Going to experiment with this list this weekend:

Tie Fighter (Academy Pilot) x 4.

Tie/SF Fighter (Zeta Specialist) with Accuracy Corrector and Special Ops Training

Tie Aggressor (Lieutenant Kestal) with Doral Turret and XX-23 S Thread Tracers.

I think swarms can be very viable these days. I don't know about this one. I'm underwhelmed by Kestal and the Zeta. I think Howlrunner would be a stronger re-roll provider than the Thread Tracers. I think the SF will die too fast. You could fit in something more spammy with those saved points.

On 11/17/2017 at 7:14 PM, Clark Antilles said:

Going to experiment with this list this weekend

How did it go?

On 11/19/2017 at 3:32 AM, Greebwahn said:

I think Howlrunner would be a stronger re-roll provider than the Thread Tracers.

Swings and roundabouts.

• Howlrunner has to still be alive at the point you attack to gain her reroll (a non-trivial concern given that she's a TIE fighter)
• She only lets you reroll one die. Nice enough with 2 dice but in a range 1 shot (which you should be aiming for with TIE swarms) you will notice the difference.

On the other hand

• XX-23s require you to hit.
• They use up someone's attack to do so.

My main problem is that Kestal seems a little....confused? He wants a target lock to fire his turret and a focus token to fire thread tracers.

I've tried a reinforced TIE swarm, and a nice balance of support ships was:

• Academy Pilot x 5
• Scimitar Squadron Pilot x 2
  • XX-23 S-Thread Tracers
  • Ion Pulse Missiles
  • Long Range Scanners

Two thread tracers with focus and target lock should net you a hit, which sets up a lock for everyone.

Ion Pulse missiles are a surprisingly deadly weapon for a swarm, because you're not just delivering ion tokens; you're delivering enough ion tokens to ionize even a big ship and you're ionizing said ship directly in front of a TIE swarm that will be able to park at range 1 next turn.

Went reasonably well. Went 2-2 in casual matchups. A list built around a K-Wing caused me no end of problems, though some of that was because of cold dice. And I would definitely go for Ion Pulse Missiles and, yes, the SF Fighter didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. I think I'd just go with two more, 12-point, standard ties next time.