More or less.

A ship with 2-dice attacks (or even 2) is no bad thing to have in a squad; because (by comparison) you've got 1-2 more warm bodies to block, threaten range 1 attacks, hunt down agility 0 targets (which they're pretty efficient at) etc, etc.

But there's a difference between 'a useful thing to have in a squad' and 'something you can build a squad exclusively out of'.

It's much like TIE bombers - Long Range Scanners, Homing Missiles, Crack Shot on a Gamma Squadron Veteran is 25 points. It's sometimes called a 'sniper' build, and what it does is put one slow-to-set-up, heavily telegraphed missile shot downrange. Said missile is bloody lethal, and a couple of these ships can that's-all-she-wrote any autothruster-toting ace you care to name in a single shooting phase.

But, once that's done......you're left with 50 points that's providing your squad with basically nothing; a couple of 2-dice popguns and dials and durability that's not as good as equivalent points values of Rookie X-wings.

Which is why you'd never take 4 of them, because even if you took out 2/3 of your opponent's squad in one volley; the remainder would probably beat you.

You can make a swarm work, but the swarm must have an answer for each of the different squad/unit archetypes it might face.

• Agility 0 large ship - Job done. Massed 2-dice attacks, point for point, are the most effective way to kill these things.
• Agility 3+ token-based ship (e.g. focus/evade)- Blocking and crack shot (I guess), but the trick is managing to block and line up the 3-4 shots in arc that you'll need.
• Agility 2-3 with non-depleting bonuses (e.g. concord dawn fenn rau) - crack shot can help, but blocking doesn't. this is probably the swarm's weakest point, because range 1 doesn't help, massed fire doesn't help and blocking doesn't help. This is where stuff like feedback array and black market slicers are priceless.

Alternatively, a 'mini-swarm' with either an ace or a large ship is a nice tool; the latter can engage stuff immune to 2-dice attacks, or prey on action-dependent aces trapped by the swarm.

As with a lot of games; a combined arms force will do better than a single theme.

(which is a shame, as I like flying pure swarms!)

For The Empire!

title, 0 points

Empire only

May not be equipped on unique pilots. (Except Fel's Wrath ;P )

When an ally attacks an enemy in your arc that also has you in their arc, you may deal one facedown damage card to yourself to add one hit result to your allies result. If you remove your last hull, add a crit result instead.

What this title does is treat your TIEs as resource to add extra hits. Making it limited to generics is obvious, you don't want to sacrifice your heavy hitters. Couple swarm leader with this and you have the empire potentially one shotting enemies.

It would also force you to consider blasting that generic TIE that has you in its arc with 1 hull left, so the empire player doesn't sacrifice it to add a crit.

The humble academy pilot becomes becomes a resource the empire player can use to deal out extra damage, but at a calculated risk.

29 minutes ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

For The Empire!

title, 0 points

Empire only

May not be equipped on unique pilots. (Except Fel's Wrath ;P )

When an ally attacks an enemy in your arc that also has you in their arc, you may deal one facedown damage card to yourself to add one hit result to your allies result. If you remove your last hull, add a crit result instead.

What this title does is treat your TIEs as resource to add extra hits. Making it limited to generics is obvious, you don't want to sacrifice your heavy hitters. Couple swarm leader with this and you have the empire potentially one shotting enemies.

It would also force you to consider blasting that generic TIE that has you in its arc with 1 hull left, so the empire player doesn't sacrifice it to add a crit.

The humble academy pilot becomes becomes a resource the empire player can use to deal out extra damage, but at a calculated risk.

That's basically the logic behind Swarm Leader - the 12 point academy pilot is a cost-efficient generator of evades to fuel a Swarm Leader with extra attack dice.

4 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

I've often thought that there should be a TIE Fighter (and by that I mean OT only TIE Fighter stuff FFG's naming scheme) title that says 'PS>2 only. When you are removed from play, an Academy Pilot enters play within range 1 of the board edge of your choice'. Simulating endless ranks, basically, but without increasing the number of ships on the board at any one time.

You'd have to work out how this would code for MoV, but my idea would basically be that the Imperial player in this context could win with a 0 MoV - i.e. his opponent killed all his original force, but then the spawned APs killed his opponent.

I really like the idea of universal Fel's Wrath though. Makes the Swarm something you don't want to joust, instead of something you can joust easily with high-hull ships if you can nuke Howl.

Missions do this. They allow you to bring on a base level, zero upgrade version of a destroyed ship for zero points. However, this is countered by the fact that Rebels would only have to, say, get off the board.

If you wanted to do it for MoV, then yes. It simply counts as 0 and offers no more points for being destroyed. However, I would add a caveat that, in the event that you have no "original" ships left on the board at the end of any given game turn, you lose.

1 minute ago, Viktus106 said:

Missions do this. They allow you to bring on a base level, zero upgrade version of a destroyed ship for zero points. However, this is countered by the fact that Rebels would only have to, say, get off the board.

If you wanted to do it for MoV, then yes. It simply counts as 0 and offers no more points for being destroyed. However, I would add a caveat that, in the event that you have no "original" ships left on the board at the end of any given game turn, you lose.

I don't think the concept works without it being possible to win with the reinforcements. If all you have to do is wipe the original list, it's basically roughly the same difficulty with or without the reinforcements. You could have the reinforcements only arrive at the start of the next round though, giving the opponent an opportunity to clean everything off at once, at which point the game ends because there are no opposing ships on the board at the end of the round.

Also, from the "Canon" Wiki:

"At least a month after the Battle of Jakku, all TIE/ln starfighters were upgraded with advanced weaponry invented by Ved Foslo, allowing them to punch through an enemy fighter's shields as well as hull, destroying them in a single hit."

I don't see a reason why we can't have a title:
TIE/ln - Imperial Only: 0 points
When attacking a ship within range 1 - 2, if this attack hits, after dealing damage, remove 1 shield token from the defender.

17 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

That's basically the logic behind Swarm Leader - the 12 point academy pilot is a cost-efficient generator of evades to fuel a Swarm Leader with extra attack dice.

Yes, my proposal is something that inflicts damage on your own ship though. Whilst swarm leader only offers the potential, by rolling extra fickle polyhedrons, the above offers guaranteed, and can be combined with swarm leader.

As well, it is not as if there are not multiple ways to implement similar concepts already.

As someone who has played imperial swarms a lot, I don't think they need a fix. In fact, I was just thinking the other day about busting mine back out... I think it might be a good counter to Scum Nym.

9 hours ago, Sir Orrin said:

As someone who has played imperial swarms a lot, I don't think they need a fix. In fact, I was just thinking the other day about busting mine back out... I think it might be a good counter to Scum Nym.

Then you still have Nym's partner to deal with, usually a Dengar that can arc you every turn for 4 damage.

1 hour ago, spacelion said:

Then you still have Nym's partner to deal with, usually a Dengar that can arc you every turn for 4 damage.

Sometimes with Dengar, if you take out his partner and still have enough TIEs left, you can keep the TIEs scattered around him, and keep switching out who's in his arc. It has been done.

15 hours ago, Sir Orrin said:

As someone who has played imperial swarms a lot, I don't think they need a fix. In fact, I was just thinking the other day about busting mine back out... I think it might be a good counter to Scum Nym.

Played him with a striker swarm, but not a TIE/ln swarm. It definitely works - he's got a low agility and "only" 10 hits, so he'll fall apart like an overripe melon in a woodchipper to massed fire from a TIE swarm.

The biggest thing to warn you about is NOT trying for range 1 shots. Range 2 is lethal enough and - assuming he's flying the Havoc - the combination of Bomblet Generator and "Genius" means blocking him is actually likely to mean him plowing into the middle of your swarm and then Bwaaaaaaam -ing about half of them with a Bomblet.

33 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Played him with a striker swarm, but not a TIE/ln swarm. It definitely works - he's got a low agility and "only" 10 hits, so he'll fall apart like an overripe melon in a woodchipper to massed fire from a TIE swarm.

The biggest thing to warn you about is NOT trying for range 1 shots. Range 2 is lethal enough and - assuming he's flying the Havoc - the combination of Bomblet Generator and "Genius" means blocking him is actually likely to mean him plowing into the middle of your swarm and then Bwaaaaaaam -ing about half of them with a Bomblet.

Range 2? Range three is plenty lethal enough. From my testing with Scum Nym he basically has to get from outside R3 to arcdodging or bumping range 1 in one round or he gets murderised. A TIE Swarm should be taking him down in a round regardless of where they engage him.

But the real trouble is his wingmate(s). Sure, the swarm can eat him, but Dengar and Fenn and torp scouts and etc eat swarms.

Maybe a fix isn't what's needed but a mental "fix" on how to handle the common top table lists?

So what about a crew card with a modified Reekin ability from armada?

Proposed
"When a friendly ship range 1-2(3?) with a PS 3 or below is destroyed , it remains in the play area and is treated as if it was not destroyed until the end of the turn."

it still limits the swarm a little spending on the ride and protecting the crew card, but should be a reasonable boost to damage or at least create a target leaving the swarm untouched for a round or two.......

If it doesn't work on Black Squadron, no sale.

11 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

If it doesn't work on Black Squadron, no sale.

if it works on black, it works on adaptability ryad.........

Add 'non-unique' somewhere in there.

Heck, I'd prefer to see it decide based on unique vs non-unique rather than PS.

14 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Add 'non-unique' somewhere in there.

Heck, I'd prefer to see it decide based on unique vs non-unique rather than PS.

Anything along the lines of "overwhelming numbers" themed upgrades should definitely exclude unique pilots (I suppose you also need to allow for the possibility of a future Sunny Bounder-equivalent in a TIE fighter). Unless, you know, your reinforcement ship is Jim Mithel, his brother-in-law.

what about this?

Overwhelm

Elite Talent - 1 point (or 2)

When attacking, remove any number of focus or evade tokens from friendly ships at range 1. For every token removed this way, the defender must remove 1 token of the same type.

Howl attacks first with unmodded crap, still can screw that Overclocked Dengar and Attani token turtling.

Edit: Probably can be abused even worse by Attani lists with Manaroo by giving a billion tokens to the user of this EPT.

7 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Played him with a striker swarm, but not a TIE/ln swarm. It definitely works - he's got a low agility and "only" 10 hits, so he'll fall apart like an overripe melon in a woodchipper to massed fire from a TIE swarm.

The biggest thing to warn you about is NOT trying for range 1 shots. Range 2 is lethal enough and - assuming he's flying the Havoc - the combination of Bomblet Generator and "Genius" means blocking him is actually likely to mean him plowing into the middle of your swarm and then Bwaaaaaaam -ing about half of them with a Bomblet.

Planning on flying my swarm at the next store champs, my plan is fly at Nym, get juicy range 2 crackshots, then scatter and try to finish him off if he isn't dead. Then hopefully most of the swarm is left to deal with whatever enemey is left.

^^^ Isn't it worthwhile to take the bomb? If Nym bumps you at R1 and drops a bomblet with "Genius" your guys will probably survive, but that means you get about 5 range 1 modified shots on him, which has a pretty good chance of destroying him right then and there. THat's like 40-ish points gained and less than that lost in worst case scenario.

That's pretty decent outcome. However, a crackshot swarm is often only 6 ships.

The bumped ship won't be firing. Several will eat bomblet and whichever is most damaged will eat autiblaster turret. All it takes is one to be out of arc (and it's hard to concentrate huge numbers of arcs of fire at range 1) and that's only 3 attackers left. If dengar kills one with a torpedo - unlikely but perfectly possible - only 2.

Range 1 shots are nice, but it's easy for a given ship to get no shot at all - when I dont need to strip actions to hurt him, I'd rather fire from mostly range 2 and be confident of the entire squad firing.

On 7/18/2017 at 10:44 PM, Chibi-Nya said:

Scared of a bomb hitting 6 ties in a single explosion T_T But dunno how realistic that scenario is.

Surprised I don't see more of them since Biggs is getting very popular.

On 7/20/2017 at 3:17 AM, thespaceinvader said:

Add 'non-unique' somewhere in there.

Heck, I'd prefer to see it decide based on unique vs non-unique rather than PS.

I would, too. After reading the posts on here and reflecting on it a bit, I think the biggest problem Imperial swarms have is lack of versatility and utility. Everyone else seems to be getting fancy new tools to deal with new situations, but due to the lack of upgrade slots on a TIE Fighter, there isn't much for variety. They can easily come out with another "TIE only" mod that's means for either low PS or 2-ATK ships, special titles that are generic fighter exclusive, or a new Howlrunner-like aura that can be used on someone like Major Striden.

Times are changing. It's likely not that swarms are "weak" but rather they simply do not have the tools to adapt.

On 19.7.2017 at 4:42 PM, Viktus106 said:

Also, from the "Canon" Wiki:

"At least a month after the Battle of Jakku, all TIE/ln starfighters were upgraded with advanced weaponry invented by Ved Foslo, allowing them to punch through an enemy fighter's shields as well as hull, destroying them in a single hit."

I don't see a reason why we can't have a title:
TIE/ln - Imperial Only: 0 points
When attacking a ship within range 1 - 2, if this attack hits, after dealing damage, remove 1 shield token from the defender.

After Dealing damage is a bad timing frame to remove the shield token. I would make it on hit if you really want to go ahead with that.

Though personally I think giving TIE/LN the range 1 bonus in R2 as well would work out much better and make swarms extremely deadly again. Might be too much actually. At least at zero points, I am sure MJ could give is the "correct" point costs for such a weapon upgrade title.