Kihraxz, Starvipers, X-wings, A-wings, Scyks, TIE Bombers, Z-95s. They all seem to just...die.

There are exceptions, of course. Defenders can doublestack defensive tokens. Vader gets that plus he boosts and/or barrel rolls out of arc. The Inquisitor gets all those goodies with Autothrusters on top. Quickdraw can't stack but has enough PS to shoot first, and more than once. Ezra evades on all non-blanks.

In general, though, putting something key like Tactician or ordnance on a ship below PS9 that can't withstand two double-modded 4 dice attacks is just wasting points on something you'll never get to use. In the past, the counterplay was to add a swarm of multiple bare ships so your opponent couldn't kill enough fast enough, but 2-attack ships don't cut it offensively any more and you can't squeeze more than 1 extra full-strength ship in under 100 points (except the new supercheap X-wings, perhaps?).

And that's a shame, because I'd like to stop losing because I put Jostero or Tomax Bren on the table and 30 points goes POP.

Yeah, X-wing is broken beyond remedy due to the power creep.

I'm hoping they announce a second edition soon, or something.

42 minutes ago, Quarrel said:

In general, though, putting something key like Tactician or ordnance on a ship below PS9 that can't withstand two double-modded 4 dice attacks is just wasting points on something you'll never get to use.

Yes and no.

You can make non-ace medium and light fighters that can do work. But the key is to understand that, yes, they can be killed before they do anything and allow for it in your list.

The moment you're talking about Jostero or Tomax Bren, you're talking about an ~ 30 point ship by the time you've strapped ordnance and other upgrades to it. Which, I'd agree, at the moment is too much because it's not hard to blow them to crud without them getting to fire those (comparatively) expensive missiles.

That's why I've been a fan of various incarnations of the Heavy Swarm for a couple of years. @FTS Gecko's infamous Five. Cartel. Marauders. pretty much started the ball rolling (although technically 5 Avenger Squadron Pilots was always possible) - yes, you can PS-Kill one and feel all elite and ace-ey, and maybe even arc dodge a second into the bargain. And the result? 3 focused attacks is still enough to cripple or kill a ship.

Essentially, think of a ship as a heavy swarm 'you get 5', a superheavy 'you get 4' swarm (fairship rebels falls into this category) or 'aces' where you're down to three ships or a support ship and one-to-two aces. I agree light ships do die easily, but 'fitting in an extra all-up ship' has gotten a lot easier than you think)

Look at a 20 point bracket (letting you take 5 ships), and you'd be surprised what you can actually fit in.

• Scum & Villainy
  • Cartel Marauder
    • Vaksai
    • XX-23 S-Thread Tracers
    • Contraband Cybernetics
    • Guidance Chips
    • Munitions Failsafe
      • Can trade a focus on one ship for target locks for the entire squad. Pleasingly, if everyone focuses, you can chop and change firing order to let the range 3 ship set up locks for closer attackers. Also, even when the entire squad K-turns, one ship can double-stress itself to focus and still let the squad get modifiers from tracer locks.
  • Cartel Spacer
    • "Heavy Scyk"
    • Mangler Cannon
      • 4 hits and 3 agility, so whilst easy to kill in two hits, very hard to kill in one. No range 3 defence bonus allows you to fight boosting turrets more easily, and automatic criticals means 3-4 of them pounding on a big ship can cripple it with face-up damage cards in pretty short order. Also, pleasingly the same PS and almost identical dial to the Cartel Marauder to allow you to chop and change them as squad members
  • Named Pilot MVP - Sunny Bounder
    • Heavy Scyk
    • Linked Batteries
    • Pulse Ray Shields
      • The best 20 points you can spend on Scum. Because of the way her ability interacts with a native reroll, she's actually more likely to land 3 hits or criticals than a ship which actually has 3 attack dice.
• Rebel
  • Rookie Pilot
    • Renegade Refit
    • Flight Assist Astromech
    • Integrated Astromech
    • Servomotor S-Foils
      • 6 'hits' means you can suck up a 4-hit harpoon and keep right on rolling, and if a 2-3 ship squad wants to spend essentially its entire arsenal of one-use weapons to kill one ship out of five, it's going to have a bad couple of subsequent turns. Free repositioning is a bit unwieldy but is available to let you set up good positions before the shooting starts, or when trying to disengage.
  • Partisan Renegade
    • Pivot Wing
    • Collision Detector
    • Renegade Refit
      • Agility 2, 8 hit points, and a large base. That's one heck of a chunk of metal your opponent has to avoid, letting you block approaches, get in the way, and deliver nasty range 1 shots.
  • Named Pilot MVP - Pretty Much Any Sheathipede
    • I don't want to like it - because it's so damned ugly - but it is incredibly powerful, and with co-ordinate can influence the battlefield from a 'safe' spot at range 3+ of the enemy. AP-5/Inspiring Recruit is especially nice - letting one ship a turn pull a red move, clear stress and still get an action. He's also cheap enough to let you up the Rookies to Cavern Angel Zealots with Crack Shot, for extra first-round punch.
• Imperial
  • Scarif Defender
    • Adaptive Ailerons
    • Lightweight Frame
      • Whilst killing one isn't hard, one-shotting one is, and five of them means that you can't afford to concentrate too much on a single target with 12-16 red dice coming in from its wingmen at the same time. Dropping to PS1 imperial trainees lets you upgrade one to an ISB slicer-equipped Reaper for jamming shenanigans.
  • Scimitar Squadron Pilot
    • Unguided Rockets
    • Lightweight Frame
      • 6 hit points, 3 green dice. Even without a stack of tokens, that takes some killing, and like the Cartel Spacer, it can fight at range 3 to full effect because the rockets are a secondary weapon.
  • Scimitar Squadron Pilot
    • Harpoon Missiles
    • Long Range Scanners
      • This thing will draw as much grief as an old-style biggs, because your opponent cannot afford to let a 20 point ship fire off a focus/target locked 4-dice attack with the Harpooned! condition strapped to it.
  • Seinar Test Pilot
    • TIE/v1
    • Cruise Missiles
    • Guidance Chips
      • Getting a shot off with this ship isn't easy since you need a fast move and a target lock with low pilot skill. But if you manage it, the returns are devastating. More importantly, unlike the scimitar, it's substantially more dangerous after the missiles are gone if for some reason your opponent doesn't go ohgodohgodit'sgotacruisemissileshotonmekillitnow. As part of a 5-ship swarm, it's a lot easier to set up an attack run with this thing coming in from a flank.
  • Omega Squadron Pilot
    • Crack Shot
    • Advanced Optics
      • Focus-and-evade for the opening round - just like a 'lil TIE defender. Plus Crack Shot, so don't mock the 2-dice primary weapons. Especially since a lot of squads these days don't actually have the 3+ agility with stacks of tokens that made 2-dice attacks go away. Nym doesn't. Ghosts don't. Fenn Rau can token-jam two attacks - but unlike against most opponents that's not even half the squad.
  • Named Pilot MVP - Epsilon Ace
    • Advanced Optics
      • Coming in at a point less than the Omegas, this guy has been the backbone of every game I've played with him. A 20 point ship should not be able to out-PS veteran instincts Darth Vader or Poe, but he can, and does.

^ Beautiful response!

The 'pop'factor is really strong on ships with 3,5 and 7 hp. That's essentially the thresholds of PS-killing ships. Harpoons get 4 hits, most of the time, and the torp/missile after them gets 4 + the harpoon trigger.

Against a 3+crit attack, TIEs go pop a great deal of the time, as do light scyks. 5 hull ships can easily die to a 1 primary and R2 follow up from ATT 3 ships. 7 HP, AGI 2 ships like T-70s with integrated can easily die to the harpoon double-tap. Poe's got his own tricks, but everybody else is up a creek without a paddle.

While 8 HP seems good, every ship with 8 has a meagre 1 agility, and universally have mediocre speed. So in the endgame they die very rapidly.

9 HP ships though, that's the key. ARCs, but more importantly Miranda are manoeuvrable enough and durable enough to take an alpha and keep going, or run away for points. There's really only two thresholds now in mainstream competitive lists.

1. PS 9 ships (exactly PS 9) with double-actin efficiency or better, that are durable enough to take the double-munitions alpha. PS 7-8 arc-dodgers universally lose to PS 9 arc-dodgers, and nothing above PS 9 except Vader has double repositioning. If you take a PS9 that isn't kylo you need a bid.

2. PS 10-11 munitions or large base arc-dodging. You've got to kill the PS 9 on the opening engagement, or at least get them down real low. If you're a large base, passive mods are crucial, since your action is going to be boosting so much of the time.

As for the under 20 point bracket, I personally think there's one ship that shines above the rest:

Jakku Gunrunner (19)
STA
Cloaking Device
Vizago

Optional bump to Unkar if you're expecting brobots. You get an AGI 4 ship that ruins any small-base ace and wrecks any C-3P0 large base ship (very amusing rules conversations there). It then becomes a guided EMP device thanks to Cikatro and, once past the initial engagement, becomes a decent 2-die attack and menace. After having played 50+ games with the quad, it's been MVP perhaps 30 times. It fits in excellently with a salad of other scum 20 point options, adding to the damage they all do.

this is basically the reason i stopped playing 1.e - if you arent playing one of the powerhouse lists, you just die. Every faction has something thats obscenely broken right now.

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

• • Cartel Spacer
    • "Heavy Scyk"
    • Mangler Cannon
      • 4 hits and 3 agility, so whilst easy to kill in two hits, very hard to kill in one. No range 3 defence bonus allows you to fight boosting turrets more easily, and automatic criticals means 3-4 of them pounding on a big ship can cripple it with face-up damage cards in pretty short order. Also, pleasingly the same PS and almost identical dial to the Cartel Marauder to allow you to chop and change them as squad members.

Shudder. I faced this once with my TIE strikers. So many crits!

17 hours ago, Astech said:

As for the under 20 point bracket, I personally think there's one ship that shines above the rest:

Jakku Gunrunner (19)
STA
Cloaking Device
Vizago

Optional bump to Unkar if you're expecting brobots. You get an AGI 4 ship that ruins any small-base ace and wrecks any C-3P0 large base ship (very amusing rules conversations there). It then becomes a guided EMP device thanks to Cikatro and, once past the initial engagement, becomes a decent 2-die attack and menace. After having played 50+ games with the quad, it's been MVP perhaps 30 times. It fits in excellently with a salad of other scum 20 point options, adding to the damage they all do.

Good Call on control elements

Yeah - whilst they do raw primary firepower and attrition okay, one thing heavy swarms aren't great at is control (which is why Miranda Doni, who's best dealt with with ion and stress, is pretty much my arch-nemesis). Most options have some serious issues:

• Flechette cannons aren't bad, but you can't stack stress with them, and one stress token is basically just an irritant. (Flechette Heavy Scyks)
• 5-hull and above ships are immune to flechette torpedo stress (Flechette Torpedo/long range scanner Gunboats)

Deadeye/Ion Pulse Lieutenant Blount can be useful, although his ability is one-use. Alternatively, a Scavenger Crane Binyare Pirate gets multiple shots but has to contend with target locks. Ion Cannon heavy scyks shouldn't be overlooked.

12 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Good Call on control elements

Yeah - whilst they do raw primary firepower and attrition okay, one thing heavy swarms aren't great at is control (which is why Miranda Doni, who's best dealt with with ion and stress, is pretty much my arch-nemesis). Most options have some serious issues:

• Flechette cannons aren't bad, but you can't stack stress with them, and one stress token is basically just an irritant. (Flechette Heavy Scyks)
• 5-hull and above ships are immune to flechette torpedo stress (Flechette Torpedo/long range scanner Gunboats)

Deadeye/Ion Pulse Lieutenant Blount can be useful, although his ability is one-use. Alternatively, a Scavenger Crane Binyare Pirate gets multiple shots but has to contend with target locks. Ion Cannon heavy scyks shouldn't be overlooked.

Against AGI 1 ships, I don't think it's necessary to get fancy with something like Blount. Anything with an Ion cannon is going to accomplish the same goal, ultimately. It's also irksome that Blount comes to 21 points, disrupting 20 point X-wing builds. Provided all the ships are the same PS, you save the ion for last and pin them for the next turn.

Rebels have an answer that's just as strong, with Strezra costing as little as 19 points, and an optional Snap shot + Hera on top of that. That kind of stress control is pretty much unrivalled. Imperials have control of munition strikes with the reaper - especially ISB slicers reapers. So long as you're willing to compromise on one big gun, then you'll be able to add in a ship to deal with a good amount of the meta, or at least force shots.

A scavenger crane quadjumper with thermal dets could also be used viciously in a heavy swarm vs heavy swarm matchup.