That's not very good protection, though. You don't get protection from the ship you are attacking, and it only grants you a reroll. I think Evade just isn't particularly practical.

I hope he means Scatter. Evade has only a slight amount of limited use.

I did mean evade so you get to ignore a dice twice in the turn and then even though it may get discarded the Named tie can give you a fresh one next turn if still nearby.

I think scatters would be too powerful unless you increase the points or make it a whole of game change a bit like captain Needa but then this type of benefit would probably be better given to an admiral (unlimited) or an officer (limit to 4 Tie squadrons).

Evades would be useless as they only cancel a dice at long range (which no ship has for anti squadron) reroll at medium, and does nothing at close (where most fighter ship interactions occur).

When I play Imperials, I almost exclusively use regular TIE Fighters plus Howl, with the occasional Flight Controller upgrade. They throw out 5 dice with a re-roll at that point and only cost 8 points. Howl+5 TIEs is only 56 points. Adding Flight Controllers brings that up to 62. If you can activate all of them at once (Expanded Hanger ISD plus a token), you can get a 29 blue dice alpha strike with 5 re-rolls. On average, that that equates to 3 dead X-Wings or B-Wings. If they die after that, who cares?

When I play Imperials, I almost exclusively use regular TIE Fighters plus Howl, with the occasional Flight Controller upgrade. They throw out 5 dice with a re-roll at that point and only cost 8 points. Howl+5 TIEs is only 56 points. Adding Flight Controllers brings that up to 62. If you can activate all of them at once (Expanded Hanger ISD plus a token), you can get a 29 blue dice alpha strike with 5 re-rolls. On average, that that equates to 3 dead X-Wings or B-Wings. If they die after that, who cares?

Embracing the Imperial viewpoint of willingly sacrificing pawns as long as you can get them to trade up.

I can't talk. That is my Imp squad strategy.

Offensive retrofit - "without number" - squadrons that have "swarm" that you activate recover one hull point up to their starting value.

I feel like removing or mitigating the main weakness if something is never the best way to go about game design.

Accentuate strengths, else everything ends up feeling the same.

Howlrunner

THIS ^^^^

Seriously, it exists... and is awesome.

I feel like removing or mitigating the main weakness if something is never the best way to go about game design.

Accentuate strengths, else everything ends up feeling the same.

THIS ^^^^

I think ppl are missing the point of things like:

Fighters/Interceptors are supposed to suck/die vs: ships... that's why they are not bombers, that have more hull and better battery dice.

Imperial squadrons are SUPPOSED to die, because they are expendable. If you don't like this fact, play rebels. They like their fighters to have big hull and be good at fighting squadrons and ships.... and they cost more and move slower.

I personally don't like that Rebs look to be getting the Swarm ability... it just seems wrong. Soon both sides will have all of the same options and then the game will be so "balanced" that it will lose the flavor I like so much.

I personally don't like that Rebs look to be getting the Swarm ability... it just seems wrong. Soon both sides will have all of the same options and then the game will be so "balanced" that it will lose the flavor I like so much.

Agreed.

There's nothing Star Wars-y about swarms of Z-95s. The rebels value their pilots too much to swarm them.

And they aren't supposed to have endless manpower to waste on swarm tactics.

When I play Imperials, I almost exclusively use regular TIE Fighters plus Howl, with the occasional Flight Controller upgrade. They throw out 5 dice with a re-roll at that point and only cost 8 points. Howl+5 TIEs is only 56 points. Adding Flight Controllers brings that up to 62. If you can activate all of them at once (Expanded Hanger ISD plus a token), you can get a 29 blue dice alpha strike with 5 re-rolls. On average, that that equates to 3 dead X-Wings or B-Wings. If they die after that, who cares?

I tend to find TIE swarms pretty scary, especially when Imperial fleets come to play the squadron game.

Howlrunner + Dengar turns an ordinary TIE Fighter into a cheap Interceptor - four antisquadron, effective counter two, both with re-rolls. Can be surprisingly nasty for eight points apiece, and you're getting two aces with those oh so handy defence tokens, each of which is buffed by the other.

Howlrunner + Dengar + 3 x TIEs = 60 points.

TIEs are rarely going to win you the fighter battle, unless you're fielding huge numbers of them. But that's not really the point. If they can hold up your opponent's bombers for long enough to stop them attacking ships, they've done their job, and if they go down you're not losing too serious a number of points. Plus, if your opponent doesn't bring a lot of squads, or a similarly composed fighter screen, you can always not commit them to save the points. Just because you bring fighters doesn't mean you have to use them.

Howlrunner + Dengar turns an ordinary TIE Fighter into a cheap Interceptor - four antisquadron, effective counter two, both with re-rolls. Can be surprisingly nasty for eight points apiece, and you're getting two aces with those oh so handy defence tokens, each of which is buffed by the other.

Howlrunner + Dengar + 3 x TIEs = 60 points.

TIEs are rarely going to win you the fighter battle, unless you're fielding huge numbers of them. But that's not really the point. If they can hold up your opponent's bombers for long enough to stop them attacking ships, they've done their job, and if they go down you're not losing too serious a number of points. Plus, if your opponent doesn't bring a lot of squads, or a similarly composed fighter screen, you can always not commit them to save the points. Just because you bring fighters doesn't mean you have to use them.

They seem like cheap interceptors until you add in the costs of support fighters that buff them. After all, you can get 5 actual Interceptors for 5 points cheaper, compared with 3 Interceptors and 2 not quite Interceptors. Denver and Howlrunner do have greater durability at least.

If I can remember, I will put my money where my mouth is and try to run that ISD/Goz/Goz/+.

*Gamma Squadron

TIE Interceptor

Standard Stats

Counter 2

Swarm

Points: 16

Scatter Token

"When an enemy ship at close-medium range declares a squadron as the target of an attack, it cannot declare more than 3 squadrons with Swarm as a target from that hull zone this turn."

Officer Upgrade - pts ?

SQUADRON COMMAND - if all squads activated by this command are the same, double the number of activated squads.

As if Rhymerballs needed more help..

Or make it be just squadrons with the "swarm" keyword. I mean, keywords mean things. And I feel like swarm fits nicely with activating a lot of squadrons, while also excluding all current and projected bombers, and those nasty good rogues.

What swarms don't need is something to reduce damage against them. That'd be too much help, IMO. Though the idea about limiting the amount that can be attacked in a single volley seems fair (as the idea of swarming is to overwhelm, thus reducing the effectiveness of a defense)

Kamikaze (10 points) - squadrons activated by this ship can take one damage to deal one damage on matching hull zone of ship they performed an attack on.

That should be squadrons with Swarm, otherwise TIE Bombers, Y Wings, and B Wings would love that upgrade.

This special character grants models with swarm within distance 1-2 to use their swarm bonus against ships. Not a tremendous increase in damage, just .25, but it means that if you still have fighters left you can get more damage against ships or even get the alpha/plink away at enemy frigates. You could keep them with Rhymer, sure, and be a great fighter screen protecting your bombers. Because they are still fragile, it's not that big of a deal.

A far as needing to constantly use squad commands to keep them positioned, that's actually not true. Part of using A-wing swarms is that you can use their speed to keep ahead of ships movement. That usually buys you 1-2 turns of shots before they get away. Giving rerolls to TIEs against ships puts them at the same level of anti ship damage as A Wings for cheaper. Sounds like Imperial Synergy to me.