Hey guys, this would be my first battle report, so I hope I get the etiquette right.

I was introducing a gamer to XWM today, and let him pick which side. He chose Rebel, so I went with Imperial. When I play Imperial, I usually favor the TIE Swarm, because I like filling the battlefield with as many guns as I possibly can. This can bite me when I go up against enemies like Wedge, but I find that if I eliminate the powerhouses first I can usually mop up the rest later. This proved to be the case in this battle.

For my squadron, I created the following list:

Turr Phenner + Squad Leader - 27 points

Backstabber - 16 points

Black Squadron Pilot + Push The Limit - 17 points

Black Squadron Pilot - 14 points

Black Squadron Pilot - 14 points

Academy Pilot - 12 points

Total: 100 points

The force I was up against:

Outer Rim Smuggler - 27 points

Rookie Pilot - 21 points

Red Squadron Pilot + Proton Torpedoes - 27 points

Grey Squadron Pilot + Ion Cannon Turret - 20 points

Total: 95

I had a feeling I would out-match him due to his inexperience and the lack of pilot upgrades, but I explained the benefits of all the types of cards (not individual, but rather "classes" like Modifications, Astromechs, etc.) so I feel like I gave him a fighting chance here.

The battle began with the standard "rush". I put my Black Squadron Pilots and Academy Pilot in front of Backstabber and Turr, then moved them ahead while I let the two heavies lag behind. This created a nice screen. No shots were fired, because we were still mostly out of range.

In the first big brawl, Turr got a good solid hit on the YT-1300, removing two shields, and Backstabber got in some action on the Red Squadron Pilot. I would have gone after the freighter, but for two things: I wanted to give him a sporting chance rather than gang up on a newbie, and the X-wing was in the right position for Backstabber's pilot ability to kick in. Right after that however I suffered major damage to Turr and a single damage to Backstabber.

Both of the heavy hitters were destroyed in the next turn thanks to some pretty good rolls, but in later turns it was clear I was going to win. I didn't let him on to that, but I figured that even with my two best pilots gone, if I could get rid of the YT-1300 and at least one X-wing, I would be golden.

So I concentrated fire on the freighter and blew it apart a couple rounds later, then in the next round I destroyed the Rookie Pilot. After this he tried to use Proton Torpedoes on me, but they failed miserably.

Then it was time for the killing blow. At this point most of my TIEs were in a nice little box, having swooped in and gotten close to the YT-1300, and the Y-wing was flying right toward them. Three of the TIEs were pointing at the Y-wing, but one was just off enough to not be able to hit him. He was able to hit the X-wing though, which at this point had totally lost shields and had one damage. One lucky roll later and he was scrap metal, then the Y-wing lost all but onw hit point.

I had to split up my force to avoid damaging them further due to collisions, or else I would have kept them in formation. But with almost all his attack force destroyed, I had no reason to do that anyway. The last round was rather exciting, but ultimately futile for the Rebel. He got in a good shot on my Academy Pilot, who had two damage cards on him, and destroyed him with the Ion turret, but the remaining TIEs swooped in and finished him off.

Results:

Rebels - total loss

Imperials - 1x TIE Interceptor lost, 2x TIE Fighter lost.

I regretted putting PTL on the TIE Fighter initially, but after playing a few rounds with it I found it came in handy many, many times. Nearly every other round I was able to get in an extra Evade token to go with my Focus, then clear the stress token the next round. Turr's Squad Leader would have gone great with the TIEs, had I not lost him early in the game, but I feel like it was a good idea anyway to equip him thusly.

What do you guys think? Good squad build? I'm still experimenting with squadrons and such, so I admit this may not have been the smartest strategy, but it seemed to work well for me against a newbie.

im not sure PTL is worth it on a mere tie-fighter but as u said it did come in handy. its more commonly used on tie-intercepters, esp soontir or turr as their higher pilot skill lets them perform some sneaky moves with boost and barrel roll as well as a timely focus+evade combo in a tight spot for extra defense.

no howlrunner? its 18pts but can make a big difference if u can keep her around for even 2-3 turns... longer than that and u have urself a game changer. im not a fan of the outer rim smuggler in this build, i think it will start to see extensive play with wave3 upgrades as a blocker with anti-pursuit lasers.

PTL was sort of an experiment. Another TIE Interceptor would have cost me two ships, and I was going for numbers, so I decided to try it out on the TIE Fighter. Sometimes you strike gold in the oddest of places. It seemed to work fine, but I wonder how well I might have done against someone more experienced. I'll probably try out this build again when I go against my usual opponents.

I think I'll replace one BSP with Howlrunner next time and lower the other BSP to an Academy Pilot, since he really didn't do much more than the AP anyway.

It is often recommended that you use the same pilot skill with all of your fodder. Here that would mean using the same un-named TIES if at all possible. The reason for this is simply so that you can move them in any order which can make it easier to avoid "accidents" when you need to move a lower skill pilot into a place you were going to abandon with a higher skill pilot.

Despite this in this battle the higher skill TIEs do provide a shooting advantage over the Rookie X-Wing.

I'm also thinking the Rebel group you faced could/should have had some improvements made to it. I can't for the life of me figure out why it would leave five points off the table when there are so many things it could be used for. That even overlooks using a unique YT-1300 plus two fighters instead of the smuggler and three.

You didn't consider that this was his first experience ever with XWM? There were a lot of cards to go through, and I'm fairly certain he'd never played a game where you create a deck or a squadron like this before. He really had no idea what he was doing, and I didn't want to hold his hand because I had my own squadron to build and we were dealing with a limited time frame. Next time I feel like he'll be able to create a better build, though. He seemed to get a fairly good handle on how the game is played, and I think he understood where he went wrong, such as pointing out to me that he should have chosen Han Solo for the YT-1300. I in turn pointed out that he could have done a lot better if he'd just added something, anything, to the YT-1300.

I'd heard about keeping all the unnamed TIEs the same pilot skill for that reason. But Howlrunner might be a good backup in case they go after Turr again and knock him out. If I can keep a low profile for Howlrunner he might survive long enough to give me a great advantage later when the big guns are either weakened or outright destroyed.

It'll be a tradeoff with the higher skill level of the BSPs, though. Their ability to go before the Rookie gave me a slight advantage over his X-wings, and I think if I had to trade that off I would lose a bit of flexibility.

here are a few different options for rebel squads u could consider...

Chewbacca+gunner + Draw Their Fire + Falcon title card - 48pts

Rookie Pilot+r2d2 - 25pts

Grey Squadron Pilot+r2 astromech + Ion Cannon Turret - 26pts

99pts.

Han+gunner+PTL+Title Card - 55pts

2x Rookie Pilot + R2 astromech - 44pts

99pts

I like PTL on Han instead of something like Marksmanship because he can target lock and evade every turn as long as he makes a green turn

Brown Bomber, on that second list, you might as well add Nien Nunb for one point- two extra greens to clear PTL stress.