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I'm fairly new to the game and Y-Wings are literally bending me over the table.

I need some tips on how to stop them

Bury them in attack dice, one agility and no evade action means that while they can take a beating, they can take damage if you shoot at them. Plus their dial is not the best so it is easy to out maneuver them.
Ion turrets while annoying are only range one to two, so stay out of range and use secondary weapons or get in close you get the extra attack die (obviously shooting them from behind). Plus Ion turrets are an expensive upgrade so that limits their points for other ships.

How many Y-wings are you facing per game and what are you flying?

Well he generally runs two Y-wings

At the moment I have Slave I (which I'm really struggling to get to grips with for some reason) Six TIE fighters and an Adavanced

You're going to have to start giving a lot more information in your requests for help. What about the Y-Wing are you having trouble with? What Y-Wing Pilots are you seeing, and what armament? Is it just the turret fire you're having issues with? What lists are you using (not your collection, what specifically have you tried)? Are your Ties all from starters, or do you have the Booster Tie? Do you have friends that you can borrow from if upgrades outside of those 3/4 kits are suggested?

Including answers to these kind of questions will help us give you advice beyond the basics of attempting to stay Range 3 against Ion, and focusing fire on one Y-Wing at a time.

Well I played a 150 point game with Fett (Upgrades I'm not sure, nothing ideal simply due to the availability of cards) Five TIE fighters (One Black Squadron pilot, three Obsidian and Mauler Mithell with... Expert Handling?) and Darth Vader with the missiles that attack twice with Three shots, and Marksmanship.

I was against Two A-wings, one of which was the Tycho guy, another was just a basic squadron pilot. Two Y-wings, both with Ion turrets and a Astro Drois to make all 1/2 manoeuvres green. Two Red Squadron X-wings ( I don't know what upgrades)

My list was what it was due to the lack of any other models, and of other upgrade cards.

1: If you have Howlrunner (out of the Tie Fighter Expansion) running her in a block of Ties makes them far better than a block by themselves. Adding in Mauler and getting as much of the block as possible into range 1 is awesome.

2 Roadblock: Academy pilots will usually move before anyone else, try to throw them into the Y wings path. if they hit you, they loose their action for the turn, and you can set up the rest to be at range 1 of that location to tear into him.

3 Heavy Laser Cannon + Marksmanship is awesome: Throw this on Kath with her reroll and you can be blasting away at that Y'Wing at range 3 with 4 dice and usually netting one crit per shot. If you need me to give you the step by step for how this works, drop me a PM, but trust me...crazy good.

4 Vader decoy: For some reason people really spend to much time on killing Vader. Give him a Engine Upgrade and he can be zooming around the table causing problems, that your opponent will have to deal with and even when they focus on him he's still hard to beat in one turn. While they play with vader, roll up with the rest of your ships and own, or if they ignore vader...fly him up to range one and start pounding.

Just remember with the Heavy Laser Cannon you do not get crits, you have to change them to normal hits.

 guardpiper wrote:
Just remember with the Heavy Laser Cannon you do not get crits, you have to change them to normal hits.

Only on your initial dice roll. HLC is an immediate effect, you do it immediately after rolling your attack dice. You may then use the Marksmanship effect to change 1 of your Focus icon dice to a Crit, and the other focus icons to hits.

I was thinking of taking Fett with Navigator, Engine Upgrade, Push the Limit and the Heavy Laser Cannon - the added manoeuvrability should mean I can keep at range 3 whilst getting the four shots off against them from the HLC?

Y Wings with R2 Astromech and Ion Turrets are very maneuverable and quite nasty.

I'm trying to find the best way to use them as they are very versatile.

Y wings are control ships, not necessarily damage dealers, strong against small numbers of interceptors, not so hot against a tie swarm.

Even if they ion Howlrunner, remember that Swarm Tactics is NOT an action, and can therefore still be used while ionised. Howlrunner's ability also still works.

Then you have Vader kicking around to assist in putting the boot in.

Focus fire on one y-wing at a time.

I played a 100 point game today (and wanted to try out my Slave I setup)

Imperials (Me)

Boba Fett - Engine upgrade, Navigator, Push the Limit, Heavy Laser Cannon
Mauler Mithell - Engine upgrade
Obsidian squadron Pilot

Rebels

Red Squadron Pilot
Garven Dreias
Y-wing - Ion Cannon Turret, Astro droid (to make 1/2 manoeuvres green)

(he may have had other upgrades on the X-wings, but I don't know!!)

I attempted to rush the Y-wings, and ended up losing Mauler really early on. Slave I managed to wipe out a Y-wing in two turns, and the lone TIE fighter took two shields off the other before dying!!

Y-wing hit Slave I, forcing me in to an asteroid meaning I couldn't shoot, and due to my stress token, couldn't perform an action on the turn after either due to another Ion hit.

Destroyed the other Y-wing in a couple of turns with Slave I by keeping it at range 3 as much as possible and then proceeded to run circles around the X-wings with my huge manoeuvrability. However by this point I was limping around on 3 hull points.

I destroyed Garven and just had the last Red Squadron Pilot to deal with - but sadly I lost by one dice!! I needed one evade roll to stay alive, but failed to score it!! So I lost the game with the Red Squadron Pilot surviving with one Hull Point remaining!!

Sounds like a fun game. 100 seems a lot more balanced for you than your earlier 150 point game was. Just to make sure, you read the rules for large ships and Ion right? That he has to hit Boba with Ion Tokens twice before you get to the straight 1. Wasn't exactly clear from reading it (since you say he Ioned you again the following turn which would have only be 1 token because of the removal of them when you took the straight 1), so hopefully he did have 2 tokens when you got sent into the Asteroid.

From the look of your list you're playing down in points (what you wrote comes out to 90). Maybe drop that engine upgrade on Mauler for another Tie next time and see how it goes?

 derek wrote:
Sounds like a fun game. 100 seems a lot more balanced for you than your earlier 150 point game was. Just to make sure, you read the rules for large ships and Ion right? That he has to hit Boba with Ion Tokens twice before you get to the straight 1. Wasn't exactly clear from reading it (since you say he Ioned you again the following turn which would have only be 1 token because of the removal of them when you took the straight 1), so hopefully he did have 2 tokens when you got sent into the Asteroid.

From the look of your list you're playing down in points (what you wrote comes out to 90). Maybe drop that engine upgrade on Mauler for another Tie next time and see how it goes?

I clearly can't do maths correctly!! And no, I did not know about the ion token stack for larger ships!! I guess that makes the entire game a little void