Since I started playing this game, I have nothiced a few signs of the game still being quite young.

I often se e this in that the tactical analysis is a bit to focused on

a)

Find a super winning ship/upgrade combo

b)

Put it all in one swarm

c)

Move it in a straight line towards the enemy

And this is why there is loads of theory on what statistical chances of hits and damage, how some ships or upgrades need to be fixed etc.

I would like to reformulate the game into two basic strategical statements.

a)

The game is very well balanced. You can basically pick ships and upgrades at random and still have a fair chance of winning.

b)

If you stay behind the enemies with your ships pointing towards them, you will win.

The analysis of the dice is not wrong and I think that it is great to have it, but it is the movement after the first confrontation that will determine victory or loss.

It is after all very common to have most or all of your ships unkilled after that first confrontation.

I really am not a master player of this game but IN the game I keep ask ing myself 3 general questions

- I am chasing the enemy, how do I keep it that way?

- The enemy is chasing me, how do I break lose from that?

- Both sides are facing eachother, what should we do next turn?

...and what ships wil l let med do this the best way ?

(usually my strategy for the first two is to move slowly and for the last one to avoid moving right towards them at fisrt ant try to hit them in the side and then do sharp turns)

I agree that the game is well balanced, but this does not mean that all squads give you a fair chance of winning. Those statements don't go together necessarily. List building is part of the way the gmae is balanced.

-By predicting their movements. Failing that, by having ships that can move slowly, so they can't force you to pass them.

-Daredevil is actually very useful here, but so are Koiograns.

-Koiogran.
-The YT-1300 and Firespray-31 have a large number of answers to these questions, and both come with the benefit of being chase-proof.

List building is indeed part of the game and there are some good combinations and some bad, but even if you pit a good combo against a bad one the outcome is pretty open.

(even if that particular list was made for crussing that combo)

What matter more is the flying:)

EG

Last tournament i used a strategy of splitting my formation into two areas

when the enemies went after one of them the turned sharply towards the other side while "squad b" moved forward to flank the enemies.

(squad a would then return to support squad b)

It gave good results, especially as the other players are more experienced than I am.

....it also is a strategy that would work with almost any combination of ships.

Sure. If you have no plan or strategy for the game, then the list is very very important.

If you have a plan, the list is a bonus.

I have to agree with this. I'm a very casual player myself but I try to experiment with lists and strategies and I find it rather depressing how many players come on talking about their planned or well performing lists at events being 3+ of the exact same ship. Especially Bomber lists, you have a ship that can take nearly an combination of weapons in the game but your four ship squad all have the same loadout?

Personally I in part blame the early effectiveness of howlrunner backed swarms for cementing in the community subconscious that a bunch of identical ships, flown as a single entity, is the best use of points. This philosophy seems to dominate the middle range of player skill, probably because it's hard to beat without skill and hard to unlearn.

I've found that playing games with multiple objectives helps this.

Ex: the rebels must destroy the {generic spacey sounding item} so that the {titled ship of some kind} can leave the table. These two items start in different areas of the table. The imperials must destroy the ship before it can escape. Protecting their mcguffin gets them kudos from lord vader.

I've done quite well with Imperial swarms, but have never flown them in box formations.

I go for a very loose formation. Initial goal is to make some unpredictable maneuvers to change up the orientation of the battle lines before the shooting starts -- i.e. break up the opponents plan. I want to make sure the fight happens in the thick of the asteroids where Imperial fighters shine at ducking around obstacles.

While I don't use any fixed formation, my tendency is to stretch out into 1 or 2 columns of ships that can weave a conga line and encircle the enemy. If you can draw a net around them when you close to engage, you wind up with concentrated fire in the center of the net. If the enemy is flying in a box, they have no good escape routes, and you are well positioned for continued concentrated fire on the subsequent turns.

If the enemy is hugging a board edge, a single column can weave through the asteroids and then turn to attack. But when I can, I prefer two columns on both flanks of the enemy — this sets up for a very nice Thatch Weave for solid consequent attacks.

When facing those dreary box formations, it takes a certain creativity that is a lot of fun to employ. The goal is to break up their formation by whatever means possible. Generally this means not only taking the fight into the thick of the asteroids, but not being shy about flying right over them yourself. The boxes will want to avoid asteroid collisions at all costs. If your ships are doing hard turns and k-turns right over the rocks, any minor collision damage is better than being caught in their cone of fire. And then you're shooting at them in the center of your net while their plan falls to pieces trying to turn and regroup.

I've found that playing games with multiple objectives helps this.

I hope that future tournaments will have more (some) scenarios.

Anyway...

The consequense is thet if every game/plan is the same then every card is equally valluable in every game.

Therefore we have discussions about certain cards being "broken" (expose, tie advanced...).

In watching the worlds videos, I recalled thinking: "the player who engaged in the asteroids always won vs. the player that tried to avoid them". That held true in most the the taped matches I could find.

On multiship matching: remember, there are only 6 ships to choose from on either side. You're going to have many of the same ships. They often have more synergy with each other and are easier to fly together than 3-4 different ships with different PS and dials.

This is an interesting observation.

I need to have a look at it myslef:)

The benefit for picking multi of the same ship and load outs is that you don't have to remember each pilots bonuses. If you have 4 bwings with fire control, you can work on maneuvers and not have to remember that one has missiles to use or a different gun to fire.

At least for a fairly new player it seems to work to learn the movement of the game.

From a layout stance. Having a solid formation on the table that moves as a big solid group works, it's actually proven, check real world events like Bombers in ww2, they were one mass that when together had protection, but on their own, got ate up. Same in the wild. You leave the herd,s your chances of survival are less.

I tend to start in a formation and try to keep them close at least. In the games where I spread out my force, I did not end the game well. I had to hope the other guy would make a mistake.

The benefit for picking multi of the same ship and load outs is that you don't have to remember each pilots bonuses. If you have 4 bwings with fire control, you can work on maneuvers and not have to remember that one has missiles to use or a different gun to fire.

I try to do this at tournaments. After a few games the brain will get tired and it is best to keep things simple.

Formation is not wrong, but I object to the diagam-plans.

It is one of tha signs that many players havent really learnt the navigations, and are using these guides to compensate for it.

Nothing wrong with being new and learning, but it is important to know thet there is more to it.

In the future I hope there will be guides on how to regroup your ships, rather than how to handle them in the start of the game.

I consider the fact that you can't fly in 'real' formations, with the leader in the front and the grunts in the back, not able to maintain a formation if it isn't the 'box' formation, one of the biggest drawbacks of the game.

You could try to use other 'proven' ww2 formations - but they don't work very well with Howlrunner and different pilot skills.

The Schwarm formation works somewhat if all pilots share the same ps (or at least wingleader and wingman)

All fighters should operate in pairs, always. The second pair supports the first pair, e.g. by attacking enemy units from a different direction. So this is more a loose formation with pairs as the smallest elements.

Transfered to the game you could try to start with this layout:

Leader: Dark Curse (16 points)

Leader's Wingman: Black Squadron Pilot + VI (15 points)

Leader 2nd Pair: Backstabber (16 points)

2nd Wingman: Black Squadron Pilot + VI (15 points)

This leaves 38 points for a heavy hitter, a star like Vader or a 3rd pair.

I don't know if this would be competitive, I'll try it when I got my Aces:

I hadn't really played anyone outside of my local group before Worlds, so I was surprised both at the tightly packed "box" formations and at the amount of Koiogran Jousting I saw.

I had planned and practiced for a dogfight through the asteroids, and the games I won were pretty clearly the ones where I could tangle the enemy up and force him to maneuver, while I lost the games where I accepted a head-to-head approach.

For me the best way to handle the box is to splitt my formation. If he moves against a, then b will flank him while A evades him (and joins in to support b later)

Great discussion here. I wish there were more topics like this. I think i fall into the 'competitive player' camp and i am always looking for ways to get an edge over opponents tactically.

recently a group of friends an i have been playing a 2v2 format where each player has 60pts and each team a total of 120pts. imperial vs rebels. no points sharing.

its opened my eyes quite a bit to how other players think and strategize and just how difficult it can be to cooridinate different play styles and tactics into the same squad. Its also forced me to look at my own tactics a bit and focus a bit more on supporting other ships and using synergy to maximise my squads strengths.

I am finding i am using a bigger range of ships and trying out new ideas.

Interestingly we are finding the imperials are dominating this format at present but it is for a range of reasons - teamwork, tactics, squad choices by rebels, one team with better synergy between ships, not using/or using a range of pilot skills in squads, dice rolls etc etc.

i wonder if there r other players out there that have been tinkering with games other than 100pt games and how useful they have found it for developing their tactics and thinking outside the square a little.

The WW1/WW2 tactics of leader out front was based on the need to visually see and follow the maneuvers. Onboard tracking computers eliminate that physical need. I'm happy with squad leaders in the rear for longevity.

...but as the leaders often can survive better with skills like Elusiveness or Skywalkers semi-focus. It might be a plan to have them in the front to force the enemies to choose between them and targets at range 3.

I do get the feeling that FFG tries to stop the howlrunner-swarm

There are quite a few things that cause area damage now. (bombs, assault missiles) and things that stops the rerolls (sensor jamer, elusiveness).

With the Ion-weapons you can also make it hard to keep the squadrons "boxed"

Transfered to the game you could try to start with this layout:

Leader: Dark Curse (16 points)

Leader's Wingman: Black Squadron Pilot + VI (15 points)

Leader 2nd Pair: Backstabber (16 points)

2nd Wingman: Black Squadron Pilot + VI (15 points)

This leaves 38 points for a heavy hitter, a star like Vader or a 3rd pair.

I've run something like this with a shuttle with FCS and an HLC and a gunner trying to hang off taking longer range shots while the TIEs mix it up in the furball. Worked ok, and will probably work better when I'm more experienced at maneuvering.

While it may not work too well in this game to have the "leader" up front due to movement issues as well as making it a bigger target I can think of a big reason you'd have the "leader" up front. To put it simply the guy in "back" is a bit more vulnerable to attack and mishap than the guy in front.

I mean a head on pass can be effective but then the other guy usually sees you coming where if you come up behind someone your shots are just as good, maybe even better, and you rarely need to worry about counter fire. I'll also speculate that if you say a head on attack is "even" against a given defense value then an attack made at the rear of a target should be more effective but ones from the "sides" of a target would be less effective. This is all based on relative motion and such. To reflect this in the game an attack made at a target's "rear arc" should give the attacker some type of benefit when following the target. On the other hand trying to make a deflection shot can be extremely difficult so the target should be harder to hit in those cases.