Hello! I'm thinking about taking this list to a tournament on Saturday, and wanted to see if folks had any thoughts.

28 - Delta Squadron Pilot, TIE/x7

28 - Delta Squadron Pilot, TIE/x7

44 - Patrol Leader, Darth Vader, Intelligence Agent

It's a pretty beefy list, with a lot of hitpoints. The Deltas, in case you've been living under a rock, are hyper efficient jousters with /x7. They also leave (barely) enough points for a Patrol Leader with Vader. This gives me another big stack of hitpoints, and a means of guaranteed damage against Aces. With my lone leftover point, I went for Intelligence Agent -- it might help me secure some blocks with Defender barrel rolls, which would be rad.

There's really only 1 free point in the list, without fundamentally changing the Vader-Decimator and the two Defenders; but if you have any ideas for a better upgrade than Intelligence Agent I'm all ears! I'm also particularly interested in what folks think of this list's matchups. I think it can tackle most Imperial Ace variants, but I'm worried about the popular Jumpmaster builds... the Decimator may wind up dying too quickly, and be a liability.

Well, the list IS beefy. I feel like Vader may be able to scare off Soontir, who is the biggest problem child of the bunch, but might have difficulty against things with shields of a similar hard to harm nature, such as Inquisitor or Whisper. Not that you wouldn't be able to plink away at them as well, just that you might end up exploding at about the same time that both shield tokens are gone.

I think the list isn't amazing, but it's also not bad in any way, and it's one of those fringe things that has winning potential, but only if flown really, really well. You might just have too many hit points and free evade tokens etc. to choke your opponent on while you chip away at them, but only if your Decimator doesn't explode at the start of round 3 leaving your Defenders to be arc dodged into next week.

If you want to up your game versus aces, you can drop one of the Defenders to Omega Leader, which in turn gives you the two points needed to convert Intel Agent to Rebel Captive, which in essence brings your list from 1 tool against aces to 3 tools against them. ...but you may still run into issues against Dengar, who OL isn't particularly effective against.

I flew this exact list in a tournament a few weeks ago and I ended up going 1-2. Straight murdered my first matchup, having lots of hull on scum ships like the star viper. Used Vader to smoke Guri quick and just mopped up the rest.

Lost my 2nd game to a Palp list with him riding on Chirpy's deci, Maarek in a x7 defender, and academy pilot. There was some good flying by my opponent and I wasn't able to really get good shots on Chirpy-Palp soon enough. Between Maarek's crits and Chirpy's, my decimator went down super fast and my x7s just couldn't hold up.

Third game was more my flying error in the beginning than any fault of the list's. 4 bombers that I was trying to outmaneuver but I ended up having to split my ships up and gave my opponent good shots on my x7s. Ended up fighting tooth and nail though once the furball happened and it eventually went to time with one of my x7s left to two of his bombers. If I had the time, I might have made this one happen. But the error in the beginning really set me back from maybe having erased another bomber in time.

All in all, I like the list. I didn't see some of what I thought I'd see in the imperial aces department that Vader is meant to counter, so some of that was wasted. But I like the fact that it is a list that none of the ships are just going to get erased quickly from the mat. If you take it, let me know how you do because I might revisit it some time after I scratch the itch to play a few others I've made.

Thanks for the input, friends. I'm worried about how quickly the Decimator can evaporate if I leave it exposed for too long — controlling the opening engagement will be crucial. If I can move quickly and unpredictably with the Decimator, to keep it out of arc, I should be able to use Vader before exploding. I think I'll stick with the list, and see what I can manage with it. I'll try to update this thread!