Am going to a tourney, and if I do not make the cut( which I really hope I do) there is an Escalation tourney on day two, I have however yet to play such a tourney, so what normally does well in such an event.

Thx in advance for any feedback

Paul

I went 3-1 with this at my FLGS' spring Escalation Tournament. You'd probably want to tweak it a bit in light of recent releases and FAQs, but it served me well. :-)

I'd probably go with something like:

-60-
Whisper w/ Veteran Instincts, Agent Kallus, Fire Control System, Advanced Cloaking Device
Scimitar w/ TIE Shuttle, Darth Vader

-89-
Omicron w/ Palpatine

-118-
Black Squadron w/ Crackshot
Wampa

-149-
The Inquisitor w/ v1, Push the Limit, Autothrusters


Whisper has very few weaknesses at 60 points, particularly with Kallus allowing you to take evade and still maintain your offense. The Scimitar is there as unblockable damage that can't be ignored. Jumping to a Palp Shuttle is the obvious next step. From there, you have plenty of options with Imperials but I went for more unblockable damage and ships on the board. To round things out, I slotted in the Inquisitor, but again you have tons of options at this price level with Imperials.

Owned with my last one I dont remember all the upgrades but started with Kath Scarlet and a black sun soldier Z95

Secound round added Guri and mindlinked to Kath

third round went cheep and added a second z95

Fourth round added a light party buss Bossk was a lot of fun

I'd start with a PS10 Vader at 34pts and a 26pt Omega Leader.

Both of those guys are incredibly difficult in small scale fights, as Vader out-aces most everyone, and Omega Leader is a rough customer in 1v1 fights. If your opponent gets one of them while the other one dances, he shouldn't be able to get both and the other one should be able to push through for victory.

My piece of advise:

1) Plan to face off against many Imperial players

2) For the 60 - 90 point rounds, either bring something that survives well (Imperial aces) or something that can dish out tons of damage to said aces.

3) For the 120-150 games, consider adding low PS generics. The most common mistake that I have seen is Imperial players adding PS8 plus pilots at every round, but then get blocked by a single, annoying Z-95 at the last round. When you reach 150 points, you start reaching the mark where the number of cannons matter.

Escalation meta is very different from regular 100 pts dogfight meta. The last 2 escalation tournaments that I attended were both won by rebels (yeah, really!). I scored first and second in each respectively, playing rebel swarm - pretty much the only occasions I play rebels anymore. A few loose observations:

1. The most common mistake I've seen people make is to prepare an awesome list at certain point brackets (typically 60 and 150 points) and then just treat the mid brackets as mere transitions to the final phase. That doesn't work. You lose mid-tier games and the tournament as a result. Your list must be very good at EVERY stage.

2. There's enough room for ONE centerpiece ship your list will be built around. That's because you can fit something worth 30-40 points within 60 point budget. After that, the increment of 30 extra points per match severely limits your options. In order to get anything more expensive than 30 points you'd need to "save" some points in the previous bracket. While it's somewhat okayish to save 1 or 2 points, anything more means just accepting the fact that your list is lackluster at a certain stage, which is a mistake (see point no 1). As a result, escalation tends to see way more generic pilots in small fighters than dogfight format does. Quantity is often just as important as quality, especially in games 3 and 4.

3. You should refrain from fielding ships without crucial upgrades in order to "complete" them in the next phase. One of the mistakes I made early on was to field Jake Farrel as a flanker but without prockets. That would allow me to field him for 30 points and then buy prockets for the next bracket. Needless to say, Jake simply didnt have the necessary impact and couldn't do what he was meant to - that is to allow me to knock out a crucial target early on. That made my list lackluster for one match that I kept losing (or winning very narrowly) until I identified the problem and changed it.

4. Just because a ship is very efficient in a dogfight format doesn't mean it's gonna do well in escalation. Imperial escalation players tend to learn it the hard way when they field something like Omega Leader in their squads. OL is great in 1v1 fights and is scary in games 1 and 2. Unfortunately it gets way worse if there are multiple enemy ships shooting at it, as it can't lock them all. At 150 pts, there are typically 5-6 ships per player on the board. OL usually gets focused by all those it doesn't have locked and it doesn't take long for them to punch through his 4 HP.

5. For the very same reason I find Palp aces in general far easier to deal with in escalation than in regular dogfights, especially at the 120/150 point brackets. They rely on their tokens (and Palp) to survive and it's just too easy to either block them with that many ships on board or to simply shoot one so many times that they run out of defensive effects. In lower point brackets they do better but they face a somewhat different problem. Palp shuttle takes too big a part of a 60/90 points budget, leaving too few points left for the actual aces. Especially at 60 points, 1 ace followed by a distant, lumbering Lambda is too easily outnumbered.

To sum it up, pick one good ship you want to be the core of your list and then keep adding hulls in a way that makes your list joust-efficient, durable and with good board control. You can afford to have a flanker but make sure you have a solid core that isn't made of 3-4 HP ships completely reliant on tokens or arc-dodging to survive. Those tend to do far worse once the board gets crowded. And it will get crowded. At 150 points it might get about as crowded as in case of TIE swarm mirrors at 100 pts... except with bigger and stronger ships. It's good to have a list that can handle this reliably and one that can survive action deprivation.

Rebel Escalation squads are hard to build as their ships are more expensive and just don't math very well in 30 point increments. As stated above, expect lots of Imperials.

I had fun with (ships in order of how they were added):

Palpmobile

Scourge

Wampa

Howlrunner

Academy Pilot

Soontir + PtL (then Autothrusters and Stealth)

Zeta Leader + Comm Relay + Juke

The guy who won our 8 person tourney flew:

ATC Adaptability Vader + 8 Black Cracks

So you could probably ruin multiple persons' days if you came with some Assault missiles.

Played an escalation tournament a few weeks ago. Black crack ties are 15 points, you can bring a total of 8 of the same ship. Vader is 30 points with ATC and adaptability.

I started with Vader and 2 blacks and just added two more every round. You'll finish with Vader + 8 TIEs. It was disgustingly effective, lost a total of 4 tie fighters in 4 rounds.

You could also do howlrunner + academy round 1 and add black crack from there, but I suspect howlrunner will die before your PS4s shoot anyways and it costs you two crack shots.

1. 4x black squad with cs

2. Howl + academy

3. 2x black squad w cs

4. OL w stealth comm juke

Am going to a tourney, and if I do not make the cut( which I really hope I do) there is an Escalation tourney on day two, I have however yet to play such a tourney, so what normally does well in such an event.

Thx in advance for any feedback

Paul

We can use your 100pt list to build around.

Cheers

Baaa

Omega Leader with the standard loadout.

Standard Inquisitor with Prockets.

90 point round you add a Palp Shuttle.

For the 120, IDK. Just kidding actually, now that Veterans is out you just slap a Defender into the build.

We don't play to 150 because we only do 3 rounds, but probably just another Defender.

Spamming Crackshot ships is good. First round you're a bit weak, but at 90 points you have a full Crackshot swarm. It just snowballs.

I can't imagine that a Defender spam would be bad either.

Am going to a tourney, and if I do not make the cut( which I really hope I do) there is an Escalation tourney on day two, I have however yet to play such a tourney, so what normally does well in such an event.

Thx in advance for any feedback

Paul

Call me old fashioned, but knowing what faction you normally fly and what your 100pt tournament list is would probably be a tremendous help.

We can use your 100pt list to build around.

Cheers

Baaa

That's... probably one of the worst ideas for building an escalation roster. While certain familiarity with the ships is obviously helpful, downgrading a 100 pts list to 60 pts list is probably the best way to get a horrible 60 pts list. No offense, just saying....

Am going to a tourney, and if I do not make the cut( which I really hope I do) there is an Escalation tourney on day two, I have however yet to play such a tourney, so what normally does well in such an event.

Thx in advance for any feedback

Paul

Call me old fashioned, but knowing what faction you normally fly and what your 100pt tournament list is would probably be a tremendous help.

We can use your 100pt list to build around.

Cheers

Baaa

That's... probably one of the worst ideas for building an escalation roster. While certain familiarity with the ships is obviously helpful, downgrading a 100 pts list to 60 pts list is probably the best way to get a horrible 60 pts list. No offense, just saying....

Cheers

Baaa

1. 4x black squad with cs

2. Howl + academy

3. 2x black squad w cs

4. OL w stealth comm juke

I like this list in the opposite order. OL is stronger the earlier in the tournament it is, imho.

I think you start with OL (26), Howlrunner w/ Crack (19), Blackshot (15) and that brings you up to 60pts. After that, just keep filling up on Blackshots, two at a time.

60pts Ryad + Delta

90pts +1 Delta

120pts +1 Delta and PTL + twin ions for Ryad

150pts +1 Onyx

All with X7 of course

Some of those ideas sound pretty scary but it makes me wonder: does nobody have any budget restraints in this game?

I mean, I thought that it's pricey enough to get 6 crack shots for a 100 pts TIE swarm. How on earth do you get 8 of them or 5 defenders with that many titles?

If you're not running 4 slavers and Guri you're doing it wrong.

Defenders...duh.

I probably should limit my spending on this game......

But I don't