I think I have identified my real problem with Phantoms:

They are no Defenders

Seriously though, for 2 more pts. you get a faster and more survivable straightforward fighter.

But I'll still try them out in my next wave 5 match

That might be my biggest problem with the poor squadron: other choices.

I think I have identified my real problem with Phantoms:

They are no Defenders

Seriously though, for 2 more pts. you get a faster and more survivable straightforward fighter.

But I'll still try them out in my next wave 5 match

That might be my biggest problem with the poor squadron: other choices.

Yeah ... I'm sorry to say this - but to me right now the generic Phantoms are as useful as generic YT-666.

Maybe we'll get some sort of upgrade that will help out these types of ships? Bonus points if the that helps the Phantoms deals with a space station.

Yeah ... I'm sorry to say this - but to me right now the generic Phantoms are as useful as generic YT-666.

I dunno, Phantoms are speed 4 and have a better battery than the YVs. They also lack heavy, which is why YVs can't function like heavier B-Wings. In the very least Phantoms can skirt around the battlefield effectively at speed 5 (Squadron phase move 4, then +1 for cloak), and then pursue ship targets with speed 1 after performing a squadron phase battery attack. It's kind of like a mini-rogue, just at the end of the squad phase and not as far.

I have the feeling the best use for Phantoms will be setting up a one-two punch with Initiative. Send them in at the end of a turn to strike, they attack, cloak back into activation range. Next turn activate them at turn start and strike.

Yeah ... I'm sorry to say this - but to me right now the generic Phantoms are as useful as generic YT-666.

I dunno, Phantoms are speed 4 and have a better battery than the YVs. They also lack heavy, which is why YVs can't function like heavier B-Wings. In the very least Phantoms can skirt around the battlefield effectively at speed 5 (Squadron phase move 4, then +1 for cloak), and then pursue ship targets with speed 1 after performing a squadron phase battery attack. It's kind of like a mini-rogue, just at the end of the squad phase and not as far.

I have the feeling the best use for Phantoms will be setting up a one-two punch with Initiative. Send them in at the end of a turn to strike, they attack, cloak back into activation range. Next turn activate them at turn start and strike.

Seems like a risky plan that hardly works out - but at least there is a plan.

But again - thats such a corner case ... I feel I'm better off with Interceptors and Intel in any case.

Cloaking back into activation range would be a cool idea - but range 1 is so limiting!

Interceptors and intel require balling.

Phantoms spread out to cover space, and can focus fire if necessary.

Interceptors. Long range alpha strikers

Phantoms. Defensive space blockers.

More than 4 phantoms and something has gone wrong. Ship escort there is no better squadron.

Interceptors and intel require balling.

Phantoms spread out to cover space, and can focus fire if necessary.

Interceptors. Long range alpha strikers

Phantoms. Defensive space blockers.

More than 4 phantoms and something has gone wrong. Ship escort there is no better squadron.

I agree with your analysis of Inteceptors vs. Phantoms, they clearly have different roles and excel at different fields. But I (like others) have still difficulties imagining the phantom to find a niche which is worth occupying. You mentioned defensive space blockers but I dont think that they have the sustainability to survive an alpha strike at all. Their ability only comes into play in at the end of the squadron phase, meaining everyone and their dog (if eligible) has already attacked once you are allowed to jump off.

Only thing that somehow worked for me so far is getting into the fray last in the ship phase via squad command, finishing off something wounded, then repositioning in the squadron phase to not require another squadron command in the next ship phase, freeing squadron command slots. But it seldomly works that good, it requires lots of prerequisites to be met, and even then they perform rarely better than a rogue aggressor would anyway..

Ofcause that is only my experience after two games with phantoms. I was wrong with the raiders potential till the clonisher came up, so I might as well oversee the potential with the phantom..

I'm disappointed at the implementation of Cloaking. The lore doesn't come through at all. In the lore, while the cloak is active they are suppose to lost to enemies, slow, and can't shoot. The Phantom also has 2.5 times the firepower of a normal TIE, and it also has shields and hyperdrive. I'm not asking for exact thematic rules, but they missed the mark a lot with the Phantom, and it's also overpriced. As the stats are now it shouldn't be more than 13 points.

Even though it's very hard to simulate a cloak thematically, I'm sure there is something better they could have come up with to make it closer to the lore.

It sounds to me like the problem most people have is that the basic Phantoms aren't all Whispers

Whisper is one of the best squadrons in the game considering she's in the imperial list.

Her otherwise perhaps underwhelming cloak becomes really something due to her text.

She's hard to kill thanks to scatter + brace + 4 hull.

And she has strong attack die against both squadrons and ships.

To appreciate the regular phantoms you first need to recognize whisper and her versatility.

Hi

Just finished my Phantomball tests. I field Rhymmer+8Phantoms. Phantomball do lots of damage. My opponent filed TRC90 Fleet with ackbar. Those corelians vaporised very quickly. I took 2 per round (at the start one in round 2nd, 2 in round 3rd, 1 in round 4th and 1 in round 5, rest was killed by ships) in round 5 only rusted wrecks of rebel scums remain.

Tactic

Those extra move is briliant in Phantomball. My opponent end his move out or range medium from phantoms in round 1 at the end of my squadron phase all where on range thanks to the cloak. I had initiative. I move rhymmer first to gave phantoms acces to those corelians. Then left them without orders. This was my only order given to fighters in entire game. Those extra move give me mobility to move and shoot next turn. CLOAK IS AMAZING WITH RHYMMER!!!

Unfortunerly 2red non bommber dices are very unpredictible. Only to my ISD2 I was able to kill those pesky little buggers

NairoD, what did the opposing squadron wing consist of?

Hi

Just finished my Phantomball tests. I field Rhymmer+8Phantoms. Phantomball do lots of damage. My opponent filed TRC90 Fleet with ackbar. Those corelians vaporised very quickly. I took 2 per round (at the start one in round 2nd, 2 in round 3rd, 1 in round 4th and 1 in round 5, rest was killed by ships) in round 5 only rusted wrecks of rebel scums remain.

Tactic

Those extra move is briliant in Phantomball. My opponent end his move out or range medium from phantoms in round 1 at the end of my squadron phase all where on range thanks to the cloak. I had initiative. I move rhymmer first to gave phantoms acces to those corelians. Then left them without orders. This was my only order given to fighters in entire game. Those extra move give me mobility to move and shoot next turn. CLOAK IS AMAZING WITH RHYMMER!!!

Unfortunerly 2red non bommber dices are very unpredictible. Only to my ISD2 I was able to kill those pesky little buggers

Oh wow ... a new Rhymerball then. How exciting.

NairoD, what did the opposing squadron wing consist of?

NairoD, what did the opposing squadron wing consist of?

6A wings. All decimated by 2 Raiders (one instigator) with OE and fletchett Missiles.

So the opposing squadron force vaporized before it became a threat - nice!

Interesting to read about your use of cloak, taking a speed-1 jump to stay on bombing targets.

I had some luck with dices (OE helped here). Instigator pinned them. First activation was second raider and he do 2 dmg to all of them. Instigator took some damage on shields but from the side where no TRC where present.

I rolled trice 2 blanks on phantoms during whole game when shooting on TRC90. Usually I rollled 1 or 2 hits. One strike was epic 4 damage on corvette without shields. Face of my opponent was priceless.

I rolled trice 2 blanks on phantoms during whole game when shooting on TRC90. Usually I rollled 1 or 2 hits. One strike was epic 4 damage on corvette without shields. Face of my opponent was priceless.

I bet it was

Won't see 4 hits very often though

Don't know if anyone as mentioned it earlier, but the cloak for generic phantoms actually does simulate the original X-wing game somewhat: If the phantom moves in to fire first, it exposes itself to enemy fire before it can recloak and move away. This has been the problem with generic phantoms in X-wing game and why most lists there use the aces like whisper.

On to my two cents for armada strategy: while cloak seems inferior to rogue, with squadron commands it is the only squadron that can move twice, before AND after its attack. If one is running with non-rogue squads anyway one should having a squad activating ship available.

Phantoms win by local superiority. Just like how one wins the ship game by positioning their ships to gang up on the opponents' at the right time without unnecessarily exposing them to return fire. If using squadron commands, one's cloak move should be away from enemy squads and maybe toward enemy ships' predicted direction to threaten them. Next turn squad command them to move in and attack again. If unable to use squad commands next turn, cloak move such that each phantom is engaging only one enemy squad, as much as possible. Either way, this forces the enemy to also spend squad commands and move towards you to engage, and phantoms threatening to overwhelm certain squads next turn will put the enemy in reaction mode. Also, cloak moving towards own ships allows one to stay in command range of ships while drawing opponent squadrons away from their own ships and into ship flak.

cloak's advantage over rogue is that the move allows it to escape engagement. hence phantoms might do well in mixed-squad lists as a specialist unit and can move to engage bombers and intel squads that would otherwise be shielded by normal and escort-aura squadrons.

Muelmuel, the problem is it doesn't kick in until the end of the Squadron face, long after the Phantom's have been attacked by a large chunk of the enemy Squadron. Meaning, they are no more survivable than anything else. That's the problem I see with cloak.

The only way to avoid this is to have both higher activations and initiative. Which if I have that I'm going to be doing more affective things than shuffling around some Phantoms.

At least Whisper feels like a cloak fighter.

Muelmuel, the problem is it doesn't kick in until the end of the Squadron face, long after the Phantom's have been attacked by a large chunk of the enemy Squadron. Meaning, they are no more survivable than anything else. That's the problem I see with cloak.

The only way to avoid this is to have both higher activations and initiative. Which if I have that I'm going to be doing more affective things than shuffling around some Phantoms.

That or run them with TIE Advanced. Early on your Phantoms need to worry about getting focus-fired. By the time the squadron dust-up is coming to a close, the ability to do so is quite reduced but the benefit from Cloak is still very useful for getting focus-fire of your own (or to flee from what pockets of it remain). The main difficulty in using the Phantoms seems to be in getting them to live long enough and that's what the Advanced are for.

Whisper is super swell, though, and works just fine without any additional help.

Guys, I'm going to play my first match with these tomorrow but am still undecided about 2 fleet variations.

So it would be great if as many of you as possible could head on over to the fleet builds sub-forum and share your opinions / advice

The thread there is titled "Stealth Strike - help me decide!"

I think it would have been better if they had just given them a scatter, perhaps a special one that can only be used when the Phantom squadron doesn't shoot that turn. Or Whisper's ability as a baseline. Atm if I were to take a squadron of Phantoms, I'd automatically upgrade to Whisper.

Muelmuel, the problem is it doesn't kick in until the end of the Squadron face, long after the Phantom's have been attacked by a large chunk of the enemy Squadron. Meaning, they are no more survivable than anything else. That's the problem I see with cloak.

The only way to avoid this is to have both higher activations and initiative. Which if I have that I'm going to be doing more affective things than shuffling around some Phantoms.

That or run them with TIE Advanced. Early on your Phantoms need to worry about getting focus-fired. By the time the squadron dust-up is coming to a close, the ability to do so is quite reduced but the benefit from Cloak is still very useful for getting focus-fire of your own (or to flee from what pockets of it remain). The main difficulty in using the Phantoms seems to be in getting them to live long enough and that's what the Advanced are for.

Whisper is super swell, though, and works just fine without any additional help.

Alpha-strike is something that every squadron suffers from. Whoever alpha-strikes in the game with a high number of squad activations can easily KO 3-4 frail generics that lack def tokens(3-4hp). Indeed phantoms are no more survivable than other generics. I agree they might find a better home in a mixed-squadrons than a pure phantom ball. The true benefit from phantoms come from their threat potential. Since they can move under engagement without help from intel they do not need to stay within your intel-aura squad, which allows them to really mess up the squad-minigame during the middle phase. If you predict that your opponent will go for them because of this potential threat, then you can draw his fighters away from their ships and into your flak, or maybe in a direction away from your own ships to distract them, or into engagement range of your other fighters, or whatever is beneficial to your strategy.

I do think they could have one black die replace a blue for their anti-squad firepower though.

I think I would have preferred phantoms to have some sort of secret deployment to simulate the cloaking. Have them deploy from an obstacle of the player's choice or something.

I like cloak as it is even when I am not sure if it worth the nearly 2pts we are paying for it. I didn't try it as long as the wave didn't arrive yet (my heart is suffering a lot those last weeks XD). Maybe I would like that cloak works as it does with Whisper, I mean, when the phantom are attacked. They would eat the first attack but you could move them to avoid the next ones. But then whisper would almost useless. I am not sure. When I got my phantom I'll see.