So, the leader of my local League came by yesterday, and left some Tie Fighters on my coffee table, saying that I was the one in the group most comfortable with running Swarms, and he wants me to get good at flying an 8 Tie fleet.
Any suggestions as to the Tactics I should run, exercises to run to get good at it, things to keep in mind to be a lethal swarm captain, and general list-builds would be greatly appreciated 
From everything I've heard, formation flying and concentrated fire are best tactics, there are some videos on youtube on formation flying..
I've never used a swarm, so that is the extent of my advice, but it comes from reading and watching those tactics in use.. videos on youtube about the worlds championships was very informative.
All I can add to the above is lose 1 tie and make one other Howlrunner with some survival upgrades.
8 Tie Swarms for me usually have me breaking my formation into 2 flights of four ships and setting up in the flanks. Then When the Reb player deploys, if they have spilt their forces having one flight use the Tie speed to re-enforce the other flight, and wreak Rebs in detail. It doesn't always work. Dice gods and all.
Some of the videos from Worlds showed great formation flying.
8 Tie Swarms for me usually have me breaking my formation into 2 flights of four ships and setting up in the flanks. Then When the Reb player deploys, if they have spilt their forces having one flight use the Tie speed to re-enforce the other flight, and wreak Rebs in detail. It doesn't always work. Dice gods and all.
Does that work a lot? If someone set up like that against me I'd concentrate all my ships on one of their groups and go for defeat in detail, unless I had some objective I had to defend or something...
8 Tie Swarms for me usually have me breaking my formation into 2 flights of four ships and setting up in the flanks. Then When the Reb player deploys, if they have spilt their forces having one flight use the Tie speed to re-enforce the other flight, and wreak Rebs in detail. It doesn't always work. Dice gods and all.
Does that work a lot? If someone set up like that against me I'd concentrate all my ships on one of their groups and go for defeat in detail, unless I had some objective I had to defend or something...
The idea is that while YOU are trying to take out one of my groups, my other group comes in from behind you to wreck your day.
The idea is that while YOU are trying to take out one of my groups, my other group comes in from behind you to wreck your day.
I need more opponents, and free time. Can one of you loan me an afternoon ever other week or so?
If you are doing 8 AP swarm, then two groups of 4 would be best. That way you can deploy them either near each other, or on either flank depending on your strategy/match up/asteroids. If you are doing a 7 ship Howl swarm, then I would look into how to fly 6 ties together.
For the 7 ship Howl swarm, the best article I have read would be at: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/87723/movement (talks about asteroids, focus fire angles, spacing, etc.)
Building on that, the 'offset formation' on a 4 ship formation (ideal for 8 AP swarm) is found at: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/87723/movement
Edited by Texx
The idea is that while YOU are trying to take out one of my groups, my other group comes in from behind you to wreck your day.
I need more opponents, and free time. Can one of you loan me an afternoon ever other week or so?
Sure, if you move to western NC
So, a couple videos to help:
General formation flying.
Advanced formations.
those would be the videos I was talking about.. lol.. just too lazy to fetch them.. lol
Formation flying is your friend. Practice on an over asteroid-ed field. Practice a lot more. And then, you practice some more.
I really do suggest cutting down to 7 or even 6 named tie swarm at this point in the game though. 8 academies is still a thing but, at least for me, it was a thing that got boring very fast. If you like to "grind" it's good but it just offers so little variety. You have to fly in formation and you have to focus fire.