Subtitle and TL/DR: Do you kill Howlie - or neuter her by killing her swarm - and how do you do it?

Sorry for the long post - just spitballing a few thoughts and interested in some other perspectives.

I'm not expecting to break the meta - or even win big with this, but I'm toying with a 2 Gamma Veteran + 3 CrackTIE list as a possible alternative, and a counter to CrackSwarm - swapping out one of the BlackCracks for Youngster with Crackshot.

Youngster's pilot ability is wasted, but frankly it's not that great anyway, but having 1 more ship shooting before PS4 and the fact he keeps the elite slot seems like it might be well worth it for 1 point, and it still saves a couple of points for initiative or alternative ordnance.

Gamma Vets would run with either Crackshot or Deadeye, Extra Munitions, Concs or Homers and either Chips or Scanners

The general idea is that the Gamma Vets can provide a higher (and slightly more reliable) damage output in the first round of shooting, sustain that higher output for another turn, and shoot before BlackCracks (and uBoats). - having three shots (2 potentially very good ones) before the Cracks get their go might be crucial to thin their numbers sufficiently before they get a chance to shoot back.

But then there's Howlie

Conventional wisdom says that Howlie must die first.

Now if most of your ships are shooting at the same PS as your opponent (in fact especially if you have initiative on the same PS), or if you're lower PS than Howlie's swarm, then I'd probably agree.

However a dead ship that hasn't fired rerolls no dice, BlackCracks can be pretty nasty in their own right, and the fewer ships Howlie supports the less useful she becomes.

So if you're shooting before the swarm, and have a fair chance of knocking one or two of them off the board before they can benefit from Howlies buff, then you could argue that you are weakening her ability as a force multiplier by subtracting her force.

Add to that, Howlie will likely Evade early on, sit back to try to take advantage of range, and the early Target Lock you really want in order to hit her hard in an alpha strike isn't going to be possible with a PS5 ship.

So going with the Howlie-Must-Die option to start with, one option to get around the TL is Deadeye - but that doesn't combine too well with Homers, as I'm not certain that its ability to ignore evade tokens is any compensation for giving up the reroll by spending focus instead of TL - even if you Chimp It.

Concs are a little better, especially if you Chimp them, but to make them work against a ship that's likely to be carrying an evade token, you really want Crackshot in your EPT slot to force the damage through.

So that brings us to Scanners - Concussion Missiles with a Focus stacked on the TL are about as good as an unfocused Conc that's been Chimped (Focused Conc gives 4 hits around 71% of the time - 3 Hits around 24% of the time ) - and with your elite slot free for Crackshot you stand a good chance of putting the hurt on her.

I've not done the maths on Homers stacked with Focus and Crackshot - but it's certainly not going to be any worse.

Telegraphing who you are gunning for by TLing Howlie in turn 1 shouldn't be too much of an issue (or a surprise for you opponent) - if she bugs out her buddies lose the buff - if she sticks with the swarm you've got her cold.

So as far as I can tell - if you want Howlie dead - Long Range Scanners and Crackshot are your best option

Moving on to the alternate strategy - Kill the swarm - neuter Howlie

In some ways, this is riskier psychologically - if you miss an Evaded-up Howlie hiding at range 3 you just shrug your shoulders - if you decide to take out a couple of mooks who haven't fired yet and you whiff it's pretty demoralising.

So if you're going to do this, you REALLY want to make those shots count.

As you're moving second Target locks aren't a problem, and you should be rolling too slowly, and deployed in such a way as not to get blocked - so Scanners probably shouldn't be on the shopping list.

So I think the 3Cs are your friend here Concs, Chimps, and Crack - the dice for Chimped Concs are about as good as a Focused Conc but do carry a slightly greater variability in terms of poor rolls - you've got about the same chance of 4 hits (around 72%ish compared to 71%ish), a slightly lesser chance of 3 hits (22%ish% instead of 24%ish), and a greater chance of 2 (6%ish vs 3%ish)

Might add to this with some more thoughts on homers and assault missiles - but I'd be interested in hearing other opinions in the meantime.

Homing MIssiles are always better, pretty much.

If you have the points, Homing Missiles on the GSVs are a very good buy. I prefer Deadeye myself so that I have a decent chance to target high PS Aces. With so many repoisiotning moves, relying on being able to acquire a TL at Range 2-3 on a higher PS target is a bit risky.

You use Long Range Scanners but I prefer to put Chips in the modification slot. It is a question of preference. LRS + Crackshot gives you a better alpha strike but makes it harder to pull off a Beta strike. Chips + Deadeye give you slightly less effective shots but you are more likely to be able to take 2 shots, even against higher PS targets.

Gonna let you in on a secret: long range Scanners are bad and the chips are good. Easy choice.

Abeit a small point, but don't forget LRS are range 3 and beyond. After you fire your first salvo when you need to relock another target, i doubt those TIEs will ever be that far away from you. Effectively wasting your points on EM, as well as limiting your bombers to focus action for the rest of the game ( which isn't that bad )

Gonna let you in on a secret: long range Scanners are bad and the chips are good. Easy choice.

Having tried them a bit I can tell you that LRS are excellent. They are a lot harder to fly, though. The flexibility that Deadeye/Chips gives you is hard to argue with. Still, on Tomax Bren for example LRS is the better choice.

Gonna let you in on a secret: long range Scanners are bad and the chips are good. Easy choice.

Having tried them a bit I can tell you that LRS are excellent. They are a lot harder to fly, though. The flexibility that Deadeye/Chips gives you is hard to argue with. Still, on Tomax Bren for example LRS is the better choice.

Homing MIssiles are always better, pretty much.

Assuming you're forfeiting your reroll by using Deadeye but making up for it with guidance chips they're not better - at least not in terms of raw number of hits / crits rolled.

Concussion Missiles out-perform them considerably - negating evade tokens is situational so difficult to quantify - after all your opponent will just focus instead.

I did a test over a couple of hundred dice rolls a while back to see how much Concs were improved with focus - taking the same dice results and comparing how they would work with chimps or with a homing missile, the following results came out.

Homing missiles + Deadeye + Chimps:

4 hits 58%

3 hits 33%

2 hits 9%

Concussion Missiles + Deadeye + Cimps

4 hits 72%

3 Hits 22%

2 Hits 6%

I haven't seen this thread since probably wave 4! Feels like old times again with Howlrunner around.

I'd rather think you want to strip out her friends long before you go after Howlrunner if you've got an ace to compete with her PS. Otherwise you're asking a pair of bombers and some ships with an identical dial to outmaneuver her from a lower PS.

Have I tried a pair of GSVs? Nope. My group isn't big on proxy-ing ships. Cards they're good with but not ships.

With a crack shot vet, you nuke blacksquads

Have to get unreasonably lucky to survive crackshot homing with a tie