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Hi all, I am playing in my first tournament this weekend and need to see if the list I am planning on bringing is a good or if I should start over. It goes as Follows

2x Dagger Squadron w/ Fire Control Systems
Biggs w/ R2-F2
Airen Cracken w/ Veteran Instincts

The plan is to hit hard with the B-Wings and have the Z-95 constantly passing an action to Biggs for a focus. Please let me know if this is any good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I biggest concern with this list is if the Fire Control Systems are worth it for the B-Wings or is there a better way to spends these points.

Well, you're screwed against phantoms, so that's a fatal problem. And daggers aren't worth it anymore in a metagame full of PS 8+ ships. Really the whole "Biggs + b-wings" archetype died when the phantom was released, it just can't compete in a metagame where half the ships can fly circles around you with PS 8+ maneuvering actions and the other half can fly circles around you with 360* turrets (and some ships can do both!). Blues with FCS aren't a bad option, but then you'll want either a turret ship or Wedge/proton rocket Tycho/etc to deal with phantoms. Or you could just go with the standard Dash + Corran/Han + Corran/Dual YT/etc lists that everyone else is using.

Four naked Blues and a Bandit (4BZ) won my store championship a couple of weeks ago (29 players, including multiple Top 16 2014 Worlds players). It should be noted that our local players are insanely good (for what it's worth, Paul Heaver, two time world champion is a local).

In the top 4, he beat:
Rookie+R3-A2
Rookie
2x Blue
1x Bandit

And for the win, he beat:
Chiraneau+VI+Isard+Gunner+Engine
Whisper+VI+ACD+FCS

I flew against the list he beat for the win and the guy was really good. Also, I'm pretty sure he's used this list to win two other store championships in the area. Phantoms can be beat if you fly good enough: spread your arcs and block decloaks.

4BZ is a lot different than the OPs list though. 4BZ has the ability to spread those arcs of fire (and bring 14 base attack dice a turn if needed vs the 11 that BBXZ does), the OPs list relies on staying within Range 1 of each other. Plus, 36 total hit points to chew through is a pretty big deal when compared to 25.

We were messing around on a game night prior to Store Championship season starting, and decided to try something similar to the list in the OP. This was when talk was shifting back to maybe seeing a Tie Swarm resurgence. So I asked my friend who won the Omaha Regional playing the Tie Swarm last year to run it against my XXBZ (2 Daggers with FCS, Biggs, Blount with VI and Assault Missiles). It did very well against the swarm, and if I hadn't made some maneuvering mistakes (because I don't formation fly much) would have won with a decent amount still intact. Then I asked to play against a phatom list, and that didn't go anywhere near as well. The way Echo or Whisper can dodge around and take out Biggs (and no, I don't think having 3 Agi vs 2 would have been a big factor) is not to be taken lightly. In the end, if you can fly it well, it will do well, but you'll have to work extra hard and be extra good to make it work in the current game environment. Especially when people figure out how good Gunner+Vader is on a Decimator.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Phantoms can be beat if you fly good enough: spread your arcs and block decloaks.

Bolded the important part. Beating phantoms consistently with "conventional" ships requires a ton of player skill and has very little margin for error. If you aren't one of those top players you aren't going to do it consistently enough to win a tournament.

What if I did this instead:

Blue Squadron Pilot + FCS
Blue Squadron Pilot + FCS
Biggs
Roark + ICT + Jan Ors Crew

It give me a garunteed evade on Biggs and lets me shoot first with one the B wings.

Santange11 wrote:
What if I did this instead:

Blue Squadron Pilot + FCS
Blue Squadron Pilot + FCS
Biggs
Roark + ICT + Jan Ors Crew

It give me a garunteed evade on Biggs and lets me shoot first with one the B wings.

It's only a partial solution. Shooting first against a phantom is nice, but only if you can get it in arc at all. And low-PS b-wings aren't very good at that, especially if you have to keep everyone in formation with Biggs. You'd be better off dropping Biggs for a third blue + FCS so that you can split up and cover the entire area the phantom can decloak into and then use Roark to boost whichever b-wing the phantom lands in arc of.

I won my store champs on Sunday with Kitted Dash, Dagger w AS and Tala,

I beat Ethan and 2 Knaves in R1
I beat 7 Tie list, inc Howl, Backstabber and Night Beast
I beat Chewie and Leebo
I beat Chewie and Rookie and Blue with AS.

In practice ive soundly beat decimators and Firesprays.

I would like to have played a phantom, to see test the list.