I was fooling around last week and put this down on the table. Lost, but it was fun, and shuts down enemy fighters through sheer weight of numbers.

Grand Moff Tarkin

Vic 1

Admiral Chiraneau

Flight Controllers

Expanded Hangar Bay

Vic 1

Flight Controllers

Expanded Hangar Bay

Raider 1

Ordnance Experts

Assault Proton Torpedoes

Howlrunner

Mauler Mithel

12x TIE Fighter

Nice!

What about Exp hangars (instead of APT) on Raider as well?

I've often wondered about the tie swarm, and then every time i'm about to field it I remember how much AS fire it takes to smack down swaths of the things lol (not much)

Once you had squadron superiority did you attempt to use them against the ships? How did that go?

I've toyed with a similar idea - dual ISDs and 16 TIE squadrons. But I shy away from it for the same reason. I suppose you could hold the TIEs back until enemy ships are forced into the ships or squadrons choice, but it's a lot of points for very little payout, and it's going to be giving away a lot of points in return. Plus, imagine having to pick up all of those ships and adjust damage dials if Mauler jumps into the middle of the pack? Yeesh.

Plus, imagine having to pick up all of those ships and adjust damage dials if Mauler jumps into the middle of the pack? Yeesh.

Maybe try dropping a couple TIEs for Rhymer? That many 50% blue dice is going to start adding up, and you don't need to get so close to enemy ships to get use from them. With squad commands can even sit them at the edge of medium range, then shoot-and-scoot so they move back into your range without firing on your squads (or at least not all of them).

I'm a bit of a Rhymer addict right now.

Update, had a different fight about a week ago with this list. It shut down the thematically included enemy X-Wings and Y-Wings before it started plinking away at the enemy ships. It worked well, would have been a 7-3 I think with Tourney points. The key is to keep the squadrons close and slow roll it to the enemy, use Chiraneau / Mauler combo to keep dishing out damage every turn. The option would be to remove 2 TIE Squadrons and put Rhymer in, but the key is just how many points you need to chew through in the TIE Fighters (42 damage, with Mauler and Howlrunner potentially having the ability to take multiple kill attempts.)

Vic 1, Motti, Chiraneau, Exp Hangar Bays

Vic 1, Exp Hangar Bays

Vic 1, Exp Hangar Bays

Howlrunner

Mauler Mithel

12x TIE Squadron

thing is without rhymer, vs an all-ship list with a couple of raiders in it, you can lose an ISD worth of points in very short order via AS batteries

Try swapping out a third of the fighters for bombers and running the squads in the same way you have been.

This will seriously up your anti-ship fire as well as add a lot of extra hull points into your swarm.

I would certainly drop a pair of fighters for Rhymer. He's harder to kill and the range you gain in anti-shipping attacks is well worth the loss of a few blue dice. No one in their right mind is going to enjoy 10-12 blue dice coming into a ship.