But what's wrong with the swarm right now? With 2 ship lists so common, I would think being able to block and focus fire them would be crippling, but nobody seems to mention them. What am I missing?

Lower Attack power; (2 Attack dice) is really hard to punch through a lot of ships defenses (green and token stacks) ATM

I'm not surprised by that. I was thinking with blocks and the raw number of reds though, can't you stop the stack/force the spending? Maybe it takes too long.

Plus swarms specialize in jousting which there are too many ships that don't need to joust to do damage. Kind of impossible to block a ship who's flying away from you and then dodging your arcs.

In addition the lists that do want to joust can usually do it better than the swarm and take their ships off faster then the swarm can do damage.

I agree; too much reliance on dice variance, so low attack power, even fully modified is a handicap.

Just now, BlueMusketeer28 said:

I'm not surprised by that. I was thinking with blocks and the raw number of reds though, can't you stop the stack/force the spending? Maybe it takes too long.

Traditionally; yes. But with Mindlink not so much, and glitterstim to a lesser degree. These are just ones of top of my head, that make me personally think twice.

I've tried Kestal with 5 TIE Fighter aces: Wampa, Backstabber, Youngster, Scourge, and Howlrunner. Pretty effective against 2 ships.

Then again, if you want a good 2-ship list, just use RAC and a combat-equipped Upsilon (Weapons Guidance and RS).

Action independence on a lot of ships (K4 + expertise on Dengar for example) limit or entirely negate the value of blocking in a lot of instances. They might have had a chance to start coming back even so but then Nym showed up with auto blaster turret and unlimited bombs and that was pretty much the end of that.

That makes sense. Well that's a pity.

Plus swarms are pretty draining to play in a tournament setting- it takes a lot of brain power to fly 7+/- ships around for 8+ hours. Most people opt to take an easier list, and thus you see an over representation of "easy" lists and an under representation of swarms.

6 minutes ago, BlueMusketeer28 said:

But what's wrong with the swarm right now? With 2 ship lists so common, I would think being able to block and focus fire them would be crippling, but nobody seems to mention them. What am I missing?

Nothing wrong with it, quite the opposite as you point out it can bring down most of the two ship lists in the current meta provided you know how to block.
That said, most people like to use new stuff and swarms are retro if you ve been here since wave 2. So everyone overlooks stuff that work in favor of stuff they want to try because that's were they spend their $$$ recently, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Lots of turrets, lots of very reliable high dice attacks.

A 5 dice attack with focus and TL does 2.8 damage on average versus 3 dice with focus, which means a better than 50% chance to pop a ship outright, not taking crits into account.

A swarm doesn't have that many ships.

4 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Lots of turrets, lots of very reliable high dice attacks.

A 5 dice attack with focus and TL does 2.8 damage on average versus 3 dice with focus, which means a better than 50% chance to pop a ship outright, not taking crits into account.

A swarm doesn't have that many ships.

Ok yeah, but how consistently is that happening? Admittedly I was out for the last wave, but last I checked, other than Nora and Fenn, 5 dice isn't that common and even then requires set up. Plus you need to be able to take actions to do that, so if you're blocked you should be throwing less. Now yeah TLTs are a problem, but unless it's a lot of them that's 2 max damage per ship.

Your swarm turns into a mini-swarm VERY rapidly.

NYM.

Very little counterplay to him with Genius, Adv. Sensors, and Bomblet Generator. Action before maneuver reveal -> Maneuver -> Drop bomb (even if bumped) -> Take no damage from own bomb -> 1-4 fragile ships take bomb damage (2 red dice each). Infinite bombs, so can do it again, and again, and again! All for under 40 points!

If he flys well, he's going to bomb the heck out of your swarm and it's REALLY tough to stop him when hes got Adv. Sensors.

2 minutes ago, BlueMusketeer28 said:

Ok yeah, but how consistently is that happening? Admittedly I was out for the last wave, but last I checked, other than Nora and Fenn, 5 dice isn't that common and even then requires set up. Plus you need to be able to take actions to do that, so if you're blocked you should be throwing less. Now yeah TLTs are a problem, but unless it's a lot of them that's 2 max damage per ship.

Norra, Fenn, Rey, Wulfwwaro, Cruise Missiles etc.

But even well modified 4 die attacks are scary. Only more like a 25% chance to pop a TIE, discounting crits, but that opens the floor to about half the game. Dash in particular is **** on swarms.

1 minute ago, thespaceinvader said:

Norra, Fenn, Rey, Wulfwwaro, Cruise Missiles etc.

But even well modified 4 die attacks are scary. Only more like a 25% chance to pop a TIE, discounting crits, but that opens the floor to about half the game. Dash in particular is **** on swarms.

Fair enough. Is Dash still around?

Yup. Dash/Miranda and Dash/Nym are both very solid archetypes.

Nym is also pretty horrible. Scum Nym in particular has a good chance of popping at least one TIE before it can shoot (ABAC plus bomblet on one he's not touching) and Dengar outjousts swarms.

5 minutes ago, BlueMusketeer28 said:

Ok yeah, but how consistently is that happening? Admittedly I was out for the last wave, but last I checked, other than Nora and Fenn, 5 dice isn't that common and even then requires set up. Plus you need to be able to take actions to do that, so if you're blocked you should be throwing less. Now yeah TLTs are a problem, but unless it's a lot of them that's 2 max damage per ship.

Requiring set up doesn't mean what it used to.

Ahsoka + Kanan (Rey + Finn) gets a focus + TL'd 5+1 dice range 1 shot when you block Kanan.

In this case only 1 action is needed (focus on Ahsoka, who you couldn't block because she was behind Kanan) so really all the setup happened in the list building stage.

Blocking has become quite ineffective at preventing dice modification.

And even then, it's hardly an issue to say, "well what are the chances of that happening?" because the thing is probability doesn't care about the individual. It's enough to know that it's well within the realm of possibilities for you to lose a ship or two a turn, every turn, to scare most people off.

16 minutes ago, Scumwing Apologist said:

NYM.

Very little counterplay to him with Genius, Adv. Sensors, and Bomblet Generator. Action before maneuver reveal -> Maneuver -> Drop bomb (even if bumped) -> Take no damage from own bomb -> 1-4 fragile ships take bomb damage (2 red dice each). Infinite bombs, so can do it again, and again, and again! All for under 40 points!

If he flys well, he's going to bomb the heck out of your swarm and it's REALLY tough to stop him when hes got Adv. Sensors.

Swarms have been heavily suppressed since before Nym. Fenn was to blame then, if a single ship can really be blamed.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Swarms have been heavily suppressed since before Nym. Fenn was to blame then, if a single ship can really be blamed.

Very true. Nym is just the fecal icing on the garbage meta cake.

3 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Swarms have been heavily suppressed since before Nym. Fenn was to blame then, if a single ship can really be blamed.

Fenn Rau and Scum Boba Fett both, plus Attani Mindlink, Expertise and TIE/x7 defenders (pre-nerf).

Fenn and Fett actually get harder to hurt at close range - Fenn Rau with Concord Dawn protector in particular gets an average of 2 1/2 evades on unmodified dice - meaning he can soak as many TIE fighter shots as you care to throw at him, and a lot of ships don't care about being blocked - expertise, K4 security droid, and mindlink let you get tokens from someone else.

Nym is annoying but not actually that bad - an agility 1 target that you don't have to be at range 1 to engage (unlike agility 3 autothruster targets), but autoblasters and bombs will do nasty things to a TIE swarm.

@Parakitor and I and a few others have been playing with 'heavy swarms' a bit, using 5 TIE strikers, or interceptors, or the infamous Five Cartel Marauders (about to get a lot scarier with the Vaksai title), and that third dice - even at a cost of a couple of ships - makes a big difference.

I should go and get some more practice back in with my academy pilots, though.

Saying that; I have seen people fly swarms and do well.

Saw a Rebel swarm mangle a Nym/Dash build.

Nym does like to kill swarms/doesn't like to face swarms. 1 dice agility isn't a big fan.

Just now, the1hodgy said:

Saying that; I have seen people fly swarms and do well.

Saw a Rebel swarm mangle a Nym/Dash build.

It's definitely possible. Both those ships die like dogs if they get caught under the bulk of a swarm's guns.

If.

Dengar/Nym is the problem