Basically, I'm thinking that Tie's are fragile, you can either mitigate that with numbers or mitigate it with abilities….

Darth Vader

-Concussion Missles

-Squad Leader

Mauler Mithel

-Expert Handling

Dark Curse

Black Squadron

-Determination

Black Squadron

-Determination

5 Tie Fighters in a force….pretty sparse for Imps, but…..

Vader is specifically using Squad Leader to get other models to Barrel Roll out of other Fire Arcs and Keep Mauler alive (since he's the big gun) by ridding him of Target locks. (or pump him up with a focus AND a lock for a close range kill. Dark Curse is naturally defensive, and the Black squadron basically discard pilot critical hit cards anyway keeping them alive assuming they get lucky and get critted…harhar! (I'm assuming I'm playing Determination correctly….you discard the pilot crit w/o taking any damage right?)

Thoughts? Or is this just a silly force?

I'm not convinced that the Black Squadron Pilots with Determination are worth the points you're spending. If I remember correctly, only 7 of the 33 damage cards are Pilot criticals, so its fairly likely that you'll never actually use Determination. I find that its better on ships like the YT1300 or the Firespray, which are more likley to suffer multiple crits before actually being destroyed.

http://afewmaneuvers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1316

When wave two is released I'd swap the determination for vetren instincts. I'm running it now and it is awesome. Also for the 15 points I'd look at other name pilots.

Deadshane said:

Black Squadron does something very particular, and that is allow you to bring an elite upgrade on a non-elite ship. (There's more of this in Wave 2.) But it costs you: in comparison to an Academy Pilot, Black Squadron costs 2 points plus the cost of the upgrade. So the upgrade has to be pretty good to justify the cost… and while you are reading the card correctly, Determination just doesn't qualify.

Each BSP is costing you 3 points more than an Academy Pilot; when you add 2 for Expert Handling and 2 for Squad Leader, that's 10 points that aren't being spent as effectively as they could be. I'd look at where you could re-invest those.

I don't really like it, the Two Black squadron with Determination especially. They have not enough bang for the buck and chances are they get killed in a single turn or take crits unaffected by Determination. Or none at all. Take two Academy Ties and give your high skill pilots Swarm Tactics. Cheaper and better…

the rest is pretty standard Vader plus Ties but i personally prefer taking him with at least 5 Ties. You are not that elite with your list that you can rely on a numerical advantage of only one ship.

The true power of the Imperial Navy comes with their quantity NEVER their quality.. Ties are cannon fodder which is why there are so many of them, they are cheap and expendable… you will win with numbers only especially against an experienced rebel player

Good Luck!

GoldCrow18

GoldCrow18 said:

I am not sure that I would agree absolute nature (or capital letters) of this statement. I think you might be able to make a 5 ship Imperial fleet work. But I don't think this one is really that compatative. The problem is that TIE's only have 3 hits. Even with three agility they die pretty fast (mostly due to the fact that all the Rebel ships have target lock)

Your fleet only has a total of 17 (2 shields from Vader) hits in the whole squadron. That is as manny hits as 3 x-wings. And believe it or not, since X-wings have 3 attack dice and target lock you 3 X-wing's outguns 5 TIE's.

Thing might change with the advent of upgrades that make ships harder to hit, as well as TIE Advanced, that can almost match X-wings in fire power (they still don't have target lock)

Hrathen said:

Well in my experience Ties are more difficult to kill than X-Wings. Evasion is basically a free shield every turn plus you have more agility, and would you shoot with an equal number of dice on an evading Tie and an X-Wing, my experience tells me the X-Wing goes down faster. Let the mathematicians argue if that is true. Offensively an X-wing is a lot better of course but defensively i am not even so sure. That is by the way why i think Ties are severely undercosted and/or X-wing slightly overcosted.

But hey if you have 5 Ties that are not as fragile as it seems, even with a low HP count, why not take 6-8 of them.

Personally i will abuse Interceptors, Tie fighter defense and X-Wing offense. That's gonna rock if you ask me even with no target lock.

ForceM said:

…you rang?

It depends on who's doing the shooting, of course, but if it's an X-wing with Target Lock or Interceptor with Focus:

• TIE/ln + Evade lives an average of 6.1 rounds
• X-wing + Focus lives an average of 4.7 rounds

That analysis discounts the extra value of critical hits, which would adjust things back toward the X-wing a little bit. All in all, it's pretty close to even.

Of course, the X-wing is going to do a lot more damage in return than the TIE will. In fact, if the two ships are shooting at each other (instead of both being shot by the same mystery opponent), the X-wing is almost guaranteed a kill and then some.

Vorpal Sword said:

You are **** right,

of course it implements that you evade every turn, but that loss of offensive power is quite worth it. You outlast X-Wings despite them having more HP since evading gives you a free shield every turn you have an action. I wonder what the survival rate is against enemy 2 dice focus attackers.

I wonder what wave 2 ships will do, but wave 1 only i find the game quite out of balance in favor of the empire. Swarms are a problem since they are too durable. They have roughly same HP as a 4 ship rebel squad with shields. They have more attack dice and a lot more defense dice, they have nice synergies with Howlrunner for example, and they have evade which i find, and i hate to say it, overpowered. I am literally undefeated by any Rebel list as soon as i take 7 or 8 Ties. 3 reasons for this, Ties are 1. too cheap, 2. Too durable for the cost because 3. They have evade.

And i am not even so sure that this is what FFG intended, or if wave 2 will change it a lot. The missiles that are supposed to solve the problem are too expensive so the team taking lots of them are outnumbered further making the problem worse…