I recently bought the starter kit and noticed something about the X-Wings and TIEs. The hull and shield points, why is it that the X-Wing has 3 hull points and 2 shield while the TIEs have nothing? On that topic why do basic TIEs not have any up gradable parts?

I know Mauler Mithel can equip Medals, but it seems like TIEs are no good. Is that true?

The power of TIE fighters is in their cost. The cost of two basic TIEs is only 3 points more than the cost of a single rookie X-wing.

They are not meant to match up 1:1 with rebel ships. They are intended to outnumber them.

As it stands right now, TIE fighters are often considered the "best" imperial ship available, in terms of cost effectiveness.

TIE fighters are no good on their own, but they are also dirt cheap. You use them in swarms This is why you can field two Black Squadron TIEs for the price of Luke Skywalker. Generally speaking, Rebel ships will be tougher and stronger in one on one fights, while the Empire relies on its superior numbers.

Basic TIE Fighters are actually probably the best Imperial ship, in terms of competitiveness, if only because you can deploy so many in a squadron.

The Tie Fighter's strength is in its numbers. At the standard tournament list point levels, its hard to beat a list like this:

Howlrunner, Determination, Stealth device

Black Squadron, Draw Their Fire

Black Squadron, Draw Their Fire

Academy Pilot

Academy Pilot

Academy Pilot

Academy Pilot

Howlrunner also makes TIE fighters extremely good with her +1 friendly reroll.

7 TIE Fighters with Howlrunner included generally do more damage output than 4-5 TIE Interceptors, especially when they get in range 1.

The Tie Fighters price reflects it's limitations. And since you can get two Academy Cadets for the price of one Red Squadron, the question really is, can you make up for quality with quantity. I believe most players would say you can. When debates come up about the worst ships in the game, the tie fighter usually does not enter the conversation. And tie swarms seem to be an ever popular squad to play, yielding success against opponents whose squads are not specifically designed to counter them.

Yep, they suck solar power.

You have to look at cannon on this. The X Wing was the losing bid to replace the V Wing as the standard fighter for the Empire. Palpatine chose the TIE fighter for it's cost. Swarms of inexpensive snub fighters was more budget friendly. Further, by having them NOT hyperspace capable, it enforced a policy of fighting intelligently and of standing your ground (the British had a no parachute policy during WW1 for the same reason).

Further, Imperial Naval doctrine was NOT to engage an enemy without at least a 2 to 1 advantage, with a 3 to 1 advantage preferable.

So, overwhelm your Rebel opponent with swarms of TIEs. Use their superior speed and maneuverability and always stick with your wing man.

YES! The TIE Fighter does SUCK.

Where it sucks the most is when you look at it as a rebel player you are SHOCKED by just how many of those eyeballs the Empire can field. While you could field five ships the effective maximum is usually four but the Empire can field eight of those things and win with regularity provided a decent squad leader (ie player) is present.

While the TIE Fighter's basic stats may not be impressive it is that cost "stat" which is what makes it one of the strongest ships in the game for its points.

when used right, they are a beast. Once you have more ships you will see. on the starter its really hard to see they are strong. As many have said, strength in numbers. I had a 200pt game with me as the Imps. I lost 2 ships, maybe one, to the rebels, and I down all of theirs. it was 10 v 5. they got surrounded and could not move as I swarmed them. I figured they would have dropped half my TIEs in the first couple moves. It was surprising. I am still learning to fly them well, as I think if you scatter them early without a wing man, they are going to get picked off quick.

Also with just the Starter, Luke with R2-D2 is a beast. He become much less amazing at higher points where people can just ignore it and come back to it after killing everything else. OR just focus fire him for a turn so he doesn't get a chance to regen shields.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."
--J. Stalin

LOL CW you beat me to that exact quote.

LOL CW you beat me to that exact quote.

You should of posted it anyway, because it would sort of reenforce the point...

LOL CW you beat me to that exact quote.

You should of posted it anyway, because it would sort of reenforce the point...

Good point.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

--J. Stalin

Basically this,

1 Tie, meh.

However I had 6 and just bought a 7th.. because 6 was not enough.

They're fragile. They're individually moderately terrible, but they serve a few different uses. They can clog up the board; making you crash and denying you actions, often while using their low PS to ensure they get to take their own actions even as they trip you up.

They present a lot of targets, and can bait and switch on you as TIEs get damaged.

They can bleed you to death through a thousand wounds. One TIE is not much of a threat. But as they add up they start to skew offense/defense ratios in really interesting ways.

Look at them versus their natural foe, the X-Wing. 2 attack, 3 agility versus 3 attack, 2 agility. 3 hit points, no shields versus 3 hull, 2 shields. The thing is, they match the X-Wing in defense to offense; they attack at 2v2 most of the time, they defend at 3v3. One on one that tends to go badly for the lower attack, as the game favors attack over defense anyway. But as the Imperial player you've usually got at LEAST a 3:2 ship ratio going, often a straight 2:1.

An 8-TIE swarm, if they can concentrate their fire, has a decent chance of killing an X-Wing in one round of combat. Rolling 2v2, the odds are about half of them will land at least one hit. If one more than half hits, the X-Wing dies. And that's not taking crits or anything into consideration. And if they've got Howlrunner or someone helping them out, the odds are very good they'll take out an X-Wing or knock the shields off a YT with a single round of shooting, while being very hard to hit themselves. They FEAST on 1 agility ships, as a matter of fact.

A good swarm flyer can pick you apart as you close, then use some of his ships to jam you up while the rest strafe and land hits here and there. And in competition you see them land a lot of modified wins, as they will get out to an early advantage killing more expensive ships, then fly very defensively and run the game to time.

In general I believe that the point costs in the game are right, but the TIE has very often been accused of being under priced. TIEs are awesome.

Don't forget they have three agility and an evade action. TIEs can be pretty hard to hit/hurt. Granted, the fact that they don't have shields means that if you get unlucky they can die to one shot, but your opponent will not be able to count on that.

They only have 2 attack dice, but the X-wing only has 2 agility, so the match up isn't that bad.

And finally their greatest advantage is they are so dang cheap. 12 point academy pilot is my favorite ship in the game.

Another great thing about the price of the TIE Fighter, Even it's unique named pilots are cheap. The TIE is the only ship in the game where you can use lots of named pilots without seriously reducing the number of ships you have total.

LOVE THE TIE

I recently bought the starter kit and noticed something about the X-Wings and TIEs. The hull and shield points, why is it that the X-Wing has 3 hull points and 2 shield while the TIEs have nothing? On that topic why do basic TIEs not have any up gradable parts?

I know Mauler Mithel can equip Medals, but it seems like TIEs are no good. Is that true?

Oh, the other nice thing about TIEs is that they're cheap and come at a bunch of very small increment point splits (often just a point or two). Meaning: even if you're not building a swarm, you can often build whatever squad and then still squeeze in an extra TIE or two for good measure. Take a couple of Firesprays, instead of loading them to the gills with upgrades you give them a couple each and then you can probably have 2, 3 Academy TIEs flying escort. That kind of thing is harder to do on the Rebel side.

Yes, one lone TIE sucks. The trouble for Rebel Scum is that there is never just one lone TIE, he brings friends!

though tie fighter swarms are very strong, they are also stagnant to fly

i can't think of a more boring game to watch or play than a tie swarm vs anything; let along a tie swarm vs another tie swarm

many IMP Navy pilots started as TIE pilots. The ones that lived, quickly were moved to better ships. Just to survive for a year or more proved you had skill. The Empire always had a rotation of fresh Pilots graduating.

I have to have a very good reason to not just build the best 88pt imperial squad I can so that I can include an academy tie. It is very satisfying to see a single academy block and muck up the early game with blocking (when they don't just take all the focus fire first, which also serves a purpose) get ignored in lieu of other threats and then firing at PS 1 finish off a big named rebel fatty (points wise).

The academy pilot is the ultimate catch-22. Kill him fast and he lives on in the glory since the other ships are fresh and free to rain down pain. Leave him be and he'll constantly be in your way and he will land a finishing blow on something that cost more than him.

When you're fighing Rebel Scum, every tie kill is a thee most efficent use of points and every tie that gets killed is negative return for your opponent. Congrats, you used 2-4 times the point cost to bring down a single academy tie... Didn't that one shoot down Wedge last turn?

I recently bought the starter kit and noticed something about the X-Wings and TIEs. The hull and shield points, why is it that the X-Wing has 3 hull points and 2 shield while the TIEs have nothing? On that topic why do basic TIEs not have any up gradable parts?

I know Mauler Mithel can equip Medals, but it seems like TIEs are no good. Is that true?

Not in the least. Are they not as good as an X-Wing one on one....yes, I'll give you that. But that's why X-Wings cost more.

However, never underestimate a TIE fighter handled well. In a couple of quick intro games I played a week ago, two Rookie X-Wings got very roughly handled by three Black Squadron pilots both times I played. The second one was even more impressive because Black-2 and Black-3 both exploded to lucky criticals and awful defence dice on turn 1 (an occupational hazard with the papier mache TIE fighter). Black-1, however, followed this up by outmanouvring and killing both X-wings in sequence!

The big things to remember are:

• This is a dogfighting game; firepower and durability is not everything (like it might be in a squad-versus-squad infantry game). With only a handful of exceptions, you have forward-only guns. That means that the fighter that can keep its lasers pointed the right way whilst keeping the enemy's out of arc will ultimately win, no matter how difficult the enemy is to kill. TIE fighters are a lot more manouvrable - they can turn tighter (having hard turns at speed 1 and Koiogran at speed 3), can manouvre faster (they can kick it up to speed 5, which an X-wing can't) and they have the wonderful, wonderful barrel roll action - which for a pilot with a higher skill means they get to sideslip after their move, and decide which WAY to sideslip after seeing your move too. The number of times I've used that action to neatly dodge out of someone's arc of fire is ridiculous.
• The TIE's lower cost means you can afford more skilled pilots - including named pilots like Mithel and Backstabber whose special rules make up for the lower firepower of the standard TIE - who get to move last and shoot first, which gives you an edge in smaller engagements since you can pick your actions after the enemy moves, and gives you an edge in larger engagements since a mob of several TIEs shooting first can kill an opponent before it gets to shoot back.
• Cheaper means more fighters and more is better. Even an Academy TIE can be used to get in the way - blocking moves and messing up formations - and when the enemy is badly outnumbered, going after one fighter usually means letting another drop in behind you. Backstabber's ability wouldn't be half as scary if he wasn't as cheap as chips.

Some good points made here. I'd lost three games in a row against an opponent fielding Garven Dreis, two Rookie Pilots and Kyle Katarn in the Moldy Crow with a Recon Specialist. In desperation I broke out my basic TIEs with all the named pilots (Howlrunner and Mauler Mither having Adrenaline Rush for those critical K-turns). Result? Four dead Rebs for the loss of Mithel and Backstabber, and it felt sooooo good!