So I'm having trouble filling out this 3 ace list. My list as it stands is as follows:

TIE Advanced: · Darth Vader (29)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Engine Upgrade (4)
TIE/x1 (0)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
TIE/fo Fighter: · "Omega Leader" (21)
Juke (2)
Comm Relay (3)
-- TOTAL ------- 61p. --

Now I have ran Rexlar Brath x/7 with pred and mk II with some success. (hard to judge list validity when I'm not that good). I am toying with swapping him out for Carnor Jax (PTL/AT/Hull). That leaves me with a shield upgrade to put on OL.

Any advice would be very appreciated. Oh, and do I fly these guys formed up?

Thanks

You probably don't fly them in formation. Rex is good, Maarek Stele for the same points is another option that would leave you with enough for an upgrade on OL or maybe Predator on Vader. Overall, I'm not a big fan of defensive upgrades on OL for this list. She's already reasonably tough, and of she's drawing shots early, it lets Vader go maximum aggro, which is going to be good. Jax works as well, but it honestly comes down to who you're most comfortable flying.

Generally speaking I think Colonel Vessary is probably a better choice here than Rexler or Mareek because of his natural synergy with both of the pilots you listed. You got two pilots that love to stay target locked and everybody loves free TLs on Vessary.

What about this?

TIE Advanced: Darth Vader (29)
Predator (3)
Engine Upgrade (4)
TIE/x1 (0)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
TIE/fo Fighter: "Omega Leader" (21)
Juke (2)
Comm Relay (3)

TIE Defender: Colonel Vessary (35)

Veteren Instincts (1)

TIE/x7 (-2)

Twin Ion Mk 2 Engine (1)

This comes to 98 points. That gives you a nice initiative bid if you feel like shooting first or moving second, depending on your opponent. If you wanted you could also drop Vader to Lone wolf and add stealth device or hull upgrade to OL. Sorta depends on how you typically see yourself flying Vader in a 3 ship list like this.

Your post title grabbed my eyes specifically because I've been running those two guys together for the last couple months, in a list I really like:

TIE Interceptor: Carnor Jax (26)
Push the Limit (3)
Royal Guard (0)
Autothrusters (2)
Hull Upgrade (3)
Rexler Brath (38)
Expertise (4)
Tie X/7 (-2)
Twin Ion Mk. II (1)
Omega Leader (20)
Comm Relay (3)
Juke (2)
Total: 100 pts

This is my current favorite list. Omega Leader is my knight who can take anyone 1 v 1. Carnor (my favorite pilot and ship in the game) is the shield that prevents focus spending to reduce damage. Rexler is the sword that hits hard, especially once you've broken through the other guy's armor. With expertise, Rexler gets free offensive modification and can still have a focus AND evade for defense, or you can spend the focus on his ability if you have an uncontested shot. I'm scared to run Vader because of his lack of auto-thrusters it what I'm sure will be a large base/turret-heavy meta going forward. If you can get Omega to end game versus just one other ship, you've pretty much got it made. Carnor almost ALWAYS gets targeted first, and it can be really hard to keep him alive without Palpatine backing him up. You can fly perfectly and Carnor can still die really quickly. But all these guys are annoying enough individually that the whole list doesn't fall apart if one dies.

Quick story, yesterday I flew this list in my local league against a guy flying a double-Ghost list (both had Gunner, fcs, anit-pursuit lasers and dorsal turrets). When OL and Carnor died, each Ghost was still alive, but shields were down on both. Rexler had one shield left. With just Rexler, I proceeded to deal a total of 17 crits combined to both Ghosts to close it out for the win. Pretty much every crit you can think of got flipped up at least once. My opponent said he had been playing X-Wing for 2 years and never before seen Rexler's ability used.

For your list, you could switch out V.I. for adaptibility on Vader, and that would give you the point you need to run Expertise on Rexler. With adaptibility, you'd have the option of running all three of your guys at PS 8 (which I like), or you could bump Vader up to 10 if you run into Whisper. Considering how fickle the green dice can be, you'd need testicular glands far bigger than mine to run Vader and Carnor together. Good luck!

Last thing: I usually start with my 3 aces pretty close together in the opposite corner from my opponent, and then I fan out depending on where my opponent goes. Wait for him to commit to the rocks if you can. Splitting them up leaves one of your precious aces open to an early "zerg" that you won't be ready for while you're trying to get your other two in flanking position.

Hey thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it. I do really enjoy flying a defender. So I think I will. I posted this fairly hard set on vader. But now you have me thinking. Unfortunately I am lacking the expertise card as well as adaptablitlty.

Well now I have more to think about.

1 hour ago, hotwookieluv said:

Quick story, yesterday I flew this list in my local league against a guy flying a double-Ghost list (both had Gunner, fcs, anit-pursuit lasers and dorsal turrets). When OL and Carnor died, each Ghost was still alive, but shields were down on both. Rexler had one shield left. With just Rexler, I proceeded to deal a total of 17 crits combined to both Ghosts to close it out for the win. Pretty much every crit you can think of got flipped up at least once. My opponent said he had been playing X-Wing for 2 years and never before seen Rexler's ability used.

Since I started X-wing just as Wave IV came out, Rexler Brath is easily my most used pilot. He's in almost every list, probably 9/10 tournament lists I make. The last month I've been flying 40 point Rex with Expertise, x7, and Mk2 Engines, and I've probably flipped more cards in this past month than all the other times flying him put together. It's still not necessarily an every-game sort of ability, but man, against certain targets it just ruins their day.

I'm a huge fan of Sexy Rex, but that list is a perfect fit for an ion/d vessery. TLs on both shots gives you an extra damage plus a contol element that will let your other aces chew up any chump that gets ioned. Good times.

But to answer your original question: i'd go for Rex/7 over Jax, that way you have a meaty jouster to soak some damage while the tiny dancers dance.

Rexler is already a terrible idea thanks to how overpriced he is, but putting Expertise on a ship insanely vulnerable to stress is just asking for trouble - you're trying too hard to force his ability and instead you have a 40pt target. If you want a Defender, it has to be Vessery or Ryad as they are the only ones worth their exorbitant cost thanks to their abilities.

Of the two, Vessery fits your list better, and the points saved will allow you to make Vader a credible threat, because right now he will struggle to do meaningful damage and PS11 is complete overkill.

Try this:

Colonel Vessery (TIE Defender)

-'TIE/x7'

-Veteran Instincts

-Twin Ion Engine MKII

35pts

Darth Vader (TIE Advanced)

-'TIE/x1'

-Predator

-Advanced Targeting Computer

-Engine Upgrade

37pts

Omega Leader (TIE/FO)

-Juke

-Comm Relay

26pts

That gives you a 2pt initiative bid (very handy for PS8's and 9's) and hopefully enough firepower to cope with the current game. All three ships will be utterly crucified by stress, though, so any stress-inducing enemy should be killed immediately before they are able to remove one of your ships.

Great adivce guys! Thanks for the info. I just finished off a game on vassal with this list.

TIE Defender: · Rexler Brath (37)
Crack Shot (1)
Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1)
TIE/x7 (-2)
TIE Advanced: · Darth Vader (29)
Predator (3)
Engine Upgrade (4)
TIE/x1 (0)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)
TIE/fo Fighter: · "Omega Leader" (21)
Juke (2)
Comm Relay (3)
-- TOTAL ------- 100/100p. --

I have never used predator on vader before. I really liked it. Of course when I take VI off him I match against ps9 whisper. Pred still was the better choice. I ended up wining with a crack shot on whisper from Rexlar. Rexlar performed well.( did not use his ability at all).

I think next time I'll go with vessery. I sometimes have trouble getting arcs on the targetted ships due to my not so greay flying and planning. I like Rexlar and Maareck for the reason that they don't need back up.

Again thanks for the help.

13 hours ago, MalusCalibur said:

Rexler is already a terrible idea thanks to how overpriced he is, but putting Expertise on a ship insanely vulnerable to stress is just asking for trouble - you're trying too hard to force his ability and instead you have a 40pt target. If you want a Defender, it has to be Vessery or Ryad as they are the only ones worth their exorbitant cost thanks to their abilities.

No, just no. Vessery and Ryad are great, and Rex is more expensive, but that PS8 on a Defender chassis is serious business. I've been running 40 point Rexpertise a lot lately, and he's the man.

1 hour ago, Biophysical said:

No, just no. Vessery and Ryad are great, and Rex is more expensive, but that PS8 on a Defender chassis is serious business. I've been running 40 point Rexpertise a lot lately, and he's the man.

He was (39pt Predator and Twin Ion II's were my preference). He's been my go-to pilot for my whole time playing the game, but his own base cost being too high kills him. He could get away with it and still be viable with the old /x7, but no longer. Expertise seems like madness with the almost certain return of Stressbot and the current existence of Ventress - 4pts wasted when those are encountered and opening up a third reason to target him with stress-dealing effects (since he'll also lose actions and the /x7 evade). Furthermore, the move from an action reliance on focus (from Predator) to one on target locks makes him much more predictable in his target selection and much harder to keep his damage output up when your opponent is sensible enough to force you to switch targets - easily done given that the Defender is nowhere near nimble enough to catch something dedicated to avoiding it. It also weakens him defensively since he won't be taking focus actions - and if he does, he runs the risk of wasting the action if he can't (or doesn't need to) use it.

PS8 is great on a Defender, yes, but Vessery can get it and still cost less than Rex while being so much more effective - there's a reason he and Ryad were the Defender pilots you commonly saw. With the change to /x7 it very much feels that, like so many other ships, that only those two will be viable owing to their ruthless efficiency, and the 'fringe' pilots just can no longer cut it against their doubled-down counters (blocking and stress control) for the extra points over Vessery or Ryad.

The Defender is just too expensive a ship to allow for even small lapses in efficiency, and everything I have experienced with regards to Rexler post-FAQ points to him once again being over that mark.

I like the 39 point Predator version, too. The thing I like about Expertise is that you can Focus for defense or Barrel Roll and still get an attack that has substantial modification. Target Lock is an option if it looks like I won't take any serious shots, but generally I'll focus and save it for defense unless I happen to get some cards through to turn face up.

6 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

I like the 39 point Predator version, too. The thing I like about Expertise is that you can Focus for defense or Barrel Roll and still get an attack that has substantial modification. Target Lock is an option if it looks like I won't take any serious shots, but generally I'll focus and save it for defense unless I happen to get some cards through to turn face up.

Yet the second he gets stressed, he goes from having substantial modification to having none, and four points and an elite slot go to waste. As I said before, the Defender can not afford lapses like that, least of all Rex who is already in an efficiency deficit.

They can only stress one ship at a time, and if you know Rex is the target, you can do things to mitigate the problem. Yes, it sometimes happens, but he's not crippled (as a PTL ace would be). It's not like it's one stress and Expertise is gone forever, and it's not like he's stuck without actions next turn. Asajj is the number one stress source right now, and I've fought that fight plenty of times and not been crippled. Temporarily turning off Expertise is not ideal, but it's not the end of the world.

1 hour ago, Biophysical said:

They can only stress one ship at a time, and if you know Rex is the target, you can do things to mitigate the problem. Yes, it sometimes happens, but he's not crippled (as a PTL ace would be). It's not like it's one stress and Expertise is gone forever, and it's not like he's stuck without actions next turn. Asajj is the number one stress source right now, and I've fought that fight plenty of times and not been crippled. Temporarily turning off Expertise is not ideal, but it's not the end of the world.

What things can you do to mitigate the problem? The Defender is not nimble enough to effectively dodge arcs, and the most common stress effects only require a shot to be taken at him (or in Ventress' case, not even that). One stress doesn't cripple him like a PTL user, but two cripples him more than they, because his special defence (where common PTL users have Autothrusters) is also shut off by it - and with the Stressbots returning that's a hard counter to the build. And that is all assuming the 'Defender tax' of Twin Ion Engine MKII - you and I clearly both take it anyway, but that is no longer a choice - eating into the supposed discount from /x7, which is already less worthwhile, and ensuring that if you don't take it, a single stress will cripple you.

No, Expertise isn't gone forever, but even a single turn where you have a shot but can't use it is wasted potential that the Defender cannot afford, and with Rexler already so painfully over the mark, making it worse with a situational, expensive EPT seems like an insane idea.

Well, the most common form of Asajj (by far the most common source of stress) is 40 points. To swing her arc around is her action. Sometimes she'll need to use it, sometimes she'll TL or Focus. If she is focusing her gun on Rex, a target that with Focus/TL can resist her shots for a very, very long time, then they're effectively canceling each other out. Not ideal, obviously, as you want to get more than your points out of an engagement, but it does leave roughly the same number of points to take on a same number of points in the rest of the opposing squad.

Stressbots I'm not too concerned about. Most lists these days can kill one in a round of shooting, or jump to range 1 from beyond Range 3, or simply get double stressed and run like the dickens for a couple turns to clear it out.

I guess I don't think the Defender is on such a narrow marchin, so I'm willing to accept some sub-optimal matchups for what I consider to be an overall stonger build.

I'll Echo Bio's sentiments regarding 'Rexpertise'. Amazing. Expertise is Soooo much better than Predator on Rexler. You want to put him in a high firepower list though. The other ships have to hit hard.

For that reason, I don't think he works great alongside Omega Leader (who doesn't have a powerful enough attack imho). Its not like it can't work, but with the right support, a Rexpertise squad can just erase a problem enemy ship before it has time to be much of a problem (such as Ventress, a k-wing or stresshog for example).

6 hours ago, Biophysical said:

Well, the most common form of Asajj (by far the most common source of stress) is 40 points. To swing her arc around is her action. Sometimes she'll need to use it, sometimes she'll TL or Focus. If she is focusing her gun on Rex, a target that with Focus/TL can resist her shots for a very, very long time, then they're effectively canceling each other out.

Someone flying Ventress well does not need to move the arc often, because they already have it where it needs to be, forming the wide 'arrowhead' that can be all but impossible to escape once she starts locking you down with stress - and by far a more effective Ventress build in my experience is 44pts: Dengar and Expertise, ironically. Her shots stay fully modified regardless of actions and she can much more easily remove the stress that shuts Expertise off, as well as being much more capable of keeping guns on target than a Defender is. They're not really going to 'cancel each other out' - Ventress shuts off 10% of Rexler's points cost (and severely weakens his shots against everyone, rather than just her) without having to do very much at all, then he's locked to predictable greens if he wants to live any longer than a pre-Veterans Defender would - and at that point he's unlikely to ever escape the stress cycle.

6 hours ago, Biophysical said:

Stressbots I'm not too concerned about. Most lists these days can kill one in a round of shooting, or jump to range 1 from beyond Range 3, or simply get double stressed and run like the dickens for a couple turns to clear it out.

I guess I don't think the Defender is on such a narrow marchin, so I'm willing to accept some sub-optimal matchups for what I consider to be an overall stonger build.

Killing an eight health Y-Wing or nine health ARC-170 in one go is no easy task, regardless of attack dice 'creep'. Anyone flying the Y-Wing version is unlikely to be so naive as to not self-block it or screen it in order to ensure enemies cannot just zip straight to Range 1 (In Braylen Stramm's case he doesn't even need to do that since he does not have the Range 1 'safe zone'), and the second a Defender is double stressed it's in serious trouble because it can't easily disengage entirely (needs straight lines and a lot of space) and will have nothing protecting it.
I played against a Stressbot list a few days ago and this exact scenario played out - the Defender cannot easily set itself up to avoid the Range 2-3 cone (it's not built for dodging arcs like that), and so inevitably it gets caught in it if it actually wants to contribute to the fight. My next move was to immediately Rex get out of the combat as best I could, but not getting the evade on that disengagement move sealed the deal, and a couple of Range 3 pot-shots killed off nearly 40pts of ship just like it used to before Veterans, yet there were no key mistakes in my play I could identify and no extreme dice results to blame.

The Defender being on such a narrow margin seems obvious from examining the pre-Veterans version (trash that only you, I and a handful of others ever bothered with), and the post-Veterans version (phenomenal, considered one of the best ships available), and realising that only two points and that evade seperate them, meaning there is not a lot of granularity there.

Even before the FAQ, Vessery and Ryad were the pilots you saw because they were the best ones for the cost - making the /x7 title so much less efficient only makes that worse. It's the unfortunate side effect of the way FFG apparently designs pilots (one or two really good ones, the rest considerably less so) that lead to Vessery and Ryad being so good the whole ship had to suffer for them: the level they apparently had to be brought down to killed off the viability of the others and left us with yet another two-pilot expansion - uniquely the first where the fix card has an off switch.

If you consider Expertise to be a stronger build I'm obviously not going to change your mind, but I cannot understand how you could think spending more points on an EPT that is completely negated by the same weakness that kills their actions and their 'fix' title and for which there are tons of sources, to be a good idea over Predator, which is always active and always useful (Expertise is worthless for blanks, for example).

3 hours ago, blade_mercurial said:

but with the right support, a Rexpertise squad can just erase a problem enemy ship before it has time to be much of a problem (such as Ventress, a k-wing or stresshog for example).

I'm curious as to what you are fitting into 60pts that will be able to, alongside Rex, delete a Y-Wing (8 HP), K-Wing (9 HP) or Lancer (10HP) in one round, or all keep putting damage on said target for enough consecutive rounds to stop it doing anything in time.

44 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I'm curious as to what you are fitting into 60pts that will be able to, alongside Rex, delete a Y-Wing (8 HP), K-Wing (9 HP) or Lancer (10HP) in one round, or all keep putting damage on said target for enough consecutive rounds to stop it doing anything in time.

Well, I'm not going to give specific lists at this time, since I haven't had enough table-time with them to vouch for their effectiveness, but here are a few possibilities:

Upsilon, phantoms, ordnance-laden bombers, Quickdraw or any 3 attack ship packing crackshot (such as Strikers & other TIE/sf).

Destroying 9/10 health in one turn is a stretch, but doing it in two turns is not. And that usually suffices, considering Rexler is PS 8 (higher than those 'problem' ships typically field).

46 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I'm curious as to what you are fitting into 60pts that will be able to, alongside Rex, delete a Y-Wing (8 HP), K-Wing (9 HP) or Lancer (10HP) in one round, or all keep putting damage on said target for enough consecutive rounds to stop it doing anything in time.

I've run it with a Epsilon shuttle and Pure Sabaac, which is a another big gun in the list as well as Carnor Jax, but there's a lot that can go in there in the faction that can hit pretty hard (Pure Sabaac is key for cost, though).