While this is just one example against my regular highly competitive opponent I played a zero no squadron game on the weekend to see if it could be done and I won. AF may not be large ships (i.e. other thread) but there close.

I was running 2x AF B’s, MC30 and 2 x Cr90’s

My opponent was running 2 x Vic1’s, 2 x Gozanti’s and a hell of a Rhymer ball.

I lost one AF and a cr90. If it was not for scatter I would have tabled him on turn 5. The last Gozanti scattered an 8 damage hit and was able to run away.

I let my opponent proxy some of the new imperial squanders.

The game would have been over by turn 4 if I had of brought along a way to create accuracies. The Vic’s braced approximately 16 hits between them before I brought them down.

I also feel if I had of taken AF A’s instead and maybe a cluster bomb or two there would have been a heap of dead squadrons and would not have needed to go so hard on his gunships.

This is not my style of list as I normally play around 100 points of squadrons.

Man your memory is bad. You lost both AF (you flew the second off the table) and the CR90. The MC30 was on 2 hull.

Yes you won but it was a 6-5 with the MOV 8 points. 6 turns is 6 turns what happens next is ...jump to hypersapce

I could do what ifs all day as I made some huge tactical blunders starting with deployment, and in this game if you stuff deployment you have often lost already.

As for squadrons being mandatory. No ofc not but you have to be able to deal with them or move swiftly and ignore them whilst being able to absorb any damage they throw out and destroy the carriers.

If I was not running squadrons I would have a fleet that consisted ships from the ISD, Gladiator, Raider range.

If you don't like squads, don't use em. Break the current squad meta. Don't pout and whine.

I like squadrons and I'm going this route with my Imperials. It's more fun to try new and different things when everyone else is doing what's "good." Worst case scenario I lose a game. Oh noes.

But if you lose enough games then you get a negative OER and a "Promote after every conceivable peer" comment in your packet.

If you don't like squads, don't use em. Break the current squad meta. Don't pout and whine.

I like squadrons and I'm going this route with my Imperials. It's more fun to try new and different things when everyone else is doing what's "good." Worst case scenario I lose a game. Oh noes.

But if you lose enough games then you get a negative OER and a "Promote after every conceivable peer" comment in your packet.

But if "every conceivable peer" is dead you still get promoted.

If the military has taught us anything, it's that you will still get promoted as long as you are just willing to wait long enough that it's "your turn"

Its almost like it was intended that they were limited to 1/3rd from Day one or something....

Lets be fair, the difference in squadrons between merely waves one and two are so significant that they can barely even be compared. Wave 1 to Wave 5 is going to be almost like two entirely different games.

My two cents on top of this: I think the designers genuinely meant for squadrons to be the **** even in wave 0.

Then, by design or accident, I dunno, it turned out not to be the case. Squads just got lumped together and played no real part in the greater game.

Enter wave 1. FFG tried to make fighters more dynamic. Weird stuff happens. Rhymer. Yavaris. Mithel. Gallant Haven.

You can sense that they really want squads to be important and powerful, but it just ends up being weird. Rhymerballs and A-wing swarms. Angry Bees w/o intel. Meh.

Intel, Rogue and Grit start shaking things up, and squadrons become viable at this point IMO. You can now run credible bomber wings - and investing in AS squadrons becomes a real alternative (almost anyway).

And it continues. So yeah, the 1/3 cap was there for a reason, but it took a couple of years for them to get it right.

I agree their intention was that even in Wave 0 that squadrons would be the shiznitz, as you say.

The two things I don't think they fully realized at the time was:

1. The...aesthetic/tacticle joy of rolling a fistfull of dice, even if/when you know rolling the same number of dice over multiple attacks works out better for you.

2. That it was harder to push squadrons around than they originally intended.

You know what would be interesting, GK? I should go back and play Wave 0 only, using what I know now of the game, and see how it turns out.

The Vic always gets it.........