I recently played an extended tournament using Vader (FCS, Hate) and 3 Imdaar phantoms - it was a blast to fly but I couldn't help but feel a little bit power-gamey. Ended up coming 2nd, going 3:1 with a 1119 MoV. In an effort to be less like that guy and fly something a bit more interesting, I was thinking of the following:

GE Slippy Ladies

Countess Ryad (84)
Juke (5)
Fire-Control System (2)
Jamming Beam (0)

“Echo” (50)
Juke (5)
Collision Detector (6)

“Duchess” (42)
Elusive (3)
Seismic Charges (3)
Total: 200

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

Very simply, I've gone for three female pilots who are all super jammy on their movement. Would this be at least semi competitive? Any ideas to increase fun levels and/or competitiveness?

I think I’d rather have Afterburners on Duchess than SC. Would probably drop FCS for a minibid. Other than that looks fun. Competitive? Depends on your skill level vs your expected opponents. Always ask yourself can you make a cut if you fly a meta list? If not, I wouldn’t worry about it.

1 hour ago, Estarriol said:

I think I’d rather have Afterburners on Duchess than SC. Would probably drop FCS for a minibid. Other than that looks fun. Competitive? Depends on your skill level vs your expected opponents. Always ask yourself can you make a cut if you fly a meta list? If not, I wouldn’t worry about it.

Disagree with afterburners on any tie striker, afterburners only go into effect after a 3 or higher maneuver, Tie striker only has 3 options with 3 straight and 3 bank right or left. What makes afterburners worth is when they are on ships with at least 5+ 3-5 speed options and have at least 1-2 of those being a red maneuver since afterburners can still activate while stressed.

Back to the list at hand, if you want to stick with Duchess as your striker for a Theme, id switch elusive and seismic to Juke. Less restrictive, contributes to both offense/defense, and gives you a 1 point bid (Personally the deepest bid I ever go unless the build demands the need for it i.e. Kylo with Supernatural)

If your willing to divert from the theme (which I think is cool) to have the best tanky Striker would be Countdown with Elusive. Same price as Duchess with Juke at 47.

Another suggested add is to have 5th Brother on either Phantom or Striker, you can drop Seismic on Duch and ColDet from Echo (you already have 6 adjustable options when you de-cloak with Echo). The fact that you even get a recharging force token that by itself is worth the 9 points. Less risk that you then would have to use your evade token when defending with Echo as well.

Wishing the defender was cheaper, I think it is priced inconsistently. Keeping my fingers crossed that FFG realizes this.

What Id table 1st:

19 minutes ago, Glattyator said:

“Duchess” — TIE/sk Striker	42
Juke	5
Ship Total: 47
Half Points: 24 Threshold: 2

Juke on Dutchess without 5th bro is bad. Just focus instead for better offensive output and save 5pts. I'd swap 5th bro on Echo to Dutchess. She will sloop alot, and needs the force anyways.

Yeah I think Ryad is locked in. I just played around a bit in Fly Casual - Echo doesn't need ColDets with those crazy debanks.

Elusive and 5th Bro makes sense on Duchess. Actually makes her much more durable.

Agreed the Defender is slightly over costed. Not the worst value for money though.

9 hours ago, Glattyator said:

Disagree  with afterburners on any tie striker, afterburners only go into effect after a 3 or higher maneuver, Tie striker only has 3 options with 3 straight and 3 bank right or left. What makes afterburners worth is when they are on ships with at least 5+ 3-5 speed options and have at least 1-2 of those being a red maneuver  since afterburners can still activate while stressed. 

Even though the striker only has three 3-speed maneuvers on its dial, you have to take in consideration that with aelerons, each of those 3-speed maneuvers can take you to 3 different positions, 4 with Duchess. Afterburners gives Duchess the ability to enter the first engagement behind your opponent. Finally, Duchess lives or dies depending on how many arcs are on her; afterburners gives her one more tool to stay alive in a pinch.

I have played an enormous amount of Duchess and hands down I would take burners on her every time.

5 hours ago, hargleblarg said:

Even though the striker only has three 3-speed maneuvers on its dial, you have to take in consideration that with aelerons, each of those 3-speed maneuvers can take you to 3 different positions, 4 with Duchess. Afterburners gives Duchess the ability to enter the first engagement behind your opponent. Finally, Duchess lives or dies depending on how many arcs are on her; afterburners gives her one more tool to stay alive in a pinch.

I have played an enormous amount of Duchess and hands down I would take burners on her every time.

Agreed. I will acknowledge the point that none of Duchess' red moves are speed 3+, but she most definitely has the extreme flexibility at high speed; she essentially has a full range of 90' turn, 45' turn, straight and turns the other way at speed 3.

Plus, with her ability to use ailerons whilst stressed, combining afterburners with the blue speed 3 straight gives her enormous flexibility when coming out of a red move.

At the same time, consider as another option for extreme manouvres putting afterburners on Echo. Echo does have a full range of speed 3 moves (including a Koiogran turn), and combining those with a decloak and boost (and barrel roll if you keep 5th brother on Echo) means the TIE/ph's final position, even if you know what's on the dial , can best be described as " somewhere on the board, **** knows where "

14 hours ago, wurms said:

Juke on Dutchess without 5th bro is bad. Just focus instead for better offensive output and save 5pts. I'd swap 5th bro on Echo to Dutchess. She will sloop alot, and needs the force anyways.

5th Brother and Elusive is a very efficient combination on a TIE striker; normally a red move represents a vulnerable moment - and I guess it does here, too - but vulnerable is a very relative term given how squirrelly her loops and turns can be in the first place, and getting one reroll and one focus-to-evade modification even without an action is pretty impressive.

21 hours ago, RollingSwarm said:

Very simply, I've gone for three female pilots who are all super jammy on their movement.

Just a slight warning for what it's worth:

Wookiepedia claims "Echo" is female but I've never figured out why; no reference is given.

In comparison, each reference I've been able to find in FFG articles refers to "Echo" as a 'he' whenever gender is given. "Whisper" is consistantly referred to as 'she' but not "Echo".

I love everything here. I've only had a little experience with Duchess, but instantly fell in love. Echo and Ryad are possibly my 2 favourite pilots in the game. However, I've only run those 2 together once (with Vermeil, beating Boba, Guri, Quad on a low, close score).

The problem with them together is damage output, linked to I4. It's not hard to stay alive and healthy, it is hard to catch higher Init in arc and hurt it, so I usually use them in different squads. Duchess may help, but she also relies on rolling paint, so can still be kinda limp at times. It'll be huge fun to fly, but dice and I5/6 boost/roll may frustrate.

This would be my pop at it.

(84) Countess Ryad [TIE/D Defender] (5) Juke Points: 89

(50) "Echo" [TIE/ph Phantom] (5) Juke Points: 55

(42) "Duchess" [TIE/sk Striker] (9) Fifth Brother (2) Predator Points: 53 Total points: 197

Difficult to say how it should fly, but Duchess is likely a big squishy target, so she'll probably want to scoot while Echo snipes and Ryad brawls, or you'll just lose her input straight away. But if winning on points is needed (likely), you'll have to protect Ryad. So it seems a tricky balance.

Personally, Ryad super shines with coord, so I'd probably be dropping Duchess for Vizier. Who is not exactly a slippy girl but does come with fun manoeuvre shenanigans. I'd never drop Echo. Ever.

Individually. Ryad needs nothing more than Juke, but worth noting that she is great with the aforementioned coord or, less optimal now its 10pt, Adv Sen, used very sparingly. FCS can be a nice cheap addition if she can safely grab locks. She flies fast though, so needs to change target often enough to make it dubious to me.

Echo is great with just Juke. You don't need anything more, but Col Det on her is one of the best value things in the game. The key thing is that it allows you to take what would be massive risks around obstacles with 3 speed manoeuvres. She can switch position so radically with the 3 speeds, nothing else really compares. They can be very hard to judge with the decloak and without Col Det, so you can lose quite a lot of options just to ensure her safety. Afterburners are a genuine alternative, switching her facing by 45 degrees for the next decloak can be clutch. She also loves 5th Bro, he lets her be more aggressive, which makes her awesome for catching people dead to rights.

Duchess, limited experience so I'll leave it to others but I can definitely see 5th Bro and Afterburners adding a lot. Her limp shots are definitely a thing though, so Predator was good for me. Bullseye is not too hard to achieve, if she lives. 5th Bro on top seems like it could make her quite dangerous. Being so squishy, I wouldn't want to put Afterburners on as well as the Bro....

11 hours ago, hargleblarg said:

Even though the striker only has three 3-speed maneuvers on its dial, you have to take in consideration that with aelerons, each of those 3-speed maneuvers can take you to 3 different positions, 4 with Duchess. Afterburners gives Duchess the ability to enter the first engagement behind your opponent. Finally, Duchess lives or dies depending on how many arcs are on her; afterburners gives her one more tool to stay alive in a pinch.

I have played an enormous amount of Duchess and hands down I would take burners on her every time.

I've also put my time flying with and against strikers, my local meta is very heavy with them(Duchess and Countdown as favorites). Played against list last night even with 3 strikers and a Reaper ha.

IMO the ailerons is exactly why you don't NEED afterburners on Strikers, its basically built in BEFORE-burners that don't have only 2 charges (I might like that pun more than I should ). Not that Afterburners isn't a great mod for most ships and with Strikers you'd definitely make some really fun S-bends, its just redundant for arc movement and positioning with 4-5 Int.

The question for this list specifically is the cost of 6 points worth having afterburners? When I weigh afterburners vs 5th brother I want the free mod that can be used for offense and defense for the whole game.

I think the root of these three should be Juke on Ryad and Echo and Predator on Duchess. Natural choices given their ship abilities/maneuverability. The last 12 points seems very subjective. FCS is a nice choice on Ryad, as is 5th Bro on Echo. That'd probably be my choice

3 hours ago, Glattyator said:

IMO the ailerons is exactly why you don't NEED afterburners on Strikers, its basically built in BEFORE-burners that don't have only 2 charges (I might like that pun more than I should ). Not that Afterburners isn't a great mod for most ships and with Strikers you'd definitely make some really fun S-bends, its just redundant for arc movement and positioning with 4-5 Int.

The question for this list specifically is the cost of 6 points worth having afterburners? When I weigh afterburners vs 5th brother I want the free mod that can be used for offense and defense for the whole game.

That's fair. There is some redundancy with giving more manoeuvre options to already manoeuverable ships, at the cost of their offense. A balance needs to be struck.

However, enormous fun is it's own reward!

I generally like Beforeburners more than Afterburners tbh.

16 hours ago, Glattyator said:

IMO the ailerons is exactly why you don't NEED afterburners on Strikers, its basically built in BEFORE-burners that don't have only 2 charges ...

Before-burners is probably the most important thing we are all taking away from this discussion.

I need to play test so see where best to put 5th Bro. For Echo, see how I fly her?him?them?fml-whatever, best with ColDets / Afterburners etc.

FCS on Ryad has been good in my experience but I will test with and without some more to see if it really is key.

Juke for Ryad and Echo 100%.

Elusive for Duchess with 5th Bro or Predator to keep her nice and cheap (but still classy). After-burners and before-burners sounds a bit crazy... but it does fit the list theme of being crazy to fly!