself that I understand...then go 1-3 with a crackswarm in a tournament. 
7 Ties crackshot swarms are a thing, maybe you're just not seeing them in your meta.
One just won the Spanish Madrid regional as said by Deroche above and I went top 4 with one at the Jakku Open.
Classic plasma torpedo shot with GC and a focus vs a focused Tie: about a 20% chance of one shot (discounting crits).
Classic proton torpedo shot with GC and lock vs a focused Tie: about a 25% chance of one shot (discounting crits).
For both you have about 40% chances of rolling 2 hits. Even if you consider that you take a crit every time, you only have about 1 in 4 chances of drawing a direct hit, so about a 10% added chance of dying to a hit crit.
This gives you an overestimated 30% chance of dying to a plasma and 35% chance of dying to a proton.
Assuming a classic plasma/plasma/proton setup you have about 3.1% chances of loosing 3 ties on the engagement.
Pretty good betting odds.
I have much better odds with my swarm of 5 crack blacks and 2 academies to destroy a scout before it fires if I can manage a range 1 engagement with the blacks.
Triple scouts are not the big menace to the swarm, palp aces are.
That sounds like much better odds than a single academy at range one, one shotting Soontir Fel.
That was kind of a pivotal moment in the Spanish match that was posted in this thread.
Edited by WWHSDblack cracks offer more consistent damage and a chance at 1 rounding a ship. Palp aces needs to worry some.
academy swarm doesn't have the output to force damage through. The aces don't need palp to avoid 2 attack dice and deal damage back. Palp aces eats this alive.
I faced two opponents in Vassal Online Season Zero with 7 or 8 TIE Swarms. I would have to go back and look at my notes for geographic location, but out of 4 matches, with two of them being TIE Swarms, I wouldn't say they have completely gone away. And it wasn't some guys trying them out... they had obviously practiced with them and had widely different setup strategies.
So all 3 ties blank out on dice and/or pull a direct hit?
Possible? Perhaps. Likely? I'm not certain I would say so.
You said "worst case scenario" not "likely scenario".
Fair enough. I will edit it.
Because you can't really fit 8 ties into a list, unless they're all mostly generics. 7 ties with Howlrunner is a better list.
The Tie Swarm takes a fair amount of skill and time to fly correctly. Since there's easier lists that can perform as well, and don't take as long, in tournaments you're less like to see them.
This is a really big reason: the 7-8 TIE swarms are just straight up tiring to fly, and they require lots of practice. Heck, I don't even really have fun managing formation flying with 6 TIEs. I have much more fun with around 3-4 ships.
Even when the two ship meta was dominant, it wasn't because TIE swarms were weak. It was because the point system and time limit worked against having lots of low point value ships. If you extend the time limit to 90 minutes and use the current MoV rules for large ships, you would have seen way more TIE swarms back then. The only thing that they truly sucked against was pre-nerf Phantoms, and that was only because pre-nerf Phantoms were broken.
7 Ties crackshot swarms are a thing, maybe you're just not seeing them in your meta.
One just won the Spanish Madrid regional as said by Deroche above and I went top 4 with one at the Jakku Open.
Classic plasma torpedo shot with GC and a focus vs a focused Tie: about a 20% chance of one shot (discounting crits).
Classic proton torpedo shot with GC and lock vs a focused Tie: about a 25% chance of one shot (discounting crits).
For both you have about 40% chances of rolling 2 hits. Even if you consider that you take a crit every time, you only have about 1 in 4 chances of drawing a direct hit, so about a 10% added chance of dying to a hit crit.
This gives you an overestimated 30% chance of dying to a plasma and 35% chance of dying to a proton.
Assuming a classic plasma/plasma/proton setup you have about 3.1% chances of loosing 3 ties on the engagement.
Pretty good betting odds.
I have much better odds with my swarm of 5 crack blacks and 2 academies to destroy a scout before it fires if I can manage a range 1 engagement with the blacks.
Triple scouts are not the big menace to the swarm, palp aces are.
That sounds like much better odds than a single academy at range one, one shotting Soontir Fel.
That was kind of a pivotal moment in the Spanish match that was posted in this thread.
It was actually a range 2 unmodified shot...crit got through...major explosion into a direct hit...crazy!
I was really impressed with his swarm flying.
I think the biggest problem is the mental exhaustion of it. Flying a swarm is draining, especially in longer tournaments.
PSA: A Howlrunner led Swarm is highly susceptible to being arc-dodged if it is flying in formation.
Edited by KeffischHows thie for a 6 tie crack squad:
Howl w crack
Zeta leader w crack
4x blackcracks
Sadly there are just too many ships that can largely ignore even multiple 2 dice attacks. I remember playing agains a 7 swarm at a store champs. I was flying carnor and 3 juke ties. Juke fo's killed so many ties that day. Lost carnor and that was all on my side.
Blocking aces is easier said than done, especially when there are three or more on the board for you to deal with. Plus, even if you do block them, you'll have a tough time chewing through those green dice with two dice attacks. Your max output is two damage; that's only slightly above Soontir's average (especially with Palps and/or thrusters).
Not saying that you can't bring him down; but by the time you do, it's likely that the rest of your list has taken enough of a beating that the remaining ace can solo it. Crackshot is better against aces than blocking -- or even better, when used in conjunction with blocking.
Spain (Madrid) just had a 7 TIE swarm win a 186 player Regional, and it had *some* crackshot in it (four):
Interesting to see how differently things are done in other places; laying out the damage decks, the multiple camera angles, the judges/observers, the simultaneous activations of the shuttle and the black squadrons. Thanks for posting!
In the video description, which is in English, it says that the palp aces player had a MOV of over 1000.
And then he hits the swarm and gets annihilated. Amazing.
Edited by ArschbombePSA: A Howlrunner led Swarm is highly susceptible to being arc-dodged if it is flying in formation.
That's right! Screw formations! Take 7 Black Sq. Pilots at 98 points. Or if you must, you can throw two Crackshots in there. All seven of you shoot before Torpedo Scouts, and you can pick your own path through asteroids because all you care about is focusing fire, which is not necessarily the same as flying in formation.
nwm
Edited by HolmelundAnd then he hits the swarm and gets annihilated. Amazing.
To be fair, that Academy Pilot hit him, it would have been a totally different game otherwise. 
Even though Whisper is no longer the swarm eating arc dodging out maneuvering powerhouse that it used to be being the dethknell for the TIE swarm, Many top Meta lists still have plenty of "Ace" type lists that involve high pilot skill, repositioning, and high attack that still kills swarms dead.
Even though Whisper is no longer the swarm eating arc dodging out maneuvering powerhouse that it used to be being the dethknell for the TIE swarm, Many top Meta lists still have plenty of "Ace" type lists that involve high pilot skill, repositioning, and high attack that still kills swarms dead.
And that's where crack swarms swoop in
To be fair, that Academy Pilot hit him, it would have been a totally different game otherwise.And then he hits the swarm and gets annihilated. Amazing.
Sure the academy pilot hit him, but why was he in that situation with Fel in the first place? Positioning. He forced the baron Fel to bail out and run for several turns with a 12 point academy pilot. Rather then turtleing he was forced to reposition and then greedily spent his one token on offence. The soontir player was out flown, by a wide margin. 1/8 chance it's a crit, 1/16 chance it's major explosion, 20% it's a double damage. It's not even bad odds.
To be fair, that Academy Pilot hit him, it would have been a totally different game otherwise.And then he hits the swarm and gets annihilated. Amazing.
Sure the academy pilot hit him, but why was he in that situation with Fel in the first place? Positioning. He forced the baron Fel to bail out and run for several turns with a 12 point academy pilot. Rather then turtleing he was forced to reposition and then greedily spent his one token on offence. The soontir player was out flown, by a wide margin. 1/8 chance it's a crit, 1/16 chance it's major explosion, 20% it's a double damage. It's not even bad odds.
It's not bad odds for any of those individual results, it's horrible odds for that particular chain of results to occur. There is a 0.6% chance of a crit being a Major Explosion (6% of the deck ), rolling to draw another crit (triggers 50% of the time), and drawing a Direct Hit! (21% of the deck). That's not even factoring in the odds of two unmodified red dice getting a crit through 4 unmodified green dice in the first place.
The swarm player did out play the Palp Aces player but his decisive victory is owed in no small part to a lowly Academy Pilot whose uncle agreed to let him leave the moisture farm to attend the academy instead of making him stay on another season. Strangely enough, that pilot had his targeting system turned off when he made that shot. When asked about the shot that took out the Baron he was quoted as saying "It's no big deal, Interceptors are a lot bigger than womp rats".
Edited by WWHSDOn episode 19 of Mynock Squadron Podcast, we talked about the concept of variance and discussed how it pertains to TIE swarms among other things. Toward the end of the show, our TIE swarm master Dallas Parker broke down 8, 7, and 6 TIE swarms.
The Yavin System Open was just won by a 7 TIE Swarm yesterday.
Howl and three Blacks all with crack and three academies.
The academies were taken for the uboat blocks among other things and worked very well.
That's the same list that won Madrid.
Hows thie for a 6 tie crack squad:
Howl w crack
Zeta leader w crack
4x blackcracks
Cowboy Kenny ran this at the Plano regionals. He just missed the cut at 20th place, so I think he did quite well. Zeta dropping a random 4 dice attack on you super hurts.
It's so easy to overlook the value of these guys until a skilled young pilot show you how...
