How many squadrons and what type do you take?

I'm an Imperial player and just want to take enough that I don't get obliterated if my opponent brings a bomber heavy fleet.

Your thoughts?

My new go to screen is 2-3 advances, mauler, jump master, soontir. It absolutely shreds enemy squadron forces

last night I played against someone who took soontir and a tie advanced v.s. my fireball (3 firespray, Dengar, Rhymer and a tie advanced)

Managed to tie up most of my bombers for 1 shooting round...

But really if your intent is to tie things up for a couple of rounds you need something meaty and cheap which is where Tie Advanced are a good option. If you actually want to contend in the fighter game you need a bigger investment. Mooses setup looks quite good if you can spare the points

Also, as an alternative to the jump master, I will sometimes just toss chirneau on whatever ship will be throwing squad commands so that I can trigger mauler every time w/o worrying about having all enemy squads in the Intel bubble

It all depends on the overall strategy behind your fleet. Minimum 4 squadrons to keep bombers away

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

With BCC and Toryn Farr... My Rebels are going back to their old staple.

134 Points.

Thanx for the advice. Ya Moose's setup sounds brutal but a little pricey. I'm gonna try 1 Tie-advanced + 3 TIE-Fighters. Unless I'm going for bombers I try to keep squads under 50points

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

So true! Hopefully TIE-Defenders give us more options

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

Not really some of the villian ships work well

Ya but not everyone can afford multiple packs of R&V. Also I don't feel like a true servant of the Emperor when I employ all those bounty hunter scum.

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

Not really some of the villian ships work well

Ya but not everyone can afford multiple packs of R&V. Also I don't feel like a true servant of the Emperor when I employ all those bounty hunter scum.

Imperials are in a tricky spot. Bring too many anti-squadron fighters to a fight and they're a waste of points. Bring too few and they give up points while doing little to slow down the bombers. At least the rebels have black anti-ship dice for when they encounter a non-member fleet. And they have more than 3 hp so they can survive more than a turn of ship-based anti-squadron fire.

I just bring a few TIE Fighters and hope it's enough.

Not really some of the villian ships work well

To handle a bomber fleet with Intel support you need to be able to kill it or to entangle it in a quagmire. Aggressors are very nice but expensive. Three Aggressors can't kill a bomber fleet quickly, nor are they numerous enough to adequately entangle it in the face of clever Intel usage. Those 3 Aggressors also cost 48 points. As you keep adding squadrons, you quickly reach a point where you might as well have brought your own Rhymerball.

I usually go very squadron heavy but I feel this is in responce to my regular opponant who usualy maxes out his squadron allowance and backs this up with a couple of dedicated 'carriers'. This usualy results in an almighty dogfight somewhere on the battlefield which pretty much results in mutual destruction. As a Rebel player I'm now leaning more towards A-Wing, YT-2400, Han Solo, Dash Rendar and Jan Ors in order to counter my opponents waves of TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors.

I think it will depend the kind of fleet that you are looking for.

The minimal amount of squadron should be 4 to 6 depending if you choose naked squadron or unique one (defense tokens). Maybe you will loose the dogfigth but you will prevent any attack against your ship (the firts purpose of squadron)

If you do not want to use a carrier, go for the rogue for their activation ability.

At first I would say 0 but FFG finally wised up and saw the need for viable squadrons. Especially with the rouge trait. Squadrons it depends on what you want them to do. It is hare making a comparison but the best I can go with is units from an old game called Monster Apocalypse. Here is what squadrons can do.

• Bomb capital ships
• Screen against enemy fighters
• Harass Objective taking ships

Bombing capital ships no other list does it better than the Imperial Rhymer ball. Thing is you dedicate a lot of points into squadrons maxing out the squadron capacity and then even more so with high squadron value ships to support them. It is kind of unintuitive as ships are supposed to do more damage than ships but if you catch an opponent not prepared to deal with it they will break fairly easy.

For the Screen the trick is to not spend as many points in squadron as say a Bomber player. You want to tie up the bomber offensive but keep most of your points and value in your ships. The counter trait works great with this.

Harass This is probably for the lowest squadron investment option. You either have a couple of rouge traits with grit or a bomber with a couple of escorts. They are there to chase down those fast objective capturing ships and not really there to do much damage as all of it will be placed in the main fleet.

So what about Flotillas? Well they have characteristics like a squadron with the scatter defense token but they do not engage squadrons and actually ram ships so they are NOT squadrons. So when allocating points for squadrons you should use your flotillas for your ship count not your squadron count.

I like the fact that FFG has put more emphesis on Squadrons with new Squadron packs and the new pilots with the corlean conflict. I am still hopefully they will continue to put out more squadron cards such as a R2-D2 X-wing squadron. It is certainly much better than the days of Wave 1 where squadronless was the way the meta was going.