I ran phantoms with a BTA build over the weekend and they were very helpful with both holding off fighters and delivering high peak damage on ships before the BT attack.

I haven't seen many people talk about cloak, our meta has never used phantoms before, holy cow. I was able to do so much.
-One of my games the extra distance 1 movement got all my squads in range for a 1st activation alpha on the enemy ISD
-In another, I got engaged with some A-wings. Cloak was able to pull all those phantoms out of engaged range and they were able to attack a flagship early next round
-Fearing that their bomber swarm would be able to alpha my ship, I was able to engage all their fighters.

Is it just me or are these things seriously awesome?

Has anyone else had success with them? Is there anything I'm missing?

Awesome, tempered by expensive.

There are definitely situations where you can make cloak a huge impact ability. But generally the surprise factor only makes a difference once. I played against a fleet with a decent investment in Phantoms as part of a larger screen, and they were a point sink that I mined for all it was worth.

7 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

Awesome, tempered by expensive.

There are definitely situations where you can make cloak a huge impact ability. But generally the surprise factor only makes a difference once. I played against a fleet with a decent investment in Phantoms as part of a larger screen, and they were a point sink that I mined for all it was worth.

I suppose I should mention these were ran along side a dedicated AA group (Howl,mauler,dengar, soontir all activating off a quasar 1 with Fcs). So the opponents had their hands full dealing with the scatter ace doom machine while the phantoms were off with the ISD achieving mischief lol

At first I thought they were pretty costly too, but their ability to do multiple rolls has really impressed me. With 4 blue AA dice, they supplement my dedicated AA fighters and still offered a large enough threat against ships to help.

My only real complaint is the 4 hull and how peaky the Anti-ship damage is. (I had 2 double doubles followed by two turns of 1 damage out of 4 attacks lol )

Editing....

I prefer defenders personally.

For only 2 points more, they are much more sturdy.

I've used them several times, and have had these results:

Positive results:

• Unkillable longevity vs small squad forces when the action took place around station.
• Huge damage output when red anti-ship dice went bonkers (extremely rare)

Negative results:

• Phantoms were killed, before being able to use Cloak, by strong AS squads (Howler powered, swarms of 4 blue squads, etc.)
• Minimal damage to ships when the dice rolled average, or worse
• Countered to death by any counter squads. A-Wings maul them
• Even Sloane powered Phantoms didn't generate much ship damage when dice roll average

Overall impressions after many games:

• I always felt I could accomplish the same goals with cheaper squads
• The crazy positives were far too situational and luck dependent to relay on

Sloane makes them better, but Cloak just isn't strong enough to matter. 1 move just isn't impressive enough for their cost and low hull. They are still in need of a boost. Maybe a ship upgrade that gives Red anti-ship attacks Bomber?

2 minutes ago, Eggzavier said:

I prefer defenders personally.

For only 2 points more, they are much more sturdy.

and faster, and have a better chance of doing damage to both fighters and ships lol IDK, I'm just not quite sold on defenders (minus steele, he's awesome).

I hear they're super good with Sloane...?

5 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

and faster, and have a better chance of doing damage to both fighters and ships lol IDK, I'm just not quite sold on defenders (minus steele, he's awesome).

Steele is great!

My meta knowledge is a bit out of date, but I ran him with 5 other defenders with FC pretty often and had no complaints.

2 minutes ago, Thraug said:

I've used them several times, and have had these results:

Positive results:

• Unkillable longevity vs small squad forces when the action took place around station.
• Huge damage output when red anti-ship dice went bonkers (extremely rare)

Negative results:

• Phantoms were killed, before being able to use Cloak, by strong AS squads (Howler powered, swarms of 4 blue squads, etc.)
• Minimal damage to ships when the dice rolled average, or worse
• Countered to death by any counter squads. A-Wings maul them
• Even Sloane powered Phantoms didn't generate much ship damage when dice roll average

Overall impressions after many games:

• I always felt I could accomplish the same goals with cheaper squads
• The crazy positives were far too situational and luck dependent to relay on

Sloane makes them better, but Cloak just isn't strong enough to matter. 1 move just isn't impressive enough for their cost and low hull. They are still in need of a boost. Maybe a ship upgrade that gives Red anti-ship attacks Bomber?

These are great points. based on what I saw I'm torn. I've had very good and very bad rolls. Situationally, cloak was very helpful to me, but I didn't face much that my dedicated AA couldn't topple itself. (I have been considering switch them out for a jendon/steel combo, as those guys almost always get 4 damage, it would certainly average better for damage.

Are Phantoms affected by the less plentiful options for decent escort units with imps?

Are people considering the cost of intel saved when taking phantoms?

1 minute ago, Eggzavier said:

Steele is great!

My meta knowledge is a bit out of date, but I ran him with 5 other defenders pretty often and had no complaints.

I've run him with Jendon some bombers and rhymer(prenerf) and loved his ability to dish out hurt to ships. Since they nerfed rhymer, I haven't really used a bomber fleet, though the quasar has me itching to try one lol

Just now, Ginkapo said:

Are Phantoms affected by the less plentiful options for decent escort units with imps?

Are people considering the cost of intel saved when taking phantoms?

I can't speak for anyone else but as the only member in our local meta that blew the dust off them long enough to use them, I can say I actually hadn't considered the effects of the imperial escort fighter or the cost saved on intel. I was just looking to try something new, and was pleasantly surprised.

Now that you've mentioned it though I can see the later being a positive feature.

8 minutes ago, geek19 said:

I hear they're super good with Sloane...?

I haven't had a chance to try. This is for the reroll sloane offers on crits?

5 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I haven't had a chance to try. This is for the reroll sloane offers on crits?

From what I hear, yup.

I want to try this with Sloane. 128pts

1 Tempest Squadron ( 13 points)
1 Zertik Strom ( 15 points)
1 TIE Advanced Squadron ( 12 points)
1 Soontir Fel ( 18 points)
5 TIE Phantom Squadrons ( 70 points)

Card view link

3 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

I want to try this with Sloane. 128pts

1 Tempest Squadron ( 13 points)
1 Zertik Strom ( 15 points)
1 TIE Advanced Squadron ( 12 points)
1 Soontir Fel ( 18 points)
5 TIE Phantom Squadrons ( 70 points)

Card view link

This looks like a really cool combo. I may give this a try myself!

Let us know how it goes?

Why do you want red phantom dice with Sloane?? Is it because both chances of getting doubles are better? Higher consistent damage? You're def not getting higher avg accuracies.

They are too luck dependent for me to take, but I've seen them do terrifying things. I squared off against Sloane Phantoms on Monday and out of an activation of 4 of those I lost 9 shields plus a brace and a redirect token. He rolled great, but that kind of stuff is *possible* with Phantoms.

3 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Let us know how it goes?

Why do you want red phantom dice with Sloane?? Is it because both chances of getting doubles are better? Higher consistent damage? You're def not getting higher avg accuracies.

Extreme view incoming....

I dont understand why discarding tokens is helpful when you are dealing damage in small amounts anyway. Woohoo you stopped them bracing 2 dmg into 1. It helps, but unless you have Demo or something does it make much difference.

Similarly, I have never figured out how Nym works. You want Yav, Toryn and Adar so you can do it reliably, but then have nothing left for the mc30 or liberty which would benefit.

1 minute ago, Ginkapo said:

I dont understand why discarding tokens is helpful when you are dealing damage in small amounts anyway. Woohoo you stopped them bracing 2 dmg into 1. It helps, but unless you have Demo or something does it make much difference.

Discarding tokens is just icing on the cake, and where it really shines is in helping the ships hurt you after the squadrons have done their work. In my case, I braced the first attack because he rolled double-doubles. He followed it by rolling acc-double and killing my brace token. Then when I got zapped by the VSD, even though it was only 3 reds, I couldn't brace the 4 damage.

I always felt Phantoms did not feel right thematically in game mechanic terms.

I always felt phantoms should be immune to attack until they have made their first attack. To simulate being completely invisible until they decloak & having a great first strike capability.

The rules as written give the phantoms a post-attack action, in effect to disengage (which granted, fits with the idea of a cloak) but not at the expense of that missing first strike.

4 minutes ago, ISD Avenger said:

I always felt Phantoms did not feel right thematically in game mechanic terms.

I always felt phantoms should be immune to attack until they have made their first attack. To simulate being completely invisible until they decloak & having a great first strike capability.

The rules as written give the phantoms a post-attack action, in effect to disengage (which granted, fits with the idea of a cloak) but not at the expense of that missing first strike.

Yeah I agree with you there. rebel assault 2 was one of my favorite games growing up, the phantom was a devastating bad guy in that game.

I don't field them regularly, but when I do they usually do better than I expected. Defenders have better raw stats, Phantoms have better tech advantages (and with Cloak, a slightly higher speed) and anti-ship damage (although they lack Bomber).

By being decent against both ships and squadrons, Phantoms can really pay off if you can shepherd them into the mid-to-late game, where they should always be able to find a target and where Cloak can really pay off against a diminished number of enemy squadrons. To do that, you either need to have much higher-priority targets or you need to use a decent number of Escort squadrons to eat lasers for them earlier on (plus TIE Advanced are decent against ships, so if your opponent went squadron light, you can transition over to going after ships with your whole squadron blob very easily and without too much loss of performance). It helps if you can get the station near the middle of the table where you expect fighting to break out, because abusing Cloak with the station is really good.

Whisper is amazing all on her own, though. Really hard to kill. Her main issue is if you're going Imperial aces, especially with Sloane, it's tempting to run the Howlrunner Swarm aces ball and Whisper doesn't get any benefits from that.

I like TIE Phantoms in a Sloane list. Against enemy ships Sloane doesn't benefit Tie-Bombers or any of the Rogue capable options so you are left with TIE Fighters, Interceptors and Phantoms to choose from. With the rerolls of a single crit and the ability of using accuracies to spent a target ship's defence tokens these 3 options can rack up reasonable damage even without using any bombers.

Below is a Sloane fleet expected damage and token spends of a single squadron in the first two rows. The bottom rows show how much you get per point - well actually per 134 points. I know you can't buy 16.75 Tie Fighters to make 134 but it gives the efficiency per point you spend. Tie Phantoms do rather well on the damage front and they are self escorting able to fight off squadrons which Tie-Bombers would not be able to do and would need a proportion of your fleet spend to get them into position against most opposition.