It will be maintained until everyone throws all of their gas clouds in the garbage, or (much less likely) people learn how to fly pure arc dodging ace lists to beat them.

Tbh I think the fact that ties can joust 3 ships wide now with no consequence clouds is kind of dumb, but just make them feel dumb when they spend 55 minutes trying to chase Soontir or Ani with survivability upgrades. If you want to beat spammed generics consistently, play ships that they realistically won't be able to catch in their firing line like Interceptors, Delta 7s, Silencers, Fangs, A-Wings, or Guri.

Didn't you see the new trailer?

I mean, just ask Leia. She wasn't in any lists and then she dropped to 2 points and she's more popular than human flesh at an Ewok barbecue.

Passive mods are few and far between in 2nd edition. I guess the closest you can get to a passive mod spam is force, but even that is limited by charges. This is good for swarms, as one thing that kept swarms dead in 1st edition were the hyperabundance of passive mods. Doesn't matter how many 2 dice attacks you will chuck at a tokened and Palp-ready Soontir with range 3, autothrusters, and stealth device (not that that matters, since he would dodge you instead). The odds of 2 hits hitting him are slim.

3 hours ago, ThinkingB said:

gas clouds in the garbage

Gas clouds ... are a tricky thing.

I'm inclined to lambast them cuz they don't take away attacks. Which is the most important in destroying the efficiency of combo large ships and hurts single ships a lot more than a tie losing a shot.

Are we now defining swarms as 5 or more ships? Because I would classify it as 4 or more, which means even in extended generic swarms are king (phantoms anyone?)

On 4/16/2019 at 7:24 PM, ScummyRebel said:

8x I1 vultures with energy shells isn’t too shabby in our area.

You can actually swap out 4 I1 Trade Fed Drones for 4 I3 Sep Drones for an even 200 points. I definitely will give this a try when I get the 2 Vultures from the boxed set I found on E-Bay. Another swarm I want to try is 4 Gold Squadron Torrents and 2 104th ARC-170 with VTG and a Shield upgrade. 6 ships with 40 health between them should be hard to kill.

7 hours ago, knute said:

Are we now defining swarms as 5 or more ships? Because I would classify it as 4 or more, which means even in extended generic swarms are king (phantoms anyone?)

I always thought of swarms as 5+, that’s just me. 4 were a mini swarm, 3 was an Ace list, 2 was Fat “X”.

This doesn’t hold true for a lot of lists, just the way I thought of my builds or an opponents.

I played against an 8 (4I1 4I3) Droid swarm at the SO in Milton Keynes last weekend, I was his only loss in swiss and he made top 32 at least. Its pretty horrible.

The main thing stopping me from running it is having to buy 3 more ships

All it takes is one I6 with a good pilot ability and BAM, the swarms are gone.

Low-I efficiency spam and jousting is a core archetype of the game, but not the only one.

I don't think the devs intend to make this style go away.

... Some players only want to fly a certain way, and the devs have said that their intent is for "everything to be playable".

Sounds like it's gonna stick around.

8 hours ago, Marinealver said:

All it takes is one I6 with a good pilot ability and BAM, the swarms are gone.

Not quite. Depending on who the Ace is, some lists are just too beefy for a loan Ace to take down in 75 minutes. Maybe if it's a 2 hour finals match, but not a Swiss round.

On 4/18/2019 at 12:17 AM, T70 Driver said:

You can actually swap out 4 I1 Trade Fed Drones for 4 I3 Sep Drones for an even 200 points. I definitely will give this a try when I get the 2 Vultures from the boxed set I found on E-Bay. Another swarm I want to try is 4 Gold Squadron Torrents and 2 104th ARC-170 with VTG and a Shield upgrade. 6 ships with 40 health between them should be hard to kill.

Played against that list with me running Obi, 2 GSTs & clusters & Wolffe. Definitely a lot of hull and arcs. Wolffe went first, and my GSTs were limping along at the end of the game. Got a few torrents & an ARC though... At one point Obi was surrounded by four GSTs. He was able to arc dodge but eventually he didn't live. I wouldn't put this list against rebel beef or three aces. The aces would just pick them apart slowly.

Honestly, now that turrets are as they've always should've been and not ungodly monstrosities of hyper-mobile, arc-independent, thought-free excercises in frustration...low I should never be as irrelevant as it was in 1st Ed (discounting, of course, that one LEGENDARILY busted ship...)

Only danger here would be high I being too efficient, thus making the benefit of cheaper, lower I pilots pretty pointless (alliteration!)

****, trajectory Sim was the only (not really) hard counter to "swarms" (provided the opponent only knew how to fly in a single blob) and ffg gimped the **** out of the poor thing

It seems like just a few weeks ago, I was rolling my eyes at threads about how difficult swarms are to fly, and how they're not good, and even how bad Howlrunner is: "Her ability should be out to range 2"...

10 hours ago, pakirby said:

Played against that list with me running Obi, 2 GSTs & clusters & Wolffe. Definitely a lot of hull and arcs. Wolffe went first, and my GSTs were limping along at the end of the game. Got a few torrents & an ARC though... At one point Obi was surrounded by four GSTs. He was able to arc dodge but eventually he didn't live. I wouldn't put this list against rebel beef or three aces. The aces would just pick them apart slowly.

Does fine against beef and aces, at least for me, but I run the all I3 w/ 6 ESC version.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

Does fine against beef and aces, at least for me, but I run the all I3 w/ 6 ESC version.

Can you translate what you mean by ESC?

4 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Can you translate what you mean by ESC?

Energy Shell Charges.

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

Energy Shell Charges.

Ahh, that makes more sense as I was misreading it as Republic.

Agree with mixes being the way to go. You want a ace like model for a potential late game finisher, but also let level skirmishers to crush in the joust. There's a balance.

A game with nothing but named pilots is boring. You just keep seeing the best pilots over and over and wonder what the point of printing lower ones is. A game with straight generics is also boring. What's the point, who's the story around for this game? Then we just play the most economical ship

I like it where it currently is. Especially with support ships allowing you to have unique generic/ace blends. My favorite thing about Obiwan is he had the initiative and skill set of an ace, but the ability of a clone Commander.

9 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

Does fine against beef and aces, at least for me, but I run the all I3 w/ 6 ESC version.

Republic doesn’t have Energy shell charges.

On 4/18/2019 at 8:41 AM, Archangelspiv said:

I always thought of swarms as 5+, that’s just me. 4 were a mini swarm, 3 was an Ace list, 2 was Fat “X”.

This doesn’t hold true for a lot of lists, just the way I thought of my builds or an opponents.

This. A mini-swarm has always been 3-4 generics or low cost named pilots to me. Swarms have always been 5+.

Generally swarms are unaccompanied by other ships, or have a single other ship of no significantly improved ability beyond the swarm ships themselves (think Mining TIE swarm with an Escape Craft as a distraction or crew carrier). Seps kind of muddle that because you can squeeze in 5 drones and a Bubablub that synergises with them (Sear and Tambor), but the drones are squishy enough that it's a net zero.

Mini-swarm are almost always 3-4 of something relatively low threat but agile, with a big, expensive threat alongside, or 4 of something small base that's a bigger threat. Something like a Boba Fett and a bunch of Mining TIEs, Falcon and A-wings, Decimator and TIEs, etc, or 4x T70, 4x Strikers, 4x Phantoms.

3-ship is generally triple ace but can be 2x high cost aces and a filler/support. Occasionally you'll get a fat ship and a pair of flankers (the old Dash+2xA is a prime example).

2-ship is always aces, but can be anything from 160 points on one ship and a cheapish harasser ace, to fully balanced spread.

I hate swarm meta. In my opinion this game works best with 2-4 ships on each side. Also, cost efficiency of generics means that more often than not we will see spam of one most cost-effective generic ship (5 Y-Wings, 4 Phantoms, 5 A-Wings). Games filled with swarms are long, are often called to time, also flying with more than 3-4 ships is tiresome.

I think the one thing the game needs to level out really well is a slight price reduction on about half of the I3/I4 pilots like Magva, Kullbee, Turr, Blount, EZRA, etc. I'd like to see a fluid spectrum between pure 8-ship swarm and fat 2-ship aces/freighters. You can always mix it up and take an Ace + Miniswarm, but being the kind of guy I am I'd rather take the in-between approach: Use 4 well-loaded I4 ships to out-efficiency the aces and out-ace the swarms at the same time. Honestly 4-ship Rebels or Imps would be my favorite archetype except that these pilots seem just a little overpriced right now. I see them played at tournaments (especially the named B-Wings) but they never quite have the points for the upgrades they need in order to shine.

Initiative-based pricing for Advanced Sensors (please make it affordable for Ten and Braylen without being busted on Guri) and general price reductions would probably do it. Some new toys like Snap Shot could help the likes of Turr. I'm optimistic for July.

I mean you CAN run 8 Tie Academy Pilots, so there’s that. 4 GST Torrents and 2 104th ARCs are being run as well...