My latest new squadron did pretty well last game night, winning all my games by a substantial margin so I think I may be taking these guys to a local tournament coming up.

Here's the current list:

Gamma Veteran + Deadeye + Extra Munitions + Plasma Torps + Guidance Chips

Gamma Veteran + Deadeye + Extra Munitions + Proton Torps + Guidance Chips

I have a very similar list that uses the best choice for Bomber ordnance: Homing MIssiles. It uses the Inquisitor instead of Carnor, but you could keep him by downgrading your TIE as you suggested.

I love the pair of 27 point Homing Missile Vets as a base for imperial squadrons, do try them out! Its way better than using Jonus. You get more rerolls (or have a focus) and you aren't rangebound. The Evade-denial is incredibly relevant with how important those are for aces, too.

Another possible ace soon will be Quickdraw (Rage + EBaffle), who will make for an amazing alpha strike with 2 Guidance Chips + Focus 4 dice, 1 fully modified and one fully rerollable 3 dice and one Crackshot 2 dice attack. The Inquisitor/Carnor are better lategame closer who you need to cover your Bombers, though. I am curious how the two versions will compare.

That's a good point, I have used Homing Missiles in the past and they do work nicely. OTOH, my prior experience was with lists that didn't use Deadeye and you got more bonus out of the Homing Missiles not consuming your target lock. But changing both ships to Homing Missiles is a 3-point upgrade which I what I've got to spend so yeah, this looks like another good option. So you use focus/Deadeye if you're not in range for TL, but you can still take the TL if you happen to be close enough. Usually you're able to TL for the second shot, just not necessarily the first.

As far as swapping out the ace... 34 points is a pretty happy place, you can get nicely kitted out versions of several aces for that including Ryad, Vader, etc... The reason I went with Carnor Jax was specifically to try to protect my TIE Bombers a little longer with his token denial and hopefully buy them enough time to get off both ordnance shots more reliably which is the problem I was having in my prior list which use one TIE Bomber. It went through a couple variations but the final one was Tomax + Ryad + Vader with fairly typical upgrades and I noticed that Tomax was always the first ship to die and had trouble clearing both tubes before going down.

Since I expect my Bombers to still take a lot of fire, I also wanted a strong "finisher" ship that will work well being my last man on the table too.

Do you have much issues getting both your shots off before the Bombers die? What if any special things do you do to buy them time?

I haven't looked at Quickdraw builds that much yet, I wasn't able to make Gencon this year but I will be picking up a TIE/sf as soon as they hit the streets. Quickdraw + Rage + Electronic Baffle + Guidance Chips weighs in at 31 points, so there's definitely points for a missile there.

I'm not sure I'm understanding this rightly though: "2 Guidance Chips + Focus 4 dice, 1 fully modified and one fully rerollable 3 dice and one Crackshot 2 dice attack"

Quickdraw doesn't have the ability to take Extra Munitions, so how are you getting two shots both using Guidance Chips and 4 dice? If you're using Rage, how does he have Crackshot as well?

Whenever my opponent choses to focus one of the Bombers early the ace has free reign for a while and usually gets an upper hand late game. The Bombers definitly aren't durable, though. It is why I like this 2 Bomber + TIE + lategame threat setup so much, it gives them some backup.

I'm not sure I'm understanding this rightly though: "2 Guidance Chips + Focus 4 dice, 1 fully modified and one fully rerollable 3 dice and one Crackshot 2 dice attack"

Quickdraw doesn't have the ability to take Extra Munitions, so how are you getting two shots both using Guidance Chips and 4 dice? If you're using Rage, how does he have Crackshot as well?

Oh, that was me adding together the Alpha strike of the entire squadron. Two Bombers with their missiles, Quickdraw Rages, Baffles one stress to remove her shield and perform an attack with focus and rerolls from Rage, then she has another attack with at least rerolls depending on wether you spend the focus or not and finaly the TIE does its attack with Crackshot, where you can expect one damage to come through.

It skews the squadron extremely towards alpha strike, so in the long run I'll probably stick with a lategame ship, but at least it is a place to try out the sf for me when it releases.

OK, that make more sense then. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing some amazing combo or something there

I spent some time last night crunching numbers in an X-Wing probability calculator and I've got two new variants I'm thinking about...

With the 3 free points from downgrading the TIE I can change the bomber build on both ships to look like this:

Gamma Squad Veteran + Crack Shot + Homing Missiles + Extra Munitions + Long-Range Scanners

What I realized is that if I swap Guidance Chips for Long-Range Scanners, there is no longer a need for Deadeye AND my first shot will be able to get both Focus+Lock modification which outweighs what I'm losing from Guidance Chips. Then, with Deadeye no longer necessary I can use that point and slot to throw in the Crackshot for even more alpha strikyness. The flip side is that getting lock for my second shot is a little harder, but if I'm only going to reroll one die or less I can always keep the lock which solves that issue.

The second variant is a bigger change. From that point, with EPT no longer a strict necessity to get Deadeye I wondered... how much am I paying for that Crackshot? Turns out it's 1 point for the card, but then an additional 3 points per ship for the EPT slot plus the higher PS. So what if I dropped Crackshot and went with cheaper Scimitars? How much would that buy me? With 8 points freed up, it turns out you can beef up that Academy TIE pretty significantly.

Scimitar Squadron + Homing Missiles + Extra Munitions + Long Range Scanners

Scimitar Squadron + Homing Missiles + Extra Munitions + Long Range Scanners

In a different meta that would be perfectly fine, but right now it is so convenient to kill Scouts before they get to shoot. At the very least stick to Gammas.

On Deadeye/Chips vs Crackshot/LRS I can't give you a definite answer. Chadwick swears by LRS and he has more experience and success with Bombers than me. Crackshot makes the damage from the Bombers even more scary, certainly. I prefer the flexibility from Deadeye where you don't need to lock in one target before you get to shoot. Running one of either might be a good idea. I haven't tested any of that, though.

Yeah, PS is very meta-dependent and against triple Jumpmaster lists going PS2 is going to be a serious detriment. Maybe something to keep in pocket for later on...

I'd like to try the Crackshot/LRS version first anyway because it's more similar to what I have now and will be able to help me understand the Chips/LRS tradeoff better without changing too many things at once. Similarly, I want to try a version with bombs at some point too just because I've never used Bombs so it will be a good learning experience.

Originally I looked at LRS and thought it was obviously inferior to Chips. I mean, extra hit right? Duh. Then came the realization that low PS had a lot to do with whether you would be in range to take that required Target Lock and that's what led to the importance of Deadeye which costs you a point, an EPT slot, and taking a high enough PS body that it *has* an EPT slot to begin with. Sure, it makes your ordnance work better but in this case it's taking 8 points to do so (about 3 for +PS, 2 for Deadeyes, and 3 for EPT slots to put them in).

While I was originally resistant to giving up the "free" damage modification of Chips, taking a step back to look at the whole package make me realize that by locking turn 1 and Focusing turn 2, I wasn't really losing modification, I was just getting Focus (and maybe TL too in the case of Homing Missiles) instead of Chips which is actually better anyway. Second shot may be less modified, but early damage beats later damage and there's no guarantee both ships will survive to take a second shot anyhow. With Crack and better overall mods, that first shot will certainly hurt - calculator puts it at about 0.9 extra damage per shot compared to the original list.

Now, you're absolutely right that it can telegraph your target, although you DO still have the ability to take a new Target Lock on turn 2 if you really need to. When I get to play some test games I'll be keeping an eye on how often this is really a problem. I suspect that against most lists if you're picking an important ship and maybe keeping your TIE Bombers deployed somewhat centrally then it won't be, because they can only deny you the shots if they keep their important ship out of the fight.

Anyway, I'm currently planning to fly the Gamma Crackshot/Homing/LRS on game night this coming Tuesday and we'll see how it goes. I'll report back to the thread with my results and observations.

Anyway, I'm currently planning to fly the Gamma Crackshot/Homing/LRS on game night this coming Tuesday and we'll see how it goes. I'll report back to the thread with my results and observations.

I really like the Gamma w/ crack, homing + LRS. However, its NOT easy to use. Definitely harder to set it up than the deadeye + chips bomber. On the other hand, getting good at using it improves your flying skills and makes you a better player

Regardless, I don't recommend the extra munitions in either case unless you have nothing better to spend the points on. The bombers are usually dead before they can fire a 2nd ordnance shot...

Regardless, I don't recommend the extra munitions in either case unless you have nothing better to spend the points on. The bombers are usually dead before they can fire a 2nd ordnance shot...

Yeah, that's the challenge for sure. My first cut at TIE Bombers had just one (Tomax Bren) and he was pretty much always the first one to die. This list is basically the result of trying to solve that problem. Two bombers so at least one will get both shots off. Carnor Jax to potentially deny some modification against the bombers, possibly buying them a little more time or distracting the opponent into chasing a hard to hit target instead. And a better set of upgrades specifically designed to help them get their shots off in fewer turns so they have a better chance of firing it all.

One Bomber usually gets to fire both missiles. If your opponent chases the lategame ship both do. I would always miss EM if I didn't bring it.

One Bomber usually gets to fire both missiles. If your opponent chases the lategame ship both do. I would always miss EM if I didn't bring it.

That has not been my experience at all.

I haven't had a ton of games with them, but its certainly possible to be destroyed without firing any thing on at least one bomber (higher PS defenders did it to me once) or perhaps only 1 missile each (this happened to me vs dengaroo).

I have been able to fire both missiles once or twice, but so far, it feels about 1 in 3 games you get both missiles off on at least one bomber (never on both though, at least not for me so far). Not sure that's worth 4 points (extra munitions x 2). Maybe I could've flown better, but I can safely say I am not a bad player, so I don't think its a result of poor flying...

Its very much dependant on your opponents play. If both Bombers get focussed too hard you need to capitalize with the rest of your list. I won't say not having EM is worse, but I'd say its personal preference. I had good experiences using doubled up missiles.

I view EM as points well spent. I'm either going to get to fire another big shot in your face, or that ship will soak up more than its fair share of firepower for you to try to prevent it. Either way I feel like I'm being compensated for the 2 points. If I can't have at least two shots of ordnance, then I'm just not going to take any Bombers because I'll feel I'm not leveraging them enough. I'll make a different sort of list instead. Note that that could be two of anything, but it's hard to convince me to take two different 4-point shots if I can save two points by running doubles of one. I'll just try to pick one kind I like better.

I can't say whether people kill the Bomber first because ordnance is scary, or if it's simply because it's the easiest thing to kill. It's got less green dice than any of my other ships and it tends to move slower because it's trying to keep people in range 2-3 for shots which makes it easier to track as a target. But either way, it does seem to be the first ship to die. Maybe it's also because when I did have one Bomber it was infinite-Crackshotting Tomax. Sometimes I got the 2nd shot off, sometimes I didn't, blade_mercurials 1/3 estimate feels about right to my experiences. More than 1/4, but less than 1/2 anyway. I haven't lost my Bomber before getting off ANY shots yet, but I'm sure it can happen.

I just started running dual bombers, and I expected to get 3 out of my 4 shots which seems to be about what's actually happening in practice so far too after a few games. If I get all 4 then that's a bonus. I actually had one game where I would have gotten all four shots but my Bomber suffered a Munitions Failure crit effect and lost the other one. However, he still got the killing shot on my opponent's YT firing 3 reds at range one

Actually, I was just double-checking the name of the card and found out that Munitions Failure was removed from the new damage deck. I knew there were changes but I hadn't yet researched what they actually were. Looks like it would be a good idea for me to swap damage decks then.