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Hey all. I recently bought the starter set, and have a few small games under my belt. I've found lots of good advice for making good squads, but I'm not going to talk about that. Part of the fun of these sorts of games, for me, is trying to find stuff that isn't obvious. So naturally I found myself thinking about the TIE advanced, the most unloved of fighters (in game terms).

This is a list that I'm working on that might not be terrible. The idea is that it has a good alpha strike with the missiles, and then rely on toughness and good maneuverability to grind away . Tell me what you think.

Vader, Squad Leader = 31
Tempest Squadron Pilot, Concussion Missiles = 25
Tempest Squadron Pilot, Concussion Missiles = 25

This leaves 19 points, which means a named TIE.
Howlrunner would boost my (not very good) Primary weapons, but is an obvious first target, and leaves me a point to try and get initiative.
Backstabber would give some situational primary weapon bonuses, but is still probably getting shot first, although it would leave 3 points for an upgrade.
Mithel ends up being similar to Backstabber.

Dark Curse and Night Beast start getting interesting. For one, they both are cheap enough to free up points for a Stealth Device somewhere, and they both have abilities that can be used defensively. I was thinking that Dark Curse with a Stealth Device would be pretty tough, just hanging around on the primary target like a flea. Night Beast ends up having more offensive options, and is cheap enough that I could change out the Stealth Device somewhere with Concussion Missiles on Vader.

Maybe I just go all the way down to Academy Pilot and get Missiles and Stealth Device for Vader. That seems like too many eggs, though.

What do you all think?

Try a bomber in there if you have one. Matches your strategy well. Should be an interesting experiment.

I wouldn't expect much out of those Advanced after getting the missiles off. Concussion Missiles are decent, but just 2 isn't much of an alpha strike and your follow up isn't much with the 2 attack on those ships.

If you want a missile alpha strike, Bombers are the way to go. They're cheaper, can carry more, can carry bombs and are still really durable with 6 hull.

Something like
Jonus w/ seismic, squad leader
Gamma w/ assault, seismic
Gamma w/ cluster, seismic x2

I saw a Jonus/Advanced/Advanced list work fairly well once. I doubt it could keep up now that we have a better grasp of the game in our playgroup but maybe it could still work? Notably Advanced's are fairly decent as durable missile carriers in Epic play against the CR-90. Their 3 agility protects them somewhat more from the turbolasers and the overall durability of the craft allows them to close successfully to drop their payload. after that they are still decent.


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Also Proton rockets might bring a renewed viability to theses guys when they reveal what they do

When you suggest TIE bombers, do you mean the remaining few points could be filled out with a bomber, or to replace the Advanced with Bombers? Bombers, for the points, would carry a second set of concussion missiles each, which is awesome, but they're movement dial kind of sucks, and their defense is worse, so they'd really have no chance in the dogfight (I think).

The stuff I like about this list is that it sort of takes advantage of a lot of different things. The TIE Advanced move early at PS 2 and Focus each turn (which is almost as good as Evade with 3 Agility). If a good target opens up, Vader, at PS 9, makes them Target Lock. If movement puts them in a bad position, Vader makes them Barrel Roll or Evade. Basically, I don't have to commit to anything thanks to 2 PS 9 actions that anybody in my squad within Range 2 can use. I figure this, and the naturally good defense of the Advanced lets me play a bit more aggressively to get better Primary shots once the missiles are gone.

Also, if I'm interpreting the rules wrong, this won't work as well as I'm thinking, so if anyone would want to check my work, I'd appreciate it.

Here's my imagined events:
1.) At PS2, Tempest Squadron Pilots move and choose to focus.
2.) If Tempest Squadron Pilots are in weapons range of something valuable, and are unlikely to be killed by return fire, Vader uses both his actions to have them both Target Lock.
3.) When missiles are fired at PS 2, the statistically expected outcome based on die facings are 1 blank, 1 focus symbol, and 2 blast symbols. The Concussion Missiles turn the blank into a blast, so that should equal 4 successes 4.) Each missile will do 4 damage (or 3 if bad luck brings up 2 blanks) minus whatever Evades they roll.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

Wow, I had never thought of using Vader like that, good idea, but I think it would work out better for you with different ships. the Bombers would work out better as an alpha strike, getting off multiple ordinance. the problem with 3 Tie Advanced is that you have the same defense as a regular Tie, for almost twice the price, and your only gaining 2 shields for your points. Tie swarms are pretty solid, and with your idea of using Vader as a free action support ship would play well backing up a small swarm, say Vader with Squad Leader, Howlrunner, Nightbeast (a pretty under used Tie IMO) and x3 Academy Pilots. 6 ships, Vader passing out 2 free actions from the backfield, Howlrunner giving reroll support and Nightbeast getting his free focus each turn.

Not quite, remember you can only use an action once per round. So Vader w/ Squad Leader can pass one action off.

Compare the Bomber to the Advanced and they're actually somewhat similar. The Bomber has more hull and total HP, while the Advanced has shields and higher agility. The Bomber carries a bigger payload, the Advanced has an Evade action. The dials are even fairly similar, the Bomber has the glorious 1 forward and 5K while the Advanced has a white hard 2 and 5 forward.

The big difference is that a Bomber runs in 5 points cheaper than an Advanced. For the 21 points you pay for a Tempest Squadron pilot you could instead have a Scimitar with a missile.

Now, the TIE Advanced isn't completely useless. It's a better ship defensively and has a decent range of movement, but as a missile platform the Bomber is superior. If you're set on missiles, go Bombers. If you're set on the Advanced, you may want to look into a different kind of squad.

Darth Vader's text: "During your 'Perform Action' step, you may perform 2 actions.

Squad Leader text: Action: "Choose 1 ship at Range 1-2 that has a lower pilot skill than you. The chosen ship may immediately perform 1 free action."

I can't just do the Squad Leader text twice? Is there a FAQ explaining this? From my reading it seems like you could active the card once, then again after the first action was resolved.

As far as Bomber vs. Advanced, I'm not seeing the similarity. Defensively, 3 Agility means using a Focus defensively adds 6/8 successes on average, while Evade adds 1 success. The Bomber gets no Evade at all, and it's defensive focus adds 4/8 average successes. The white hard-2 makes the Advanced seem like a better close-in dogfighter, to me, but I guess the green forward-1 in the bomber makes it pretty easy to get behind someone.

So if I'm understanding that correctly you're basically trading long-term durability for an extra concussion missile load. Which seems like a pretty good trade, honestly. I'll have to think about this. Maybe Vader w/ missiles, 1 Advanced w/ missiles, and 1 bomber w/ 2 missiles. That still leaves me 16 points for a named TIE, and I'd have twice as many missiles.


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Oh, I get it, you can only do one type of action once, and lending the action via Squad Leader is a type of action, so you only get to lend once. That definitely makes things less good.

Yep, you got it.

Like I said, the bomber is superior missile platform because of its significantly lower cost. For the price of a Tempest you can get a Scimitar and its missile. The Advanced fits in better as a more defensive-oriented dogfighter.

Here's a pretty significant reworking. I'm trying to get more ships and primary weapon effectiveness.

Howlrunner: 18
Backstabber: 16
Winged Gundark: 15
Advanced w/ Concussion Missiles: 25
Advanced w/ Concussion Missiles: 25
99 points

This isn't really enough ships to be a swarm, but each ship has either good PS or good durability. The idea is that the Advanced are in front and obtain Target Locks with their first action once in range. The TIE/lns follow behind trying to be at Range 3 or higher in the initial engagement. The opposing squad has to fire at Advanced at short range or the TIE/lns at long range. The Advanced are pretty tough, and should survive a lot in the way of primary weapons fire, at least long enough to get their missiles off.

If the Advanced don't get shot at, they can hold their missiles and just fire Primaries without using the Target Lock up, and then get Focused Missiles the next turn (unless there's a high-priority target they can probably down with un-Focused missiles). If they do get shot, they fire off the missiles. Either way, they can keep up pretty well with the TIE/lns in a dogfight, so they're not really a liability there.

The overall idea is that the other squad has to either take bad shots at good dogfighters or take better shots at tough dogfighters. There's some decent piloting skill in there, too, and the low PS fighters are tough. Maybe I'm imagining things wrongly, here, though. Howlrunner is useful, but also not so critical, I think, that it makes her a weak link.

Bombers do seem pretty great, but I think the Advanced transition better to dogfighters with Howlrunner.

Looks neat, give it a shot and see how it goes.

I'd just like to point out that squad leader is not a very good choice. Vader is incredibly expensive, you really need to be using his actions to help himself. Paying 31 points to give an extra action to a 25-point ship just doesn't make any sense.

On the good side, the TIE advanced itself sucks but Vader's ability is by far the most powerful special rule in the game. Give him an engine upgrade and enjoy having two stress-free actions a turn in a ridiculous number of combinations, with all of those move actions coming at PS 9 after pretty much everyone has already moved and you know what arcs to dodge.

What Chumbalya said.

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to ask. With the new TIE Phantom, the card says that when you decloak you may perform a barrel roll action using a '2' template. That means you can't barrel roll again then doesn't it. Somehow I missed the reference to it as performing an action and calling it barrel roll. Notably when you decloak, the option to move 2 forward is labeled as a maneuver, not a boost that uses a '2' interestingly.

So with an Engine Upgrade and push the limit on "Echo", You can decloak, bank 2 forward, move whatever, then barrel roll, then boost...WAAOOOWWW Not that you should/would, but think about it, that's four moves!


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Also Proton Rockets. CALLED IT! Three days ago! BOOM! lol ...Appologies, just had to have my fun.

KnuckleWolf wrote:
What Chumbalya said. That means you can't barrel roll again then doesn't it.

Nope. Decloaking does something very similar to a barrel roll, but it is not a barrel roll action. You can decloak to either side and perform a barrel roll as your action.

Yep. It's performs a barrel roll, not a barrel roll action.

I was thinking Squad Leader would be good because it's an Action that could be lent at PS 9. So whichever of my fighters had the best attack lined up (or was in need of extra defense) could benefit from the extra action after I'd seen all the other moves. For example, early on, I could lend the action to an Advanced to get a Target Lock (combined with Focus) after all the other ships had moved to get off a pretty quality missile shot otherwise unavailable. I could use it to barrel roll any of the lower PS ships out of a firing arc, or give them an Evade token. This way, I figure I can Focus with everyone for offensive power and give the defense with Vader whenever I see who really needs it. Am I off base here?

I'm also not quite sure what you mean by Vader needing to keep his action himself. Like you said, the Advanced is kinda sketchy (although I think it's neat, which is why I'm looking at this). Not counting missiles, it's the same combat power as a basic TIE fighter, so using the second action on Vader vs. someone else isn't really changing my offensive or defensive power. If Vader can take the hit from someone and a TIE fighter can't, giving the TIE an Evade or something will be much better than putting it on Vader. Vader is awesome, but he's expensive because he's PS9 with 2 Actions. Squad Leader is just giving a PS9 action to whoever can make the best use of it each turn. I'm certainly interested in hearing why I'm wrong, though. I am very new at this game.