I have run this list three times.

Captain Jonus

- Concussion Missile

- Proton Bomb

Scimitar Squadron

- Assault Missile

- Seismic Bomb

Scimitar Squadron

- Assault Missile

- Seismic Bomb

He fired first and did a quite a bit of damage, but didn't quite finish anyone.

Then I fired and blew his entire crew to kingdom come, leaving a crippled Falcon and maybe (maybe) a single rattled survivor.

The next turn my bombers dropped their charges, and either pulled a 5-K (something only they are capable of since anyone else would have been too close) and/or a bank. The wide swath of seismic charges put a couple more damage out, and my bombers were easily able to put out the last few damage necessary with their primaries. I think the one game they did not quite finish off the Falcon while they were stressed from the K-Turn, but managed to do so the next turn.

My third game was against a 4 Interceptor list. Soontir and Phennir with PTL/Stealth, and a pair of Alphas. The game went similarly, though boost and barrel roll caused some problems for me.

On the first pass, I missed with two of my Assault missiles, but the third hit an Alpha and killed him (he had used his token avoiding the first two missiles) and put a hit on the rest of the squadron.

Next turn, I dropped bombs (saving my Proton Bomb) and pulled my maneuvers. The Alpha, who had already moved, was evaporated in a glowing field of Seismic charges. Turr Phennir and Soontir Fel were both forced to use both actions boosting and barrel rolling in order to minimize damage. Had they not done so they would both have been obliterated, but as it was they both took one damage from the outermost mines.

After that, it took some work to get a hit through Focus/Evade + Stealth, but as soon as I got that hit the ship died. Somewhere in there I tried to bomb Phennir, but again he was saved by boost + barrel roll. I ended the game with Jonas (3 damage) and one unscathed Scimitar. This took something just shy of forever to accomplish, with him whittling me away and me missing repeatedly.

My conclusion:

Jonas makes expendables VERY good. Scary good, especially when used en masse. Also, TIE Bombers are much better dogfighters than people were expecting them to be. The 5-K turn allows them to make a K-Turn even when face to face with ships that have a higher PS. They also have 1 forward and 1 banks, something sorely missed on a regular TIE fighter, and the green 2 bank is HUGE for allowing them to recover from stress while maneuvering. Barrel roll goes a long, long way towards overcoming the wide turning radius of the 3-turn. Finally, 6 hull is a lot of damage to chew through, especially when you start with 4 of them.

Edit: I went with Assault Missiles because of the AoE damage. It is good for putting damage on multiple ships, obviously, but even more than that I wanted to discourage my opponent from concentrating fire. By forcing him to keep his ships more than 1 away from one another, it made it hard for him to focus down my ships. As it turned out, the HSF lists scattered exactly the way I wanted them to and the Interceptor list took splash damage. If my third opponent hadn't rolled so spectacularly well with evades and even one of the two assault missiles that missed had hit him at all, his entire list would have gone pop on the fist pass.

Sounds great. Did the XWs move after your Bombers? If so you did a good job getting up all your TL's on the first engagment. The one fear I see with this list is average pilot skills staying outside range 3 on T1, you missing the TL's on your T2, and them screaming forward and blowing a bomber away.

That was a concern, which is why I cross locked (put a TL on the ship on the opposite side) with my bombers so I could get a shot off. That is also the reason I went with Assault missiles. By blocking his Falcon from getting too close to ALL of my bombers, I made sure that two of them could still fire at the Falcon (and 2 damage to my Bomber isn't that big a price to pay for 8 dice hitting the Falcon). Knowing I could hammer his Falcon, my opponents refused to move their X-WIngs full speed towards my Bombers and wound up not getting close enough to deny my shots (I am guessing that is why they maneuvered the way they did, anyway).

Also, the Bombers are fast. They can choose any speed from 1 to 4 without stressing, which is an excellent way to ensure they get close enough to TL.

I can see the potential for getting your TL one turn, but having your opponents be too close to shoot with missiles. I figured if someone managed to do that, the mines I drop while K-Turning would be painful enough to make it worthwhile from my point of view. That, plus the 5-K turn means anything close enough to deny me a missile shot is also too close to prevent me from K-Turning behind them (still with a TL) and firing the turn after.

sounds promising. keep playing and reporting!

Interesting, would love to hear how the list fares against a 7 TIE Swarm and a 3 X-Wing list. Thanks for posting!

My experiences with similar squads is that a mass of bombers with Jonus supporting is a decent counter to the swarm. Swarm might still have the edge but it is far less than its edge against most other squads I have tried against it.

Of course, my experience has also been that Gammas live longer than Scimitars and I tend to not lose them before they get their ordinance off like I have with Scimitars. But that might also just be piloting and dice.

So I took this squadron to the Omaha tournament yesterday, and won the whole thing going 6-0. I switched it up a bit, however, trading the Proton Bomb on Jonus for a Seismic Bomb and Squad Leader, leaving the list at 99 points and all 4 bombers loaded with one missile and one Seismic Charge. I had initiative for all 6 games.

Many of the games were down to the wire, but a couple were complete massacres. The worst was against Wedge and 3 rookies, flying a loose 2 x 2 box. We took a couple turns on the approach, but then I moved up just enough to TL his back row Wedge with 2 assault missiles, and a backrow Rookie with 1 assault missile. When I moved Jonus up, I used SL to put a focus on one of the Scimitars locked onto Wedge.

Wedge fired at Jonus, lay 3 damage down on him including a "Munitions Failure" that blew off his Concussion Missile. I returned fire with Jonus' main guns, and all 3 assault missiles. At the end of that round of shooting, Wedge and his backrow rookie were dead, his two front X-Wings were down to one shield and zero shields (his formation was loose enough that the "diagonals" were not in splash range). and Jonus had only one hull remaining. Next turn I dropped all 4 bombs and K-Turned, and his 2 remaining Rookies blew up. That's it, first pass and 4 dead X-Wings.

The most exciting game of the night was the finals. My opponent had a Blue Squadron with Fire Control and an HLC, Biggs and 2 Rookies. He split the team, sending 2 Rookies directly towards my formation, and brought Blue and Biggs around from the flank. The first pass was not a total disaster, but my Assault Missiles were not very accurate and I only managed to put 3 damage out using 3 of my bombs so all 4 of his ships survived it, and I was left with Jonus having 5 damage on him. Biggs was a much bigger problem that he appeared at first glance, because combined with the TL requirement for missiles he kept me from assigning ideal targeting priorities.

The game went back and forth. At one point Jonus failed a K-Turn, but because of that got a PS 6 shot off that kept Blue from clobbering a bomber. Later, a stressed 5 damage Scimitar with Damaged Sensor Array didn't bother to clear the stress (no actions anyway), so went 4 forward to get point blank with Biggs' side, and killed Biggs the same round the two Rookies finished him off.

In the end, I had one Scimitar with 3 hull left vs. one Rookie with 2 hull left. Fortunately for me this was the one Scimitar who did not drop his Seismic Charge on the first pass, and when we K-Turned past one another he dropped his bomb and got the Rookie down to one hull, while the gunfire exchange had me miss the Rookie and him put one more damage on my Scimitar. We passed one another pulling greens, but the turn after I was forced to barrel-roll so I wouldn't face an asteroid the following turn (I wanted to K-Turn and these things need SPACE to do that), my opponent K-Turned right away, rolled two hits and fortunately for me I rolled one evade survived with one hull. Next turn my 5-K turn put me out of range. The turn after I picked a 3 green hoping to close to point blank, knowing that the only chance my outgunned TIE Bomber had was to take the X-Wing down with my next shot. My opponent moved forward slow, I fired at point blank, put 2 damage on and he only evaded one. BOOM! His return fire (both of us are PS 2 remember), dealt 3 damage and I avoided zero.

So, simultaneous destruction of our last ships, but I had 99 points and he had started with 100, so I won because I had initiative. You cannot get a more exciting photo-finish for a final match. Hats off to Evan, who played a great game, and Sean for running the whole thing. I wound up with some great knick-nacks (like a box for my damage cards), some promo-pilot cards for Black Squadron and Wedge, and a brand new Lambda shuttle that I still have no idea how to work into a competitive list.

But the Bombers, they made a believer out of everyone.

I just won the Redmond tournament yesterday also using a 4-bomber list (see my tournament report for squad list). I really do think that FFG undercosted these bombers by a point.

I ran KO's list in a Free For All game today, 5 players, 100 points each. It was a lot of fun and let's just say it performed well. The game came down to my 1/2 dead scimitar pilot against an Awing sans shields. I lost that dogfight. Good game however!

Right off my squadron of bombers faced off against two Bwings and a HWk290. Assault missiles, primary fire, and a seismic charge took down one Bwing early. One Bwing performed a good maneuver followed by a barrel roll, which blocked Jonus' movement and caused him to get caught by one his squad's seismic charges.

I was very satisfied with the Jonus-boost to the secondary weapons. The best round of assault missiles I have ever used. Over-lapping the proton bomb and a seismic charge also meant the destruction of a few other enemy vessels. Sadly, once all the ordnance is gone, you are just left with 2 attack dice.

(God help me I cannot wait to see the meta move away from HSF, I am so tired of playing against it).

I'll be sure to keep running him then.

(God help me I cannot wait to see the meta move away from HSF, I am so tired of playing against it).

I'll be sure to keep running him then.

this was a great read, and I will look more into the squad. I can't really see anything too bad about this other than someone using the barrel roll-de-lock but no one really does.

16 (with 3 splash) is a lot of damage, wiping out most tie swarms or major damage on x-wings.

The one thing I noted in my game using this list was that after the ordnance was gone, I felt under-gunned. One alternative is dropping it to 3 bombers. Discarding a scimitar pilot allows you to upgrade all bombs to protons and add more missiles all around. The draw back is obviously one less delivery system and loss of re-rolls ala Jonus for the lost ship.

If you worried about survivability here is a list that ups it just slightlyi

Jounuus

Concussion Missile

Seismic Charge

Schmitar Squad x2

Assault Missile

Seismic Charge

Saber Squadron

PTL (or stealth)

100 Pts

You only get 2 shots with the assault missile here but it'll be hard for your opponent to choose who he goes after first, your nimble interceptor waiting in the back row, or your bombers screeching at full speed ahead. The other good thing about the squad is if your interceptor stays back, after the seismic drop you can blow off remaining hull on ships.

Here is something I drew up today:

99/100pts

Jonus: 22

Scimitar + Missiles = 21

Scimitar + Missiles = 21

Simitar + Proton Torp =20

Black Squad + Squad Leader/ Draw thier fire = 16/15

You still have 4 bombers and 3 "missile" shots and black squad plays defense or hands out an action. It's certainly an all in on engagement round type of squad. If your missiles don't hit then the dice aren't with you this time and you're going to have a rough go. There are still 26 hit points to chew through but you're going to be fighting an uphill battle at only 2-3 attack dice and 2 evade.

I think I like Jonus with something, scimitar with missile and bomb x2, and an interceptor more but it'll require lots of playing to get a feel for it.

Here is something I drew up today:

99/100pts

Jonus: 22

Scimitar + Missiles = 21

Scimitar + Missiles = 21

Simitar + Proton Torp =20

Black Squad + Squad Leader/ Draw thier fire = 16/15

You still have 4 bombers and 3 "missile" shots and black squad plays defense or hands out an action. It's certainly an all in on engagement round type of squad. If your missiles don't hit then the dice aren't with you this time and you're going to have a rough go. There are still 26 hit points to chew through but you're going to be fighting an uphill battle at only 2-3 attack dice and 2 evade.

I think I like Jonus with something, scimitar with missile and bomb x2, and an interceptor more but it'll require lots of playing to get a feel for it.

You use DTF and gain the missile back on the scimitar

I played the most exciting game of x-wing I have ever played against the squad KineticOperator posted. I ran my Horton, Dutch and Gold squad.

I got all my ordinance off except for a single proton torp, he got all his ordnace off but a proton bomb. All other ordinance did some damage but only one of his missiles or bombs hit more than one target. Who was winning kept going back and forth. Dutch went down in the 2nd round of fire, Jonas in the 3rd, a Scimitar in the 4th, Goldie in the 6th, then Horton managed to finish off the remaining two Scimitar over another 5 turns. Neither of us flew perfectly, both of us landing on an asteriod once, I split my forces in the middle, getting into a 2 on 1 which cost me and he performed some unnecessary red maneuvers. On the other hand, we both did a good job of denying each other focused fire in the initial exchange via asteroids.

It came down to Horton staring down a Scimitar at range one, both with a target lock and focus. Scimitar had 2 hull left, Horton had 1. The force was with Horton, 3 hits versus 1 dodge.

I played the most exciting game of x-wing I have ever played against the squad KineticOperator posted. I ran my Horton, Dutch and Gold squad.

I got all my ordinance off except for a single proton torp, he got all his ordnace off but a proton bomb. All other ordinance did some damage but only one of his missiles or bombs hit more than one target. Who was winning kept going back and forth. Dutch went down in the 2nd round of fire, Jonas in the 3rd, a Scimitar in the 4th, Goldie in the 6th, then Horton managed to finish off the remaining two Scimitar over another 5 turns. Neither of us flew perfectly, both of us landing on an asteriod once, I split my forces in the middle, getting into a 2 on 1 which cost me and he performed some unnecessary red maneuvers. On the other hand, we both did a good job of denying each other focused fire in the initial exchange via asteroids.

It came down to Horton staring down a Scimitar at range one, both with a target lock and focus. Scimitar had 2 hull left, Horton had 1. The force was with Horton, 3 hits versus 1 dodge.

Love it. The close games are the best. What upgrades were you running on your Y's? I've been trying to come up with a good y wing squad.

I ran:

Horton 33

Proton Torp

Blaster Turret

Dutch 34

Proton Torp

Ion Turret

R5-K6

Goldie 33

Proton Torp

Ion Turret

Adv Proton Torp

When I run it next I am going to replace the R5-K6 with two generic R5 Units. Those crits can really mess up your y-wings (I forgot to mention in that photo finish I had, Horton was reduced to zero agility). Also, R5-K6 worked about as often as you would expect it to work and I do not think a generic R2 is needed as I find there is little need for red maneuvers with a turreted weapon.

I like to run the ships spread out, but within 1.8 to 2 of Dutch. Turns out if you stay at range 2 of your target, Horton can make good use of the Blaster Turret with his rereoll of blanks (or get TLs from Dutch). I gave Goldie the adv torp because that evens out each units points and makes none (or all) of these guys a priority. Okay, Dutch is a bit of a priority, but ignoring Goldie gets you an adv torp in the face and Horton can really dish out damage while maneuvering out of arcs when the board gets empty. I need to test this more, but I think this squad will perform well against most squads, swarms will give it pain.

4 bomber squad sounds great. Though only time will tell when people get used to this change in meta. Maybe people WILL run Expert Handling more often, that sort of thing. I can't wait to see what combinations are thought of counter the bombers.

Thanks, I really enjoyed running a variation of this. Jonus with PTL and a homing missile is pretty awesome. I didn't use as much with bombs but some cluster missiles in the mix with only 2 assault still can do a lot and get a couple more shots in, although I like keeping one seismic charge around just in case.

I've been running Jonus + 3 Gamma myself and so far I am 2-0 with it and most importantly, it is a fun list to fly!

What upgrades and ordnance do you use on them? How does it work once you run out?

3 AMs, 3 Seismics, SL on Jonus.

In both games - when I ran out of fireworks - the enemy ships were either:

a. gone/heavily damaged and ripe for TL + 2-3 attack dice.

b. scattered, see a.2.