So I'm flying my X-Wings like any other night, trying to do the standard formation to target-locks and turn a bunch of ties one by one into debris. No big deal. Right? But, the nightmare scenario begins; and I get blocked so many times and so well that.....man, Wedge never even got to fire at all.

I need a little help here fellas...........

Mirdanda Doni + Sabine + Ion bombs = Profit!

Well, first of all, don't fly in a 'box' formation. Blocking is powerful when all of your ships bump into each other and lose their actions. Its less devastating when only one of your ships loses its action.

Actually, that shouldn't come first. First of all is asteroid placement. This is difficult to describe (pics would be easier), but basically you have to understand the TIE swarm's game plan and try to make it as hard on your opponent as you can to follow through on that plan. Once you disrupt your opponent's 'standard operating procedure' he gets nervous and has to adapt on the fly. Some people can do that no prob, but others get ruffled and are more likely to make a positional error.

So typically, TIE swarms like to deploy clustered together in one corner. Before placing any rocks, you don't know which side your opponent will end up on, but you do know it will be one of the corners. Then TIE swarms love to come out fast with straights. Typically 4 or 5. Some will start off in a funky blob and will do a combination of turns/banks to get lined up, but don't let that fool you; its just a delay tactic before busting out the fast straights next turn. Anyway, the general TIE swarm plan is to move up one side of the board and then turn into the middle (hard turn or bank---shouldn't matter and it depends entirely on where the enemy has gotten to early on).

So, knowing this, you want to place your rocks to disrupt this flight plan. Generally speaking, you ought to take the largest rocks that you feel comfortable flying your ships around (the larger the better, but if the really big ones make you nervous, then go with the middle sized ones). Now imagine roughly where a TIE swarm can go after it has moved straight forward about 5 base lengths and then banked in about 3 more base lengths. Stick a rock just in front of that spot (so the imaginary TIEs will be facing it). Now do the same on the other side of the board (because you don't know which side the swarm will deploy on). Your third rock should go fairly right in the middle of the board, but with an eye for disrupting the swarm trying to turn in sharp to avoid one of the first two rocks you placed.

If you have time and inclination (and some space on your kitchen table or what-have-you), you can practice setting up the rocks in different ways and you don't even need to have the ships to represent the swarm (just 6 or 7 empty bases will do). Pretend that you are a swarm player and put rocks in different patterns on the board and see what makes flying them easier and what makes flying around them harder.

Now when the game actually starts, no matter how the rocks have been placed, there will be gaps between them. Ultimately, this is where the TIE fighters are going to fly through. If you fly all of your ships through those gaps too, then you are going to get bumped. So, its a good idea to split up and approach from different angles. Now your opponent has to pick who to go after or even be tempted to split up his forces (which would be a dumb mistake, but forcing errors is a good way to win games ). Generally, a well flown TIE swarm will use bumping a lot, and you can't entirely avoid it---but if you can minimize it, you stand a better chance (especially if you can capitalize on having a higher Pilot Skill and concentrating fire to remove TIEs quickly).

Hope that helps!

Mirdanda Doni + Sabine + Ion bombs = Profit!

OK, so I have a K-wing but I don't have a Sabine crew card in my collection; what ship does her card come in? How does this ship slow the amazing blocking ability of a gaggle of TIEs, Z-95s or As?

When Ion bombs detonate, they assign 2 ion tokens to all ships within Range 1. The bomb is dropped when you reveal your dial, not at the Action step and so cannot be blocked like bombs that require an Action to deploy. Once Ionized, you know exactly where the affected Ties will be next turn so there is no risk of them bumping you. Miranda Doni is PS8 so she will not reveal her dial until most Ties have already moved. This means you can chose to drop the bomb when it is most advantageous to you rather than trying to guess in advance.

Sabine comes with Ghost expansion and allows bombs to inflict an extra point of damage on one ship when they detonate. This is not vital to the tactic and is really just adding insult to injury. It will work almost as well without Sabine and you can use the crew slot for someone else.