Hello guys,

So I'm trying to figure out how to use the 3 Hp squadrons and the heroes and I'm finding it really hard. I want to use them badly, especially in light of the resurgence of all of the rebel heroes thanks to Rieekan.

I just can't seem to do enough damage to get their points back (in light of the abundance of braces thanks to Jan) before they get blasted (and yes I'm using advanced for escorts). How do you guys use them?

Interceptors beneft a great deal from counter. If you want standard ties you need a boat load of them. remmeber to target Jan first

Mithel. He is my favorite.

I play squadrons close to the vest. What 8 mean is that for me, squadrons stay near a supported range of my ship who can shoot at any squadrons at try and engage them. I also usually let my opponent have the first Crack at my squadrons. Let him spend the time moving forward, let him/her get into range of not only my squadrons but my ship.

This allows me to turn the squadron war into something favorable.

I usually play with about 70ish points in squadrons so this could just be my style

Mithel. He is my favorite.

I play squadrons close to the vest. What 8 mean is that for me, squadrons stay near a supported range of my ship who can shoot at any squadrons at try and engage them. I also usually let my opponent have the first Crack at my squadrons. Let him spend the time moving forward, let him/her get into range of not only my squadrons but my ship.

This allows me to turn the squadron war into something favorable.

I usually play with about 70ish points in squadrons so this could just be my style

Besides Mithel, what do you like to use for the rest of the points?

Lots of little volleys are less vulnerable to brace from Jan.

Use mauler to allocate a damage all round as you move. Use counter attack from Dengar and use flak shots from your own fleet to spread small volleys onto his squadrons. Throw in 3 dice plus a swarm reroll and you should get kills in the second turn. Try and keep the dogfight near your ships for flak support and think very carefully about going off on an alpha strike near to enemy ships. Tie fighters don't last long near a 2 blue flak Nebulon.

IG88 and mauler should kill Jan in the second turn and with luck maybe on the initial pass. Boba feet added in could help but is very expensive and you must start a turn next to Jan.

5 ties + howlrunner makes a downright nasty little blob. Avoid flak until it's a hard decision (i.e. don't engage double blue AA ships until your own ships are in range: otherwise its free licks on your eyeballs). Using squadron commands is good: you've got speed on your side, so it's easier to get the alpha strike.

For Jan, IG-88 or a crapload of tie's does the trick, since there's only so many braces she can do before they start burning up. If you have the points, mithel is really nasty. But if you're going for the Imperial Synergy ball, Fel, Mithel, Howlrunner, and a couple TIE/adv can make an auto-damaging nightmare for a reb squadron ball.

If I were that reb, though, I would hide my fighters until you're forced into some Neb-B escort flakking love.

Lots of little volleys are less vulnerable to brace from Jan.

Use mauler to allocate a damage all round as you move. Use counter attack from Dengar and use flak shots from your own fleet to spread small volleys onto his squadrons. Throw in 3 dice plus a swarm reroll and you should get kills in the second turn. Try and keep the dogfight near your ships for flak support and think very carefully about going off on an alpha strike near to enemy ships. Tie fighters don't last long near a 2 blue flak Nebulon.

IG88 and mauler should kill Jan in the second turn and with luck maybe on the initial pass. Boba feet added in could help but is very expensive and you must start a turn next to Jan.

True, but when she's screened by X-wings, getting a 2nd turn kill isn't so easy (especially considering that those X-wings can really put the hurt on them and take roughly four or five shots apiece to kill using three blues)

Mithel. He is my favorite.

I play squadrons close to the vest. What 8 mean is that for me, squadrons stay near a supported range of my ship who can shoot at any squadrons at try and engage them. I also usually let my opponent have the first Crack at my squadrons. Let him spend the time moving forward, let him/her get into range of not only my squadrons but my ship.

This allows me to turn the squadron war into something favorable.

I usually play with about 70ish points in squadrons so this could just be my style

Besides Mithel, what do you like to use for the rest of the points?

Lots of little volleys are less vulnerable to brace from Jan.

Use mauler to allocate a damage all round as you move. Use counter attack from Dengar and use flak shots from your own fleet to spread small volleys onto his squadrons. Throw in 3 dice plus a swarm reroll and you should get kills in the second turn. Try and keep the dogfight near your ships for flak support and think very carefully about going off on an alpha strike near to enemy ships. Tie fighters don't last long near a 2 blue flak Nebulon.

IG88 and mauler should kill Jan in the second turn and with luck maybe on the initial pass. Boba feet added in could help but is very expensive and you must start a turn next to Jan.

True, but when she's screened by X-wings, getting a 2nd turn kill isn't so easy (especially considering that those X-wings can really put the hurt on them and take roughly four or five shots apiece to kill using three blues)

IG-88 ignores Counter & Escort, Mauler deals 1 point of damage after he moves to everyone he is engaged with.

So if you have Flight Controllers, Mauler deals 1 damage, IG-88 has 5 blue dice, 3 damage + 2 accuracy, or 5 damage = dead Jan, but that is lucky lucky, realistically you will do 2/3 damage to Jan, leaving her with 1/2 hp, which Mauler can auto deal next round with his ability if she has 1 hp left.

IG-88, Dengar, Mauler, Vader, is what I run, then you can add Soontir, or an extra Advanced. One thing Rebels cannot do atm is activate 6 squadrons at long range every round, only the ISD I with Wulff, Boosted Comms and Expanded Hangar bays can do so, and having 6 squadrons go at once can be a real game changer.

I do Howlerunner, Dengar and 4 Tie Int but that comes out to 80 points. Add flight controls and the Tie Int are shooting off 6 dice at 1 target. and have counter 4

I do Howlerunner, Dengar and 4 Tie Int but that comes out to 80 points. Add flight controls and the Tie Int are shooting off 6 dice at 1 target. and have counter 4

With swarm rerolls not only for the attacks but for the counterattacks as well.

With ties, you generally want to use the en masse or specialise. I usually use my ties as CAP to ward off bombers and let the capital ships do their work. That is to say defensively.

Offensively if you are set on the 3hp units consider investing in interceptors accompanied by howlrunner and even dengar to have 5 die attack, 4 die counter squadrons. Having a squadron command with a carrier can also help you alpha strike Jan blobs before they wipe you.

Just echoing Lyraeus' comment above - try to avoid the temptation of launching an "Alpha Strike" that strands your fighters in space away from your main fleet.

I mean, you're reading this right now and you're nodding your head, but when you're playing and Soontir can LEAP out to long range and roll five attack dice it's just... so... tempting...

Just echoing Lyraeus' comment above - try to avoid the temptation of launching an "Alpha Strike" that strands your fighters in space away from your main fleet.

I mean, you're reading this right now and you're nodding your head, but when you're playing and Soontir can LEAP out to long range and roll five attack dice it's just... so... tempting...

It is the common mistake that most players do. New players especially. This leads to people stating that squadrons are not worth their points which is wrong.

Squadrons are scalpels. You apply just the right amount of force, no less. If you use too much you might waste your activations.

Oh, even if you have the ability to activate 4 squadrons, sometimes it's worth not activating all 4.

I love my 3 hp fighters! Nothing better than using Boosted Comms to send the TIE Fighter that is the only fighter remaining on the board after a free for all to the unshielded side of a fleeing Corvette with 1 hull remaining on turn 6 in order to try to table him completely.

The die came up blank but it would have been a pretty epic way to finish a game.

Howlrunner, Denger, tie advanced, 3 interceptors and two regular ties, fill the rest of the points with firesprays, also make sure you have a ship to activate at least 3 a turn, though 5 or 6 is better

There are a few important things to keep in mind to get good use out of your TIE Fighters (or Interceptors, similar premises):

1. TIEs work best when they're ganging up on targets. Whenever possible make maximum use of Swarm through activating your TIEs in an efficient order.
2. TIEs therefore hate flak coming at them because they're often bunched up to maximize the value of Swarm. The best way to avoid this problem is to NOT RUN THEM OUT IN FRONT OF YOU SUICIDALLY. I see people do this a lot and it's really not smart. If an enemy ship is out of effective range of your ship but has a big furball to pour flak into right in front of him, you're about to see a lot of dead/crippled TIEs.
3. Be cagey with your TIEs. Keep them screened by your ships until they're needed (behind or on the flanks, depending). Keep them away from easy flak attacks (until later in the fight, when flakking them costs a serious anti-ship attack). You might need to take a few squadron attacks on the nose of your screening ship(s) but that's fine. It allows your TIEs to get into the fight at full health, which is a serious boon to them. TIEs can take on average about 2 serious attacks. Starting down even 1 HP compromises their life expectancy significantly.
4. TIEs live by killing enemy squadrons faster than they get killed back. Getting in the first attack is extremely important, as is focusing fire on enemy squadrons until they're destroyed. Only engage squadrons you expect to destroy this turn. The ideal end goal is your TIEs have destroyed all the squadrons they planned to and now during the squadrons phase they're either engaged by nothing at all (meaning no non-Rogue pot shots back) or engaging only ineffective bombers like Y-Wings/Scurrgs/TIE Bombers that don't pose a serious threat to them.
5. Command your TIEs as much as you can. Rolling all of these earlier points together, TIEs love Squadron commands. It gets them the alpha strike, it lets them move in to attack enemies from the safety of their screening ships, it lets a large number of them (3-4 if commanded by an ISD/VSD, maybe more with the right carrier get in a number of attacks with no non-Counter attacks coming back at them, and it gets their attacks in before normal squadron/Rogue counterattacks. In subsequent rounds, attacking earlier is still valuable, and you can use it on engaged TIEs to take out their engaging enemies and then bug out after the attack is over, again improving their life expectancy.

TIEs live and die by their positioning, avoiding unnecessary damage, and focusing attacks on enemies. The upsides of shepherding them well is they are superlative anti-squadron fighters for their cost, but they can be unforgiving when not used well.

This sums up Ties very well.

Numbers Numbers Numbers.....it's all about the swarm.

If you want a list for the "Lulz"

I'd run dual ISD 1's with flight controllers and expanded hangers. Then 12 standard ties, then mauler, then howlrunner.

$warmLyf3

If you want a list for the "Lulz"

I'd run dual ISD 1's with flight controllers and expanded hangers. Then 12 standard ties, then mauler, then howlrunner.

$warmLyf3

I had a two ISD one VSD Motti list that ran 8 generic TIE Fighters. It worked astoundingly well for handling enemy squadrons and the entire cloud could get activated in the course of one turn by both ISDs. Utilizing the principles I expounded on above, squadron-heavy bomber clouds (including Intel) were never a problem. They just got buried in TIE bodies.

Lot's of TIEs can be good for the very reason why TIEs are always good. You get a lot of them. TIEs are cheap enough that your opponent can kill a few and you don't care. People often don't think about TIEs as a squadron to attack ships with, but with enough numbers any die type does a lot of damage. Actually I like them best against Star Destroyers since they are coming right at you you don't need all your ships spamming squadron commands. Also anything that buffs all ships buffs TIEs well, the already have swarm, throw Howlrunner, and flight controllers into the mix and TIEs hit really hard. Having lots of squadrons attacking is also nice for getting past those pesky defensive tokens.

If you want a list for the "Lulz"

I'd run dual ISD 1's with flight controllers and expanded hangers. Then 12 standard ties, then mauler, then howlrunner.

$warmLyf3

I had a two ISD one VSD Motti list that ran 8 generic TIE Fighters. It worked astoundingly well for handling enemy squadrons and the entire cloud could get activated in the course of one turn by both ISDs. Utilizing the principles I expounded on above, squadron-heavy bomber clouds (including Intel) were never a problem. They just got buried in TIE bodies.

TIE - AKA: DISPOSABLE

Think of them as clone cannon fodder...

Re: Gottmituns

The thing is that while TIEs are best used in quantity, I strongly recommend against thinking of them as disposable. They do not weather attacks well and they will reward you if you can find ways to get prolonged usage out of them. Some of them will die for sure (with 3 HP it happens - sometimes ALL of them will die if necessary), but a blase attitude towards their survival will result in bad decisions, which results in them taking avoidable damage, which results in them dying 1 or 2 attacks before they otherwise would have died.

On the issue of disposability, if you find yourself with a number of squadrons surviving past the dogfight stage of the game, try to get them evenly distributed around a ship that your capital ship is attacking on the arc that you intend to attack along with the two arcs beside it. If you have the squadron commands lined up to keep up with the ship while attacking this can:

1. Force the enemy ship to choose between attempting a double arc attack on you, splitting one attack each between you and 1 arc's worth of squadrons, or 2 attacks against 2 arcs of squadrons.

2. Minimize the damage cause by anti-squadron attacks by minimizing the number of squadrons that can be attacked by each side.

3. Slowly do damage to the shield arcs that are effected by redirect tokens reducing their effectiveness (and to a lesser extent Advanced Projectors).

4. Lowering a shield facing you before your attacking ship attacks and before they can spend repair points to bring it back up.

5. At medium-long range, can easily put out the equivalent blue dice difference that an Imp-I could never fire and an Imp-II could only fire at medium. The damage done by these attacks are immune to pretty much everything but redirect tokens which would be better spent responding to ship attacks. This loops us back to 1. where the ship either risks dying of 1000 papercuts or wastes attacks trying to swipe the hornets away. This is also a better command value dice-wise at said range than focus fire as you're adding >1 dice to the attack.

This works great for taking out the odd sniping CR90 or keeping a Nebulon pointed straight at you to keep its sides from being exposed (and therefore continuing to move straight towards the death grinder which is your front arc if you play it right).

I had quite a bit of success running the following fleet.

ISD I : Admir Motti : Wulff Yularen : Flight Controllers : Boosted Comms : Expanded Hangar Bay : X-17 Turbolasers : Relentless

Raider I Ordnance Experts : Assault Proton Torpedoes

Raider I Ordnance Experts : Assault Proton Torpedoes

Tie Interceptor x6

Major Rhymer

Tie Bomber x5

You can of course drop them down to 5 of each squadron and upgrade the ISD I to an ISD II and take ECM.

It was a bit of a radical change for me, as I used to always like to have enough ship squadron command power to activate all my squadrons if needed in one round, here you accept that early phases your dealing with enemy squadrons and need them activating, but with Rhymer you can place your bombers where they can shoot even without a squadron command, and once you have dealt with enemy squadrons, you can start activating your bombers.