I 'll be flying a Defender for the first time in 2.0. The ship looks awesome, but it comes with a very heavy price.

I currently own an Interceptor, Tie Advanced Prototype, 4 tie fighters, a Lambda, tie bomber and Tie Phantom.

I thought I 'd go with a Defender, a Lambda as support, and another ace, but with the leftover point budget i dont like how the Lambda ends up. I also liked the idea of Soontir + Stealth Device as the other ace, but he becomes very pricey.

Any ideas?

Mini tie swarm to back up an ace defender?

Ryad, Inquisitor (Base, not Grand), and Soontir Fel would leave you 22 points of upgrades to play with. I might consider something like that as a good starting point.

Ryad w/ Daredevil and Adv Sensors - 97 pts

Soontir Fel w/ Lone Wolf - 56 pts

Lieutenant Sai - 47 pts

Just use Sai as a coordinating platform to dish out focus tokens to whomever needs them, likely Ryad in most cases.

38 minutes ago, RStan said:

Ryad w/ Daredevil and Adv Sensors - 97 pts

Soontir Fel w/ Lone Wolf - 56 pts

Lieutenant Sai - 47 pts 

Just use Sai as a coordinating platform to dish out focus tokens to whomever needs them, likely Ryad in most cases.

Im on a 2x Phantoms kick with an ace and stuff. Works with Vader to.

Look at my Tie Phantoms that definitely arent basically just definitely better X-Wings

How bout

Rexlar , Juke

Echo, Juke, Collision Detector, Kallus

Scarif Reaper, Krennic

It's rough, but the defender I'd try would be Brath (JESUS 2nd ed is weird, never thought I'd ever say that). He's a high initiative for "cheap" relative to the other named pilots

Get him, Juke + collision Detector (gotta hit them obstacles to get your evade)

With Whisper + Sigma Ace (also jukes)

Or Juke Brath, Predator Duchess, and two Planetary Sentinels

Or Juke Brath, Elusive Howlie, and 3 Academies

Something I've been thinking about:

Lt Sai with title, Vader crew and Director Krennic

Col Vessary with Juke and collision detector

And because you need a blocker that constitutes an actual threat.... WAMPA!

Total on this version of the points is 199

Can confirm Rexler = best. Here’s what I did:

200 Point Rexler:

Rexler Brath

FCS

Outmaneuver

HLC

———

Captain Kagi

Advanced Sensors

Ciena Ree

Electronic Baffle

———

Seyn Marana

Marksmanship

This list is all about Rexler. He's a beast in the endgame, and here he has all the tools he needs to get there.

Seyn Marana deals a facedown damage card just about every time she can bullseye an opponent (or get a lucky roll). These are great for Rexler to flip faceup.

The Shuttle will have to make every effort to take blue maneuvers and track with Rexler, because he will rely on coordinate and Kagi's ability. Kagi makes Rexler immune to locked ordnance strikes (the worst fear of an evading Defender).

Coordinate will allow him to be focused before he repositions at I5 (with a very reasonable bid). Otherwise, if he's only dodging at I4, Ciena Ree basically gives him an Advanced Sensors reposition on dope. As long as he has a blue dialed in, he can turn 90 and still clear the stress for full throttle and then focus or another reposition.

I recently flew Defenders with Adv Sensors and they are ridonkulous. Ryad/Adv Sensors/Outmaneuver is a monster combo. Same goes for Brath and he ends up 2 pts cheaper (Ryad is an even 100) - he loses Ryad's crazy repositioning but provides in5 so he's more reactive. Flying this build means you're playing an in-your-face flanker (a counter-intuitive term, but makes sense after you use it - fly straight at 'em, boost and K-turn and watch your opponent wonder how you got there). That means you need your other ships to provide a distraction. Fel is great, but he also plays a flanker role (I'm planning on him with Phennir with a Defender for an outmaneuvering madness list). Four TIEs or a Bomber and two TIEs is always a solid base and should be a great distraction so your Defender can go to work picking apart the enemy. They provide steady jousting damage and that Defender is nigh impossible to catch, so if they chase the Defender you hit hard with the jousters and if they aim at the jousters, your Defender has free reign and wins in the end game. Either way, the Defender is the star of the show, never really needing to disengage, so they should get shots every turn.

My $.02.

I see many different suggestions, which kind of reflects my thoughts: So many ideas, can't really figure if one of them is the better choice!

Colonel Vessery with Juke

Ved Foslo with FCS and Crackshot

Redline with Proton Torpedos

Rexlar - AS, Juke, HLC

2 x Sigma Squadron - Juke

200 points

Good luck hitting it.

You can also run three named Juke TIEs if you like.

Valen Rudor (28)
Juke (4)

"Scourge" Skutu (32)
Juke (4)

"Mauler" Mithel (32)
Juke (4)

Rexler Brath (84)
Juke (4)
Advanced Sensors (8)

Total: 200

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

If you drop Valen to a Black or Wampa you also have the option for Outmaneuver on Rexler.

I went for:

Rexlar: Juke, FCS

Iden, Del and Gideon: all with Elusive.

200pts

i havnt done all that much 2.0 listbuilding but it kinda feels like if you run a defender you cant run a support ship so miniswarm is probably best.

The points always seems to be JUST over 200 when i try to squeeze a punisher in there and a striker. Dang lol

Mini-swarm seems to be the default accompaniment to basically everything in our tiny pre-official release meta

Be it Vader, Soontir, Whisper, inqy, or Redline, it's hard to resist the siren call of howlie + 3 TIEs. They're hellishly efficient

Only time I've gotten away from the formula was with Juke Whisper + Sigma Ace, which is a loadout I keep repeating in just about any list that can fit them

Miniswarm seems good. It was good when the Defender first came out in wave 4.

So far, I've been running Rexler with Maarek + coordinate support. All the Lambda's offer a lot, and I'm not sure if there's a best. That 50ish point spot has a ton of options as well. I know this is all very open ended, but I think the OP is on the right track.

The Rexler I've been running is HLC, Juke, Homing Missiles, sensor slot variable. I don't know if it's optimal, but it feels really good. You don't have an overwhelming attack mode like you did with old pre-title HLC Defenders or TIE/D, but you are super tough and have a tool for a variety of situation. Range 1 or Bullseye and you get 4 dice (while Juking). Range 3 against high defense and maybe you take a Homing shot. All the other times, you get a Juking 3 dice primary, which isn't optimal, but sure doesn't suck.

19 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

The Rexler I've been running is HLC, Juke, Homing Missiles, sensor slot variable. I don't know if it's optimal, but it feels really good. You don't have an overwhelming attack mode like you did with old pre-title HLC Defenders or TIE/D, but you are super tough and have a tool for a variety of situation. Range 1 or Bullseye and you get 4 dice (while Juking). Range 3 against high defense and maybe you take a Homing shot. All the other times, you get a Juking 3 dice primary, which isn't optimal, but sure doesn't suck.

Juke may be a sneaky good EPT in 2.0, especially against the non-force pilots. Defenders and IG-2000’s seem like the optimal Juke carriers given their ability to get bonus evades.

Vessery with outmaneuver, fire control system, and homing missiles

2x Nu squadron gunboats with FCS, proton torpedoes, advanced slam, and arsenal loadout

I need to buy another gunboat to test it out but I like the looks of it. It's hard to build around Vessery's ability in 2.0

The way adv sensors is worded makes it sound like you can't get the evade from Full Throttle. Is this correct? If so, adv sensors is far less cool.

1 hour ago, Effenhoog said:

Vessery with outmaneuver, fire control system, and homing missiles

2x Nu squadron gunboats with FCS, proton torpedoes, advanced slam, and arsenal loadout

I need to buy another gunboat to test it out but I like the looks of it. It's hard to build around Vessery's ability in 2.0

Why FCS on Vessery? He should just be spending his free locks.

5 minutes ago, DXCrazytrain said:

The way adv sensors is worded makes it sound like you can't get the evade from Full Throttle. Is this correct? If so, adv sensors is far less cool.

This is correct.

4 hours ago, RunnerAZ said:

Juke may be a sneaky good EPT in 2.0, especially against the non-force pilots. Defenders and IG-2000’s seem like the optimal Juke carriers given their ability to get bonus evades.

Yeah, it's very good. The main drawback is that you have so few supporting ships that it can kind of end up doing nothing. If they just spend their Focus, but have no follow-up shots, it's not doing much.

Rexler Brath (84)
Juke (4)
Fire-Control System (3)

Soontir Fel (52)
Predator (2)

"Redline" (44)
Proton Torpedoes (9)

Total: 198

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Rex fires last.

Given how much they cracked down on multimods w/o a support ship im honestly surprised Juke didnt get nerfed, either by expensive pricetag // charge tokens // requires out of arc or some other stupid restriction.

Its still cheap. And still lethal since it pretty much forces focus/calc/force/evade token use even more than in 1.0 due to lack of multimods on most platforms.

Guarantee you are going to royally piss off a force user if you force him to spend a token on a juked evade result, especially if he just used one this round or ends up using more before they regen 1. And this'll happen often.

The daredevil ryad is comical and will probably have a place but i still suspect to see her and any defender with juke stapled to them. Them and Phantoms get evade tokens naturally, and with evade tokens getting nerfed people are much less likely to want an evade action over a focus.