Is it viable to play a Tie Swarm with Howlrunner and then a bunch of Academy Pilots with Crackshot? It seems very fun even though I would have to by the Crackshots separately.

I too am thinking of trying out a tie swarm. I might have tomax lead it instead of howlrunner. Tomax and unguided rockets/crackshot leading 4 TIE/fo crackshot

2 hours ago, llamalord9 said:

Is it viable to play a Tie Swarm with Howlrunner and then a bunch of Academy Pilots with Crackshot? It seems very fun even though I would have to by the Crackshots separately.

There are a couple of variations. If you want Howlrunner then you get about 7 some black Squadrons with cracks and fill the rest with Academy's just don't be too discouraged wHen Howlrunner goes down quickly being a huge threat . If you go 4 Blacksquadron with Crackshot and 4 Academy Pilots is a handful to fly and very rewarding if you can get some early hits through.

1 hour ago, Akondo said:

I too am thinking of trying out a tie swarm. I might have tomax lead it instead of howlrunner. Tomax and unguided rockets/crackshot leading 4 TIE/fo crackshot

You might find you get frustrated with not enough ships and trying to keep Tomax alive beyond the first engagement. I've personally found TIE l/n's and similarly f/o's really want as great of numbers as possible of the same type.

7 hours ago, llamalord9 said:

Is it viable to play a Tie Swarm with Howlrunner and then a bunch of Academy Pilots with Crackshot? It seems very fun even though I would have to by the Crackshots separately.

• Game Night Kits at the moment have crack shot as participation prizes! Get them free! Added to participation prize Engine Upgrade cards from store championships, the free goodies are great for Imperial players at the moment....
• Academy Pilots don't have an elite talent, but Black Squadron Pilots do. A mix works well, getting you blockers and PS4 crack shot 'mini ordnance carriers'- consider Crack Shot to be a sort of 'one-use-missile' sat in the elite slot and you're not far wrong.
• The big weakness with a Howlrunner Crack Shot list is that Howlrunner only provides her bonus if she's still alive at the point it comes your turn to shoot - with PS4 black squadron pilots losing her at PS 5+ is quite feasible.
• The secondary weakness is that her ability only works at range 1 - locking you into more or less a 2x3 (maybe 4/3 if you've bulked out with academy pilots) block, which is rather hard to manoeuvre through obstacle fields, and your opponent knows this.
• Don't get me wrong - it's a lethal list. Howlrunner (Crack Shot), Black Squadron Pilot (Crack Shot) x 3, Academy Pilot x 3 won the Yavin open last year, at the height of "deadeye jumpmasters are broken and invincible" mania, and for good reason, but it does take some serious piloting skills.
• If you want a slightly more forgiving version (plus the alt art crack shots have TIE/fos on them), consider 5 x Omega Squadron Pilot (Crack Shot, Weapons Guidance) - you get a sort of 'distributed howlrunner effect' from your ability to spend focus on blank results that doesn't go away on the survivors as ships get shot down, and whilst you have slightly fewer ships, you'll be surprised how much more capable an individual TIE/fo is than a TIE/ln*, especially since you can fly in a nice loose formation when not chained to range 1 of someone.

* Green Hard Turns, Target Lock, Tech slot, Segnor's Loops and a shield that isn't just a 4th hit but stops a critical a surprising proportion of the time - a bargain bundle of upgrades for just 3 points!

Best Crackswarm I ever seen

Howlrunner, Crackshot (19)
Black Sq, Crackshot (15)
Black Sq, Crackshot (15)
Black Sq, Crackshot (15)
Academy (12)
Academy (12)
Academy (12)

Another common Crackswarm is:

Howlrunner, 4x Black Squadron Pilot, Zeta Leader -- all with Crackshot. You've got less blocking power, and are down an overall body, but you've gained a 3-dice attack on a slightly-superior ship, and an additional two copies of Crackshot. I've tried flying Howlrunner, 3x BSP, Mauler Mithel, Scourge, which is pretty similar to the above, but the extra dice didn't trigger all that often. The Zeta Leader build is going to be stronger.

You have to be super careful not to let Nym bomb you, but on paper, a Crack Swarm wins against two one agility ships. Take evades and roll well, if you can avoid losing a tie on the first turn of engagement you're already ahead.

7 Acadamy Pilots + Youngster with Rage. When I think of a swarm I think of 7-8 ships.

On ‎10‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 4:20 AM, Varyag said:

7 Acadamy Pilots + Youngster with Rage. When I think of a swarm I think of 7-8 ships.

It is great fun to use. I also want to try a Snap Shot TIE fighter swarm - you can get 6 ships, including the brutal Mauler Mithel, all with Snap Shot. That's a lot of short range firepower; not tied to any formation, and theoretically delivering a faintly ridiculous 32 attack dice in a single turn if someone was daft enough to land in a range 1 kill box of all six.

I've found that 4 snapblacks with an ace like QD works really nice.

Fly the 4 snap blacks straight into the gullet of the enemy and take up space/block/ get snaps.

Makes it so much easier for a flanking ace to decimate from the side and cleanup endgame.

Overall I actually have a very high win percentage with this list (though in a tourney it probably wouldn't fair well, mostly because you will usually lost most if not all of your blacks in the process which decreases your MoV).