I've played against a few 6 tie swarms before, and I think maybe even a 7 tie swarm when I was new to the game, but never a 8 tie swarm until today at my local game store.

I have to say, it's definitely a very intimidating sight at first.

I debated about what type of squad to make to go against it, but to save time and make it simple I just flew my best 4 ship rebel squad (X,X,B,HWK), even though it's not the most ideal for a large swarm like that.

Well to my surprise I ended up winning. In the end it came down to Wedge with 3 hull and 1 shield left versus an obsidian tie with 2 hull left. After dancing around the board a bit we finally got in range and I took him down.

The thing that worked to my advantage was my opponent had only flown an 8 tie swarm a few times before, so he had trouble keeping them together. He lost a lot of actions, and often had several ships that couldn't shoot at me each round. That allowed me to take minimal damage while taking down 1 or 2 of his ships each round.

His luckiest break was when he had a tie at range 1 shoot at my hwk with 4 hull left and get 1 hit and 2 crits. I got only 1 evade, and my 2 crits were both direct hits.

congrats. tie swarms are very good - but particularly powerful in the hands of an experienced player

Good to see you getting a few in the win column. I have yet to face an 8 tie swarm.

Obsidian and 8 TIE swarm do not go together...

Definitely an inexperienced swarm player there but lucky for you for your match against a larger swarm.

I'm pretty adept at the swarm but tomorrow will be my first 12 TIE swarm game. Honestly I don't expect any difference between the 8.

I'm not sure what you're saying...If you want to do an 8 tie swarm doing half academy and half obsidian is the best option in my opinion since you can't afford howlrunner. Otherwise you can do 7 academies and 1 16 point named tie but I don't think that's a better option.

I am of the opinion that an 8 tie swarm composed of 4 obsidian and 4 academy pilots is more of a threat than an 8 tie swarm of only academies.

That PS3 for half your squad will allow them to fire before any PS 2 ships so you could remove a potentially dangerous target before it can fire back.

The only "problem" with splitting your 8 TIEs between Academy and Obsidian is that you probably want to split your entire force into two flights of four each. You keep them close enough to support each other but flying a pair of four ship flights should be far easier than managing eight ships in a single group.

I prefer Dark Curse and 7 Academy TIE.