Strombole said:

Those are great strategies. After reading posts on this forum it seems to me that combos are the best way for rebels to deal with the higher amount of imperial ships.

cleardave said:

Well I definitely have the Star Wars fever. I'm a sucker for theme too and that's why I think I'll only ever have 1 tie advanced (it'll always be Vader). I really want to try the 8 tie swarm though. It seems like a fluffy list that is also powerful… But that would mean i have to buy more figures… *shakes fist at FFG*

El_Tonio said:

I kind of feel the same, but I think it's largely for two reasons unique to the games I've been playing. One, I'm using all TIE fighters and no TIE Advanced. Most folks seem to run one, but they don't interest me much, so I'm holding out for TIE Interceptors to be my heavy-hitters. Secondly, I've been playing mostly smaller point games. So I think that's a large part of it as well, as FFG would have us believe, the game balance is set to be proper at 100 points. Playing smaller 50 and 75 point games, I feel like the Imperials can't make the most of their potential numbers advantage without making significant sacrifices in pilot quality.

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

In smaller games, that is games below 100pts, and let's focus it in and say 50pts or less, the Imperials can be a lot more fragile, in my experience. If you lose that single TIE Fighter, and you probably have only 2-3, that lone X-Wing is suddenly going to have a much easier time taking you apart, because you won't be able to surround it every turn, and the TIE Fighter is not able to keep up with the damage output.

Usually at that game size, an X-Wing that puts a Proton Torpedo on a TIE Fighter and kills it in one shot pretty much won the game, the players just don't realize it yet.

At the 100pt mark, it's pretty even, I feel. You have enough points to really make your squadron work well together, if you put some thought into the combos you set up. Below 50, you don't have a lot of flexibility, so if someone gets off a lucky shot, or someone maneuvers one way and the other lucks out and gets behind them, the whole thing could be over pretty quickly.

in a 100pt match, you can rally things back your way if some dice anomaly wrecks you early on.

My observations so far:

@ < 100 pts (35, 60) the game is EXTREMELY well balanced. I replayed several games and switched sides and the factions have a nearly 50/50 win/loss ratio.

@100+ pts the game shifts in favor of the Imps if they are using swarms. The numbers just become overwhelming.

I'd be curious to see the Imperial setups from those saying the Rebels are balanced or over powered. I'd bet they are using Tie advances. The Tie advances face off pretty evenly with the X-wings. If you go 2 Xs and a Y vs 2 Advances and a smattering of ties, the advantage goes to a properly built Rebel team. They have great synergy that you can use to quickly take out a few Imp ships and get rid of the numbers advantage, and with 2 advances you don't have much of a numbers advantage. My guess for the rebel wins is that the Imp player doesn't have enough ties to field, or is so focused around Vader that they aren't willing to take an army of ties instead.

The Tie swarm though is a different story. The 8 tie swarm or my preferred 6 named tie pilot swarm is really overwhelming. Just too many targets. The rebels can take out a few, but then the Imps get in close and a few of them can throw 4 attack dice at range 1. Even against an agility 2 Xwing thats a deadly assualt. I've seen fresh X-wings get blown up by both Backstabber and Mauler in 1 attack.

I intend to try a rebel swarm to counter the imperial swarms (4 rookie Xwings), but I haven't had a chance yet as I started working on modifying the stands. I have a feeling the rebel swarm will be ok against the 8 tie, but lose hard against the 6 tie just due to initiative.

Another Imp team I want to get to the table is taking out a couple of the weaker offensive TIEs and throw in a cheap Tie Advance to simply act as a decoy. The advance with the shields and missles ranks as a high priority target and could draw a lot of fire early on allowing backstabber and mauler to slip into range 1 without having to risk torpedo damage.

So is anyone having luck against the Imp swarms? If so, how?

I think the biggest balancing factor in the 100+ scenario would be board size. If confined to the 3x3 area, that many TIEs will get the way.

As for balance issues, I've been following FFG for a long time on many of their products, and haven't found any sort of glaring imbalances thus far. out of the dozen and a half or so games I've played thus far, all Reb, the win/loss is fairly even depending on the variables. Me and the roommate have tried alot of list variations and still are. We each have a primary list or 2 that we run and our games typically time out before any sort of conclusive victory.

I've posted this elsewhere, but will restate it here.

First, we stick to the 100 pt, 3x3, 75 min, 3 obsticle very firmly. I find that doing so limits the variables involved as much as possible and lets us work within what we can expect for any local tournaments. I cannot understate how important asteroid placement is. There have been games where collisions accounted for more than a quarter of all the damage delt to the Imperial side. I tend to use the biggest three asteroids I can find and drop the largest of them right in the midle of the play area, laying the following within a close proximity and typically at an angle. Primarily I do this in an effort to break up the Imperials formations. Also, any given Rebel ship can run right over an asteroid for better positioning in subsequent turns and possibably enjoy an agility bonus because of it.

Second, deployment. There's not alot that can be said here except for observe your opponent. see where he's placing his ships and think about the next three manuevers it will take to get you into position. Beware that placing certain priority targets can be an attempt at baiting you. Determine your target priority and deploy as responsibly as possible.

Speaking of which is my third point: target priority. I've seen a lot of different opinions on what your target priority should be and it seems to mostly be up to personal preference. For my self, I generally go off of the following criteria (Note: this is strictly from a Rebel PoV): Damage potential (Back Stabber/Mauler Mithel/ Marak Stele) any of these ships will be at the top of my kill list over just about any other, including Darth Vader. In the correct circumstance either one of the first two can hit just as hard as an X-Wing, and those shots will happen at some point. After that is force multipliers (Vader/ Howlrunner/Winged Gundark) eliminate them to reduce the effectivness of your opponents combined tactics. Last are the defensive fighters (Dark Curse/the guy who get's focus who I can't remember) these are really there to suck up hits, Skywalker style. Ignore them as best you can, and focus on the other ships. After that I tend to start at the highest pilot skill and go down, taking opportunity shots as I can. Some will favor targeting lesser pilots in order to deny the opponent shots, and while logical in the extreme, I firmly believe that this is not a game of instant gratifaction. Outside of rare instances of luck, there is rarely any single turn that will completely loose a Rebel player the game. Several consecutive turns of dispersed fire and/or unfocused action can however.

Fourth in my list is ability use. I cannot stress how important target locking is. I tend to lock onto my priority targets early on and then push for an opening. Focus can be used to take on the regular TIEs, in conjunction with overlaping fields of fire, then pound on a priority target when you have the correct positioning. The Rebellion are all about fighting dirty and application of force.

That about wraps it up. I'd welcome any questions/comments.

~T

We played a double sized Dark Whispers scenario today taking the ships from Asteroid Run to add to the standard forces. The first game ended with a Rebel win, knocking all the ties out for no loss, the second game had 2 Ties escaping off table with both sides losing a ship - seems pretty balanced to me.

kmanweiss said:

Interestingly, I'm using no TIE Advanced. The problem at smaller points games for Imperials is that pivotal first turn or two when you have to go head-to-head with the Rebel ships. If the rebels have built a properly offensive force (and understand they need to focus-fire), you WILL lose a TIE before you can get into the knife-fight TIEs want to be in. That makes a significant dent in your hitting power for the rest of the game which can begin to snowball quickly. The problem with that initial approach can be worse if you have some named TIE pilots in your squadron as they're not any less vulnerable to fire than rookies and make much more appealing targets.

I've read through the forum and it's interesting to see the various posts. So far, a few work buddies and I have been playing X-Wing and no matter what point value or who runs what, the Imperials always win (this has been a dozen or more games). Usually, it is by using Evade actions every turn unless they don't think they'll get shot at.

As an example, today we ran 100 points so it was Wedge, Garvin, and Horton (Y-wing) with proton torpedoes on everyone and a bit of other upgrades (swarm tactics on Wedge) against Darth Vader, Mauler, and a few grunt TIEs. As usually happens, we managed to destroy the good TIE in the first pass by shooting it with ALL of our ships. After that, we were lucky to get a hit, even with doubling up shots on a ship. They managed to destroy Garvin in about two - three turns by concentrating fire on him and from there it was down hill.

I don't want to say the game is unbalanced without some more experimenting, but by making use of the evade action, the Imperials seem to be extraordinarily hard to hit. That guaranteed miss every turn seems to more than make up for having two shields, or even having an R2 unit, which doesn't seem to help in the larger games where 2-3 TIEs can get a shot at you every turn.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments about that, I'd love to hear them. I must admit, I tend to like Rebels better, so I'd love to see a good way of giving them a fighting shot.

The Evade action is your best friend as Imperials. Speaking strictly in Wave 1 terms;

My Imperial philosophy is simply that if I'm going to be shot at, I take an Evade. If you have Howlrunner buffing TIE's rolls from behind, you can make your 2 Attack dice a little more potent while you keep your TIE defense rolls maximized. Once you've gone through the initial pass, it's time to start using your superior movement options to try and fan out, minimize exposure and start erasing Rebel craft from the board.

If this is more or less how your match is going as Imperials, you're doing it right.

As Rebels, you have to know that the Imperials will be doing whatever they can do to make your shots miss, and whittle you down. You only get one R2D2 for shield regeneration, so what you can do is try and bait out a few shots on that ship, then have them regenerate as needed. If you can divert shots to R2 (but not too many) you'll force your opponent to effectively waste his own shots, which means your other craft won't be taking as much damage.

I'd also recommend, as Rebels, that you not leave home without the Ion Turret. The 360 degree fire arc is so great against the more nimble TIE's, as they can't hide in your blind spots anymore. In addition, your turrets will cause their movement to be dropped to a white 1 forward next turn, so you can use that information to your advantage to try and set up a kill shot.

The Y-Wing can always Target Lock/Ion Turret a TIE in one shot, so you have a fairly good chance at getting 2-3 hits off that roll, and only one of them needs to go through for it to work.

Also remember, the Evade token is a one-shot deal, so if you can bleed it off one TIE, you just need to focus your attacks on that now Evade-less ship to get it dead. Dark Curse is probably the worst for this, as you can't use Focus or Target Locks to boost your attacks against his defense, so I typically leave him as a lower priority target so I can concentrate on dropping as many TIE's as I can early on to take out the numerical advantage.

Take 4 ships as a rebel. I have yet to see a consistently competitive 3 ship build. 4 X-wings is the best that it gets in Wave 1 only. Make sure you're playing in the 3' x 3' game space and using the requisite 6 asteroids to litter the play field. Wedge + Swarm tactics should bring the pain. I saw great use of Garven plus Wedge to get multiple focus shots. I'm not going to say it's easy, I think Wave 1 skews towards the Empire as having more ships can be more forgiving.

Also, keep your 4 X-wings in a group. That way your ships should all have shots at the same targets. Try to make sure you are hitting and destroying targets of lower skill to limit the return fire. As ClearDave points out, that first shot should bleed off the Evade token. Even with the Evade, Wedge has a 70% chance dealing damage with a 3 dice + focus attack. This gets really great if attacking at close range and/or target lock + focus (achieved in one round by locking on target with Wedge and have Garven shoot first, burning his focus and giving it to Wedge). Wedge firing at an Evadeless TIE with target lock + Focus should be putting 2 damage on one. If Garven did a point of damage, that should wipe out a target per round. One of the 3rd or 4th X-wings can also play clean up.

I don't mention Y-wings because they usually just suck up points and require even more skill. If you're going that route, don't make it even harder on yourself: take an Ion Cannon. You can play a bit sloppier with a 360 turret. Try using it to strip off those Evade/Focus tokens and try to blow past the TIE Fighters so your can shoot them on your 6 after you pass.

Good luck!

I tend to play a lot of 31 point games with 2 TIE against a single X-wing. I'm still trying to drum up support in my gaming group so when ever I get the chance to pull someone in for a quick game I just run the basic ships. Inevitable I end end up playing Rebels in these games and I'm not tooting my own horn, but overall I think people would say that I'm a competent gamer, understand tactics and game strategy. I've yet to win one of these games. I just have not found a single Rebel pilot at 31 points which can hold up to the Imperials. I have not had a chance to play with A-wings yet. I have played with some of the new elite pilot skills and ship upgrade cards but haven't found a combo that works.

The best results so far has been Biggs w/Stealth and R2-F2.

So from my experience and from the experiences of others I think Imperials have a distinct advantage at 2 to 1 odds and they get worse as rebels achieve ship parity. I think it shows that ubered out Rebels can't compensate for numbers.

BigDogg said:

why not Luke + R2F2? or Luke + expert handling + R2 astro

Two things I'd like to add to this conversation-

1) Bear in mind that it was only supposed to be a couple of months before we got Wave 2.

I think a lot of the imbalance between Rebels and Imperials is actually a meta problem that shouldn't really be here to start with. That said, I think the main problem for the Rebels is that…

2) The TIE Swarm is pretty powerful and easy to pick up and play

We're all still pretty new at this game as it's not even been out for six months and as I think everyone agrees, being able to move and manuever effectively is the most important facet of this game. If you're an Imperial player who rolls the swarm, the main thing you need to learn is how to not crash your ships into each other. You don't have to worry quite so much about being efficient in your movement because you have so many more movement options with a standard TIE that it's hard to paint yourself into a corner of predictability with that ship, and even if you do, oh well- you probably have 3-5 more floating around the board.

The Rebel player has to be more efficient in his movements, has to do more pre-planning to try and ensure he's not setting himself up for failure in the next couple of turns by getting too close to a board edge or other obstacle, and still has to try and bring his guns to bear. He also needs to bear in mind his ships simply don't have the range of the Imp ships, so he has to play both preventive and reactive at the same time. Now, once we all get really good at movement and manuevering, it won't be such a big deal, but as it is, it's a lot for a new Rebel player (which again- we all are) to try and handle at this point.

Additionally, the Imperial side is generally much more forgiving when a mistake in movement is made- it's still fairly uncommon for a Rebel player to completely erase a standard TIE in a single round of shooting, regardless of range, Actions, Pilot Talents, etc. Does it happen? Sure. Does it happen to a degree that it can be planned on in the movement phase? No way. As such, As such, a Rebel player has to commit usually half of his squadron (i.e. 2 ships) to downing a single TIE in a round. Does the Imperial player have to focus fire similarly? Of course, but again- they have more ships so they have a much greater flexibility in this committment. Getting back to the original point, if I bump into an asteroid with one of my X-Wings, I've just lost 25% of my Actions for the turn. If an Imperial player does it? He loses 20% of his Actions, tops (at least in my experience- I rarely play against Imp lists with less than 5 ships).

TL;DR- There really isn't that much of an imbalance, but with only Wave 1 available, the counter for the Imperial Swarm is being a smarter/ better/ more efficient Rebel player and that's harder to achieve than figuring out some awesome counter-tactic or synergistic list.

Cid_MCDP said:

I'd add (3) the powerful named Rebel pilots are all familiar and attractive options, but a squad full of named Rebels doesn't work well.

I played for a long time before I got my first Rebel win. That win coincided with a switch from 3-ship Rebel lists to 4-ship lists, and since switching I win with Rebels at least half the time. I plan to experiment with 3-ship lists again once Wave 2 is available, but at least in Wave 1 I would never recommend playing a small Rebel list.

Vorpal Sword said:

Yeah, I think a 3-ship list is something that is definitely fieldable, but to use it with any repeatable success, you have to completely be comfortable with moving and maneuvering, especially ships that are moving in what amounts to a formation, and also with the way Pilot Ranking causes you to select and prioritize your moves and combat. It's just too many eggs in one basket if you don't know exactly where those ships are going to end up and who's doing what, when. In other words, once a player becomes fully versed, practiced, and experienced in X-Wing, a 3-ship Rebel build is completely viable. For a new player though, it's unlikely they'll field it to any degree of success.

Duraham said:

I've tried him and he is good but I like Biggs better

BigDogg said:

Wait, why would you field Biggs at 31 points if he's your only ship? His ability doesn't do much (read "anything") when he doesn't have a wingman. You could drop to a Red Squadron Pilot with R2-F2 and get a Proton Torpedo. Granted, I am the kind of person that keeps the Proton Torpedo manufacturers in business. If there's a way to get them into my squad, I will.

As far as balance, I've played a 3-ship Rebel build with wild success:
Wedge Antilles(Proton Torpedoes, R5 Astromech, Determination)
Horton Salm (R5 Astromech, Ion Cannon Turret, Proton Torpedoes, Proton Torpedoes)
Rookie Pilot (R2-D2)

I use the Rookie as my decoy, sending him up against the larger group of ships, then run away to recharge shields. The Proton Torpedoes work magic, but sometimes those nimble TIEs just evade away and I get nothing. Oh well, it happens. The only builds I've lost to so far are 4-ship Rebel builds (though I've beaten a few, and they're always close matches), and Imperial squads with 7+ ships. So is the game imbalanced towards Imperials? Maybe, but I second what's been said earlier: more ships is more forgiving on mistakes, and experienced players being able to wield fewer ships more effectively.

That said, a squad with 7 or more ships AND an experienced player…that's just a nightmare to fight against. It really makes you feel like the desperate Rebellion trying hopelessly to topple the oppressive Empire.

EDIT: I just remembered that I did manage to beat an 8 TIE swarm with my squad, and it was a guy who ended up winning the Kessel Run in town, so he knows his stuff…but he is primarily a Rebel player. He took the Evade action the entire game, but with my ships ganging up on TIEs to bleed off the evade, or preferentially attacking stressed and asteroid-ed ships, they dropped like…TIEs.

Parakitor said:

The Biggs thing makes no sense to me either in a one-ship Rebel list. The only thing that might make this work is if he only has a core set (reference to Stealth upgrade notwithstanding). Biggs' PR 5 would go before anything on the Imperial side save the named TIE pilots. Admittedly, it still doesn't make much sense, but that's the only way I can think of that Biggs sort of work for any reason in a one ship list.

Completely agree with you on everything else and I'm happy to hear you have the nuts to run a 2x Torp Horton Salm. I've been considering it just to mess witih people's minds in my local club as I've fallen into a fairly constant rut of 4x X-Wings of various configs.

ScottieATF said:

That's the problem I had in one of my first games. I faced a squad of the 6 named TIEs and just barely managed a win by killing a second one at time for a points win. The 4 that survived each did so with 2 hull damage.

I'll have to give the 4 ship Rebel build a shot. I have an idea as to who to field.

In regards to the Wave 2 ships, I think the Imperials may get an ever bigger advantage if I've seen the Tie Interceptor accurately. 3 attack and 3 agility with an Evade action is going to be very difficult to deal with. I like the A-wing, but I'm afraid that 2 attack dice isn't going to give much when opponents generally have at least 3 evade dice. Guess we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, the Rebels will try their luck with 3 X and one Y or maybe just 4 X.

Cid_MCDP said:

Ok, I've got a really, really long post that i want to write in response to this, but let me just say that you are contradicting yourself here. With 6 ships in close formation, being able to plan which ships are moving first so that they are out of the way for the higher pilot skills moving afterwards, while still maintaining firing arcs as well as squad cohesion, without hitting anything unintentionally, i would call that being efficient in my movement. Especially when there are 6 or 7 more ships on the other side that i have to try and figure out where they are going as well.

At a beginner level, I don't think I'm contradicting myself. I think you're looking at it from your very advanced player point of view, in which case, yeah definitely- you need to be able to move efficiently. What I'm saying is, and perhaps I chose a poor way to try and convey this notion, that the Imperials generally have 25%-50% (or more) ships than the Rebels, so they have more chances to get it right, i.e. they don't have to be as efficient in their movements to still be successful in game terms.

Look at it like this- say I've got an X-Wing behind one of your TIEs. You may go right, you may go left, you may just step on the gas and try to leave me behind, or possibly, pull a K-Turn and try to gun me down. That's a lot for me as the Rebel player to take into account, and odds are, I'm going to either split the difference and play a straight 1 or I'm going to guess wrong. There's probably a decent chance I'll put three attack dice on you, but there's a good chance I won't either, and unless I just get super lucky with the mind meld, it's highly unlikely I'll get in range 1 and put all four on you.

Now let's say it's me who's out in front of you and you have 2 TIEs behind me because of your general superior numbers/ points value options in current meta. I have largely the same options availble to me that you did in the first scenario, but having two ships behind me instead of one, you're much more likely to guess right because you've got more chances in the guessing game. There's a pretty good chance if you hedge your bets you can put at least 4 attack dice on me, maybe as many as 6, but probably at least 2 in any case. The significance here is I only have a 2 Agility, so where my worst and average case scenarios probably don't amount to much, your worst case scenario and average case are much more likely to damage my ship.

Again, maybe "efficiency" wasn't the best word I could use to describe this- perhaps "more forgiving" would have been better, but the overall point here is I think an Imperial Swarm list, because of current ship meta and more forgiving nature is much more accomodating to a new player than any Rebel build. Because of that, there's a perceived imbalance towards the Imperials in the game which I don't think actually exsists and will largely disappear as time goes on and more ships become available, diluting the prevelance of the Imperial Swarm.

I played in an 8 player kessel run this week. The distribution was 3 rebel players and 5 imperials. I believe the distribution was imperials in the 1, 2, 4 spots with a rebel placing third. The interesting part for me was playing against a 4 X-Wing squad - thatvwas the roughest game of the night. It probably makes a difference that the attack dice were hot all night, and the evade dice were stone cold.