I played a kanan biggs list and got destroyed. How should i set the ships ( formation) and how hould i fly it?

You're in the wrong place, friend.

This is the thread you are looking for.

Would probably be easier to help you if we knew what your list was.

1 hour ago, Darth Landy said:

Would probably be easier to help you if we knew what your list was.

Note i dont have intregrated astromech

Kanan Biggs (100)

Kanan Jarrus (46) - VCX-100
Twin Laser Turret (6), Jan Ors (2)

Biggs Darklighter (29) - X-Wing
R2-D2 (4)

Gold Squadron Pilot (25) - Y-Wing
Twin Laser Turret (6), R2 Astromech (1)

12 hours ago, Gold_SquadronPilot said:

Note i dont have intregrated astromech

Kanan Biggs (100)

Kanan Jarrus (46) - VCX-100
Twin Laser Turret (6), Jan Ors (2)

Biggs Darklighter (29) - X-Wing
R2-D2 (4)

Gold Squadron Pilot (25) - Y-Wing
Twin Laser Turret (6), R2 Astromech (1)

First, replace the gold squadron with the Phantom. Not only is it a cheaper way to get a second TLT shot, but it synergizes well with everything else. Obviously the lack of IA is just downright less efficient than it could be, I would suggest proxying it if your friends are willing to let you do it, or borrowing it for a tourney.

As for Kanan's outfit, it's pretty well established that for crew there's basically two options - either full offense via Finn (and usually Rey, but the second crew could be played with in this variation) or Recon/Rey. Recon/Rey fits the more defensive mode that you seem to be going for via R2D2 on Biggs. FCS is almost mandatory imo, though you could make a case for AdvS or even Accuracy Corrector (I don't believe in AC as 2 hits these days is next to meaningless of most of the meta, but some swear by it). AdvS opens up the dial abit to allow you to more reliably get focus tokens for Kanan's ability, yet in this meta of 2-3 ship lists being dominant, I find it hard to pass up on the FCS, which not only helps set up the TL+F 4-5 dice primary for the next turn, but it also ensures you have a modifier for your end round TLT. If my math is correct, you should have 2 points after my recommended upgrades. The common idea is to put Tactical Jammer on Kanan, giving Biggs 3-4 dice and R2D2 to regen, keeping him around for awhile to protect Kanan. If you wanted to try something a bit different, you could put either Anti-Pursuit Lasers or Ion Projector on Kanan (my vote is for APL between the two). APL might be able to allow you to do damage end game when Kanan turtles ups for defense on otherwise shifty ships. Plus it might help discourage arc dodgers from abusing the R1 blind spot that you don't have Engine Upgrade to protect.

You can read several of my write ups that Asterus already linked for how I approached different matchups, but in general, the list is rather defensive, especially your variant with R2D2 Biggs. People often mistake it for being an offensive list due to the fire power that Kanan brings to the table, but in reality, it's more about maximizing his staying power. Most lists you'll want to delay the engagement as long as possible, but the typical opponent won't let you get more than 1-2 tokens on Rey because they're not stupid. Ideally you'll want a R3 partial engagement the first turn - get some shields knocked off on Kanan while you take your 4 dice primary and TLT onto one of them. Second round they'll have to shoot at Biggs, Kanan should probably be using 2 of his 3 focus tokens to drop their dice, leaving the 3rd for his primary attack, which will likely be a TL+F 5 dice attack. Note that this would be a reason to go with APLs - often the enemy will attempt to ram Kanan to get the shots on Biggs without suffering his fury. But it's also where TJ will be the most effective and helping Biggs out. Here is also where you can make the case for AdvS over FCS as it might be difficult to find a maneuver that clears for Kanan the next round. I've found the 2 turn to often be a good move, utilizing his rear arc (and TLT) to smash your opponent. This would also be a turn to consider bumping Biggs into Kanan - it's a tactic that might leave Kanan exposed, but they'll more than likely continue their assault on Biggs anyways, and if they don't, then Kanan can take a bit more damage allowing Biggs to regen and swoop in the next turn to provide cover. The reason to self bump would be that it can screw up your opponents maneuvers and decisions. Now you have Biggs that is right in front of them, and Kanan off to the side - they have to commit to one of them. And Biggs can typically provide an unexpected block, especially on Defenders. End game if Biggs is still alive, break him off to preserve MOV. Kanan will want to break off if capable to get a few focus tokens stored up on Rey. Then he'll want to use Evade as his action, and more often than not spend the F to drop the opponents dice from 3 to 2, and then spend the evade to take at most 1 damage, often 0. Your opponent will likely be saving his mods for defense as well, but Kanan's shear quantity of attacks, augmented by FCS, will push damage through. And Kanan has more health than the opponent anyways. The one thing is ensuring that they can't R1 blind spot you. You might have to decide to fly over a rock or do the 5k to get the range to prevent the donut hole. And don't be afraid to deploy Zeb (who obviously has Chopper equipped because he's free! Though I suppose you could put a 1pt crew (my bet would be on either IA or Hera) on him if you went with TJ on Kanan) to force a block, especially if they're consistently blind spotting you. But be sure it's the right move - Kanan loses a lot of fire power and you can't undo it.

What Khyros said, for the most part. The only thing I disagree with is Accuracy Corrector being "next to meaningless".

Remember, FCS does not work for both TLT shots -- you can only reacquire after the second shot. So while you can essentially use a TL twice each round, I'm not entirely convinced that that is better than the consistency of the (at worst) two hits AC brings to the table.

Many of the meta ships these days only have 1 agility or even 2, and AC combined with TLT shreds these things like nothing. Even high agility ships like the phantom are not impervious to consistent 2 hits. Yes, they will likely evade most of them, but even a phantom gets a bad roll on occasion and only has a limited supply of tokens to keep it safe. Plus one wrong move -- a bump or a rock -- and you're probably going to see a dead phantom. FCS on the other hand could potentially equal a dead phantom as well, however dice whiffs can still happen even with FCS in the back pocket. Especially if there's no more focus tokens left because Kanan used them all up for his ability.

Now without TLT, I'd say FCS is certainly better than AC, but with it it becomes a much harder decision on which to take. While it's true that AC will have more difficulty with certain aces, in those battles you just try and whittle them down and get a TL when you can and save up for an optimal primary shot.

18 minutes ago, Darth Landy said:

What Khyros said, for the most part. The only thing I disagree with is Accuracy Corrector being "next to meaningless".

Remember, FCS does not work for both TLT shots -- you can only reacquire after the second shot. So while you can essentially use a TL twice each round, I'm not entirely convinced that that is better than the consistency of the (at worst) two hits AC brings to the table.

Many of the meta ships these days only have 1 agility or even 2, and AC combined with TLT shreds these things like nothing. Even high agility ships like the phantom are not impervious to consistent 2 hits. Yes, they will likely evade most of them, but even a phantom gets a bad roll on occasion and only has a limited supply of tokens to keep it safe. Plus one wrong move -- a bump or a rock -- and you're probably going to see a dead phantom. FCS on the other hand could potentially equal a dead phantom as well, however dice whiffs can still happen even with FCS in the back pocket. Especially if there's no more focus tokens left because Kanan used them all up for his ability.

Now without TLT, I'd say FCS is certainly better than AC, but with it it becomes a much harder decision on which to take. While it's true that AC will have more difficulty with certain aces, in those battles you just try and whittle them down and get a TL when you can and save up for an optimal primary shot.

True true, but how often does AC actually do something? First, let's go with the assumption that you only have the single TL from the FCS (no focus tokens, which is a lie - often times, especially late game, you'll have at least one if not two). Now that TL can only be used on a single attack. For the purpose of comparing against the AC, let's say you don't reroll if you get 2 hits.

On the first attack, you will roll:

3 hits = 12.5%

2 hits = 37.5%

1 hit = 37.5%

0 hit = 12.5%

So, you have a 50% chance of using the TL on the first attack to reroll, bringing the results to:

3HTL = 12.5%

3H = 10.9375% (1H->3H + 0H->3H = 9.375% + 1.5625%)

2HTL = 37.5%

2H = 23.4375% (1H->2H + 0H->2H = 18.75% + 4.6875%)

1H = 14.0625% (1H->1H + 0H->1H = 9.375% + 4.6875%)

0H = 1.5625% (0H->0H = 1.5625%)

Which means you have a 84.375% of getting 2+ hits on the first shot (with a 23.4375% of it being 3 hits)

And then for the second shot, there's a 50% chance of having a TL, which you will now spend regardless, and then a 50% chance of naked rolls. The probabilities for a 3 dice TL shot are as follows:

3 hits = 42.1875%

2 hits = 42.1875%

1 hit = 14.0625%

0 hit = 1.5625%

And the naked dice results were already posted, giving you an average result of:

3 hits = 27.34375%

2 hits = 39.84375%

1 hit = 25.78125%

0 hit = 7.03125%

Which means the second attack has a 67.1875% chance of rolling 2+ hits (with a 27.34375% of it being 3 hits).

If we classify these attacks into success (3h), equal (2h), and failure (0-1H), then we find:

2 Successes = 6.4%

1 Success + 1 Equal = 26.0%

2 Equal = 24.3%

1 Success + 1 Failure = 12.0%

1 Equal + 1 Failure = 26.2%

2 Failures = .07%

Now I realize it's possible to roll 3 natural hits and not need AC, so I'm going to do a similar thing for that to compare:

2 Successes = 1.6%

1 Success + 1 Equal = 21.9%

2 Equal = 76.5%

So with that, you can see if we consider 2 hits to be a success, the FCS is only successful on both shots only 56.7% of the time, but is (almost) always successful on at least one. However, if we consider 3 hits to be a success (which against certain match ups that's the only real way to do damage), then the FCS is successful twice 6.4% compared to 1.6%, and successful once 38% compared to 21.9%. And if you consider 1 hit a success, I didn't do the math, but the FCS is ~95% compared to 100% for AC.

So it's impossible to compare every scenario for FCS vs. AC. The above is only when you already have the TL via FCS, which won't happen on the first shot. And against a TIE swarm, the AC is going to end up being better more than likely, and against OL, they're both meaningless. But the two extraneous bits that aren't included in this are the effects of the 4 dice primary and having the TL, and the initial shots where you don't have the TL. But hopefully the above logic helps you to decide which way to go based on the meta you're seeing. The #1 thing to determine is whether 2 hits is likely to do damage, or are you going to need all 3. As you'll see in my write ups, often times I'd use the 4 dice primary TL+F to strip all tokens, and then use the end phase TLT to do 1-2 damage, but 3 was basically required in order to push damage through. I still see that being the case as you have plenty of ships that can mitigate 2 hits easily, though there are more meta lists now that are Rebels, leading to 2 hits being successful more often.

4 hours ago, Khyros said:

True true, but how often does AC actually do something? First, let's go with the assumption that you only have the single TL from the FCS (no focus tokens, which is a lie - often times, especially late game, you'll have at least one if not two). Now that TL can only be used on a single attack. For the purpose of comparing against the AC, let's say you don't reroll if you get 2 hits.

On the first attack, you will roll:

3 hits = 12.5%

2 hits = 37.5%

1 hit = 37.5%

0 hit = 12.5%

So, you have a 50% chance of using the TL on the first attack to reroll, bringing the results to:

3HTL = 12.5%

3H = 10.9375% (1H->3H + 0H->3H = 9.375% + 1.5625%)

2HTL = 37.5%

2H = 23.4375% (1H->2H + 0H->2H = 18.75% + 4.6875%)

1H = 14.0625% (1H->1H + 0H->1H = 9.375% + 4.6875%)

0H = 1.5625% (0H->0H = 1.5625%)

Which means you have a 84.375% of getting 2+ hits on the first shot (with a 23.4375% of it being 3 hits)

And then for the second shot, there's a 50% chance of having a TL, which you will now spend regardless, and then a 50% chance of naked rolls. The probabilities for a 3 dice TL shot are as follows:

3 hits = 42.1875%

2 hits = 42.1875%

1 hit = 14.0625%

0 hit = 1.5625%

And the naked dice results were already posted, giving you an average result of:

3 hits = 27.34375%

2 hits = 39.84375%

1 hit = 25.78125%

0 hit = 7.03125%

Which means the second attack has a 67.1875% chance of rolling 2+ hits (with a 27.34375% of it being 3 hits).

If we classify these attacks into success (3h), equal (2h), and failure (0-1H), then we find:

2 Successes = 6.4%

1 Success + 1 Equal = 26.0%

2 Equal = 24.3%

1 Success + 1 Failure = 12.0%

1 Equal + 1 Failure = 26.2%

2 Failures = .07%

Now I realize it's possible to roll 3 natural hits and not need AC, so I'm going to do a similar thing for that to compare:

2 Successes = 1.6%

1 Success + 1 Equal = 21.9%

2 Equal = 76.5%

So with that, you can see if we consider 2 hits to be a success, the FCS is only successful on both shots only 56.7% of the time, but is (almost) always successful on at least one. However, if we consider 3 hits to be a success (which against certain match ups that's the only real way to do damage), then the FCS is successful twice 6.4% compared to 1.6%, and successful once 38% compared to 21.9%. And if you consider 1 hit a success, I didn't do the math, but the FCS is ~95% compared to 100% for AC.

So it's impossible to compare every scenario for FCS vs. AC. The above is only when you already have the TL via FCS, which won't happen on the first shot. And against a TIE swarm, the AC is going to end up being better more than likely, and against OL, they're both meaningless. But the two extraneous bits that aren't included in this are the effects of the 4 dice primary and having the TL, and the initial shots where you don't have the TL. But hopefully the above logic helps you to decide which way to go based on the meta you're seeing. The #1 thing to determine is whether 2 hits is likely to do damage, or are you going to need all 3. As you'll see in my write ups, often times I'd use the 4 dice primary TL+F to strip all tokens, and then use the end phase TLT to do 1-2 damage, but 3 was basically required in order to push damage through. I still see that being the case as you have plenty of ships that can mitigate 2 hits easily, though there are more meta lists now that are Rebels, leading to 2 hits being successful more often.

The guaranteed two hits do actually do something though a fair bit, even with ships that have decent agility. We all know green dice can be fickle, and ships only have so many tokens and once they run out, it's not that hard for two to punch through. Your write-ups also have instances where your dice went cold, even against a decimator, and that just would not have happened with AC. So I think basically it balances out in the end, and just really depends on preference and personal play style.