18 hours ago, AngryAlbatross said:

Can you post the list?

Fresh from the BtD facetwit group...

Crack Dealers

AP-5: Operations Specialist
2x Cavern Angels Zealot: Crack Shot, Flight-Assist Astromech, Renegade Refit, Integrated Astromech, Servomotor S-Foils
2x Green Squadron Pilot: Snap Shot, Crack Shot, Chardaan Refit, A-Wing Test Pilot
100/100

It's high on my list of things to fly before 1.0 goes away.

6 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It looks like a really good list, and one I'd like to try. My only real concern is the fact that whichever B-wing gets targeted tends to end the turn buried under a mound of stress tokens, which is likely to prevent it staying in the fight effectively over the next few turns. Plus, with only 4 ships and very slow dials, you may come unstuck against stuff like Dash Rendar - if you're using linked battery for rerolls, you're stuck with primary weapons, which means distinctly less effective fire at range 3.

These are all interesting questions, that I think can only be addressed by putting it on a table. I really just have to borrow some B-Wings to try it out.

[bah, humbug]

On 7/4/2018 at 3:49 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

But, yes. 5 strikers can work - has worked, in fact, in my experience. Agreed bad dice can hobble you but in the game I played against them, I can confirm that:

• Flight Assist Astromech is a lot less useful than you'd hope when there are enemy ships all over the place but moving after you.
• Massed Strikers with higher PS are surprisingly capable of arc-dodging the worst of the X-wing's fire. When you break up the fight into 'take whatever shots you can get' where shots are distributed across both squads relatively evenly instead of 5-on-1 vs 5-on-1, the agility-based defences of the strikers come into their own versus the shield tokens of the X-wings.

I'd been thinking of asking you whether you thought 4x PS 1 Strikers, plus a PS 1 Reaper with up to 2 points of upgrades (probably ISB Slicer, but LWF could work too) would be a good alternative to 5x PS 3 Strikers. Reaper flies mostly like a Striker, and is likely a little tougher to kill. However, given the rise of PS 2 X-Wings, I think we have an answer. If that PS wasn't important, any thoughts?

Out PS them. 4 Red Squadron Pilots, 4 Dagger Squadron Pilots, and so on.

17 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I'd been thinking of asking you whether you thought 4x PS 1 Strikers, plus a PS 1 Reaper with up to 2 points of upgrades (probably ISB Slicer, but LWF could work too) would be a good alternative to 5x PS 3 Strikers. Reaper flies mostly like a Striker, and is likely a little tougher to kill. However, given the rise of PS 2 X-Wings, I think we have an answer. If that PS wasn't important, any thoughts?

This.

4 Trainees and a Scarif base pilot is essentially the same as 5 scarif defenders. It will likely perform a bit better against most lists, but much worse against other heavy swarms. It does suffer from having the 'kill this first' target, but even once the reaper die, 99% of opponents don't care if you're a PS1 or PS3 striker.

4-5 X-wing lists, Cartel marauders and spacers, sunny bounder, other strikers, lothal rebels, and wookies will really, really care, as will anyone with predator. How big a proportion of your opponents that is, is a call based on your likely opponents.

Well actually... I wonder why people suggest another Swarm to beat a Swarm.

Please don't get me wrong: I think your ideas might work very well, but that still feels like fighting fire with fire.

How about a highly maneuverable 2 ship list?

The idea is... react to the movement of the Swarm, don't let them get you in arc... or if you can't avoid it, just let 1 or 2 shoot at you and defend with a lot of green dice + tokens.

Whisper (TIE Phantom) + Veteran Instincts + Advanced Cloaking Device + Sensor Jammer + Director Krennic
Kylo Ren (TIE Silencer) + Push the Limit + First Order Vanguard + Advanced Optics + Advanced Sensors + Autothrusters

You should have a good chance, especially because you are mostly unblockable with these two ships (decloaking Whisper and Sensors Kylo)

Rainbow Dash + Corran or Miranda should work very well, too.

@Schu81 Kylo can certainly fly circles around an x wing swarm, but Whisper is too easy to catch since you decloak before the X-Wings move. I would love to see Dash + against 5 x-wings, I think that could do it!

I took 4 Rookies and AP5 with R3a2/Tactician to a Store Championship yesterday, got 2nd because I got lazy (and was so tired from flying 5 ships). Its a really strong list! Those X-Wings are really hard to chew thru.

Dice variance kills the x wings, but mainly I had a lot of trouble with Scavenger Crane/Countermeasures Rey and Quickdraw + lists.

Flew against 5X today. Went fairly close, but beat it with Double VCX. (Two Lothal Rebels with FCS, Autoblaster, Courier Droid. One has Ghost, one has Chopper. Snap Shot, Hera, R3-A2, Phantom II on the Ezra Sheathipede).

I think a lot would depend on how well each list is flown. My opponent hadn't flown 5X before, but has been flying a lot of 4-ship rebel lists for ages, frequently 3X + something.

With one and only one X-Wing in arc/range of the non-Ghost VCX on the second turn, this set things up for a kill on that X-Wing before it shot next turn. The proper-Ghost ate 13 attack dice, but with an Evade and a reasonable amount of bad luck, I took only 7 damage (my opponent rolled 8 instead of the average 9.75 hits). After this, the proper-Ghost was able to K-Turn, and while my opponent reversed on two X-Wings, it left them without tokens, so it lived a while longer yet. We tend to play with time controls, so I was 41 points to 40 when the last turn started; half HP on the non-Ghost, and full Ezra, against two wounded X-Wings. I guessed positions right, and made one last shot and popped one (the other was way far away), but otherwise it was almost as close as a game gets, and a different set of moves from both players could have left the X-Wing out-of-arc.

Ezra really makes the Double VCX archetype pop, I think. I tried it a little with a Deadeye/Ion Pulse Missile Blount back in the day, and I know it started out with an Autoblaster Y-Wing with a damage-reduction droid, but stress Ezra goes a long way. Free actions on the approach, plus a tougher-than-he-should-be pest. Against Rookiee Pilots, Ezra was great. He was able to coordinate to my VCXes, and still shoot first, meaning he'd have a single, clearable stress to power his defenses.