blocking will hard counter a scout just as bad as wes janson

the little prototype pilot has been a sterling addition to rebel squads since rebel aces, and it's even more valuable now that there are large base action-dependent ships to annoy the crap out of

Blocking is definitely the go-to strategy, because any list with at least one chump can do it. Wes is a little better though, because it removes that focus for Deadeye and defense, while not losing a body that can fire at the scout. In a perfect match, Wes allows all your 100 points to fire at a scout and still denies that focus. Blocking that focus away only leaves at best 88 points worth of ships firing at the U-boat.

I think X Wing Nut was close, but I would tweak his list so that everyone fires before the U-boats:

Corran/Biggs/control. The control can be bumping, stress or both.

Of course, this is tailor made vs. U-boats. Good luck vs other lists.

you got that right

Wes with VI + bb-8 will expand his utility to soft palp-ace counter as well as scout counter

I wonder if Tie Bombers with LRS will become the thing that can kill U-boats and Palp Aces?

I wonder if Tie Bombers with LRS will become the thing that can kill U-boats and Palp Aces?

until Black One shows up and starts defying horror movie tropes

tie bombers have the dice for it (if you can trust such things), but they're expensive. You'd have to drop seismics off the chadwick bomber (which'd make me stupidly sad) to run

Inquisitor (PTL, title, thrusters)

double Gamma vet (crackshot, homing, extras, LRS/chips)

black squadron (crackshot)

Biggs and Janson. How can you go wrong? They have to focus on Biggs, and Janson strips a focus. This is assuming that the lead toilet survives your alpha attack! Would I fly this list in a tournament? Maybe. But I'm unsure how it would do against Palp aces or a double beast build.

low offensive modifiers would make me weary facing off against just about anything, even tie fighters not flown by fickle

my default addition against every other matchup at this point is

Miranda

*TLT

*Sabine

*seismics x 2

[41]

clocking in at 99 with PS 10 bb-8 wes and r4-d6 biggs, it's got the bid needed to secure near certain victory v the PS 8 variant of palp aces and, flown well (re vigorous TL cheating before deciding whether or not to SLAM), completely screws over crackswarms

sometimes, you don't even need to drop a single seismic. the psycological terror just makes your PS 8 TLT invincible

I think this is a tough question.

For casual games, these answers are all fine if you know who your opponent is, and you can tailor your list to their particular brand of U-Boat-baggery.

For tournament players, it's fine building a hard counter to specific lists, but what if you never face that list? At Yavin, out of the 15 games I played, I faced a total of 5 U-Boats in 2 games. Tournament players need to think about counters to other lists, what counters their list and how to mitigate that counter, etc, etc.

The list I took to Yavin I took because it was fun to use, but I really didn't feel like it had a strong game vs most of the current meta (i.e. Aces, PalpAces, U-Boats) - a very similar list dragged me to a spot on the England ETC Team, but during the qualifiers for that, I'd only really faced swarms or Han/Poe. I struggled hard vs Aces, I lost to BroBots, and U-Boats weren't a thing then. Here's the list. Finished 6-3, 47th overall: http://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Rebel%20Alliance&d=v4!s!139:135,126,-1,-1,166,181,138:-1:16:U.-1;140:135,126,-1,-1,38,28,41:-1:16:&sn=Unnamed%20Squadron

During my first U-Boat game vs 2 scouts with torps, Binayre Z-95, N'Dru, I got spankled all over the board, but it did teach me how to approach U-Boats; instead of making them chase me, engage, and try and close to R1. Turrets are better than torps. I lost that, after not killing very much, maybe both Z-95s?

During the second U-Boat game vs a more traditional 3 Scout build, I SLAMmed in to R1 and engaged them at point blank range, making use of the many, many bombs I was carrying, killing one, dragging one to one hull, and chipping a shield or two off the final one. Had Sabine not been bounty hunted by Boba Fett, I'd have done a fair amount more damage.

TL;DR - some humble bragging (oops), and a list that will, with practice, give a canny player at least a shot vs U-Boats (a very tough game though), beat Aces a lot of the time (undefeated vs Aces at Yavin), but suffer hard against the Dash/VCX builds. Not sure how the Yavin version fares vs BroBots, but if you can persuade them on to your bombs, you're golden.

Fickle, if you can find the points, I highly recommend thermals over seismics on Miranda with Sabine. That stress is a killer.

Agree with many here. Biggs and Wes both perform really well against triple Uboats.

In my regional I went a bit of a different direction.

I took a Rookie with R4-D6, 2 Talas, a Dagger, and Roark with Tactician and TLT.

It performed above my expectations against non-Uboat lists (I went 4-2 at the regional without facing the Uboats I was looking to counter), and against Uboats it just dismantles them. The Rookie is there to block, so he is capable of canceling out one of the Jumpmasters, but if he misses the block and still has arc (which he should), Roark can just boost him up to PS 12 and you can PS kill the Jumpmaster with 5 shots before they get one. You'll want to shoot with Roark last, as you can get lucky and kill one of the Jumpmasters with your 4 other ships if you get your ranges right, and then Roark can tactician TLT the other Jumpmaster to ruin his day for next round, or for the existing round if he has Overclocked.

I've messed around with Wes/Biggs/Chopper and done reasonably well with it in general. (3-1 at the only competitive even I took it to). I'm interested to try it with 42 point Corran after seeing the regional result from the weekend - I'd dismissed Corran from my consideration when deciding what to do with the 42 points you have left after taking Wes/Biggs. Obviously someone knows better than I do!

I wonder if Tie Bombers with LRS will become the thing that can kill U-boats and Palp Aces?

As much as it pains me to say it, I believe Deadeye Gamma Vets will be the future of Bombers. LRS is really good, but Deadeye offers so much flexibility because you don't have to pick a target.

Curious... With that Utah list... if you swap out that 42 point Corran with say...

37 - Chopper

01 - Enhanced Scopes

01 - Tactical Jammer

+3 points of fun

29 - Wes

02 - R3-stress droid

01 - VI

00 - Integr. Astro

25 - Biggs

01 - R4 droid to trade damage for stress to limit those big hits

00 - Integr. Astro

Chopper can hit hard and act as a significant blocker for U-Boats to try to move around. You still have Biggs and Wes on approach. You have the potential of dealing stress to further mess things up with Wes as well. You do lose that PS 10 of Corran and the double-tap...

Actually, I think I just talked myself out of it....

I wonder if Tie Bombers with LRS will become the thing that can kill U-boats and Palp Aces?

As much as it pains me to say it, I believe Deadeye Gamma Vets will be the future of Bombers. LRS is really good, but Deadeye offers so much flexibility because you don't have to pick a target.

I suspect you're right here, but it the Gamma Vet comes with its own problems. One with deadeye and EM is already 22 points, which doesn't provide much room when you're still trying to fit four bombers into a list. Plasmas work, but nothing else does unless you're willing to give up something else to fit them in.

I wonder if Tie Bombers with LRS will become the thing that can kill U-boats and Palp Aces?

As much as it pains me to say it, I believe Deadeye Gamma Vets will be the future of Bombers. LRS is really good, but Deadeye offers so much flexibility because you don't have to pick a target.

I suspect you're right here, but it the Gamma Vet comes with its own problems. One with deadeye and EM is already 22 points, which doesn't provide much room when you're still trying to fit four bombers into a list. Plasmas work, but nothing else does unless you're willing to give up something else to fit them in.

Three with support is what I am looking at. Since you have no Agromechs, its pretty much Homing Missile or bust. Has the benefit of having an in build kind of-4-LOM.

The thing is, if you're creative enough, there are lots of rebel counters to U-Boats. The real problem, is that there aren't any counters to U-Boats that will also still win against Palp Aces. Basically, no matter what you counter, there's still something you'll lose to.

I'm hoping that the ARC-170's dual arcs, heavy firepower, and powerful astromech and crew combos can provide an answer to both simultaniously, but until then, i'm honestly not sure that there's an equally good answer to both.

The thing is, if you're creative enough, there are lots of rebel counters to U-Boats. The real problem, is that there aren't any counters to U-Boats that will also still win against Palp Aces. Basically, no matter what you counter, there's still something you'll lose to.

I'm hoping that the ARC-170's dual arcs, heavy firepower, and powerful astromech and crew combos can provide an answer to both simultaniously, but until then, i'm honestly not sure that there's an equally good answer to both.

someone suggested an astromech that did something along the lines of:

once per round, when declared as the target of an attack, you may spend one of yours focus token to remove one focus token from the attacker

would screw over a jumpmaster, would also REALLY make aces think twice and, in general, makes the arc's defensive focus less pointless (focus on just 1 agility is less than impressive ito outcome)

would actually love to have this in the game, either through the ARC's mech (though that'll probably have to account for the pack's evade token) or Heroes of the resistance's unique mech

but as for counters to both palp aces and scouts, blocking does it for both

This list will reliably take out a Scout before they get a chance to fire.

Blount (Tracers, Draw Their Fire)

Biggs (R4-D6, Plasma Torps, Guidance Chips)

2x Tala (Concussion, Guidance Chips)

1x Tala (Homing Missile, Guidance Chips)

Anything + a PS1 Prototype A-Wing + Refit (15 points).

I've been running "Ghosts On Target" for a couple months now with 2 Lothal Rebels (FCS, Autoblaster Turret, 2 crew [different on each - one has Intel Agent & Han Solo, the other has Hera & Ezra]), and an A-Wing blocker. I have not lost to U-Boats yet... Not because I'm a great pilot, but because that A-Wing can be a real jerk to Jumpmasters. If you master the maneuver choice + boost, you can deny actions, and if you're lucky, cause a bump from a 2nd one. Plus 2 Lothal Rebels have a combined 32 health to chew through. If you miss a block, you can typically take several torpedoes and still have some good fire back. The Intel Agent on the one Ghost makes it easier to get that block in.

The thing I love about the list is that it can counter UBoats AND Palp-Aces, with 2 Autoblaster Turrets on two large bases.

(Spoiler Alert: I'll be at Origins with this list next week.)

5x GSP

Adaptability

Crackshot

Refit

Title

Autothrusters

Shoot first or block depending on how ypu use adaptability. Plus As are a blast to fly.

The thing is, if you're creative enough, there are lots of rebel counters to U-Boats. The real problem, is that there aren't any counters to U-Boats that will also still win against Palp Aces. Basically, no matter what you counter, there's still something you'll lose to.

I'm hoping that the ARC-170's dual arcs, heavy firepower, and powerful astromech and crew combos can provide an answer to both simultaniously, but until then, i'm honestly not sure that there's an equally good answer to both.

someone suggested an astromech that did something along the lines of:

once per round, when declared as the target of an attack, you may spend one of yours focus token to remove one focus token from the attacker

would screw over a jumpmaster, would also REALLY make aces think twice and, in general, makes the arc's defensive focus less pointless (focus on just 1 agility is less than impressive ito outcome)

would actually love to have this in the game, either through the ARC's mech (though that'll probably have to account for the pack's evade token) or Heroes of the resistance's unique mech

but as for counters to both palp aces and scouts, blocking does it for both

The R3s appear to read "Once per turn". That might actually be it.

The thing is, if you're creative enough, there are lots of rebel counters to U-Boats. The real problem, is that there aren't any counters to U-Boats that will also still win against Palp Aces. Basically, no matter what you counter, there's still something you'll lose to.

I'm hoping that the ARC-170's dual arcs, heavy firepower, and powerful astromech and crew combos can provide an answer to both simultaniously, but until then, i'm honestly not sure that there's an equally good answer to both.

someone suggested an astromech that did something along the lines of:

once per round, when declared as the target of an attack, you may spend one of yours focus token to remove one focus token from the attacker

would screw over a jumpmaster, would also REALLY make aces think twice and, in general, makes the arc's defensive focus less pointless (focus on just 1 agility is less than impressive ito outcome)

would actually love to have this in the game, either through the ARC's mech (though that'll probably have to account for the pack's evade token) or Heroes of the resistance's unique mech

but as for counters to both palp aces and scouts, blocking does it for both

It wouldn't screw JMs, thought, because they spend their focus before you are declared the target of their attack, per the wording on Dark Curse and weapons that require focus to be spent to fire.