I bought 4 A-Wings thinking it would be fun to have that much speed, but play testing with 2 or more has not worked out so well the few times I've tried. Sure the speed is nice, but it has the attack of a support ship without any support features. The best idea, I feel, that I've come up with is this:

I only have 2 A-wings, so this is theory, but I have thought a lot about A-wings recently. I really like the idea of 4 Green Sq. Pilots w/ Deadeye and missiles. The kind of missiles depends on your opinion. There is enough room in points for all of them to have Homing Missiles, but that may not be the best choice if the idea is to fire wihout the Target Lock (though it does bypass evade tokens, which is nice). I think Concussion Missiles would be the way to go because they turn a blank into a hit, which is what you'd use your target lock to accomplish with Homing Missiles anyway. Then I would slap a Shield Upgrade on one of them with the remaining 4 points.

The only other thing I know from experience is that Arvel Crynyd can really give the large ships a hard time, especially Chewbacca, Krassis and the generic pilots. They move, he moves where he thinks they'll go, and collides, allowing him to attack even though they can't. I've seen it happen enough to know it's good, but you have to be pretty lucky about guessing where they'll go.

Parakitor said:

That would play right into my mindset of considering the A-Wing needing the most skill to play well. Given their maneuverability, if you can correctly guess the movements of the enemy, I would think you could do fairly well. Arvel's ability on top of what they can already do is just a continuation of that. The problem is, I'm terrible.

Parakitor said:

Homing Missiles still require a target lock to fire. They don't expend the lock in doing so - leaving it in place to spend rerolling - but the Attack (Target Lock) means you have to have one in order to fire.

My experience with the A-wing is the same as the OP. One can make a good outrider or flanker, but much more than that simply doesn't bring enough firepower to the table to get the job done. Missile-heavy loads seem popular for fun, but I don't know that anyone considers them seriously in competitive play. It's just too dependent on the die rolls, and rolling 4v3 (assuming against most TIEs) isn't going to gain you 20 points worth of damage even before you consider the hole it leaves you in.

Honestly, I don't even really consider the generic A-wings, personally. If I'm putting one in, it'll be dropping the points for Tycho+PTL.

The only convincing role I've seen for them is against big ships, where they fire missiles then close for the kill. Against smaller ships they jsut seem to die much more quickly than you'd expect.

Buhallin said:

You can use Deadeye to fire the Homing Missiles (or others) without a TL….that is the purpose of Deadeye.

I flew four Green Squadron pilots with Veteran Instincts and Cluster Missiles this past weekend. The idea being to hit the opposing squad hard right off the bat with the Cluster Missiles, doing lots of collateral damage, then stay in formation and mop up whatever was left over, with the raised pilot rating helping me to attack a little sooner. Except my opponent had a Firespray and immediately split up his other ships, so I ended up swarming after the Firespray and taking it out pretty quickly with the missiles. In hindsight, I should have taken out his Squad Leader Vader first. Had it been a timed tournament game, I would have won on points, but we played 'til the end, and when three of my ships all whiffed on a 2-hull remaining Vader, he managed to pick the rest of my ships off.

Thinking about changing to Deadeye + Cluster Missiles for the next attempt.

Buhallin said:

Double prototype w/ Lando is quite good:

Lando, Squad Leader, Chewbacca, Gunner, Falcon
Prototype, Homing Missile
Prototype, Homing Missile

The two homing missiles can reliably pull 3 hits, though I usually get 4 out of them. Lando can hand out target locks to both A-Wings in one turn, which means you get to put down the target locks at PS 7. You can fairly easily knock down 2 imperial ships in the first volley, or 1 rebel ship and damage another. After the first volley of missiles, you're hopefully far enough ahead in the attrition war that your opponent can't knock all the HPs off of the falcon w/ Chewie.

DailyRich said:

i dont take cluster missles unless i have marksmanship, the dice are too dang fickle to do otherwise.

spend a turn setting up your TL then use marksmanship the nxt turn with clusters and observe how much better they work.

A-Wings come with Homing Missiles in the box, so you can equip every one of your A-Wings with one. Use them, love them. They are useful no matter who you are up against, and are critical to helping you get some numerical parity in the early rounds.

Someone in my Regionals tourney ran a 4 A-Wing squad. He lost all his games. He didn't even kill one of my ships when we faced off.

In the Connecticut Regional, someone was flying a Falcon backed by 2 A-wings with Stealth and PTL, and made it into the top 4.

Would homing missles be chosen over concussion? Homing missles seem nice against Empire and the Millinieum Falcon, but concussion would do well against anything you would face. I might give A-Wings one last chance on tonights friendly, but I don't feel great about them. I feel like anything with a natural 3 agility is a good canidate for stealth device. Am I wrong thinking this?

Not wrong, except about Homing Missiles. They hit for 2 or 3 consistently, and can hit for 4 easily if you focus as well as lock. The main reason they are preferable to the other missiles at the moment is the Millenium Falcon is in so many lists. If it Evades (and it always evades), it can mitigate a point of damage every turn, which is a lot of damage by the time you kill it. Homing missiles prevent that.