In the shadow of Defenders, imperial bombers are not seen very often. Amongst them, the very interesting TIE bomber shuttle (title).

Where is the Doom-bomber (19 pts?)

Any suggestions of good bomber shuttle dynamics?

Tactician? Defenders are relatively "immune" to stress, and aces maybe too fast for tactician.

Mara Jade? Intersting option (maybe intelligence agent as second crew)

Vader? Would say this would have the role of the rebel stresshog (avoid arc)

Tomax shuttle? E.g lighting reflexes or adrenaline rush (and Mara Jade) makes him really annoying.

Fleet and Systems Officer, throw focus everywhere.

I think the TIE Shuttle is a little borderline because of the weakness of Imperial crew. Vader is pretty great, and the most interesting option to me, but stuff like Fleet Officer and Systems Officer have some significant drawbacks that push the TIE Shuttle just a little away from mainstream use.

I'm not saying it's unusable or bad, it's just one of those things that unless you really want to use it, you're probably not going to try that hard to get it to work.

Doomber only has three shots in it: the extra two shots the Lambda gives are probably worth the five points.

Outside of Vader, it's a stress platform, a token passer and a scanner with Intel Agents. It could even be a debuff engine with Kylo crew.

It's a good ship in most configurations. You don't see much of it because the dominant archetypes are one of the setups that don't really benefit much from it.

Fleet and Systems Officer, throw focus everywhere.

Pretty much this. Fleet/Systems/Mk2, give all the tokens to everyone. The overall outcome is probably better than palp on average, but not in specific cases, and it's more difficult to fly, but it's 7 points cheaper.

A crew version of Howlrunner would be great to pot into the shuttle - as well as any kind of 'bubble buff' that would help to increase damage or durability of surrounding friendly ships.

Right now we only have a range 1 bubble debuff available and I haven't tried it yet: Mara Jade.

Tomax Bren w/ Crack Shot, Shuttle title, Rebel Captive, and Moff Jerrod is good.

He's 2 red dice that gets to Crack Shot every turn. Anyone that shoots at him gets stressed. Moff Jerrod is there to remove that crit that you know is going to happen. Don't like the Moff? Throw on Mara Jade instead. Or Ysanne Isard. The overall build makes people not want to fire at him for a while. That allows him to use his Crack Shot enough to really wear people down. Will it be enough to break through Soontir Fel? No, but most everything else has to worry.

janky support is janky support

if it ain't palp or manaroo (and manaroo mainly because she can contribute with feedback array, or be busted with dengaroo), it's jank

far prefer the Tie Bomber bomber, the one that actually bombs and ordnances things

An o.k. use of the title I think is turning Tomax into an uncomfortable ship for aces with just title, crackshot, and rebel captive. He's got ace punching ability via always crackshot and he's not an ideal target due to giving stress when you shoot him. In general though it seems the empire has the weakest crew which is unfortunate and probably the phantom's fault.

Thomax Bren, Fleet officer, systems officer, cool hand, tie engine mk II, tie shuttle

I haven't tried it yet, the main situation I would consider it is as a 4th TIE Bomber where I want to free up some points. Haven't even looked into specific lists, but it you want to run Gamma Vets the points can get pretty tight.

Things could easily change depending on what new crew we receive though, Imperials are somewhat lacking in good choices.

Tomax Bren 24

Lightning Reflexes (1)

TIE Shuttle (0)

TIE Mk2 (1)

Rebel Captive (3)

Tactician (2)

Total: 31pts

Imperial stressboat. Dont let his lack of damage deter you, this guy has done surprisingly well for me to the point where ive elevated this from a joke to a legit strat. You simply CANNOT get away from this guy due to every single move being turned into a U-turn, regardless of whether he flew through a rock, hit a ship, or didnt clear stress. It is surprisingly easy to keep someone at range2 with that flexibility. Ive quadstressed so many ships with him, while only being fired at once and being completely unstressed myself lol (9 green moves ftw)

In a more standard build, Tomax with Cool Hand, Fleet, and System Officer is pretty dope. 9 greens (mk2 engines again) to pick from, auto evade after handing out focus, can even assign 1 of the focus to himself. Be surprised how hard he is to take down with that build and he lets people do some mean things with that free focus. If youre one of the people that hate systems officer (for reasons i'll never understand, pretty dope to me) then swap for rebel captive for even more defense. Palpmobile is just beefy, but has 0 defenses, tomax shuttle has quite a bit of defense.

I did look briefly at a TIE Swarm with 2 Tactician Shuttles alongside Howl & Blacks. The tacticians would suck in fire and the bombers have a bigger ass so can take it a bit, and yeah they've only got 2 red dice but so do TIE Fighters. They can K-turn, they can reroll with Howlrunner, and they can stress things. Wouldn't be terrible .

Bren in the shuttle is too expensive for my taste. It wants to be cheap. I've had a lot of success with PS2 Bomber Buddy and PS5 Bomber Wingman Buddy, but generally, I think pouring points into Tomax in particular that aren't missiles and Torps is kind of missing the point.

Jonus could also shine with a Gamma Vet alpha list, but I've not got round to trying it. Mostly because I only own 3 bombers.

Tomax Bren 24

Lightning Reflexes (1)

TIE Shuttle (0)

TIE Mk2 (1)

Rebel Captive (3)

Tactician (2)

Total: 31pts

That looks really fun. Definitely going to try that out when I get around to starting Imperial!