Had an excellent game last night with a flight of three Y-Wings against Vader, Marek Stele, and a couple Black Squadron pilots. Narrow, narrow loss for the Y-Wings - Literally Vader down to a single hull point and my Gray Squadron pilot at 2 hull points. It came down to which of us missed an evade first and that was me. Great learning experience though. I'd been wanting to try this combo and it played as well as I'd hoped! Here was my squad:
Dutch Vander - R5-K6, Ion Cannon, 2xTorps
Gray Sq Pilot - R5-D8, Ion Cannon, 2xTorps
Gold Sq Pilot - Generic R2, 2xTorps
99 Points
Imps: 100 points
Vader - Cluster Missiles, Swarm Tactics
Marek Stele - Cluster Missiles
Black Sq TIE x2 - Swarm Tactics on one.
I may be misremembering his kit slightly but this was close.
Rebels had initiative.
Very tight game. Had some great shots. Torps are really good in convert with the main guns and ion cannons. Even if you don't one shot a ship, they are great for stripping evasion tokens and doing a point or two of damage. Follow this up with an ion or main guns will usually finish it off.
The Dutch/K6 combo is capable of generating a sick amount of target locks. I would Focus as my action with my Gold and Gray pilots usually. Then get a target lock with Dutch, pick a wingman and give him one with Dutch's ability. Since Dutch shoots first, always spend his lock if at all possible, even if only to reroll a single die. Now give the other wingman a lock. Unload on with whatever on a target you have optimal positioning for. Rinse and repeat.
Ion Cannons - Awesome for stripping the last point of hull from Imps. And really, really great for using them for opportunity fire whenever a couple TIEs get too close to each other. I was able to snag a few timely hits and really cause a traffic jam a couple times, which let me set up some good kill shots.
R5-D8- excellent buy. At one point my Gray Sq pilot had 3 damage on him. He was able to get back to full hull status.
Speed Kills: The TIEs are *almost* too fast to effectively deal with Y-Wings in a cohesive manner. It's like a jet fighter trying to line up shots on a propeller plane. The Y-Wings can almost guarantee to be covered by a wingman and the TIEs seem to end up in a position to be shot by at least one (even if it's only with a 360 Ion Cannon). TIEs trying to maneuver for shots at the slow moving Y-Wings tend to end up either bumping each other somewhat or getting in each other's way quite often.
Sorry the report isn't more cohesive, just a bunch of random thoughts after the battle. I'll try to do a more proper report next time. But here are some pics of the fight:
Early Maneuvering:
The furball begins - This was one of those situations where I made good use of the Ion Cannons to foul up the Empire's plans:
Start of a really good turn for the Y-Wings:
One TIE down:
Second TIE down:
Both sides pretty beat up at this point:
Didn't get pics of the final turns but Stele took out one Y-Wing, while dying himself. Then Vader got some spectacular die rolls and managed to finish off Dutch while my pilots suddenly went cold. Vader and the Gray Squadron pilot ended up in a maneuvering duel, changing positioning and taking shots. At that point, Vader had one hull point left and my Y had two. Vader Evaded two Ion Cannon shots completely and finally got a nasty shot through to take the last hull points off the Gray Squadron pilot for the win. Super close, super tight, super fun game!
Jim