A simple Y-Wing with the Ion Cannon Turret can wreck some serious havoc, putting named pilots out of the game at the most inconvenient times. Yesterday I was unfortunate enough to have Soontir with 5 defense dice get hit nonetheless, and he was essentially out for three rounds in a row. Doh!

Any good strategies against it?

Also, somewhat unrelated sidenote, does a defender get an extra die at range three against secondary weapons?

Throw your low skill pilots in front of it to prevent actions and maneuver your better pilots behind at long range. 1 evade die with no actions should be easy to put hits on.

Only primary, pg 12.

Ya y-wings can be tough. 1-2 are manageable but 4 can be tough. I beat it once with a 4 x squad and was destroyed by it with my HSF squad. It didn't help the Han with gunner was not hitting a yWing, yes a one agility ship vs Han with gunner and I was consistently rolling all blanks.

I've learned that the most important thing is to never stress any of your ships within range of a Y. If they ionize you while you've got that stress token, you can't perform any actions and you're most likely never going to shake it. They're just gonna keep blasting you until you're dead.

Your best bet is probably to stay at range three as long as possible so that they can't ion you. The extra defense they get for it will only bring them up to two unless they invested in the Astromech but I've yet to see someone do that with a Y-wing.

My Imperial lists are usually 5-8 ships large. I'm not afraid of Y-Wings and usually leave them for last. Then again I also don't typically take aces with higher target priortiy.

Looking at the Y-Wing's shortcomings; they have an agility of 1 and are only doing one or two points of damage against you unless they are packing protons (Which most of the time you evade anyway). They don't have much to protect them beyond a high hit point count, but after three hits any criticals will start to stick.

So, keep shooting them. They can't rinse off too many shots over the course of an entire round and eventually things will start to hurt. If it absolutely must die, shoot at it with higher attack powered ships or throw a warhead at it. This will be easier with Bombers out, which will likely function as the anti 1-agility anything.

Otherwise Y-Wings have very tricky movement options, while TIE Fighters are the most agile ships in the game. Ion cannons kind of make up for this but remember: Even with an Ion token you're still dodging, attacking, and performing actions. Even with an Ion token, once resolved, you can barrel roll or boost your way to a new postion. Might help even if you can catch a rebel ship who was tailing the ioned fighter.

When the blaster turret comes out, the Y-wing could really be devastating. Four y-wings, two with blaster turrets and two with ion turrets could be brutal.

We'll see. Requiring a focus to shoot kind of puts a limit on what Y-Wings can do. Then again when I think about it, what other kinds of actions could they possibly want to take beyond Target Lock?

But yeah, as an Empire player I fear the blaster turret more than the Ion cannon. Ions are a minor inconvenience, Blasters actually hurt.

Even with an Ion token you're still dodging, attacking, and performing actions. Even with an Ion token, once resolved, you can barrel roll or boost your way to a new postion. Might help even if you can catch a rebel ship who was tailing the ioned fighter.

Maybe you miswrote this, but you can't do crap with an ion token on you. You drift 1 forward, and get no action. You can attack, but if the other player is good, or lucky, there's nothing to shoot at. And what's worse, if there are asteroids around you could be in even more trouble. For a normal academy TIE, that's a major issue, and even for someone like Soontir, you don't get to perform any actions, so you're out of luck unless you happen to be pointed in the right direction to begin with.

Yeah, in the next round you get to do what you want; unless you're struck again, which is very likely.

And yeah, you can have 5-8 ships if you're playing 100 points, but we often play 60 just because it's faster. That's probably 3-4 imps against 2 rebs, in which case getting a name pilot taken out for a turn or two is devastating.

Even with an Ion token you're still dodging, attacking, and performing actions. Even with an Ion token, once resolved, you can barrel roll or boost your way to a new postion. Might help even if you can catch a rebel ship who was tailing the ioned fighter.

Maybe you miswrote this, but you can't do crap with an ion token on you. You drift 1 forward, and get no action.

A ship with an ion token can actually perform actions as normal. Only movement is affected!

You're right. My bad.

Uh-huh, so, a inconvenience. Just means you don't move much from that spot, but someone like a TIE Interceptor for instance could perform Boost + Push the limit = Barrel roll, and now you're out of the sights of whomever was setting you up!

I know it's too much to hope for FFG changing the effects of an Ion Token, but this is silly. Ion cannons were useful and dangerous in the flight sims because the ship didn't move OR Shoot AT ALL. Here, it happens and it's forgiven easily with 1hp damage and still some movement.

Besides I'd still take an X-Wing over a Y-Wing with the Ion cannon. I'd happily trade critical hits and more than one damage point capability over 360 anyday. Better, the YT-1300 can do both with more hit points. Torpedoes suck, so the Y-Wing isn't good for that either.

An ionized interceptor that boosts + PTL to barrel roll has generally just committed suicide. He certainly didn't get out of the firing arc of a 360 degree Ion Turret, and now he is stressed AND ionized. He cannot select a green maneuver (has to go white 1 forward) to get rid of the stress, so he won't get an action to evade or focus next turn either. With no defensive actions available he will almost certainly take a third hit next turn and pop.

Ion turrets are best when used en masse, not one at a time. Even a TIE swarm can have troubles if you keep 2 or 3 TIEs ionized. If nothing else, you have cut the number of TIEs shooting back in half (assuming you are smart enough to move out from in front of the ionized TIEs). It is also very effective in breaking up formations so that Howlrunner and company are no longer supporting one another, and if you Ionize the front rank the following ships have to do something pretty dramatic to avoid colliding with their drifting compatriots.

Dutch with R5K6 and Ion Turret with 3 x Golds with Ion Turrets is an effective list. Certainly not first tier, but not a joke either. If you are running an elite Rebel list against them, you could be in a lot of trouble. They can often get an "Ion lock" on all 3 of your ships and keep pinging away at you turn after turn. Large ships can be escorted off the table. Again, it is not even remotely a first tier list but shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

My Imperial lists are usually 5-8 ships large. I'm not afraid of Y-Wings and usually leave them for last. Then again I also don't typically take aces with higher target priortiy.

Looking at the Y-Wing's shortcomings; they have an agility of 1 and are only doing one or two points of damage against you unless they are packing protons (Which most of the time you evade anyway). They don't have much to protect them beyond a high hit point count, but after three hits any criticals will start to stick.

So, keep shooting them. They can't rinse off too many shots over the course of an entire round and eventually things will start to hurt. If it absolutely must die, shoot at it with higher attack powered ships or throw a warhead at it. This will be easier with Bombers out, which will likely function as the anti 1-agility anything.

Otherwise Y-Wings have very tricky movement options, while TIE Fighters are the most agile ships in the game. Ion cannons kind of make up for this but remember: Even with an Ion token you're still dodging, attacking, and performing actions. Even with an Ion token, once resolved, you can barrel roll or boost your way to a new postion. Might help even if you can catch a rebel ship who was tailing the ioned fighter.

This. Y-wings just can not deal with a Swarm. Vice-versa they excel versus elite squadrons. I have literally seen a darth vader being escorted off the board because he got caught again and again with the ion cannon. He was stressed and didn't get rid of the token either...

But swarm laughs at even 2-3 Ties being ioned. They will be able to just outdamage an all Y-wing squad pretty much in any scenario.

I've learned that the most important thing is to never stress any of your ships within range of a Y. If they ionize you while you've got that stress token, you can't perform any actions and you're most likely never going to shake it. They're just gonna keep blasting you until you're dead.

Actually you can with an X-Wing since the straight 1 forced on you by the Ion Turret is a green maneuver for it.

The Ion Damage rules state that the maneuver the ship must take is a white 1, regardless of what color that maneuver is normally for that ship. So if you're stressed when ioned, you don't get to lose the stress.

Even with an Ion token you're still dodging, attacking, and performing actions. Even with an Ion token, once resolved, you can barrel roll or boost your way to a new postion. Might help even if you can catch a rebel ship who was tailing the ioned fighter.

Maybe you miswrote this, but you can't do crap with an ion token on you. You drift 1 forward, and get no action.

A ship with an ion token can actually perform actions as normal. Only movement is affected!

But if your stressed that 1 forward does not count as a green, so you stay stressed. While you are stressed you don't get actions. My opponents make it a point to shoot ion turrets at my stressed ships. Not fun for me.

On the other hand Y-wings do die easy. They have less agility dice than TIE's have attack. So even so so firing conditions from my TIEs are likely to hurt them.

My advice if you shoot on them, stay on them till they are dead. Don't shoot at them some times, and then move on to other ships. I find they are really nasty when I have Biggs/Wedge drawing my focus.

Imperial setups inherently lend themselves to flying many ships and swarm tactics. I don't have a lot of faith in Elite pilot builds for the Empire because so much hinges on 3 hit points. With sure-fire damage-dealing coming in Wave 3 I suspect Imperial Elite pilot builds are going to be more vulnerable to most kinds of lists.

4 Y-Wings with Ions is considerable but I've run 8-ship swarms against them just fine. Only in an experimental solo match in my earlier days of X-Wing did a Y-Wing list outperform a swarm... and that was when that Y-Wing was down to 1 hp and several TIEs were injured by asteroids. That hardly happens when I play swarms nowadays, now that I can gauge how far the templates are.

Overwhelm them with fire and take them out in one go or engage at range 3.

Swarm tactics are great, but if you're flying them in formation (which is the only sane thing to do, if you want to get the benefits and so you don't end up in a game of bumpercars), a single ionized TIE in less than ideal conditions will screw your neat little formation right up. Throw in an asteroid, one or more other ships, being close to the edge... Your movement options just got very limited.

I'm not saying it's invincible, but I've had tremendous success with it. I tagged Vader twice, the second time sending him hurtling into an asteroid in my last game (range 1, target lock), causing him damage, robbing him of both his actions and leaving him right in the line of fire for Han in the Falcon. It was glorious.

As several have already stated, TIE swarms (6 to 8 ships) easily tear apart the Y-Wing ion quartet. Small Imperial squads with only a few elite pilots will always be susceptable to ionized death.