I have played it since start december. That is when i could get my hands on enough ships to start up.

So what you do is avoid the firepower of all combined Ties and Howlrunner buff by hindering manoeuvers

I mean yes this all sounds well and good but the imperial player can place 3 asteroids himself (when i play ims i usually place them along one board edge, sometimes even my own board edge because that way i can clear the field in one turn, then i am free to manoeuver). So all you have is 3 asteroids. I suppose you place them somewhere midfield to get a maximum out of them. When i played rebel i tried to make Biggs hang back somewhat behind an asteroid to get an extra defense die. But generally, those asteroids did not block lines or shots enough to save me in the end. I am also aware that Ties cant go as slow as rebel ships, but most of the time, a skilled imperial can get through the field with relative ease without completely breaking formation. It is not a must to have very ship in howlrunners range every turn to win. So this divide and conquer works to some extent but for us it does not make up for the dice advantage imperials have.

Also, what action do you usually take for Ties? Evade i suppose dince to us it has proven the superior skill and outlasting the rebels is a very powerful tactic.

ForceM said:

On the next turn, your opponent has cleared the asteroid field, but you get to shoot before the vast majority of his or her ships, so by the time the swarm gets its first "real" shots in, it's down two or three ships and no longer poses a credible threat to 4 Rebel ships.

It doesn't always work--sometimes the asteroid placement is too sparse, sometimes the dice hate you, sometimes you make a maneuvering mistake and screw up your own timing--but as I said upthread, it works often enough that when combined with the complexity and expense of running a swarm, it's been a while since I saw someone try it.

***

And as far as actions, Evade is actually not a great choice unless you're dodging missiles/torpedoes. I've written extensively about it here, but the short version is that if you expect to take multiple attacks Focus is just as good on defense and (of course) better on offense.

The poor Y-Wing got double-dipped. In what must be an effort to match "canon*" it was given a lousy 1 Agility AND a maneuver dial strictly inferior to the X-Wing**. I think everyone recognizes that the 1 Agility radically reduces the benefit (i.e., true squad point value) of all that bonus hull and shield. Damage reduction and miss chance act as multipliers on the effectiveness of hit points. I've found time and again that a 5 HP, 2 AGI X-Wing takes no less shooting to kill than a 8 HP, 1 AGI Y-Wing.

Personally I think the Y-Wing would be an A-OK ship if it were just errata'd to cost fewer squad points across all its pilots. Let's say 2 fewer. I have my gripes about the "canon," obviously, but really none of it matters in the end. Heck, fun game design needs the Y-Wing to be its own beast too. Nothing need ever be useless or overpowered in a points-based game, because you can always just alter the point cost as required.

I'd like to improve its Agility but somehow I think fans would have an easier time swallowing errata to a little black corner number than a big green central number. Plus an Agility boost could actually make the Y-Wing undercosted unless the squad point cost were increased anyway! Errata to the maneuver dial might make me happy but woof that would be a pain in the rear to implement.

Gentlemen posters here are calling it a support ship and that's both correct and peripheral to the true issue with it. If a Y-Wing with Ion Turret is a useful member of the Rebel team and absolutely worth its point cost, great. A naked Y-Wing remains a stinking heap of trash. So, my solution is to simultaneously decrease the cost of all Y-Wings and increase the cost of Ion Turret to match. That way an "Ion-Wing" costs the same, fair number of points it does today. The naked Y-Wing becomes a viable option - a crappy but appropriately cheap extra body on the field. The game is enriched by the addition of more viable options.

*a very silly idea. I understand the point of making a Star Wars-branded game feel "Star Warsy," but adherence to "canon"/theme over a game's play needs is why people call a lot of FFG's product "Ameritrash." Further, what's "canon" anyway? I don't recognize the "authority" of jack squat except for the six three movies - that is, "Star Wars" is the movies to me. And nothing in the movies really says to me that Y-Wings are slow-moving space trucks. Sure, they did some fine fiery exploding in the first trench run, but the X-Wings did an awful lot of blowing up too. Fans have different interpretations of what "Star Warsy"-ness really is. Jay Little stated this at GenCon last year. It's why they're making three different SW RPGs, each with its own thematic focus. So, claiming "canon" as a controlling reason for anything in a game, as opposed to a contributing factor, is foolish.

**and no pilot with a dang elite talent icon, which is a pet issue I'm going to harp on probably forever.

Okay, now that is very different, so you suggest to be totally defensive and dependant on asteroid placement i do believe it might work. Of course it also depemds very much on your enemys skill since it is a divide and conquer strategy. You need to be out of range of at least half of the enemy to have an advantage. Your fire needs to be concentrated while you deny it to your enemy. It can work in don't doubt that but you need a lot of skill (i would say more than to play a swarm efficiently) and still luck.

But hey i dont want a method to beat it 100% i just want balance. If that is achieved i will be happy.

I have read the evade thing too. I am not convinced, but i know focus is very flexible. It requires a lot of discipline to constantly evade or to keep focus for defense. In my experience evade is a big advantage imperials have even if they focus one Tie. Think of it as a free shield every turn. Try to play like that a few games, especially in a swarm. It makes the game slower but you might see you can outlast rebel formations.

Thank you anyway for your answer. It is in any case helpful and well written.

Man, I had a long reply written out earlier, but either the board or my connection became unresponsive and I couldn't recover it.

Anyway, Vorpal hit a lot of what I was going to say about the Swarm and asteroids anyway, but one thing- when you talk about asteroids on the board edge, you don't literally mean that, right? You know the rules for placing asteroids, right? Because in the context of this thread and what we've been discussing, it makes something of a difference. Secondly, and I apologize if this comes aross as condescending or whatever- it's not my intent, but you know how Actions and tokens work, right? I'm probably reading way too far into your posts, but the way you posed your Actions on TIEs question kinda made me wonder if you and your friends aren't using a single token throughout the duration of a round rather than discarding it after use.

As for your Actions on TIEs question, I don't know- it's purely contextual. If I feel like I have enough guns focused on a target to get through the shields, I'll Focus with everyone present. If I don't, I usually just hedge my bets and Evade although in light of Vorpal Sword's post, it would appear I need to rethink that strategy.

Making a TIE Swarm that uses Howlrunner spread out is one of the best ways to neuter/ nullify it. I've meant to write a post about this on my blog, but one of the best strategies for making this happen has been to split a 4-ship list into two 2-ship groups, with one ship more forward than the other, set them pointing towards the center of the play area at about 30 degree angles on deployment. If you've dropped a few asteroids so that not only does the Imperial player have to choose between which group of ships they're going to go after, they also have to worry about splitting up their force even a second time, that's usually enough to make things get interesting for them- collisions, Pilot Rank gaffes, etc.

Many times when I do that 2 group deal, I'll have Luke with Swarm Tactics in front of a Rookie within Range 1 to benefit on one side of the table, and a couple of Red Squadron X-Wings on the other with various upgrades and droids to taste. I like this setup because if he comes after Luke, he's got to contend with two PR8 X-Wings with two PR4 Red Squadron X-Wings coming in from at least the flank, and quite possibly the rear depending on how quickly he advances. On the off chance he goes after the Red Squadron X-Wings first, well, it's just vice versa. I really prefer the Red Squadron X-Wings to Rookies as the folks around here use Academy and Obsidians in their TIE swarms quite a bit.

If playing a setup like this still doesn't work, try giving Luke R2-F2 and have him activate the droid's ability as an Action until the rest of the squadron have cleaned out a few TIEs. He works well as a kite in this manner too. Bonus points if you can fit in Garven Dreis to give him a Focus too, but far from necessary in my experience. I'd sooner spend the points on R2-D2 for the trailing Rookie, but again, that's probably more just my playstyle than actual tactical advice.

If you dig using Wedge more than Luke, I'd suggest giving R2-F2 a try on him sometime. Wedge's ability conveys an attack bonus anyway, so it shouldn't completely neuter him if he uses his Action for something besides Target Locking or Focusing. I think R2-F2 works best on Luke for obvious reasons, but he really has the potential to help out anybody who isn't just completely screwed by giving up an Action.

I almost always include 1 Y wing in a list, and thats just because Dutch is so awesome he is hard to pass up on. I find I tend to use between 1 and 3 Ys per list, partially because I'm a fan of them, and partially because I find them to be really, really good with the Ion turret against most opponents. Keep in mind that outside of range 1, it takes 4 Ties to kill 1 Y wing, and thats if they roll nothing but hits and you don't roll a single evade. At range 3 with asteroids in the way, its very hard for Ties to land hits on a Y-Wing.

Recently, when I've been setting up my asteroids, I aim for a center table deployment. Sometimes, my opponent will cooperate, and place their asteroids in the center, but if they are playing a swarm, i tend to find that the asteroids end well away from the center of the table. My first asteroid goes center of the table about a 5 movement and a 4 movement away from my opponent's deployment zone. My second and 3rd asteroids are placed 1 away from the first closer to my side of the table, making a triangle from my first asteroid. This gives mea pretty safe area to advance behind the asteroids. If my opponent picks a side, I deploy to keep the asteroids between us. If he deploys dead center, I deploy straight across from him. The goal is to advance toward the asteroids enough that the first pass puts them between your opponent and you. You're flying Y-Wings (with R2D2 and R5-D8 in my typical lists) so you can afford to take an asteroid hit most of the time after the first pass with enemy ships. Hopefully the asteroid field will break up enemy formations, and sometimes you'll get lucky with the ion shots (I've had Horton Ionize a tie, which had to float into an astroid and ended up taking a critical hit).

Once the first pass is over, I survey the field. Its not uncommon for me to pull a 3 or 4 maneuver to continue to open the range between myself and my opponent or just fly straight with my R2D2 Y-Wing to recover a shield. Either way, i want to not be too predictable - i can shoot 360 and my opponent cant, so as long as I don't stick somewhere that is going to get me shot by multiple ships at range 1 I'm good. What tends to happen as the game progresses is you start pulling apart formations by ionizing ships and can scatter opposing ships even more when you make a 3 bank when he was expecting you to take a 1 the other direction. As you ionize enemy ships or isolate them getting them to chase you, you're killing them with your cleanup ship(s).

The cleanup ships are the ships you use mid to late game to hunt down ionized ships - a Rookie X-wing is probably the best choice, but a gold squadron works if you can line up a range 1 shot with the primaries. I've also had decent luck using Horton as the cleanup ship because he doesn't need much support - if he is shooting at range 2, you can either focus and have a pretty good chance at 2 hits or fire a torp and finish the ship. I try to keep the cleanup ship out of the fight early in the game by deploying at the very back of my deployment zone and moving slowly. Depending how the first wave progresses I can burst past the asteroids with a high speed move if I am worried about the cleanup ship getting ganged up on, or I can pick on an ionized ship that is coasting from the first wave.

Even if you don't shoot at an ionzied ship with directional fire, its out of the game for at least 2 turns - one from the ion coast, and then another while it turns around to get back into the combat. If they don't K turn, it can be a third turn before they are shooting at something again.

Cid_MCDP said:

Yes i know the rules for asteroids and tokens. You deploy them the minimum distance from right or left board edge in a line, that is what i meant not that you put them just on the edge without respecting the distance. As for the tokens i don't know what xou mean really…

To your splitting rebels up tactic, well i would still clump up and plain kill one flank after the other. It might work if the imperial player falls for it.

The red squadron is a different issue. It makes sense against an obsidian squadron swarm, but not if it us Howl/mithel with swarm tactics. Or just plain Academies. In the former you have 4 Ties that go before your Reds anyway. In the latter the Academies go after your rookies anyway. So i don't know if it's worh the points.

I dont have my cards here, R2-F2 is the one with +agility as an action right? Well i like it on Biggs, but makes sense on Luke too. But for Luke i prefer R2-D2 since with my playstyle he gets more use out of him and does not lose offensive power.

Endgame124 said:

Yes, indeed you need quite some ties to kill a Y-Wing in one turn but is still disappointing that you can kill an expensive ship so easily. Even if it takes 2 turns… You are almost guaranteed a kill on it that is the problem while on a Tie you can never be sure if you do any damage at all.

I already said that i will ignore any Y-Wing except it is loaded on equipmemt or hands out important buffs like Dutch. I love it when my enemy takes a very expensive Y-Wing because i can kill it easily compared to X-Wings, giving me an early point lead should the game go to time!

Also if you manage to ionize a ship it is not really hindered for more than a turn except you hit a stressed enemy of course. A Tie Fighter can just outturn you and that is all. If you make hard turns, go ahead man a stressed Y-Wing has even less damage potential than ordinary. The Ion Turret can throw an enemy out of formation too, but in a swarm one 12 point Tie does not matter much. Its fun of course that you can sometimes make enemies run off board or crash, that is for sure.

ForceM said:

Ok, like I said, no offense in regard to the rules stuff. Just could have explained why you were having so much trouble.

Don't think you understood what I was trying to say about the split up and Red Squadron, but that's ok. I probably didn't explain it all that well.

Yes, R2-F2 gives an extra agility die.

Well yes. You try to split up your ships to make him go to a side or split up as well, i just don't know if that tactic will work since you will have 2 Ships free to act and 2 that will have a very rough time while they get focused.

Red squadron. I understood. I just say it makes no sense if the enemy has all Skill 1 since even Rookies go first. It also makes no sense if the enemy has lots of swarm tactics since they will go before you anyway… The only enemy it makes sense against over a Rookie is Obsidian Ties. He gives out more points and you still ho first (although you lose even more points, so its dubious as an advantage)

ForceM said:

Y Wing and a Tie fighter are roughly head to head at Range 2. Tie gets Ionized and is forced to move 1 forward. The Y-Wing runs with a 4 forward, getting out of the Ties front arc. The Y-wing and Tie fighter are back to back. If the Tie isn't ionzied again, it can A) make a K turn, gaining a stress and maybe being at range 3 of the Y, or B) turn in any direction, still not have the Y Wing in any arc. The Tie is ineffective for at least 2 turns.

Y-Wings with R2 units are solid because you can pull those red maneuvers while still being able to choose from many options to clear the stress token. A pair of Y Wings can keep 4 ships effectively out of the fight as long as you're doing well stacking target locks and focus onto the Y's with Ion Cannons.

I've been working with this list, on and off - its 4 ships instead of the 3 I've been running lately, and I think it would be better with an A wing instead of the 3rd Y, but its fun to play.

Dutch w/ Ion & R2D2
Garven
Gold Squadron w/ Ion & R2
Gold Squadron

The Gold without upgrades is the cleanup crew, closing into range 1 of ionized ships to light them up with 3 attack, preferably outside of the inoized ship's arc.

This is very close to my favorite squad. I do use an A-Wing instead of the third Y-Wing.

I personally have found the balance to be quite fair in the game. I have been able to use a y-wing to good effect even if it is just as a fire sponge for the ties while the rest of my squad swoops through and drops damage. I have been a Warhammer chaos player forever though so I guess I just am used to odd play stratagies. Granted I mostly play with my other half lately at home and we take turned building squads for each faction. I find both to be pretty good soo far. I haven't touched any wave 2 yet though.

Endgame124 said:

This is all well and good, but the chance to hit a tie even with the ion cannon is not huge against an evading 3 agility ship. While his chance is better to hit you with 2 attack dice against one evade die even without any action. If you fail to ion him he has no problem keeping up. And more importantly you are not fighting on a 1v1 base here. The second Tie your enemy gets for the same cost as your Y-Wing with Ion turret shoots you all the way with impunity.

You also don't disrupt 4 Ties there, you have only 2 ion cannons in your list. But your chances are pretty good to actually hit a target with Dutch and Garven handing out buffs. But against a list with swarm tactics you have 4 ships attacking before you do, which can potentially be a dead ship before you have even fired a shot. After you have played there ate potentially 3 more ships firing at you, which equals a pretty dead Y-Wing.

This list looks impressive with 29 hit points on the table and all the buffs being handed out and stuff, but i have played against a very similar one. It just fell apart on the tabletop. I killed the ion cannon Gold squadron first turn and took 2 damage to an academy Tie in return that was ioned. 2nd turn i did a lot of hard 1 turns to one flank. He had expected K-Turns and his Y-Wings were out of my angle. But Garven was in 6 of my seven Ties arc. I shot him down but he killed a Tie on his own being short range. The one remaining ion cannon non Dutch finished my wounded academy. Now it was 5vs2 and the Gold squadron without ion cannon was a sitting duck even with his R2. I killed Dutch 2 turns later and left the Gold squadron for last while i took i believe 2 more damage to two different Ties. One of them was Howlrunner and she was ioned for one turn. But i managed to get Mithel in range one that turn and he did 3 damage even without a buff… I mean it can go better for that list, but i just don't see it defeat a swarm.

ForceM said:

Just wanted to point out that I built win/loss tracking into my Squadron Builder. It's not massively used at the moment but you might use the Squadron Lister to get an idea of what's working for people.

That said, my personal experience has been very much that the Y-Wing sucks. We've tried named pilots, unnamed pilots, loading it out, running it with just an Ion Cannon, without an Ion Cannon, in different squadrons. But it's just too unmanouevrable, and gets picked apart once a few TIEs decide it's worth going after. I generally only use now because I only have 3 X-wings but want to field 4 ships. Once wave 2 comes out, I don't think I'll use it at all except in big battles.

vs

ForceM said:

I haven't played a ton of games, especially with the y-wing but the last time I played with it… meh. It seems pretty situational, I tried to look for opportunities to crash other ships into asteroids with the ION but that never really came up. Tried off the board, that also didn't come up much.

Funny thing though perception. I swear I only was able to successfully ion 1-2 times in the game and my opponent flipped out and said it was a nasty ship.

The ION also seems like a must have… the 2 std attack and 1 def, does really make it completely a supporting role. Though honestly 1 dmg seems pretty standard against empire's 3 agility anyways even for x-wings, sure some 2 pops up on forgiving rolls.

I am on the fense, would like to try it out a bit more, the 360 firing range of the ION is pretty good even if only 1 dmg.

If you are going against a y/ion, all you really have to do to mitigate, is to ensure you are not facing the edge or asteroid, sure ION sucks but if a reb is going to take up 1 ship and can't get extra damage with collisions then I will gladly go after more "dangerous" vehicles.

Endgame124 said:

Well you can fly around the board all day long, after some time, you will have to fight. And your enemy does not always make a mistake. At some point a ship will be in range of the ties. If there are more, one will be focused. I had the choice to shoot the plain Gold squadron or the one with Ion cannon in my game. I shot the more expensive one with 6 Ties. (The last one shot the other ship since i could not reach the focus target, but he completely missed. This is not at all unusual. Some were at range 2 some at range 3. He made 2 dodge rolls and i missed only 2 shots thanks to howlrunner and focus on my range 3 ties and a little luck. But all in all it is not a case of extreme luck really. I Scored 10 hits and missed 2. He made 2 dodges out of 10. Its somewhat better than average. And his damage is pretty much average. I have indeed very often killed a rebel ship first (encounter not game) turn and this has nothing to do with overwhelming luck or stupid enemies. The rebel player can try and control the first engagement, but there will come the moment someone comes in range and even a swarm can often manoeuver without too much trouble It is not as rigud as people think sometimes. The odds are just in my favor here, be it X-Wings or Y-Wings. Your calculations are not wrong, they even show how it is possible. I get 12 shots against very few agility dice and i am not even range 1 with any ship. He got 5 attacks and i had 3 dodge dice twice plus one token. This repeats round after round depending on how the game develops.

2 Ion tokens are of course hindering the DPS of a swarm somewhat. But don't forget even a 3 or 4 ship rebel has limitations to its manoeuvering and the ties manoeuvrability also brings some advantages. Sometimes it devolves into a furball, sometimes a player can keep his tactic working. But i have never seen that a player can control the board and engagements 100% and that is what Rebels seem to desperately need to win.

Your win there is against a 6 ship imperial. It is not bad but what makes you think it would be easier against a real swarm? I also won't argue about 3 or 4 Ship rebel builds or which ones are better. But some people think that the initiative and special skills don't weigh up the extra firepower and Durability of a 4 ship build. Again this might just be me but i really think that with 3 ships the pressure on the rebel player to make early kills without suffering losses in order to just even numbers somewhat gets bigger and bigger. I have seen especially 3 ship elite builds struggle a lot against real swarms. If you can consistently beat them that's good, i could certainly not.

I will never run a team without a Y-Wing. The strategic capabilities of the Y-Wing are far too useful especially in games with superpowered pilots like DArth and Wedge…. They are even more useful in Asteriod battles as you can force a player to crash… would I run more than 1 Y-wing? No, but I will always run 1… the ion cannon is the best way to take important ships out of the fight and the 360 fire capability is invaluable in my opinion since it makes the maneauvering more managable and less important… I will never agree that the Y is useless but if you arent running ion cannon you are making a serious error in judgement … honestly, I would prefer running a Y-wing to a bigger ship like the Firespray or the generic smuggler in the YT anyday (simply because the firespray is basically an Imperial Y-wing with more shields… Wedge makes the Firespray his beotch.. trust me I have done it). Also, I just ran a game against a guy with Lando (YT, with Chewie and Nien Nub), Wedge, and a Rookie Pilot and my 3 Xs and a Y mopped him up and all I lost was a single X. For background, this guy won his YT at the Kessel Run event and is no slouch… sadly I was not a player back then I would have loved at very least an A-Wing or Interceptor… But yeah, Y-Wings are awesome!

GoldCrow18

I do agree, however, that proton torpedoes are grossly overpriced! I never use them because I would rather be able to mathematically put a whole other ship into play and those 4 points are huuuge!!

GoldCrow18

Endgame124 said:

Endgame124 said:

I already said why i dislike this build. It has medium Skill all around. But a Tie swarm will manage to make 4 ships go before you. If you are unlucky, he will destroy your combo in the first encounter. As a rebel player i kinda like:

Luke

Garven

Rookie

2nd Rookie or Goldwing with Ion cannon.

For equipment it can be interesting to run swarm tactics on Luke and perhaps a few Droids. I don't dig Torpedoes too much…

ForceM said:

A 6 ship vs 7 ship swarm probably wouldn't have made a difference in my last tournament game - more than likley vader would be replaced by howl runner and another academy. The torp that cleared vader's shields and landed a direct hit would have outright destroyed a tie - ideally that would be a dead Howlrunner, but I would settle for mauler if I couldn't get a lock on Howlrunner. Given the same rolling, Luke and Dutch would have killed another tie and I probably wouldn't have taken as much damage on Dutch as I did, since most of the damage on Dutch came from good rolling on cluster missiles. After that, it would still be the same number of ships I had to deal with.

3 Ties in range of howlrunner + howlrunner's shots only manage 4.75 hits, of which at least 3 should be dodged by X wings, or 1 by a Y Wing, and thats if there aren't asteroids in the way. I also thinks this is where we are seeing drastically different levels of power with the rebel ships - I don't normally lose rebel ships in the first 3 turns of the game, unless I'm playing against multiple Advanceds w/ Concussion missiles. I hide in asteroids as best as I can and typically refuse to take a 6 pack of Ties head on until the formation breaks up some. If you're consistantly having 4 ties wipe out a rebel ship on turn 2, I can see how rebels would have a really hard time of it.

I usually only take torps on Wedge and Horton. With the A-Wing on its way, I may consider adding an A-Wing with a concussion or homing missile to my lists, but those 4 and 5 point missiles and torps add up so fast I don't really see taking more than 2 in a list, tops. If only torps cost 2 points…

First, there is nothing wrong with the Y-wing. Learn to use it effectively and you will be fine.

About swarms, they don't matter any more. Those of us that havemultiple wave 2 ships have already learned that the swarm is a thing of the past and are going to fewer ships where each ship can hit HARD! I'm playing a three ship build right now and I have YET to get beat by a swarm list (7 or 8).

Now things that are going to hurt y-wings and x-wings now more than ever are missiles. The big V with a homing missile will lay down the law fast on a ship. The slave one packing a torp and a missile with a reroll, destructive. Han with a missile is sick btw. The trick to this game now is to find away to stack up your ships green dice so you are rolling four or more.

For more on this see my thread, "putting wave 1 and 2 together."

Endgame124 said:

I did not kill the Y-Wing with 4 Ties but 6 as i said. If 4 do 3,75 damage 6 should do what? About 6? So we are 2 damage above average even if we ignore the fact i had focused with the range 3 ties and he had a dodge die mire as a consequence. This should roughly balance itself out. I don't do it all the time but a kill on first pass happens very very frequently. And that is nothing that extraordinary as your own calculations show it.

You say you evade or don't fight a swarm, or hide. But you will have very few very bad shots too and wont wittle down the swarm fast enough. If you keep exchanging a ship for a ship you lose as rebel. A Rebel player can wait, delay, hide… But there will be the moment he will have to face the swarm and the longer he manoeuvers the longer the swarm also has time to position itself.

Also i try and keep howlrunner on range 3 for the first exchange so she gets the bonus defense if the enemy has no torps. That plus evade is usually enough to save her from all but the hardest efforts to kill her. And these efforts usually cost the enemy dearly because he shoots a very elusive target that also has already shot most of the time. Leaving another Academy to shoot back.

Also there is not a lot of reasons i would take vader over 2 Ties except for his 9 Skill or if i needed a missile. Because 2 Ties also have 2 Actions and he can't do a lot 2 ships can do for you, besides perhaps presenting a bigger target to your enemy. In your case, yes you kill a Tie, the other survives though. Vader survives with 2 shields, which is slightly better in that case i guess.

Picasso said:

I have read your thread. It's okay and shows a few new combos of course. One is even posted by myself.

But in no case it shows why wave 2 should magically solve all the problems with balancing, swarms and Y-Wings especially.

What could balance swarms is the 2 new missiles of course, but this means you need a lot of A-Wings (or the falcon). I do indeed believe that these missiles can do sone harm to swarms. But you still need to hit, and that is easier said than done. And not everyone will play 4 A-Wings with 20 points of missiles of course. So i do believe the try to balance out swarms might be successful, but the fact that they just try to balance it out shows there was a problem in wave 1 with it. Also if you don't focus on these swarm counters, you will end up just as helpless as before.

For the Y-Wing i am afraid, wave 2 makes things even worse in many respects. Imperial ships with even more attack dice means an agility 1 ship will just melt no matter how many hitpoints… The ion cannon is good against elite builds, that is where you are right. When someone posted a squadron consisting of 3 Bounty hunters, i could not help but smile and think of how 4 Y-Wings with Ion cannons would escort them off the table with ion tokens. But something like 5 Interceptors might just ruin any Y-Wings day.