So I'm looking at the TIE Striker expansion's new Lightweight Frame card, and it reads

"When defending, after rolling defense dice, if there are more attack dice than defense dice, roll 1 additional defense dice"~Lightweight Frame (it also contains a clause of not working on ships with 3 evade or more, but that's irrelevant right now)

Well, first of all, at the cost of some fantastic cloak upgrade, you could give this to a Phantom, for 5 defense dice while cloaked, or 6 at range 3, but good luck finding something tossing 5 to 6 attack dice.

Secondly, my first question on this forum was "Why aren't there more competitive TIE Punnishers?" Well, according to one reply

"Punishers do universally suck though. 40 points 9 health 1 defence no regen is going to die before it can do much."~thespaceinvader

Following what he says, unless you're running some fringe HWK-290 based list, I doubt that there's going to be many 1 dice attacks, so it's safe to say that with Lightweight Frame, your Punnisher has 2 evade dice. Though this may come at the cost of Guidance Chips (an amazing upgrade), we now have the evasive capabilities of unmodified Rebel starfighters. That and a 40 point TIE Punnisher build is poorly thought out. It should be 35 at most.

A TIE Bomber has already an evade of two. While there's plenty of ships throwing 2 dice at you, being able to give it another evade brings it to the evade level of a TIE Fighter, when up against something with more than 3 dice.

I feel like this could be able to bring back TIE Bombers in some small capacity in competitive. Am I on to something, or do I need some sleep? In my area, I'm going to try running an Evade 2 Punnisher, and see if I can't win me a tournament. Wish me luck!

You're giving up guidance chips or long-range scanners. A missile bomber is not going to like that. The tie shuttle, on the other hand, could probably use lightweight frame if you've got the two points. Also, if you're just using it as a bomb-deliverer (fancy that), then lightweight frame is again OK if you have the points.

Tie Shuttles will like it.

There is an idea of Tomax Bren using it with Homing Missile and Extra Munitions (and Crack Shot). The idea being that maybe he doesn't need the GC if he uses the TL for re-roll. Tomax Bren is still useful after firing his Missiles as he can fire with Crack Shot. So...it might be better to keep him alive. It's a thought.

That's a better idea than I had! I'll remember this. Introducing, a Bomber Ace.

I like the idea of putting it on Bombers with mines (so pretty much Deathfire).

Following what he says, unless you're running some fringe HWK-290 based list, I doubt that there's going to be many 1 dice attacks, so it's safe to say that with Lightweight Frame, your Punnisher has 2 evade dice. Though this may come at the cost of Guidance Chips (an amazing upgrade), we now have the evasive capabilities of unmodified Rebel starfighters. That and a 40 point TIE Punnisher build is poorly thought out. It should be 35 at most.

I feel like this could be able to bring back TIE Bombers in some small capacity in competitive. Am I on to something, or do I need some sleep? In my area, I'm going to try running an Evade 2 Punnisher, and see if I can't win me a tournament. Wish me luck!

I have been musing on this myself. My thought processes:

• TIE Punishers are a beast of a ship - much like an ARC, 9 hit points covers a multitude of sins - but can't dodge for jack. and once their ordnance is gone, struggle to do anything with their expensive, 2-dice popguns.
• Lightweight frame gives them effectively agility 2. Because that's still only 2 green dice, it also means they'll still get their range bonus against range 3 attackers, so you should get that extra dice 99% of the time, which on an expensive ship makes it a pretty good deal.
• Taking Lightweight Frame means no guidance chips. It also means no long-range scanners. Since a missile-armed punisher needs to get its target lock (and struggles to do so at lower PS), the best missile you can arm it with is cluster missiles - range 1-2 rather than range 2-3, so you can move into range 3, lock, and then let the other ship move into missile range. As a side bonus, as two separate attacks, cluster missiles don't work too well with guidance chips. They do, however, work very well with....
• ...Accuracy Corrector. Which, as a side benefit of that, gives the punisher a fairly respectable primary attack once the missile racks are empty. Certainly, it lets you boost, K-turn, or spend your focus defensively and not have your attack output suffer.

That gives you:

• Cutlass Squadron Pilot - Accuracy Corrector, Cluster Missiles, Extra Munitions, Lightweight Frame x 3

Which weighs in at 96 points - leaving enough for one set of mines (Cluster Mines or Connor Nets) or two sets of seismic charges. In either case, the ship carrying it already has extra munitions, so gets a reload of the bomb as well.