I've been playing around with my imperial side a lot more often lately, trying to get a build that I like, and I kinda realized I couldn't get any proper mileage or uses out of the Black squadron TIE and it's upgrade slot. Any suggestions on how I could make use of it? I realized I cannot really equip squad leader on it, swarm tactic on it is a joke, leaving me with marksmanship (which brings it up to a whopping 17 points), determination (ha. ha. ha.), expert handling (honestly not bad), and that's pretty much it.

so far I have:

7x Academy TIEs

1x Black sqd TIE + squad leader, to give an action to a TIE that really needs it. I find this better than making him a Dark Curse or Backstabber, improves your other TIEs by a marginal amount. I've tried swarm tactics too, but it's rather useless, especially if you are facing 3 ship rebel builds or 6 ship imperial builds since your Black sqd TIE is going to shoot after everybody else already.

1x Howlrunner + expert handling

1x Dark Curse

4x Black sqd TIE + expert handling each

This build basically means you are immune to target lock + focus combos, or virtually any target lock from rookie Xwings and gold Ywings. Very expensive on both the points and wallet though, considering how you are supposed to cough out 5 expert handling cards, and I really do feel that a similar squad with 7 TIEs would fare better than this.

I've been wanting to try giving them swarm tactics with Vader and give that a shot. Here's what I'm thinking:

Darth Vader + Swarm Tactics + clusters/concussion = 35 points

Howlrunner + Swarm Tactics = 20

2X Black Squadron TIE + 2 Swarm Tactics = 16 + 16 = 32

Academy TIE 12

99 Points or Obsidion instead of the Academy for 100

The idea is to fly them close enough together to pass swarm tactics from Vader on to have everyone shoot at a Pilot Skill of 9 with initiative and some of them benefit off of Howlrunner's ability as well. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to do with 5 TIEs, but lose Vader early and there's most likely going to be some problems.