Anecdotally, are your launch tournaments seeing many swarms?

By PaulRuddSays, in X-Wing

We’ll have a thousand little metas, but I’m curious whether our first weekend tournaments are seeing many swarms? And if so, please define the swarms you saw (Howlrunner, Drea, Heptugwhatever, ...)

I’m headed up to my launch tournie in Garden City MI in a few hours and will report back on what we see there.

Edited by PaulRuddSays

Two of ten TIE swarms (one Howl/Iden/Academy, one Howl/Del/Alpha/Academy).

Edited by Hawkstrike

Does the TTS tourney count?

We had a small six player event yesterday. I ran six ties, Howl and inferno squad. Another player ran Jonus and four bombers

24 minutes ago, DekoPuma said:

We had a small six player event yesterday. I ran six ties, Howl and inferno squad. Another player ran Jonus and four bombers

But did you meet each other. Because that matchup has me very intrigued.

Not really, no. It's not what people want to fly.

And tbh it seems like TIE Swarms aren't good enough, there's other stuff way ahead of them in the jousting stakes and a lot of Proton Bombs.

53 minutes ago, SOTL said:

Not really, no. It's not what people want to fly.

And tbh it seems like TIE Swarms aren't good enough, there's other stuff way ahead of them in the jousting stakes and a lot of Proton Bombs.

How to keep TIE swarms away:

Deathrain

Trajectory Simulator

Proton Bombs

Skilled Bombardier

Fairly cheap (52 points, plenty of room to add missiles), high action economy (launch, boost, lock, blue move, focus), white reloads.

Edited by Polaritie

Just one swarm. They're still a massive pain in the *** to carry around, set up, and fly correctly

Actually ran into four juke Sigmas, and it wasn't that bad. Boba/Palob/Seri had a very strong showing, until a string of 8 ******* green blanks in a row had the phantoms win by 5 points (half points rules)

Did cement my preference for whisper, two sigmas, and an imadaar/duchess though. The flexibility of Whisper's ability is pretty big

Edited by ficklegreendice
2 hours ago, DodgingArcs said:

But did you meet each other. Because that matchup has me very intrigued.

Yes, the bombers crushed it. The obstacles were set up in a way to to make it difficult to avoid the joust. Despite everything, it took almost two full rounds to kill the first bomber, and I lost howlrunner in the process. In the end, I killed 1 bomber, Jonus, and a couple damage on another bomber.

Lots of different lists. More Bombers and Punishers than swarms, though a few at each of the events I went to. Swarms showed strong though, winning what matches I observed.

There was also a fair few quick build list games, but those slanted heavily towards Luke. The threat level points are just screwy. Luke and Vader are just way better than their printed threat, so each game went to them.

I played a pair of mini swarms yesterday.

3 z95s

2 a wings with a tie.

Had fun made alot of enemys with it. Lost first game by 1 point and won second by 3. Last game was my son and he won with jan chewie gavin bare.

3 hours ago, Tbetts94 said:

Does the TTS tourney count?

Uhhh. This needs to be publicized more. These vids were exactly what I was looking for during the wait for 2.0.

2 hours ago, Polaritie said:

How to keep TIE swarms away:

Deathrain

Trajectory Simulator

Proton Bombs

Skilled Bombardier

Fairly cheap (52 points, plenty of room to add missiles), high action economy (launch, boost, lock, blue move, focus), white reloads.

Not even sure you need the bombardier. If you have the points, sure, but trajectory almost always did enough of the trick to wreck swarms for me.

12 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

Not even sure you need the bombardier. If you have the points, sure, but trajectory almost always did enough of the trick to wreck swarms for me.

The bombadier enables traj sim to use the 4 straight as well as the 5 straight. For only 2 pts it is a nice fine tuning option.

No swarms, but we had mostly new players or people that I haven't seen in 3 or 4 years. So it was honestly more about teaching/learning how to play than an actual tournament.

17 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

The bombadier enables traj sim to use the 4 straight as well as the 5 straight. For only 2 pts it is a nice fine tuning option.

Yes I should have been clearer. I’ve been testing trajectory punishers and I have found the 5 was the correct choice often enough that it’s not terribly valuable to spend the points on the bombadier.

Edited by Kdubb
3 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

until a string of 8 ******* green blanks in a row 

So pretty much business as usual then, right? ?

Myep

Only problemo I have with second edition is that green dice have gone absolutely-bloody-nowhere

Which may be part of why juke phantoms are so appealing. Juke + evade are one of few ways to counter green dice

Played in a 30-person launch tournament, only about 4 swarms that I saw. A tie swarm did really well though, top 5 I think.

I didn’t play against any.

Edited by ayedubbleyoo

We had 9 people yesterday. 5 of them ran 4-6 ships:

  • 5 elite TIE Swarm (Iden-Del-Gideon-Seyn-Scourge. All Crack and Stealth Device except Seyn with Marksmanship and someone with no Stealth)
  • Tarkin-Krennic-Sai + 5 Academies
  • 4 X-Wings with Shield Upgrades
  • Luke + 3 X-Wings
  • A 4-ship Rebel jumble (AUXY-Wing)

then we had some 3-ship lists:

  • 2 ARCs and Thane
  • Leepio, Sabine TIE, and Evaan
  • Boba, IG-C, and a Z95

And then there was me with the only two-ship list:

  • Boba and Moralo

So, average ship counts are definitely up. Luke X-Wing squad went 4-0 and won the day. 4 generic X-Wings took third. the 5-TIE swarm guy had to leave for work before the last round and still ended up 5th.

Lots of scum. Not much imperial.

I've had some moderate success with 2 strikers, 2 crack shot interceptors, and a juke phantom

Michigan update: one guy with a 6 TIE swarm and... redline? Out of 24 players starting.

8 hours ago, Tbetts94 said:

Does the TTS tourney count?

6 TIEs is more of a mini-swarm. True Swarms have at least 7. So this is Swarm vs Mini-swarm.

Also why is the thumbnail using FO TIE silhouettes?

5 hours ago, Marinealver said:

6 TIEs is more of a mini-swarm. True Swarms have at least 7. So this is Swarm vs Mini-swarm.

Also why is the thumbnail using FO TIE silhouettes?

Not really, 6/7/8 is considered a swarm easily.