On top of @Magnus Grendel's pretty solid list. I like Zeta Ace + A Score To Settle (with or without Comm Relay as points allow) as a "micro ace". PS 5 is enough to give him some actual solid arc dodging ability vs generics. ASTS lets him barrel roll and have some modified attack while staying pretty cheap, or a double modded attack when he Target Locks. Comm Relay gives him a token stack (or feeds Swarm Leader on someone else). Against higher PS stuff, he's just a really good blocker, or the last shot that pushes something through.

47 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning...

My beds against a wall there's only one side to get up ?

2 minutes ago, Hobojebus said:

My beds against a wall there's only one side to get up ?

After the number of times I have concussed myself in similar circumstances whilst not quite awake yet, I can tell you now that is just not true.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Pilot builds I've used, liked, and/or really want to try:

...

I started reading this, and thought, "Who wrote this? This is good stuf -- wait, it's probably Magnus Grendel. Only he writes such thorough iterations of ship builds." Very nice work, as always!

Five cartel marau.......

I mean...

Five omega squadrons with predator.

6 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning...

It's just Hobojebus. He hasn't actually contributed anything meaningful to the forum for over a year now.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I've always thought the TIE/FO is a hella durable little fighter. Only ever got to fly them a couple of times, but I'm very into making 100% of my Imperial Forces First Order forces. If I ever get the funds I'm gonna do the same to my Rebel stuff.

What can I say? I think the ST era has serious potential. Just hope they use it right.

2 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Only ever got to fly them a couple of times, but I'm very into making 100% of my Imperial Forces First Order forces. If I ever get the funds I'm gonna do the same to my Rebel stuff.

I've repainted my Imperials in First Order black/white except for the Imp Vet and Imp Ace models. Imp grey is iconic, but the FO black/white is sharp looking.

Edit: Oh, and I didn't repaint the TIE/ln's so that they are distinctive in a rare case that I have TIE/fo's and TIE/ln's on the table at the same time.

I'm also hoping for the other new tech in the Silencer is really good, mainly for Zeta Leader and Epsilon Ace. I'm not feeling any particular tech on them yet.

38 minutes ago, kris40k said:

I've repainted my Imperials in First Order black/white except for the Imp Vet and Imp Ace models. Imp grey is iconic, but the FO black/white is sharp looking.

Exactly. It's too **** nice. Resistance colors are kinda interesting too. They're not as individualistic as Rebel stuff but they're pleasant to look at. That reminds me, need to go enter that Nissan contest.

Like I could possibly turn down the chance to get a TIE/SF flavored Murano!?

Magnus beat me to it, but Epsilon Leader + Pattern Analyzer is way more fun than it has any right to be.

Given that at 21 points your other options are ASTS OL, so... taking a TL once and then evade every round... or Wired Zeta Leader, so... doing a green move every round... the flexibility makes Epsilon Leader just so much more interesting to fly.

Of course in a world with PWTs, TLTs, high PS, and reinforce, one PS6 ship who can pretty reliably avoid arcs with his 2-die gun isn't super useful.

1 hour ago, Captain Lackwit said:

I've always thought the TIE/FO is a hella durable little fighter. Only ever got to fly them a couple of times, but I'm very into making 100% of my Imperial Forces First Order forces. If I ever get the funds I'm gonna do the same to my Rebel stuff.

What can I say? I think the ST era has serious potential. Just hope they use it right.

Yeah, I made the conscious decision to avoid the First Order ships when they first came out. I wasn't overly enthused by The Force Awakens, the Gozanti had just come out with new TIE pilots and repaints, and the First Order aesthetic didn't really grab me. I like the Rebellion era stuff, I was already collecting Rebels, Empire and Scum so I decided to draw a line.

I'm regretting it. The First Order has some fun ships with fun abilities and mechanic, and with the TIE/fo, TIE/sfs, Upsilon and now the Silencer, there's a whole lot of options for all-First Order themed lists, and not just in casual play either.

57 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Yeah, I made the conscious decision to avoid the First Order ships when they first came out. I wasn't overly enthused by The Force Awakens, the Gozanti had just come out with new TIE pilots and repaints, and the First Order aesthetic didn't really grab me. I like the Rebellion era stuff, I was already collecting Rebels, Empire and Scum so I decided to draw a line.

I'm regretting it. The First Order has some fun ships with fun abilities and mechanic, and with the TIE/fo, TIE/sfs, Upsilon and now the Silencer, there's a whole lot of options for all-First Order themed lists, and not just in casual play either.

See?

And yeah it's kinda surprised me but from what I've seen in XWMG, The First Order is RIDICULOUSLY aggressive.

4 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I started reading this, and thought, "Who wrote this? This is good stuf -- wait, it's probably Magnus Grendel. Only he writes such thorough iterations of ship builds." Very nice work, as always!

Thank you - thats very kind, if not exactly fair: I think There's a lot of good stuff on the forum - you often have to wade through a few layers of 'fix the x-wing with an sfoils upgrade', 'this ship omg op plz nerf', 'how do I hard counter xyz so it takes no skill to win?', and various other renditions on familiar themes to find it, but off the top of my head yourself,ficklegreendice, boom owl, and fts gecko can all be relied upon for genuinely sensible advice...

Plus, I really like TIE/fo.They're probably my joint favourite with strikers.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Yeah, I made the conscious decision to avoid the First Order ships when they first came out. I wasn't overly enthused by The Force Awakens, the Gozanti had just come out with new TIE pilots and repaints, and the First Order aesthetic didn't really grab me. I like the Rebellion era stuff, I was already collecting Rebels, Empire and Scum so I decided to draw a line.

I'm regretting it. The First Order has some fun ships with fun abilities and mechanic, and with the TIE/fo, TIE/sfs, Upsilon and now the Silencer, there's a whole lot of options for all-First Order themed lists, and not just in casual play either.

I can't bring myself to mix era squads, but I've used quite few pure FO squads and they are fun. Tech is surprisingly potent as an upgrade class, and between the four FO ships once the silencer arrives you've got a decent peg for any shape hole, especially the super-customisable /sf.

4 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

I'm also hoping for the other new tech in the Silencer is really good, mainly for Zeta Leader and Epsilon Ace. I'm not feeling any particular tech on them yet.

The best I can offer is weapons guidance/wired on ZL and Targeting Synchroniser on EA. Advanced Optics looks generally good (great for OA) but there is also an as-yet-unseen tech called threat tracker (probably). We don't know what it does but the name implies a defensive effect, maybe something to do with being locked?

Does it really count as Era-Mixing if you paint your ships a particular way though? I mean **** in TLJ we're seeing refitted AT-STs, AT-ATs (I mean the stuff aboard The Supremacy, not the Gorilla Walkers), and so on.

So there's totally a precedent for like, repainted stuff with "" around its name. Shoot, even some FO uniforms have famous Imperial names on them.

"Oh that Pilot is referring to himself as Soontir Fel? Not actually him but god does he try."

A good 5 ship swarm list that features 2 FOs:

Zeta Leader + Juke + Comm Relay

Omega Leader + Juke + Comm Relay

Howlrunner + Crackshot

2 x Black Squadron + Crackshot

100pts

Run it as a block of Ties or split it into 2 groups.

I forget how much fun the TFA Core Set was SOLELY because of the FO, with its TL action and 2 Sloop. Heck, if the JM5K hadn't come out around the same time, the FO would have stayed such an awesome ship.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

That to me has always been the problem; not that (in a setting with more generics) that there isn't an argument for better generics, but that if you're trying to buy PS because you're expecting higher PS generics, the fact that a lot of the 'better generic' rebels jump from 2 to 4 rather than 1 to 3 means that Obsidians are no better off than academies when a Red or Dagger hoves into view; trying to buy pilot skill 'enough' always seems a waste; either take the best you can or the cheapest you can - pilot skill being all or nothing and hence a small increase is often useless, and a point per ship being actually quite a lot of points on a swarm.

4 Obsidians/4 Academys only ever really seemed to be a thing because you had nothing else to spend the 4 points on - frankly Dark Curse, Backstabber or (more recently) Rage Youngster is a lot more user-friendly, not least because of not locking half your swarm into a fixed movement order.

Still, I will admit to not getting much experience in the early waves; my first real experience of the game was around the time of the TIE phantom coming out and trying to take on three phantoms with the TIE Fighter All-Stars.

If you weren't around to see it, the early waves were all about the low PS and whether to bid or not - one could argue that it was one of the original meta calls, and was often potentially decisive in otherwise mirror matches - it was one of the key reasons Paul heaver's Biggs Walks The Dogs took Dagger squadron b-wings, even though it left his fourth ship a rookie instead of a third blue.

It might seem pointless now, but the whole concept of the PS bid was once just that - a bidding war against ones potential opponents.

In the post TLT world, and the post-phantom one in particular, the relevance of such things became rapidly irrelevant. We give the PS4 stuff EPTs to make up for it now.

This has been History 101 ☺

I’ve also found I like the Synergies between the FO’s and SF’s. Which outside of maybe the Intercepters and LN’s is hard to get with the other ships in a generational type list. The dials are super similar (if not identical short of reds and greens) and the Pilots really do pair up nicely. So List get wildly creative. Like:

Quickdraw’s Epsilon Squadron.

QD with Title, Swarm Leader, LWF, FCS, PA.

4x Epsilon Pilots.

Zeta Squadron Pilots: Hopefully I can inspire @Magnus Grendel With and idea to use those Zeta’s. So you can run the Zeta Leader with a Zeta Specialist and a trio of Zeta Squadrons. Enough flexibility with movement order between the 3 Z squads and the Z specialist to make life bearable while having punch from the SF and ZL.

Zeta Leader: Wired, Weapons Guidance, MKII Engines

Zeta Specialists: Title, FCS, LWF, Primed Thrusters

3x Zeta Squadron.

As someone else mentioned earlier seems like they fit in well with the Upsilon Shuttle as well with the extra actions as equipment and officer choices.

3 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Does it really count as Era-Mixing if you paint your ships a particular way though? I mean **** in TLJ we're seeing refitted AT-STs, AT-ATs (I mean the stuff aboard The Supremacy, not the Gorilla Walkers), and so on.

So there's totally a precedent for like, repainted stuff with "" around its name. Shoot, even some FO uniforms have famous Imperial names on them.

"Oh that Pilot is referring to himself as Soontir Fel? Not actually him but god does he try."

The First Order uses AT-AT's in combat alongside the newer AT-M6's. I have no qualms assuming that they have other Imperial era hardware still in use, similar to the US's A-10 Thunderbolt II which has been in service 40 years so far. The TIE/sa bombers seem similar, but there may be some unseen advancements to those as well.

So, I just repaint my army and say it's all First Order.

15 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I can't bring myself to mix era squads, but I've used quite few pure FO squads and they are fun. Tech is surprisingly potent as an upgrade class, and between the four FO ships once the silencer arrives you've got a decent peg for any shape hole, especially the super-customisable /sf.

Not to derail the thread too much, but having read this statement, have you ever tried 4 tie/fo omegas with crackshot and weapons guidance? Do you think this variant could make up for, say, crackhowl with 3 crackblacks? Or is the howl reroll just too gud?

35 minutes ago, Gibbilo said:

have you ever tried 4 tie/fo omegas with crackshot and weapons guidance? Do you think this variant could make up for, say, crackhowl with 3 crackblacks? Or is the howl reroll just too gud?

In that situation, I'd take 5; if you're taking a crack shot swarm with TIE/fo, then your advantages over a the classic crackshot swarms (Howl/Scourge/Mithel/3 x Black all with Crack Shot, or Howl/3xBlack/3x Academy)

are:

• Individual units are harder to one-shot - 4 hits with agility 3 means even a perfect 5-hit cruise missile has less than a 1/3 chance of one-shotting a TIE/fo with a focus token, meaning you should always get at least one shot off with most ships
• There's no need to keep a close formation as every TIE carries its own 'on board' howlrunner, which makes them a lot more resiliant to harpoon missiles and other such shennanigans

I haven't tried it yet, but really want to. The Alt-Art Crack Shot cards are calling me...

so - cross-posting from the Resistance Bomber thread:

Not only does Advanced Optics do what we hoped, but it's a point cheaper than comm relay!

• Omega Leader
  • Juke
  • Comms Relay
  • Stealth Device
• Omega Ace
  • Opportunist
  • Advanced Optics
  • Twin Ion Engines MkII
• Zeta Leader
  • Wired
  • Weapons Guidance
  • Twin Ion Engines MkII
• Epsilon Ace
  • Targeting Synchroniser

is 100 points on the dot, and potentially surprisingly nasty for 'just' 4 TIE fighters.

This is my quad FO list:

Omega Leader (standard) 26 points

Zeta Leader, Comm Relay, Predator 26 points

Omega Ace, Swarm Leader, Advanced Optics = 25

Zeta Ace, A Score To Settle, Comm Relay = 21

98 points

OL is OL. Zeta Ace is just a solid attack, Omega Ace uses the Comm Relays to fuel his 4-5 crit hit, and Zeta Ace follows it up with a TL/ASTS shot.

11 hours ago, kris40k said:

similar to the US's A-10 Thunderbolt II which has been in service 40 years so far

Only because the A-10 is unmatched in it's role. I can thik of a lot of ships that are better than TIEs...

Like the Defender .

... it's 2 points?

Cheaper than the Evade equivalent, yet usable by every single ship with a Tech slot?

Holy crap. What were they thinking?

16 hours ago, kris40k said:

The First Order uses AT-AT's in combat alongside the newer AT-M6's. I have no qualms assuming that they have other Imperial era hardware still in use, similar to the US's A-10 Thunderbolt II which has been in service 40 years so far. The TIE/sa bombers seem similar, but there may be some unseen advancements to those as well.

So, I just repaint my army and say it's all First Order.

Good lord. At this point I'm surprised the TIE fighters aren't bigger and the troops aren't on serious steroids. Everything ELSE about the First Order is sheer, "Make it bigger". Yikes.