And here I'm sitting looking at E-Wings snipe...Granted, it's not so straightforward to use than other fighters but the more I play them, the more I fall in love with snipe.

E wings best advantage is its speed 4 AND snipe, so they should ALWAYS be able to shoot the enemy first. Coupled with Bomber and a high hull and a respectable 4 dice normal shot, its up there with the best squadron in the game.
Give em flight controllers and All fighters follow me, and watch the imperials squadrons get melted.

I'v had alot of fun with this list
http://armadawarlords.hivelabs.solutions/view_list.php?token=112017&key=07fa25320b7b8b0b80e1fae2c35c9a3a

Activating 4 E wing's and Horn with flight controllers melts most imperial fighter balls. Mainly because they can't hide from a speed 5 ship with snipe.
Then their hull 5 and bomber means they are still effective vs enemy ships

Tycho, Shara, 3 X-Wings, Jan. X-Wings take the alpha, while Tycho and Shara jump out after.

So the answer is both.

In support of both A and X squad make up, the splash of a-wings make for easy and flexible deployment stalls.

This has been a good discussion.

What I am gathering though is that 60-70 points is simply not enough to be effective in match ups more often than not. So if we were running a medium-heavy squad of 90-100ish some folks believe a healthy mix of both coupled with the standard aces is desirable? I've been playing around with various squad builds lately trying to find something that is optimal for Rebels in general with no heed to your opposition (since you rarely know what to expect, meta notwithstanding) and it has been interesting. By all accounts, it seems that ace ability stacking favors the Imperial squadrons, so they are swinging two extra dice and getting solid rerolls. They are flimsy are **** though, so I have been working around supports and X-wings. At the higher points, I really do like Ten Numb to be in there for that blanket damage and ruthless strategists. Someone earlier had mentioned YT-1300 and I haven't played with it yet, but it would seem a couple of those with counter 1 and the two blanket damage above would almost certainly see the destruction of Interceptors or base TIEs; they just have a weak ship game.

9 minutes ago, Geodes said:

This has been a good discussion.

What I am gathering though is that 60-70 points is simply not enough to be effective in match ups more often than not. So if we were running a medium-heavy squad of 90-100ish some folks believe a healthy mix of both coupled with the standard aces is desirable? I've been playing around with various squad builds lately trying to find something that is optimal for Rebels in general with no heed to your opposition (since you rarely know what to expect, meta notwithstanding) and it has been interesting. By all accounts, it seems that ace ability stacking favors the Imperial squadrons, so they are swinging two extra dice and getting solid rerolls. They are flimsy are **** though, so I have been working around supports and X-wings. At the higher points, I really do like Ten Numb to be in there for that blanket damage and ruthless strategists. Someone earlier had mentioned YT-1300 and I haven't played with it yet, but it would seem a couple of those with counter 1 and the two blanket damage above would almost certainly see the destruction of Interceptors or base TIEs; they just have a weak ship game.

I've found 33 to be enough, and some people play 0. It all depends on your play style. If you're gonna spend that much (100 pts) why don't you go full 134?

23 minutes ago, Geodes said:

This has been a good discussion.

What I am gathering though is that 60-70 points is simply not enough to be effective in match ups more often than not. So if we were running a medium-heavy squad of 90-100ish some folks believe a healthy mix of both coupled with the standard aces is desirable?

As with everything else, it very much depends. My go-to tourney list for the last year has been squadronless, but I have a very specific reason for that which is specific to the list.

I personally think that a 100-point squadron defense is a valley of inefficiency, because you're bringing enough squadrons that it's a substantial enough portion of your list that you want to maximize them with support on the ship side, but then you're not maximizing the value of the ship-side support by bringing a full squadron complement of bombers and what have you.

I consider 60-70 points of squadron defense investment to be a good rule of thumb. Whether that's 6 A-wings, a Jan/X-wing ball, cluster bombs and QLT on everything, Mon Mothma and the A-wing aces, or something else focused on squadron defense. If you can make something less than that work, so much the better. If you need more than that just for squadron defense, I think you should evaluate the efficiency of your approach.

23 minutes ago, Geodes said:

This has been a good discussion.

What I am gathering though is that 60-70 points is simply not enough to be effective in match ups more often than not.

Just one opinion in the thread. I've done 49-55 for almost 10 months, and for achieving its goals in my lists, I've rarely felt like I wanted/needed more. But then, the only time my squads really get any anti-ship power is when I face no squads or a really bad light squad list. Otherwise, all the ship-killing power is on my ships. Contrast this with an Aceholes list where the ships can help out a tiny bit, but almost all of the killing power is in the squads. The more you spend on squads, and the more you put into ship upgrades that boost your squadron game, the less you have to spend on boosting your ships. And figuring out that nice interplay between your ships and squads is one of the big keys to getting your lists to work.

I'm firmly in the x wing camp. With defenders running around 4 hp doesn't cut it

8 hours ago, ImpStarDeuces said:

I've found 33 to be enough, and some people play 0. It all depends on your play style. If you're gonna spend that much (100 pts) why don't you go full 134?

8 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

As with everything else, it very much depends. My go-to tourney list for the last year has been squadronless, but I have a very specific reason for that which is specific to the list.

I personally think that a 100-point squadron defense is a valley of inefficiency, because you're bringing enough squadrons that it's a substantial enough portion of your list that you want to maximize them with support on the ship side, but then you're not maximizing the value of the ship-side support by bringing a full squadron complement of bombers and what have you.

I consider 60-70 points of squadron defense investment to be a good rule of thumb. Whether that's 6 A-wings, a Jan/X-wing ball, cluster bombs and QLT on everything, Mon Mothma and the A-wing aces, or something else focused on squadron defense. If you can make something less than that work, so much the better. If you need more than that just for squadron defense, I think you should evaluate the efficiency of your approach.

8 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Just one opinion in the thread. I've done 49-55 for almost 10 months, and for achieving its goals in my lists, I've rarely felt like I wanted/needed more. But then, the only time my squads really get any anti-ship power is when I face no squads or a really bad light squad list. Otherwise, all the ship-killing power is on my ships. Contrast this with an Aceholes list where the ships can help out a tiny bit, but almost all of the killing power is in the squads. The more you spend on squads, and the more you put into ship upgrades that boost your squadron game, the less you have to spend on boosting your ships. And figuring out that nice interplay between your ships and squads is one of the big keys to getting your lists to work.

I must have not be very focused when I was viewing replies. It almost seems, then, that squadrons are to taste and your personal list more than anything. I guess htis makes discussing the merits and flaws of X- and A-wings to be moot since they fill different roles. I just wondered that in the Sloane world which would be more viable. Again, it seems it is dependent on your play style.

1 hour ago, Geodes said:

I must have not be very focused when I was viewing replies. It almost seems, then, that squadrons are to taste and your personal list more than anything. I guess htis makes discussing the merits and flaws of X- and A-wings to be moot since they fill different roles. I just wondered that in the Sloane world which would be more viable. Again, it seems it is dependent on your play style.

yup!

1 hour ago, Geodes said:

must have not be very focused when I was viewing replies. It almost seems, then, that squadrons are to taste and your personal list more than anything. I guess htis makes discussing the merits and flaws of X- and A-wings to be moot since they fill different roles. I just wondered that in the Sloane world which would be more viable. Again, it seems it is dependent on your play style.

Agreed.

What we could talk about more productively, is ways to approach the squadron game, and once we understand approaches, we can in turn ask what squadron compositions for Rebels and Imperials fit those goals.

1. One approach could be called "win the squadron game." This was Q's original contention when he took 8xYT2400s to Nationals a bit over a year ago. That's 32 Rogue blue dice that are dropping every turn, which is going to just overwhelm most light and medium squadron set-ups, and then turn its attention to ships. With the advent of flotillas in wave Thror, and new aces/squadron types in wave 5, we've now got a lot of all-in approaches to the squadron game. Gallant Haven and Rieekan Aces often took this approach.

2. The opposite approach is taken by @Ardaedhel . In our Texas meta, we had the GH point denial, and so one approach to the squadron game if you know you're going to lose points on it is simply to deny those points to the opponent by taking as few squadrons as possible while trying to win on the ship-game by itself. He's related before that his 30 point investment in Mothma is the anti-squadron point investment. I really apply the same approach myself, but since my commander boosts my ships, those points have to come from actual squads.

One other odd factor is how exactly your ships interact with all of this. You really have to think about the total package of squads+ships, and how you might fly both squads and ships to maximize your overall squadron game. The game is a complete whole, not a part objective, part ship, part squadron game.

You are correct in that perhaps I approached this wrong. It should have been a focus on squadron tactics as they fit into models, both meta or other. I would love to discuss the strategies involved, but I don't have nearly enough experience under my belt to add meaningful analysis for either side. (/shame)

YT-1300's

high hull (7)

counter (1)

escort

3 blue antisquad

1 blue antiship

13 points

Only weakness? Speed 2 so augment with 1/2 Awings for that interception

strengths? Impossible to one-shot, cheap, decent damage potential, great against all units due to counter, can protect a B-wing bomber wing easily

8 hours ago, Geodes said:

You are correct in that perhaps I approached this wrong. It should have been a focus on squadron tactics as they fit into models, both meta or other. I would love to discuss the strategies involved, but I don't have nearly enough experience under my belt to add meaningful analysis for either side. (/shame)

Never forget: You kill all the ships you win (objectives notwithstanding). If you kill all the fighters you can still lose.

That's the kicker in the rules that really opens up all play styles.

What are we limiting the discussion to? A comparison of just A-Wings and X-Wings irrespective of fleet build? Aces/No Aces?

On a basic comparison between the two, A-Wings are clearly superior. 66pts for 6 A-Wings versus 65pts for 5 X-Wings. You're looking at 18 AS dice versus 20 (but A-Wings make up for that with Counter 2), 24 hull versus 25. The biggest difference is the significantly faster speed of the A-Wings. X-Wings won't alpha strike often, but A-Wings can alpha anything but a TIE/In, TIE/D or E-Wings. They're also more reliable against ships. Yes, X-Wings can get a two-damage result, but that's a 1/8 chance, with an overall chance of 5/8 for ship damage, whereas an A-Wing has a 6/8 chance.

Now once you start talking about Aces and fleet build, you're never going to get a clear consensus. The beauty of this game is the complexity of list building, and there are too many variations to truly have a "best" answer. If you have an exact fleet you're building around, that might make it easier to determine what the better option might be for that list.