Hello guys,
Iv'e been taking a look to the upcomming new squadrons and I think that there is a huge difference between imperial and rebels squadrons in point costs and capabilities.

For instance, the new tie fighter only costs 13 points, rolls 3 black dice... and cannot be targeted while the enemy squadron is engaged with another squadron. The possibilites to create combos with a low points cost is insane.. The new bomber gains a small Home one combo for only 16 points! Tie interceptor is a complete beast with that snipe 4 and you can only get the same by spending 22 points in the E-wing character.

Taking a look to the rebel squadrons, they are all overpriced for their capabilities. The new Dagger squadron looks cool but that swarm keyword is just bull for a B wing. The character ten numb (B wing) looks cool aswell, but having in mind that you can only trigger his skill with less than 50% chances for a cost of 19 points makes it useless. The A wing character is just ridiculous, its just a normal A-wing until the enemy decides to atack her, and there are tons of ways now to avoid getting engaged and just dont hit her (intel, grit, special abilities), and there is no great punishment for doing so with a roll of 3 blue dices, not like the punishment of the 3 black dices of the new tie character. This one costs 17 points, something that an overpriced squadron rebel fleet cannot afford.

In the article the writter mentions the combo with biggs + wedge + luke, forgetting that to hande this combo you need nealry 60 of your squadron points to fly with just 3 squadrons. Almost the half of your total squadron fleet. While the imps are flying with huge more potential damage combos and chances not only to reduce and distribute incomming hits, but also to completely avoid them.

My thouhgts are that the rebel squadron points are way too high, while the imperials are balanced, even a bit low.

Dont know if you have any info about the upcomming tie defender, wont say anithing about it just in case but you will see that squadron fights are going to be asolutely broken.

I love rebels and I always played rebels but with the upcomming waves im thinking of swapping up to imperial.

What do you guys think?

Honestly?

Knee Jerk Negative Bias Reaction.

Even to focus on one thing:

3 Blacks on Average is a little over 2 Damage... And if you happen to be an ace, thats 1 Damage. Or none, because you'll never get an Accuracy....

And Valen's going to do what to Ships in the meantime? Knowing that you do what you do when you CURRENTLY see a Flight of TIE Fighters...

Shoot them with your Ships.

Cheeky bastard isn't immune to that.

Whenever you think something is going to be awful without actually using it yet, my advice is to calm down and wait. Put it on the table. Try to get some use out if it. I almost typed my hands raw back in early wave two defending the "garbage" Raider and nowadays only very few still think it's useless. Even some earlier ships that were initially a bit underwhelming got elements that made them quite effective (see: CR90As and Bs getting Turbolaser Reroute Circuits/SW7 Ion Batteries).

​So basically my advice is "chill out and wait to form an opinion based on actual tabletop results."

Hello guys,

Iv'e been taking a look to the upcomming new squadrons and I think that there is a huge difference between imperial and rebels squadrons in point costs and capabilities.

For instance, the new tie fighter only costs 13 points, rolls 3 black dice... and cannot be targeted while the enemy squadron is engaged with another squadron. The possibilites to create combos with a low points cost is insane.. The new bomber gains a small Home one combo for only 16 points! Tie interceptor is a complete beast with that snipe 4 and you can only get the same by spending 22 points in the E-wing character.

Taking a look to the rebel squadrons, they are all overpriced for their capabilities. The new Dagger squadron looks cool but that swarm keyword is just bull for a B wing. The character ten numb (B wing) looks cool aswell, but having in mind that you can only trigger his skill with less than 50% chances for a cost of 19 points makes it useless. The A wing character is just ridiculous, its just a normal A-wing until the enemy decides to atack her, and there are tons of ways now to avoid getting engaged and just dont hit her (intel, grit, special abilities), and there is no great punishment for doing so with a roll of 3 blue dices, not like the punishment of the 3 black dices of the new tie character. This one costs 17 points, something that an overpriced squadron rebel fleet cannot afford.

In the article the writter mentions the combo with biggs + wedge + luke, forgetting that to hande this combo you need nealry 60 of your squadron points to fly with just 3 squadrons. Almost the half of your total squadron fleet. While the imps are flying with huge more potential damage combos and chances not only to reduce and distribute incomming hits, but also to completely avoid them.

My thouhgts are that the rebel squadron points are way too high, while the imperials are balanced, even a bit low.

Dont know if you have any info about the upcomming tie defender, wont say anithing about it just in case but you will see that squadron fights are going to be asolutely broken.

I love rebels and I always played rebels but with the upcomming waves im thinking of swapping up to imperial.

What do you guys think?

My thoughts are that you've not tried to build any real fleets, that you've yet to try any of the squads, and that you fail to take account likely synergies and counters.

Dagger, for instance, is a B-wing that's slightly better AS for a very low extra cost. How is that bad, esp. when it might have a place in a Rieekan fleet.

And have you considered the utility of 2 blue + 1 black, swarm and Toryn? What if you add Ten Numb? Adar? Yavaris? How about running Dagger with some Z-95s? Including the ace Z-95?

No, I think you've got it wrong.

Toryn, Adar, Yavaris and Gallant Haven.

Imperials cant do this.

Ten Numb, three times a turn with Torryn fishing for that blue crit. Yeah I'll take that...

I get what you are saying, however, if you consider the squadron multiplier effects in the ships it starts to become much cheaper to take rebel aces. Without the ship boosts it doesnt make sense to overload with rebel aces.

A case could be made that Rebel starfighters in general are under-statted compared to Imperial ones.

For example:

These are the real stats for all fighters in the original TIE Fighter game, that is the first time many these fighters appeared in the EU. The TIE Avenger is listed as TIE Advanced, that was how it was called in that game.

As you can see, the TIE Defender and Advanced were roughtly equivalent in shields to B-Wing and an A-Wing, respectively.

For the curious, the LIMGTW column lists the amount of weapon hardpoints the ship had (Lasers, Ions, Missile/torpedoes launchers, turbolaser Guns, turbolaser Turrets, capital-class Warhead launchers).

And the Shield and Hull columns list values that are relative to ships of their same class. For example the 400 SDB of a corvette IS NOT EQUAL to 4 times the 100 SDB of a B-wing or TIE Defender, but actually 16 times that amount.

This table suggests that B-wings should be faster than TIE bombers. Or at least, the same speed.

Their listed speeds and accelerations on Wookieepedia support this:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/A/SF-01_B-wing_starfighter/Legends

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/sa_bomber

Yet, in both this game and X-wing, they are slower.

Of course the Imps look better, there are more of them spoiled than the Rebs.

I'm not sure what to think. I'm not good at fueling the hype machine but I strongly encourage others to do so, otherwise, what would we talk about between releases?

Only time will tell, but I think Imps will have the better hand with CC, but Rebs get far better squads in wave 5. Unless the Advanceds have it, the Empire will only have one squad with snipe. That's not one type, that's one squad! Meanwhile, the rebs get the E wing and possibly any of the four remaining squads from CC.

Consider that some sharp-eyed bothans have squinted at the back of the box and seem to conclude that Dagger Squadron will throw a mix of black and blue dice. So, for a 1 point premium, you're not swapping Bomber for Swarm. You're swapping Bomber for Swarm on black dice, quite a bit better for rerolls than blue dice (when shooting basic squadrons). Every blue die has a 4/8 chance of damaging a squadron, but every black die has a 6/8 chance. When Swarm is active, Dagger Squadron basically has a minimum floor to its anti-squadron value. Not bad for 14 points.

1. I am the Master Kneejerk Naysayer.

2. Its obvious Wind Chill was not factored in while determining Factional Squadron strength.

3. How is this Off Topic?

4. No point. I just wanted an even number of bullets.

We still are missing some rebels and we are probably getting wave 5 along with the CC squadrons so yeah. E-Wings.

Lowest cost imperial squadron: 8 point tie fighter

Lowest cost rebel squadron: 7 point Z-95 headhunter

The most amount of squadrons imperials can place in a 400 point game? 16 tie squadrons (128 points)

The most amount of squadrons rebels can place in a 400 point game? 19 headhunter squadrons (133 points)

Max tie fighter damage:3

Max Z-95 headhunter damage: 6

Now not even taking into account unique squadrons, rebels COULD outnumber ANY other non-unique imperial squadron formations....

..now what were u complaining about?

On 1/31/2017 at 3:13 AM, DrakonLord said:

Lowest cost imperial squadron: 8 point tie fighter

Lowest cost rebel squadron: 7 point Z-95 headhunter

The most amount of squadrons imperials can place in a 400 point game? 16 tie squadrons (128 points)

The most amount of squadrons rebels can place in a 400 point game? 19 headhunter squadrons (133 points)

Max tie fighter damage:3

Max Z-95 headhunter damage: 6

Now not even taking into account unique squadrons, rebels COULD outnumber ANY other non-unique imperial squadron formations....

..now what were u complaining about?

Max theoretical damage is a pretty poor metric for comparing stats. Instead, let's look at...

Average TIE fighter damage after swarm (rerolling acc): 1.88

Average Z-95 damage after swarm (rerolling acc): 1.95

TIE fighter chance to whiff: 12.5%

Z-95 chance to whiff: 24.4%

And the biggest reason the two are balanced...

TIE speed: 4

Z-95 speed: 3

+1 speed is huge. It means, all else being equal, a horde of TIEs will always get the alpha strike on a horde of Z-95's. With an unmodified 4-activation alpha strike, the TIE swarm will pop 2 Z-95's right off the bat.

But of course that's not the only thing to look at, because all else is not equal. The TIE's have other squadrons in their inventory that their swarm-amplifier, Howlrunner, synergizes with (Interceptors, JM). There is one unique non-Z rebel squadron that synergizes with Blount, and it's not a primary interceptor. The ability to confer counter to TIEs in the presence of their swarm amplifier to grant counter 2 is a seriously big deal for them, too. Sure, Z-95's have higher theoretical spike damage. They are also so extraordinarily unlikely to roll it (somewhere close to 1/256, with optimized rolling) that it's pretty irrelevant. TIEs are more reliable, faster, and better supported, and bring comparable if not identical average damage. Which, they should, costing 14% more.

The balance is fine imo. The alarm was dubiously warranted at the time of the OP, but now?

Nothing to see here, move along.

Those're some 'ard facts. . .hyuk, hyuk.

On 26/10/2016 at 11:08 AM, xerpo said:

The A wing character is just ridiculous, its just a normal A-wing until the enemy decides to atack her, and there are tons of ways now to avoid getting engaged and just dont hit her (intel, grit, special abilities), and there is no great punishment for doing so with a roll of 3 blue dices, not like the punishment of the 3 black dices of the new tie character. This one costs 17 points, something that an overpriced squadron rebel fleet cannot afford.

Having used Shara Bey quite a bit both in club games and a recent tournament, i can confirm she is worth every point, even for a squadron-phobe like myself.

It's hard to ignore an A wing ace chasing your fighters about so she has to be dealt with, and given her brace and scatter tokens she generally gets at least three (so 9 blue dice with crits counting) counters in before someone nails her. On her own she's savage, paired up with Tycho and a couple more A wings, she is an absolute bargain.

I think give the reb squadrons a bit more of a chance. There's some absolute gems in there, and thats before looking at combos/ synergies.

I'm inclined to think that any squadron imbalance is tilted towards the Rebels .

Three of their CC aces are devastating to face. Norra Wexley elevates B-Wings into ship-demolishing gremlins, Shara Bey is countered best only with expendable points, high hull, or Intel, and Ten Numb setup with Yavaris and Toryn Farr support can eliminate any of the 3-health Imperial aces with unblockable damage. What's not to love?

By contrast, Empire's only gift out of the CC was Saber Squadron, because Sabers have so much to synergize with to maximize the hurt out of what they do. Cienna works, but with precedent like Shara Bey being absolutely disgusting on counter, simply being obstructed just doesn't feel as magical. At least TIE/Ds and the VTs are pretty good and their aces are also good, but they don't have the power magnification inherent in Norra, and they are not simply unpleasant to face like Shara.

To cap it off, for any ace the Rebellion gets Yavaris allows that ace to attack twice. Empire have Jendon as a compromise, but Jendon is a weak-hulled squadron that needs to be commanded to use his ability best. Yavaris can allow six attacks out of squadrons of their choice, doubling the output of said squadrons, including aces like Wedge to demolish activated squadrons with two attacks.

But in a way, the advantage probably has to sit with the rebels because as a whole, Rebel ships can't stand up to Imperial firepower for long (not without Ackbar at any rate). The problem in my universe is that fighters are so domineering now they aren't just strong, they topple capital ships. Competitively in my area, strong fighter defense lines are undefeated.