There has been a lot of discussion about Secondary weapons and droid upgrades, but what about the other ones? Which ones do you think ar best. Originally thought Expert Handling on Darth Vader would be the best, but I have since come to prefer Swarm Tactics.

Marksmanship doesn't seem that good, it seems to be about as good as focus, which just about evey ship can do already.

I haven't made up my mind about Squad Leader. I am not sure I like giving up my action just so someone else can use it. But there are lots of times when one ship or another isn't really going to benifit from their action

I think you are underestimating Marksmanship. that is a pretty good EPT. Squad Leader can be nice as can swarm tactics, but those tend to depend on the range of pilot skills more. Still, I think marksmanship is probably the best right now.

Thanks,

Duncan

So far my favorites are Swarm Tactics and Determination. Determination goes well on TIE fighters since they will tend to take criticals more often than other ships and Determintion can allow you to completely negate a crit about 24% of the time. Swarm Tactics is great for making cheap academy or rookie pilots hit with your top pilot.

Not sure on Expert Handling yet. Removing target lock doesn't really sell me as I think most of the secondary weapons are wastes. Haven't tried rolling Xwings yet so maybe it'll see more use there. Maybe Squad Leader is cool with some other actions combos (wedge getting to use marksmanship, focus, and blowing a target lock seems excessively funny), but I also don't like losing an action to give it to another.

I wouldn't underestimate something like Luke with Squad Leader. Yeah, losing an action's a big deal -- but Luke gets to convert a single focus result to an evade even without Focus, so if he doesn't have an offensive shot and already has a Target Lock established… he may not *really* need an action, anyways. Thus, giving it to another ship that *does* have a shot is a pretty potent option.

Also, Marksmanship is a huge deal. It's simply better than Focus (offensively, anyways), because you get a crit if you score any focus rolls.

I can definitely see Squad Leader seeing plenty of use on Vader. With 2 actions, he can get more use out of it, without sacrificing his own effectiveness. Especially as he will be moving last, he can order another of the low initiative TIEs into a Barrel Roll after your opponent is done moving.

I don't like Marksmanship at all. Don't get me wrong, criticals are awesome, but if you don't roll a focus result, your action is wasted. At least Focus, can be used for attack and defense. It can be effective, but for 3 points I don't like it.

As was said earlier, Determination is pretty good. You can potentially ignore a hit altogether.

I thought Swarm Tactics would be an auto include, but in my games thus far it hasn't been terribly important. It can get you a shot you might not otherwise get, but only in pretty specific circumstances. Good, but not as amazing as I expected.

I haven't tried Expert Handling yet, but it has potential. The more I've played with TIEs, the better I've found Barrel Roll to be. On an X-Wing it has potential to be pretty awesome. It combos well with R2-D2 or the generic R2.

shmitty said:

Remember that you can only spend a focus token on attack or defense, not both.

rhaak said:

But you can choose which! say you roll no focuses on your attack, you can use it for defense! sounds like an advantage to me!

R2D2 said:

Yes, I know. But you can't use it for both, so Focus can't be used for attack AND defense.

And if your pilot skill is low you could be attacked first. So then you have to choose if you spend the focus token to negate some damage or save it for the attack. All nice strategic choices, can't wait to play this game!!

rhaak said:

His point though was that Marksmanship can only be used for Attack while Focus can be used for Attack AND Defense. No it can't be used for both in the same turn but it is flexible where Marksmanship is not. In the context of the whole AND was just as appropriate as OR.

As of right now, I haven't really been looking at the Elite Skills as things to build my list around, I've been using them to fill out points. Especially for my Imperial lists since pilots are so darn cheap.

However, I was looking at the Academy vs. Obsidian and Black Squadron pilots for my Ties and aside from skill level boosts, the big primary bonus for Black Squadron boys is the ability to take skills. I just couldn't sort out what skills would actually benefit them.

• Swarm Tactics is kinda underwhelming with a Skill Level 4, unless it's chained to a higher skill pilot with swarm tactics. Skill 4 would give them a bit of an advantage against Rebel Swarm lists, but would be lackluster against the Rebel named pilots.
• Squad Leader would be okay if I was going with a swarm list myself and this was the ranking pilot. But I think Vader would be best suited to that skill with his dual actions.
• Marksmanship sounds the most useful way to increase the TIE's ability to inflict damage. Pushing the odds of getting a hit per die from 4/8 to 6/8 and increasing the odds that one of those hits is a critical. But at 3pts is the most expensive of the options. It probably would be better suited for a TIA advanced pilot so their missiles are more effective.
• Determination seems pretty weak, and if I only had a single point to spend, I would just take Night Beast or Winged Gundark rather take a Black Squadron Pilot + Determination.
• Expert Handling is another one that actually looks attractive, but I'm not certain how often Target locks are going to be a major part of my opponent's strategy. And since all TIE's naturally have the ability to barrel roll, it's not a big gain if target locks aren't a big deal.

Did I miss any?

I guess I'll just have to spend some time playing before I have an answer for the above.

-DavicusPrime

DavicusPrime said:

Target locks are going to be a major part of your opponent's strategy anytime they're loading Proton Torpedoes, or are fielding Dutch or R5-K-whosits, at the very least. Rerolls are nice on their own, too, especially since Locks don't clear at the end of the turn, so you can stack two turns of action into one Target Lock + Focus attack, which is pretty potent.

kaffis said:

Well, there you go. Sounds like Expert Handling and Marksmanship become the primary skills of choice for low level TIE's. Save Swarm Tactics and Squad Leader for the high level pilots. I still think of Determination is a toss away skill if you need to burn a point or two. Perhaps y'all can point out it's virtues as well?

-DavicusPrime

Well, working from memory, I think it's around one in five critical hits have the Pilot type. So Determination gets to negate 1 in 5 critical hits entirely (note that you discard it rather than simply downgrade it to a normal hit). Is that anything to go nuts over? Not with the overall scarcity of crits in the first place (though perhaps it becomes much more attractive if your local metagame skews towards Marksmanship), but it's definitely worth the point if you've got them leftover. I wouldn't downgrade R2-D2 to another astromech to afford one, in other words.

kaffis said:

Its actually 8 of 33 so about 24%. Since TIEs don't typically have shields, crits are going to come in earlier in the game against those. For one point, a 25% chance to negate crit entirely isn't too bad for a group that has a bunch of black squadrons. I wouldnt completely sell that talent short.