A week ago my friend and I bought 3 starter sets and about £50 each of other ships, he went rebel I went imperial. I thought it would be clever to buy an original TIE and a foTIE so I could swap pilots with my collection, then I got a TIE inquisitor and TIE striker. My pal bought heroes of the resistance and an ARC 170.

I thought a TIE swarm would be a clever move to win through numbers, but of the games we played he wrecked me every single time with Po and the ARC/Falcon/Biggs/x wings. (I had swarms of 5/6 ties) (tbf the TIE fighter not being able to move 1 forward didn't help).

Now we're entering a tournament soon and from what I've read, TIE swarms aren't very strong at all in the current meta. (only having 2 attacks, generally easy to pick off, if don't do damage early, game is basically lost).

What should I do? persevere with the 5 man mini-ace TIE swarm and try to find crack shot's on the internet? or admit fighters aren't for the competitive scene (except Omega leader), and buy imperial vets and a phantom or something?

It depends on your local meta.

If you are going to World's, or Regionals, or similar, no, you are not going to do well with a basic TIE swarm these days. However, for instance, our local Store Champ had a guy show up with a basic Howlrunner + Academies swarm and did fairly well, because the locals there fly a lot of unique lists; its not a lot of netlisters.

But that's not going to fly elsewhere. So really, you need to know what you are going to expect. Considering your friend may show up, and has already trashed your swarm handily several times, you may not want to show up with the same list as it will likely happen again if you meet him in the rounds.

The Pattiswarm with 7 ships is probably the most competitive right now, but it still can struggle against arc dodgy stuff.

I think there's a place for a Tie/Snap Shot swarm in the meta. The A-Wing chihuahua swarm seems to be doing well and its only 5 ships.

Crack Shot or Snap Shot are really needed to make those two dice attacks shine in a competitive setting, if that's where you want to go.

For casual play -- MOAR TIE FIGHTERS!

The TIE swarm is still a powerful list, but to get the best out of it you'll need to practice like crazy. Learn it's strengths (especially blocking) and get a feel for formation flying and you should be able to turn things around. But it's a list that rewards patience - the players that are making the cut and winning tournaments with it are the players that have been flying it since day one (ish).

It seems to me that your concern about the lack of a one forward is highlighting a bit of inexperience - rather than slow rolling to get shots, you need to be thinking about where your opponent is going to move to, then get in his way. With TIEs you should be moving first - you get to pick your position and take your focus token, then hopefully (if you've put yourself in the right spot) he'll fly right into you and not be able to take an action, leaving the rest of your ships free to whittle him down.

Try and keep as many of your ships the same pilot skill as possible, so you can pick and choose your activation order. Max out your numbers as much as you can, and make the numerical advantage count. Most TIE's don't need upgrades, just numbers.

8 Academy TIEs or 4 Academy TIEs and 4 Obsidian Squadron TIES make a good maxed-out swarm, or drop two, upgrade one to Howlrunner and a couple to other Aces like Backstabber and Dark Curse. Black Squadron Pilots with Crack Shot or Snap Shot are also good, but the more upgrades you add, the less TIEs you can take and the more unforgiving your list becomes.

Youngster and Rage plus 7 Academy Mooks is actually a bang up TIE Swarm. Using Rage requires some forethought and the overall style of the list calls for a pretty unique setup and plan. Being able to cover the mat in arcs and respond to any opposing setup is really key. I have been doing very well with the Rageswarm and against a number of different lists. It requires patience and skill to fly but its a very satisfying experience.

If you were looking for a TIE Swarm to take to a competition I would suggest Rageswarm. And lots of practice.

I wouldn't recomend a Tie Swarm to a new player. The thought process to run 6-8 ships is very tiring and often unexperienced players do simple errors that are not common in their regular games. I feel for you that you want to stick with the Empire, but having a decent swarm list is not cheap cause you may need an Epic ship or multiple ships that you wont fly (Crack shots). My advice is to go with Decimator and Whisper or Tie/sf ace. It wont win you tournametns but if you practice a little would win you a lot of games, and it's fun to fly it.

Like others have said, TIE swarms can be good but require a lot of practice to get used to flying in formation. I highly recommend reading the first 3 articles under the heading "Strategy Guides: Movement" in this post. Then go practice what they say. A lot.

Now, a tournament can actually be a great place to practice if you don't go in with the expectation of winning first place. Just go with the expectation to play and have fun and improve your TIE swarm skills and you'll have a good time. After each match, ask your opponent how you could have flown better.

There are several good TIE swarms that have been mentioned so far on this thread, but allow me to mention one (if you have a couple TIE/fo's to throw into the mix) that served me well at regionals a year ago and which might be a tad easier for a new player to cut their teeth on.

Howlrunner + crackshot

Mauler Mithel + Adaptability

Scourge + Adaptability

Omega Leader + Juke + Comms Relay

Zeta Leader + Wired

every ship is PS8 except for Zeta Leader, and they all have ways of boosting their attack dice to 3 or a way to punch damage through. It's a potent little list that catches a lot of people off guard with its firepower.

EDIT: You may have to tweak the individual pilots or upgrades based on what you have available to you, but the core of it is pretty solid.

TIE Swarm will never not be a competitive list. Look for videos of Dallas Parker, who has played this archetype since the game came out and still does today. It's really hard to use, though.

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I had swarms of 5/6 ties

That is the problem, I fear. At least whilst you're getting use to the game, if you want to win with numbers, take numbers. I can fit 5 ships in a squad and have them be TIE interceptors, or TIE strikers, or TIE bombers, or Khiraxz - stuff with 3 attack dice, 4 hull, much more capable dials, missiles, and so on. If you want a 5-ship TIE fighter squad, it's going to be purely elites, and they may not have the ability to make up for the lack of raw muscle.

The TIE swarm can work. It's effective - lethally so - and indeed the one competitive event I won, I won versus 3 torpedo/deadeye jumpmasters with a TIE swarm. Get used to flying one, and you can put the fear of god into players who've rarely ever faced one and don't have a bloody clue what to do.

but, as you found, 2 attack dice is a problem. They struggle to hurt agile ships, and even agility 2 can be trouble - especially against Poe, who gets a focus-to-evade against every single shot.

Making a TIE swarm work requires (a) a lot of practice and (b) a second 'trick' in addition to lots of 2-dice attacks.

There are essentially 4 possible 'tricks' that matter for TIE swarms:

• Blocking - positioning one of your TIE fighters to block your opponents move. No actions means no tokens which means unmodified dice, at range 1 (because if you block them, their position is predictable).
• Crack Shot - it's cheap (in points!) and makes for a **** of an opening salvo. Think of it as one-use ordnance, like a missile or torpedo, but sitting in the elite slot.
• Snap Shot - if Crack Shot is an elite "missile", this is an elite "cannon", giving you a second shot at range 1. Yes, it's unmodified, but two snap shot TIE fighters can thump out a total of ten attack dice per round if someone is obliging enough to park at range 1; that's enough to half-point a falcon in one hail of laser bolts.
• Unique abilities. Unique TIE fighter pilots have really good pilot abilities - because the 2-6 points you pay for those abilities are such a huge proportion of the ship's cost and the chassis isn't exactly that scary by itself.

The first squad I ever used was an 'elite' TIE swarm of the 6 named pilots. It wasn't amazing, because everyone had different pilot skills, locking you into a specific order of movement (meaning collisions a-go-go), and their different abilities meant lots of things to keep track of at once. In addition to this, unique TIE fighters often have decent pilot skill....meaning they move second....meaning I can't use them to block (see the first point) and only about half of them have an elite slot. Their abilities aren't bad, but often a snap shot or crack shot Black squadron pilot is better.

To make matters worse, you've got a big mix of different TIE classes, each with different dials (the striker especially can't play well with others, with adaptive ailerons giving it a minimum effective speed 3).

If you really want a swarm to work, I'd agree with @Hawkstrike - MORE TIE FIGHTERS. If I want a 'light' swarm to work, 6 is the absolute minimum, ideally you want 7 or 8 fighters.

Omega Leader is nice, but he's very much an 'endgame' piece - put him one-on-one against a single enemy ship (or wounded large ship) and he'll do you proud.

What he can't do is fight well in the opening pass, where (1) he has to waste actions establishing a target lock he'll never spend, (2) his PS of 8 may mean that against PS9+ opponents, or countermeasures, or black one, he doesn't get his lock, and critically (3) he can't use his ability against more than one opponent at once, and he tends to explode in a crossfire of several ships because your opponent wants him dead before the endgame.

In a squad with something bigger and scarier, he can do well because other people draw the hate off him. In a TIE swarm, where he's the biggest, scariest thing on the board, he'll die quickly and you'll not get your money's worth.

• 8 academy pilots can work. I wouldn't take 4 academies/4 obsidians, because most of the time, going from PS1 to PS3 doesn't help a great deal - with a 4 point initiative bid you can have choice of initiative with the PS1s if it really matters - and you do gain a great deal from having every ship be the same PS. You'd be surprised how much efficiency you get from the extra trio of warm bodies compared to a 5-ship swarm
• The other 8-ship squad I'd try would be 7 academy pilots and Youngster with Rage (my personal favourite). Same number of TIE fighters, but giving the option to trigger a focus-and-attack-reroll in exchange for a boatload of stress. It's not an 'all the time' option, but if you can block a target and get two or three TIE fighters range 1 shots, triggering Rage on them really amps up the punch. Plus you get you say Raaaaage! a lot.
• The Crack Shot swarm is pretty nasty - essentially 6 TIE fighters with Crack Shot - Howlrunner, Black Squadron Pilots, and a couple of upgrades (often Omega Squadron Pilots or Mauler Mithel/Scourge replacing two of the generics). Higher PS, and with a brutal opening salvo.
• The 'Pattiswarm' is a tournament winning build, and is essentially a hybrid of the two. Howlrunner and three Black Squadron Pilots with Crack Shot, and three Academy Pilots - giving you 7 ships, and blockers, but still the green-dice-piercing effect of a (smaller) opening crack shot barrage.
• Snap Shot TIE fighters are a very nasty thing as well. Both Scourge and (especially) Mauler Mithel can easily get bonus dice on their snap shots (bonus dice freely rolled do not count as dice modification), and the two of them with snap shot can unload a faintly ridiculous 14 attack dice in one turn. Whilst agility 3 or agility 4 targets are very hard to hit, with the exception of TIE/x7 defenders and Concord Dawn Protector Protectorates, they're all still tolerably vulnerable, and it's very hard for an ace or engine upgrade large ship to avoid being attacked. You can easily fit 6 TIE fighters all with Snap Shot in a squad, and that's a lot of attacks for someone to deal with.

Yes, you need to hurt someone early whilst you still have the edge of numbers.

The big thing to learn is when to deploy in a 2x3 or 2x4 'block', and when to break up into pairs scattered across your board edge as a 'dragnet' - the latter is a far more useful deployment against opponents like Dash Rendar or Miranda Doni, who are a nightmare to pin down and get shots on.

Big fun with my 8 generic Tie Swarm. Great to battle harden green players who own only a very limited number of ships. Perhaps not the best but never the worst list in small local tournaments. Quite cool. And 100% old school. Promotion of 77.

Is 5 Tie Bombers with drunk missiles a Swarm.

2 hours ago, Cubanboy said:

Is 5 Tie Bombers with drunk missiles a Swarm.

Yeah, but you've gotta be drunk to play this.

26 minutes ago, Chibi-Nya said:

Yeah, but you've gotta be drunk to play this.

Yep, seeing double definitely helps.

23 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Yep, seeing double definitely helps.

That'd just turn 5 Bombers into 5 Punishers.

@Jerry Smith, if you're just starting out, and don't have tons of ships, I'd suggest a mini swarm with some other strong ship. I've tried Howlrunner with 3 Obsidians + either Major Rhymer or Soontir Fel. Both were a lot of fun because Soontir Fel could dance away, leaving the TIE fighters on my enemy's flank, and Major Rhymer worked because opposing ships tried to close range to prevent missile shots, but I could (sometimes) screen him with my own ships.

If you're sticking with swarm, and it looks like you are with 7 TIE fighters and 1 TIE/fo in your collection, I played this a couple weeks ago, and won 2 out of 3 games.

Howlrunner, Night Beast, Winged Gundark, 4x Obsidian Sq. Pilots

Probably rough at a tournament, but it's thematic, using only pilots who flew in Obsidian Squadron. I played this squad to death in wave 2. Practice does help a lot. Even still, I like using the combined arms of a mini-swarm and something else. Swarms at a tournament will be hard with the new Bomblet Generator [shudder].