What's the best imperial protection for the dengars and Rey's out there?

Is it rebel captive?

Any out of the box tools for this ?

Rebel captive indeed.
Rhymer w/ Title, Tactician, and Snapshot works too (long as they didnt dive into range1, he snapsstreses them at R2 before actions. Just dont have initiative or kanan will immediately remove it anyway on a white move)

what, no QD expertise?

fight fire with fire!

yes, you'll die but you're cheaper and expendable (still a tie fighter!)

Want a truely hilarious counter to it?
Put Rebel Captive on Echo/Whisper....

Yes they can still tag them before they cloak but w/o expertise they will really not like doing that.
Did that once with Echo and i faced Rey who had an init bid. That was funny, i was never in arc due to flight patterns and disabled expertise so she literally never wanted to shoot me even if it was range1 as it was completely raw dice. Meanwhile i mulched her lol

Another tool that can potentially be used is TIE/D with flechette cannon.

8 minutes ago, PT106 said:

Another tool that can potentially be used is TIE/D with flechette cannon.

If you put it on ps 10 Rexler Brath........but he loves expertise too!

As many ships and targets as you can put on the board. Numbers! That's the Imperial strength! Numbers!

Yeah! 5 TIE Strikers!

I'm not sure why expertise is often seen as the boogey man EPT. It's very good no question. But if you look closely at it, it's just a slightly better version of predator for a point more, AND doesn't work when stressed.

The only thing it's maybe slightly "broken" on is ships with FCS or K4, as it's easy to have a TL to go with your focused dice almost every turn.

Had a match against a Ketsu + Kath, both expertise and K4 on one, Dengar on the other

I had Ketsu VI and Dengar Calculation variant, we melted each other's Ketsu's at 1 defense and then 0 defense and then Dengar was up against Kath and unable to arc-dodge it so we just did tiny maneuvers each and fired at each other, he did 8 damage in 2 attacks because I evaded 2 - otherwise Dengar was dead and his counter attack would've killed Kath and then it'd have been Final Salvor my 5 vs his 6 - thankfully those lucky evades got me through and a direct hit won it in the end. It was bloody and quick, just pure jousting and then range 1 dance with nothing else but pure dice rolling at each other, his 5 with Kath against my 2x 4 dice (and then 2x 3 dice thanks to weapons failure crit ugh).

I personally hate how easy it is to gain full mods for 'em when you can't stress them, but then I play Ketsu Dengar so I can't complain too much can I ? ;3 but yea, bumping and still getting full mods is a bit too easy-mode.

You need to outfly them. Get behind them, block their sloops... make their abilities useless. If ray with kannan shoots first she really does not care that much if you put one stress in her, if you shoot before her its great, same with dengar if they shoot first you need to put a bunch of stress in them for that to really matter.

At the end of the day they are huge piles of points behind 1 or 2 green dice, out fly them and hit them hard. Like most things in this game (if you ignore the forum whine) it can be countered with good flying. If you are not looking dengar or ray in the face then they are just generics that are paying a good amount for a useless ability. They are only 3 dice (maybe 4 in rays case is she is loaded with fin) you can simply out damage them with more smaller cheaper ships. 5x unguided rocket bombers might just obliterate those big ship list it does not matter if you loose one before it shoots because the other 4 are going to wreck face. I know 5x Mangler M3a dismantles dengar the 5x bomber list should do similar.

4 hours ago, Icelom said:

You need to outfly them. Get behind them, block their sloops... make their abilities useless...

...all of which is easier with loads of ships on the board! NUM-BERS! NUM-BERS! NUM-BERS!

15 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

yes, you'll die but you're cheaper and expendable (still a tie fighter!)

Mid-30s is only cheap relative to 50+ points.

note, not "cheap" but "cheaper"

KYLO MOTHER F'IN REN.

Show Rey the Dark Side! Only this time don't let her use the Force back and read your mind, that didn't go too well...

Seriously, putting one crit through on Rey isn't all that hard, and two rounds of shooting her with no return fire ought to swing things in your favor pretty quick.