So...I'm toying around with the empire again and I'm looking at how the current meta for wave V squadrons is looking. I mean Defenders have that blue and black that could put out some serious damage, but they are pretty darn expensive and in my games against them they got shut down by A-wings pretty fast.

I mean there are a variety of ways to run an anti-rebel bomber ball...mauler/howlrunner/interceptors...but then how do you counter the "hey I'm gonna hug my ships and you're coming to me"

Or even using a bomber ball these days...build it with defenders?

Or how does the imperial aces work these days? How does the defender ace stack up?

In regards to dealing with the Rebel ball that hugs ships, throw in Rhymer and sit at medium picking off his ships. Sure, nonbomber blue dice is not very good, but threatening with 6 squads will yield 3 damage on average, which is no something to shrug off when you have your ships supporting your squads.

Whisper and Cienna are my favorites. Both their abilities let them stay alive for quite a bit longer, and 37 points of anti-squad isn't bad. I consider them the "Tycho and Shara" of the Empire. Since every Rebel list can add Tycho and Shara and there are no downsides to that.

Wave 5 Imperial aces are significantly better than their normal counterparts.

Jendon has shaken things up dramatically. All those top shelf super expensive Aces can now shoot twice. Its devastating. Lambdas make gozantis sing.

Stele is just a very good all round squadron to take. Defenders are good anti-squadron that don't die to ship AA.

Whisper is a significantly better than a Phantom squadron, especially near a station. (I don't want to say Phantoms are bad, I certainly haven't finished trying them.)

Morna is great, Decimators are great. They need intel, else you're paying 22 points to do something.

Ciena is a fantastic anti squadron Ace, obstruction to make the scatter-denying accuracy less likely is amazing.

Valen will enable new strategies.

Jonus will punish lists that can't pin him down.

Zertik is a super cheap double brace escort. If you want to escort, you want Zertik.

The non-Ace uniques are all straight forward, all have a role to play, fit them in as appropriate.

I've been running 4 Interceptors, and 3 defenders supported by a flight commander VSD-I. Looking to upgrade one Defender to Steele, and maybe get CC for Ciena. The threat range on the fighter combo let's you alpha a few squadrons off the board, and the defenders can do some antiship work late game.

Pair them with Dengar and you got pretty good way to punch through a screen. Then just grab Black Squadron or a TIE Advance and you got a nice counter-escort with a lot of blue and black to shoot at enemy fighters.

Decimators are obscene. Combine with Valen Rudor to ignore the "heavy" keyword. They have grit too.

They dont care whether they are oblitterating generic squadrons or ships. Its all gravy.

Imperial squadrons got a lot more fun with Wave 5 and CC. There finally is an all-purpose fighter-bomber with the defender, the Decimators bring a unique experience to the table, and the new aces have fun abilities.

I love how Valen Rudor essentially gives all your cheap 5 HP TIE Bombers "Escort". Combine that with a Flechette Raider to reduce the number of attacks first and a Chiraneau-powered activation to get those bomber attacks in.

Imperials have a great deal of variety right now. My favorite is an Avenger ISD 3 gozantis and a bomber/fighter screen.

Jendon and Stele are kingpins in the wave V squadron game. Great anti fighter, excellent bombers. I use them in almost every build I run IMP these days, as a bomber I have yet to roll less than 2 damage with stele, and Jendon being both relay and having the ability to let stele attack a second time? buwahaha awesome.

Throw in Rhymer, some advances, a couple standard bombers and a jumpmaster 5k or two and suddenly you're throwing about 7-12 damage a turn at ships. Follow that with Avenger's front arc spec'd for 8-14 damage per shot? POP... rebel ships are dying.

Morna Kee, a real nigthmare! I hate playing against her. You can let her go without your main thrust. She can defend easely against 2 squadrons or AA. With 3 blue dice, even without the bomber keyword, she can do some dommage against ship. The fact that she can retake her defence token is such a pain in the ***

I think one essential thing to keep in mind with the Empire is that you'll need to Alpha Strike to make the most out of your fighters. This is true of everyone from TIE Fighters to TIE Defenders. The only defensive craft really is the VT... with 8 hull to tank an alpha strike in turn and counter to at least swing back a little bit. Everything else is best when activated to be thrown into the fray and get their attack damage out before the ships are destroyed.

Rebel fighters, with usually better hull than their Imperial counterparts, are designed to take the hit and then push back. However, they have less reach because most of them are slower. If you let them alpha strike you chances are you're going to lose many of your fighters.

So what you need to do is activate out of engagement range, push into immediate fights and try to weaken or kill enemy fighters before they have a chance to finish you off. Being mindful of who has initiative and activation order is essential as well, since you don't want to launch your first fighters into combat in the last round only for your opponent to activate Yavaris first and raze a bunch of your craft next turn.

Countering "Hey, I'm gonna hug my ships" Is possible in two ways. One, alpha strike by diving in with Flight Controller interceptors to trade up by nuking their more expensive fighters for your 8/11 pointers. The other is to wait for them to engage, maybe bomb your capital ship a little to chip off hull, before making a deadly counter attack with fighters and killing off his craft with AA shots, to leave your craft uninhibited to do whatever (like fly away to save points or start attacking capital ships when you have some bomber mixes in there).

I actually found Morna less than impressive, but then again she has only faced scatter aces in my games. Watching Tycho/Shara wipe a decimator and Morna put their limits in perspective. For reference, I was facing her. I mostly play rebel.

Ill wager my my attitude will change if they face brace aces and generics sometime.

Decimators are better at dealing with generics than aces. Black dice have no accuracies so they cant block scatter, though ive used it to force a scatter discard since they USUALLY hit really hard (especially Morna with her rerolls). Plus, despite not having bomber, decimators can hit ships pretty dang hard.

Defenders im iffy on. Theyre awesome, but i feel like theyre 1 point too much to be amazing, Still dont think theyre bad at all but i do admit i feel a little bit underwhelmed in the end by their performance.

f phantoms. Not even going to bother talking about why they suck.

Despite running generic VCX all the time in rebels i havnt ran a generic shuttle yet, but Jendon is a ****** especially when paired with someone that hits HARD like Bossk or Maarek or IG88 lol. Having him force a doubletap through IG88 can really scare Shara off, multiple times she refused to even get remotely close to that combo.

My new favourite has to be "rhyming Don stele" or rhymer Jendon and stele... This little group are very easy to use and cause a lot of damage out to quit a threat range, the Don can whack a small ship in two rounds.

JENDON is lovely. Pair Jendon with Jonus (from CC). Add Gozantis and other squads to taste. Lovely. I call it the JJ ball, after you-know-who.

Jendon also loves Vader, Maarek, Saber, Bossk and IG-88 (and probably more besides).