TIE Reaper

Key ship to know/practice with if your going to run Hyperspace Imperials.

Premovement "boosts" with AA, passive dice modifying pilot abilities, coordinate, decent durability, and a cool ship model.

Pilots

Upgrades

• Talent
  • Crackshot
    • Settled into this as preferred EPT for Vermiel
  • Juke
    • Good but I would rather have the Hull Upgrade at this stage.
  • Trickshot
    • AA allows initial movement over rocks, followed by dial movement, and action.
    • Makes trickshot easier.
  • Bid or Pts In Rest of List
    • If I am not taking Juke or Trick I typically just leave the EPT empty
  • Swarm Tactics
    • Supported by a mini swarm this can be chained to allow multiple ships to shoot at i5+.
    • Helps Vermeil or Feroph abilities to trigger later in init order.
  • Intimidation
    • Reapers have a tendency to bump everything nearby after the first engagement.
    • Not that great of a bonus for 3 pts better spent somewhere else probably.
• Crew
  • Death Troopers
    • Powerful double crew that can change an entire game
    • Prevents alot of ships/players from doing their favorite combos
  • Tactical Officer
    • Adds white Coordinate, but keeps existing red coordinate.
    • Good to have flexibility to stall the fast moving reaper.
    • Or to perform a white coordinate and rely on Vermiel's action economy.
  • ISB Slicer
    • Improves the usefulness of the Jam action.
    • Range 1-2 is a wide area with the Reaper.
  • Director Krennic
    • Adds Target Lock action which is nice for Vermiel in particular
    • The Prototype Condition is cool but conditional on Krennic ship having the target locked.
    • At max of i4 having that target lock for initial engage is pretty rare
    • Triggering the condition later on once shields are down allows 1 damage card to be flipped
  • Informant
    • Genuinely solid combined with AA
• Mod
  • Hull & Shield Upgrade
    • 8 HP is a dangerously low amount with fully or near fully modified Proton Torps around.
    • Extra HP for only 3-4 pts is worth look.

Dial

General Notes

• One of the more challenging & interesting dials in the game.
• Incredibly fast, sometimes to fast but you do eventually get used to it.
• Vermiel is the clear favorite here but Captain Feroph and Vizier are both under appreciated/underused.
• Effective Blocker in General
• To Slow Down
  • Self Bump with your own ships
  • Red Stop
  • Red Coordinate
  • Move along board edges and wait for things to develop before turning in
• Doesn't have to be used strictly as a Range Restricted Support ship
• The Tie Reaper is still good at switching up roles between playing directly/smashing into your opponent vs flanking.
• Crit Damage to be aware of: Loose Stabilizer - If you AA bank you take a damage.
• Jam: Don't forget you have the Jam action. Your opponent typically will.
• Works really well with Darth Vader pilot who benefits greatly from Coordinate actions in general
• 1 Bank AA + 1 Bank Movement is basically a 4 hard turn
  • 
• 1 bank + 3 Bank and 1 forward + 3 forward are slightly faster than a 5 forward
  • 
  • The 1 bank + 3 bank move is similar to a Small Base Roll + 5 forward
  • 
• 1 Sloop keeps the Reaper on target
  • Don't be afraid to use it but try your best to set up engagements where you don't need to
  • 1 bank AA + 1 Sloop same direction puts you just outside of Range 1 of your starting position
  • 
  • In some situations a 1 forward 1 sloop is not terribly different then a 1 bank AA + 1 red turn.
  • Being further away often helps manage speed turn to turn, but that red 1 hard turn is still powerful.
  • 
  • The 1 bank right or left + sloop opposite direction is roughly a pre-movement barrel roll + 4 k turn
  • 

Theres been a decent amount of concern about Imperials in Hyperspace format ( likely warranted ) but who knows after points change.

Until then I definitely encourage everyone to try out the Tie Reaper again.

It rewards practice and is a much better ship then I think most players realize.

Whenever I fly the Reaper I feel like its missing 1 or 2 shields. It just dies awfully quick when concentrated on. Feroph can be fairly tanky in certain situations. Vermeil can hit like a truck though, especially with Vader crew (not hyperspace legal 😣 ).

This is great, and the pictures are super helpful! I mocked things up in Vassal in first edition but haven’t done any of this with the medium base... very illuminating when you see it in movement diagrams!

Using it in hyperspace has been fun for different reasons because I end up having to make the ship itself work on its own merits, rather than stapling the 1 obvious crew to it every time ( Sloane ).

It takes damage quickly but it kinda should at its price point and stat line. The Evade action and a Hull Upgrade help considerably ( so does just using Captain Fair). I rarely feel like its unable to trade.

Other random aside that I am not the first to notice is that any time Vermiel is on the table people seem to go blind and try to destroy him at all costs.

Hey nice writeup! I've been flying the Reaper a lot due to Hyperspace - mostly Fairoph with Tactical Officer to stay alive and support Vader and whatever I do with those other 50-ish points.

Looking back on games, I've definitely seen the times where I needed to use the red coordinate to slow down but I couldn't figure it out at the time - which is one of the harder parts of this ship IMO - it requires thinking at least one additional move in advance.

There are plenty of games where everything happens after my Reaper moves, which is fine by me, but when that doesn't happen, it gets even crazier because I'm intentionally trying to set up and dial in maneuvers that work with multiple pre-move boosts so that I can use my game state knowledge upon dial reveal to my advantage.

And yeah, the self-bump is a very effective strategy.

Since I'm using Fairoph as a support mostly, I sort of do strafing runs (which is my fancy way of saying I pretty much joust everything). I usually use him to stay within range 2 of the aces and give them action economy to arc-dodge while serving as the bait to pull enemies away from the aces, and then run away real fast, then turn around and do it again. Of course in some particularly jousty matchups the Reaper instead fakes a joust and then 1-bank-boost-3-banks to do a 5-turn and is gone.

14 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

I usually use him to stay within range 2 of the aces and give them action economy to arc-dodge while serving as the bait to pull enemies away from the aces, and then run away real fast, then turn around and do it again. Of course in some particularly jousty matchups the Reaper instead fakes a joust and then 1-bank-boost-3-banks to do a 5-turn and is gone.

I really need to give Vizier some more game time for the reasons you describe there. Its interesting having a coordinate ship that doesn't feel like its strictly moving in formation.

My game time with the Reaper lately has been almost entirely variations on the following when I want to practice some Aces.

Swapping out some upgrades (usually prockets) and swapping in Countdown or a deeper Bid from time to time.

And this when I want to practice Named Strikers which after so much time with Sloane Whisper + 4 Strikers is alot more challenging to use:

Yeah, I always feel like there's this little game I'm playing with coordinate of having things just barely within range 2 of the coordinate carrier. If things get any closer together, I'm underutilizing my squad and losing the little game.

I'm bad at not putting myself too close to rocks so I put Collision Detector on Vader and I'm also stubborn so I keep flying Maarek, and thus I have a less expensive Reaper than your first list. Dutchess or 2 TIE Fighters do seem like the best options for "other stuff besides Vader/Reaper" though.

I keep going back to lists that let the Reaper just be "free" and occupy its own space or flanks. Not necessarily using it as a flanker. Just letting it do its thing It kind of doesnt want to be in formation to since there are certain Rock setups that already force pretty significant areas of the board to be no fly zones ( despite AA allowing movement over rocks in spots ). Usually end up playing like it is its own "ace" or using Feroph as this crazy control piece to shutdown stressed things. The coordinate range is just wide enough that using the action doesnt completely conflict with all that.

Also side note but its maybe one of the best blockers when moving after a Range 3 engage etc. It can get in so many of your opponents ships way on demand. Especially if Vader has Sense.

How about the death troopers crew? Anyone try them on other ships with any luck?

37 minutes ago, EVIL INC said:

How about the death troopers crew?

Its good.

Tactical Jammer for use as a blocker? Seems worth it if it comes in to play once or twice. I'll try it one day.

2 hours ago, Rossetti1828 said:

Tactical Jammer for use as a blocker? Seems worth it if it comes in to play once or twice. I'll try it one day.

Not currently available in Hyperspace. I do kinda want to run an Intimidation Death Trooper Feroph though.

Is composure hyperspace legal? Really helps when you miss the jam or coordinate

5 minutes ago, Sir13scott said:

Is composure hyperspace legal? Really helps when you miss the jam or coordinate

It is.

man, this thing would really like the ability to have Han gunner- just so it can stress itself to slow down, and still get focus tokens.

oh, and funny thing about ISB Slicer: it's range 1-2 only, not range 0, so if you jam someone who then bumps you, they don't keep the jam token next round 😞

10 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

1 Bank AA + 1 Bank Movement is basically a 4 hard turn 

You do this maneuver quite a bit with the reaper. Adaptive ailerons + medium base + restricted dial + cool actions makes for an interesting ship. If anyone actually owned enough of them, a list with 4 and ISB slicer is legitimately terrifying. I've been flying one in my only hyperspace list. Some notes.

1. All the pilots are usable depending on your list
2. Selectively self stressing with co-ordinate and full-stop is EXTREMELY important to flying this thing well. (surprisingly I've found that tactical officer is not required)
3. I've even purposely dialed in a red-maneuver while stressed to KEEP the stress for next round. (dial doesn't have white 2-straight)
4. The board edge is not your friend. Ailerons into a sloop off the board is easy to do.
5. This thing is scary fast. In 2e, positioning matters, so speed is always good
6. Jam is the least used action, but it is of course useful to have
7. As others have said, using its speed as a flanker is quite a good battle plan (otherwise it can easily crash into everything)

2 hours ago, Dengar5 said:

Selectively self stressing with co-ordinate and full-stop is EXTREMELY important to flying this thing well. (surprisingly I've found that tactical officer is not required     ) 

In my view this is the biggest key to unlocking this ship. However you can't be too judicious with it, as it makes you predictable the next turn, and you can't hard turn.

I also echo @Boom Owl sentiment about vermeil, people hate him! Extended him with Kallus hits like a truck.

Thx. This was very insightfull also the movement samples. I'm currently experimenting with Vermeil and the int 4 strikers and see what I can 'bold on' for the other points. Init 4 in order to stay in formation but tbh that is a realy challenge particularly if you stick on other ships, nice puzzle. Looking at this Vizier is probably also fitting for what I'm interested in flying.

Do I understand it correctly that if you have the tactical officer on the ship you can still opt to use the red coordinate?

I flew against Death Troopers for the first time the other week and they are SO good on a medium base. Really changes the way you have to fly. Great control piece

Quick stupid question about Death Troopers:

Does an enemy ship needs to: a)start, c)end, d)either, in range 0-1 of the Death Troopers?

26 minutes ago, C3gorach said:

Quick stupid question about Death Troopers:

Does an enemy ship needs to: a)start, c)end, d)either, in range 0-1 of the Death Troopers?

The enemy ship needs to be at range 0-1 when it tries to remove stress. In the case of a blue maneuver, check pilot stress happens after the physical movement of the ship, so end. In the case of an ability like Cassian, when the ability happens. And 4-Lom ignores them, since he triggers in the end phase, and Death Troopers only affects activation phase.

It's where your ship ends after it activates (moves). Range 1 of a medium base is a big bubble of no stress removal

It would have to end in range 0-1 of them, as the check difficulty step (where you remove/add stress) occurs after movement.

Shuts down Nien BS as well by the look of it....makes it an interesting meta call for sure. 4pts more than Tac Officer feels bad for an ace build though, cuts into your bid

+1 to all of the above, the Reaper is both fun and effective. Win/Win.

As a note on the Tac Officer, I agree it's not often needed but I'll always put it on if I don't have a better use of the 2pt, (I mostly don't). It just gives a lot more flexibility, even if I only use the white coord once in a game.

I find myself using the red coord to slow down on approach a fair bit but when space closes up, keeping options open- stop, sloop or huge 3 bank- makes a big difference.

It becomes an extremely predictable ship when stressed. Having the stop on the dial and Tac Officer on board means you have all the options as to when you apply that stress. As already said, timing the stress is absolutely key to flying this thing.

The other key thing is getting it to survive the 1st/2nd engagement. Once past that, I've found it can last a fair while as it's really difficult for the opponent to keep guns on it. I've had a number of games where it just carries on scooting about on 1 or 2 hull and being a pain.