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Looking to give it a try, a friend of mine uses one to pretty good effect.

So far this is what I've come up with:

TIE Advanced: •Maarek Stele (33)
Guidance Chips (0)
TIE/x1 (0)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Harpoon Missiles (4)
Advanced Targeting Computer (1)

TIE Punisher: •"Redline" (39)
Long-Range Scanners (0)
•Bomblet Generator (3)
Assault Missiles (5)
Extra Munitions (2)
Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Advanced: •Lieutenant Colzet (27)
Guidance Chips (0)
TIE/x1 (0)
Harpoon Missiles (4)
Fire-Control System (0)

Total: 99/100

Nope. Nothing you can do will make it effective.

 Peregrine wrote:
Nope. Nothing you can do will make it effective.

going have to agree, a title that comes with a point reduction and reload might fix the generics but as is the poor old Punisher done got powercreeped

Or something that lets you fire twice like corran horn. Otherwise there is no point in the massive ordnance reserves.

Yeah literally nothing worth on the punisher that can't be done on another ship for much cheaper and better.

Agreed, not a fan. What does your friend run?

IIRC:

"Deathrain" — TIE Punisher 26
Sensor Jammer 4
Unguided Rockets 2
Bomblet Generator 3
Lightweight Frame 2
Ship Total: 37

It's a pain in the butt to sink unless I dedicate a lot of fire at it or racks of ordnance. Then he'll have something with Hot-Shot Copilot to take my focus away from a ship threatening Deathrain, Or just run a bunch of Strikers to block me up.

Sensor Jammer is basically annoying if I don't have Expertise or something. And he's pretty good using boost actions to 'just' slip out of trouble.

And we play a lot of triple threat and four corner death matches on a 3x3 mat at 100 points each and it's survived to end quite a few times.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Ship Total: 37

This is the problem. You're paying the point cost of a high-end ace for a ship that isn't really all that impressive. Sensor jammer prevents some damage, but with only 1-2 green dice you're still taking damage pretty consistently. Bomblet tricks are ok, I guess, but you don't have advanced sensors to really make it work. And unguided rockets are pretty underwhelming for offense if you aren't consistently getting bomblets on stuff to supplement them. Boost is better than no reposition action, but you're only PS 6 and if you boost you don't get to fire your mediocre gun at all. I just don't see anything about this that scares me on the level of Soontir Fel or Vader, and you're paying more points than either.

Playing multi player I could see how that might be a pain to play against, 1v1 with competitive lists though I would expect you to smoke it pretty easily.

Looking through all of the Punisher options I am struggling to see a reason to take one instead of a gunboat except bombs. But if you want to play a bombing game then Rebels or Scum just plain do it better (at least until Imps get a Sabine analogue). Deathrain and redline both have their gimmick but you can use trajectory simulator or harpoons/cruises to mimic them pretty effectively if that is all you are after. And no EPT is just dumb.

Again though... he makes it work.

I guess practice almost makes up for the over priced and under powered platform. Can you remember the rest of his list?

I just had a look at the metawing analysis and it looks like that the Punisher has been used in 301 tournaments and has won one (an eleven player casual).

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Again though... he makes it work.

Sure, and I could "make it work" against certain players in my community. In fact I have, I beat someone so badly with Deathrain (while the rest of my list was off on a flanking maneuver and never engaged) that he ragequit the entire league and declared that he'd never play me again.* Success in a small group doesn't change the fact that in the larger metagame the ship is virtually nonexistent. Nor does it mean that he wouldn't be winning even more with a better ship at that point cost.

*This was TFG, so no loss here.

I'm not worried so much about meta, I just want to fly it and not get creamed.

As for the rest of the list the way he runs is this:

https://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Galactic%20Empire&d=v4!s!144:44,-1,-1,231,-1,237,-1:-1:15:;192:-1,126,-1,-1,127:-1:31:;243::48:31:;243::48:31:&sn=Unnamed%20Squadron&obs=

or sometimes this:

https://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Galactic%20Empire&d=v4!s!144:44,-1,-1,231,-1,237,-1:-1:15:;99:57,1,213,25,142,-1:-1:25:&sn=Unnamed%20Squadron&obs=

If I were to try a Punisher, I would keep it as Cheap as humanly possible. Deathrain is nice but it's even nicer to pair it with a Trajectory Simulator. You can even barrel roll back and almost remain in place while announcing a painful slog to anyone who wants to joust. Pair him/her with three Nu with the missile of your choice *cough* Harpoons *cough* on convergent vectors and that is a big interdiction zone.

Just don't expect miracles out of that point sink. Then you'll be happy when it works.

Makes me wish I had Trajectory Simulator. No one in our group owns one...yet. (There's 4 available in the store, no one's had the money)

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Makes me wish I had Trajectory Simulator. No one in our group owns one...yet. (There's 4 available in the store, no one's had the money)

Just proxy it. It's not like having the physical cards matters.

The bigger problem is that TS doesn't work with Deathrain. Deathrain's ability triggers on dropping a bomb, TS replaces the drop with a launch.

I'm not worried so much about meta, I just want to fly it and not get creamed.

Good luck with that. It's a terrible ship, even against mid-tier ships/lists. Perhaps against very weak lists you can win with it, but that's going to have way more to do with the opposition being weak than with Deathrain doing anything useful.

Ah frak. Missed that interaction. The Punisher really, realy sucks hard, then. At least the Bomber version can be used to drop something useful in yo' face before it dies horribly. Sometimes.

I'd forgotten you can give it Autothrusters, though. That's funny.