Thing the Rebels can do no other faction can: chain swarm tactics missile launch at I5. Or just generally swarm missiles.

Tecnhicallt the Scum can as well, but they pay more for it due to Illicit slot. So that’s one thing the Rebels have advantage on.

Leia crew on a cheap carrier is a nice option, surprise all of my red flips are white!

Alternatively there are some good cheap coordinating options to help get a ship double mods that's about to shoot.

Lastly Saw and Magna are great pilots for team boosting.

So...Biggs ?

Rebels can't swarm right now. To put it simply, in order to swarm effectively at this point in the game, you need action economy for generics. Even something basic like rerolling a die on attack or letting them get target locks early is enough to get the mileage you need, but Rebels can't really do this at all. You have some interesting action economy options for single targets making for decent 3-4 ship lists, but as soon as you hit 5 the faction just stops working. Part of this is that a lot of their abilities are clunky and require setup that's not reliable or piling on the upgrades.

Saw- only works if you have a damage card

Kyle Katarn- Actually really bad. On his own, he's basically just a coordinate because all he does is gave a ship a focus that he had to spend his action on. If you moldy crow it up, he can at least store some focus, but this will go by pretty quick once the shooting starts and reduce him to just that poor man's coordinate status again. For him to really be something other than just a poor man's coordinate, he really needs both Moldy Crow and a Perceptive Copilot, but that's 60 pts which is a really hard sell for that statline.

Dutch- Really overcosted. He has to give someone a TL on his target which means if Dutch needs to hand out that lock, but can't shoot the target, he was basically just a coordinate with a 2 attack primary which you can get for 30pts in AP-5. You need the R3, but then you have a 45pt ship just to give target locks? That's pretty questionable costing when Jendon gives your whole squad locks at the outset for 46 on top of just having better stats than dutch in terms of attack and defense and also having coordinate on top of that.

I could go on, but all of my experiments with trying to make the rebel action economy work have failed miserably because a lot of it is inefficient in weird ways, overcosted, too hard to pull off and sometimes all of the above. I'm fine with Rebels not being able to swarm, but can the rest of the action economy suck less?

17 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

Dutch- Really overcosted. He has to give someone a TL on his target which means if Dutch needs to hand out that lock, but can't shoot the target, he was basically just a coordinate with a 2 attack primary which you can get for 30pts in AP-5. You need the R3, but then you have a 45pt ship just to give target locks? That's pretty questionable costing when Jendon gives your whole squad locks at the outset for 46 on top of just having better stats than dutch in terms of attack and defense and also having coordinate on top of that

You do not need R3. Most of the time, you're focus firing so you don't really want an extra lock that badly. R3 is more of a "oops, can't target that guy this turn" tool rather than one that lets you hand out more locks. Also, the second lock does not trigger R4 as I read it (it's triggered by action rather than acquiring and only gives out one lock, I believe, I could be wrong, though).

Dutch is not a swarm leader. He's really good at helping one other ship. I'd suggest them both carrying proton torpedoes, not necessarily another Y-Wing, though a cheap one riding alongside would be fine. Garven Dreis (in either ride) could be a fun synergy run in a 3-4 ship list. I think in this scenario you actually run him light. Maybe an R4 but maybe just the torps. Dorsal Turret + Trick Shot only if you have the points left after adding other stuff.

Not a swarm leader, but a solid wingman booster. I would be happier if he cost less but I don't expect that to happen.

Just now, CaptainIxidor said:

You do not need R3. Most of the time, you're focus firing so you don't really want an extra lock that badly. R3 is more of a "oops, can't target that guy this turn" tool rather than one that lets you hand out more locks. Also, the second lock does not trigger R4 as I read it (it's triggered by action rather than acquiring and only gives out one lock, I believe, I could be wrong, though).

Dutch is not a swarm leader. He's really good at helping one other ship. I'd suggest them both carrying proton torpedoes, not necessarily another Y-Wing, though a cheap one riding alongside would be fine. Garven Dreis (in either ride) could be a fun synergy run in a 3-4 ship list. I think in this scenario you actually run him light. Maybe an R4 but maybe just the torps. Dorsal Turret + Trick Shot only if you have the points left after adding other stuff.

Not a swarm leader, but a solid wingman booster. I would be happier if he cost less but I don't expect that to happen.

I do, he's overcosted by about 2pts as is Norra.

I was thinking about the GR faction this morning and I kind of expect them to have pretty solid swarm boosters. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something that identified all clone pilots as such, and then uniques for the faction might be things like "Clones can re-roll an attack die as long as a friendly clone is in the defender's front arc." They have at least 3 ships that clones would pilot that are likely costed well for swarming (V-19 torrent, V-Wing, Z-95). Maybe those of us who enjoy Rebels will get some satisfaction out of the GR faction.

Then again, it's not Rebels, so...IDK.

3 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

I do, he's overcosted by about 2pts as is Norra.

Partially I fear that they will only increase costs for the "worrisome" things in the game instead of decreasing under-performers. It's definitely easier to look at a few increases than to look at so many decreases at once. Hopefully they mix both types of changes.