I think 4 B-wings would be very tough to bring down. Focused fire from most squads would struggle to take down one a turn.

With the upcoming Hull Upgrade, you're getting the same attack power as 4 x-wings, a bit less maneuverability, and almost double the health. With the hull upgrades, I'm pretty sure its the most hit points you could have in a squad.

If you didn't want the extra hull, you could get fire control systems on all of them for the extra damage, or advance sensors for the extra flexibility.

Thoughts?

Well i am an Imperial player and I would love to fly against 4 B-wings.. With only 1 agility dice u probably going down quite fast.

Since 4 X-Wings are viable my first intuition would be to say yes it is viable. In the long run your 1 agility will be worse than having 3 less hitpoints though. But the firepower is similar and you have barrel roll and a 1 turn even if its red.

The really important difference is the equipment options.

For the X-Wings it's mainly the possibility to field Droids that is awesome. The simple R2 is just a great option.

The B-Wing would really benefit from this added stress dump a lot. But it has its own advantages in firepower with the Fire control system and in mobility with Advanced sensors allowing barrel rolls or other actions before moving.

I'd say the B-Wing is fine. It could be stronger in mixed squadrons but a 4 B-Wing is probably far better than most people think it is.

Fun to fly, yes.

Will you win a lot? 50/50

What are your PSs? Two and Fours. What happens when everything shoots before or at the same time as your pilots? You will struggle with high PS squints moving after and shooting before you.

3 Blues with HLCs and Fire Control would be devastating.

It is surprisingly not! Great Alpha strike if all three survive your opponents alpha which shoots before you. After that it is an up hill battle.

Great Alpha strike if all three survive your opponents alpha which shoots before you.

That shouldn't be that hard to do.

Sure only a def of 1, but you should be at rage 3, which gives you 2 evade dice. Plus you got 5 shields per ship. Plus the Dagger squad has a PS of 4, that means it will shoot before any swarm does.

If everything goes the way you want it. A good Tie pilot will be able to stay at R4 and then go 5 forward to get within R1-2. I have done it. just remember that your bet laid plans always fall apart with first contact with the enemy.

Great Alpha strike if all three survive your opponents alpha which shoots before you.

That shouldn't be that hard to do.

Sure only a def of 1, but you should be at rage 3, which gives you 2 evade dice. Plus you got 5 shields per ship. Plus the Dagger squad has a PS of 4, that means it will shoot before any swarm does.

Really? My 6 TIE swarm with Vader & Howlrunner, both with Swarm Tactics, would disagree with that statement. :-)

3 Blues with HLCs and Fire Control would be devastating.

I flew my 6 TIE Swarm aganist 3 B-Wings (Pilot Skill 2) with HLC's and Advanced Sensors (I think one also had a shield upgrade) and one died a round. When he setup directly across from my Academy Pilots I knew he was going to take a beating. I setup my remaining three ships behind the Academy Pilots with Howlrunner in the middle and came out slow to keep out of range of the HLC and the next round I jumped forward 5 and was at range one to his B-Wings. He did kill Howlrunner, I think the first combat round, but he lost one ship per round and we were done in 27 minutes. Four of my ships were firing before he got to fire the first of his ships. One of his B-Wings didn't even get to shoot before it died the first time we were in combat range.

Then he tried to Koigan and ended up overlapping the second row of my ships and was stuck facing the wrong way with stress (He did use Advanced Sensors to get his 'action' before the move). I successfully performed koigans and shredded a second B-Wing. The last B-Wing was just a mop up of the game.

I was not impressed with the performance of his three B-Wing squad. (The guy I played doesn't play that much and my dice were on fire during the tournament)

Squad I ran was:

3 Academy Pilots

2 Saber Squadron Pilots (TIE Interceptors) with Veteran Instincts

Howlrunner with Swarm Tactics

The thing with B-Wings is they're a good ship, but they're hard to fly well . They're not very forgiving to fly, is maybe another way to put it. Your two best options are to kit them out as close in dogfighters (Advanced Sensors, maybe an Engine Upgrade) and try to outmaneuver in close, or throw an HLC or Ion cannon on one and try to hang it back and use it as artillery.

I think they work best, as with a lot of the ships, when they're not the only ship you're using. I'd hesitate to play a 4B squad, but I'd absolutely play a 2B2X squad where the X-Wings could pull some of the heat off of them.

A Blue or Dagger with HLC and FCS makes an awesome long range threat, and eats up roughly 1/3 of your squad points - you still have 67-69 points left to build out with, which will give you two solid named pilots or three generic ones. And if you pick the right pilots you can stick the other guy with a much tougher choice between rushing the B-Wing (which can hit for 4 dice at any range) or letting it take pot shots while he deals with your other guys.

Fun to fly, yes.

Will you win a lot? 50/50

Yup, much like 4 Y-wings A fun and solid list for game nights. I wouldn't take it into a tourney.

I played against four b-wings the other day. Out maneuvered all four ships with squints. I shot one B-wing down in each round. My opponent hardly ever had a shot. Tur was ducking and diving to victory.