We played a double sized Dark Whispers scenario today taking the ships from Asteroid Run to add to the standard forces.  The first game ended with a Rebel win, knocking all the ties out for no loss, the second game had 2 Ties escaping off table with both sides losing a ship - seems pretty balanced to me.

kmanweiss said:

Interestingly, I'm using no TIE Advanced. The problem at smaller points games for Imperials is that pivotal first turn or two when you have to go head-to-head with the Rebel ships. If the rebels have built a properly offensive force (and understand they need to focus-fire), you WILL lose a TIE before you can get into the knife-fight TIEs want to be in. That makes a significant dent in your hitting power for the rest of the game which can begin to snowball quickly. The problem with that initial approach can be worse if you have some named TIE pilots in your squadron as they're not any less vulnerable to fire than rookies and make much more appealing targets.

I've read through the forum and it's interesting to see the various posts.  So far, a few work buddies and I have been playing X-Wing and no matter what point value or who runs what, the Imperials always win (this has been a dozen or more games).  Usually, it is by using Evade actions every turn unless they don't think they'll get shot at.

As an example, today we ran 100 points so it was Wedge, Garvin, and Horton (Y-wing) with proton torpedoes on everyone and a bit of other upgrades (swarm tactics on Wedge) against Darth Vader, Mauler, and a few grunt TIEs.  As usually happens, we managed to destroy the good TIE in the first pass by shooting it with ALL of our ships.  After that, we were lucky to get a hit, even with doubling up shots on a ship.  They managed to destroy Garvin in about two - three turns by concentrating fire on him and from there it was down hill.

I don't want to say the game is unbalanced without some more experimenting, but by making use of the evade action, the Imperials seem to be extraordinarily hard to hit.  That guaranteed miss every turn seems to more than make up for having two shields, or even having an R2 unit, which doesn't seem to help in the larger games where 2-3 TIEs can get a shot at you every turn.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments about that, I'd love to hear them.  I must admit, I tend to like Rebels better, so I'd love to see a good way of giving them a fighting shot.

The Evade action is your best friend as Imperials.  Speaking strictly in Wave 1 terms;

My Imperial philosophy is simply that if I'm going to be shot at, I take an Evade.  If you have Howlrunner buffing TIE's rolls from behind, you can make your 2 Attack dice a little more potent while you keep your TIE defense rolls maximized.  Once you've gone through the initial pass, it's time to start using your superior movement options to try and fan out, minimize exposure and start erasing Rebel craft from the board.

If this is more or less how your match is going as Imperials, you're doing it right.

As Rebels, you have to know that the Imperials will be doing whatever they can do to make your shots miss, and whittle you down.  You only get one R2D2 for shield regeneration, so what you can do is try and bait out a few shots on that ship, then have them regenerate as needed.  If you can divert shots to R2 (but not too many) you'll force your opponent to effectively waste his own shots, which means your other craft won't be taking as much damage.

I'd also recommend, as Rebels, that you not leave home without the Ion Turret.  The 360 degree fire arc is so great against the more nimble TIE's, as they can't hide in your blind spots anymore.  In addition, your turrets will cause their movement to be dropped to a white 1 forward next turn, so you can use that information to your advantage to try and set up a kill shot.

The Y-Wing can always Target Lock/Ion Turret a TIE in one shot, so you have a fairly good chance at getting 2-3 hits off that roll, and only one of them needs to go through for it to work.

Also remember, the Evade token is a one-shot deal, so if you can bleed it off one TIE, you just need to focus your attacks on that now Evade-less ship to get it dead.  Dark Curse is probably the worst for this, as you can't use Focus or Target Locks to boost your attacks against his defense, so I typically leave him as a lower priority target so I can concentrate on dropping as many TIE's as I can early on to take out the numerical advantage.

Take 4 ships as a rebel.  I have yet to see a consistently competitive 3 ship build.  4 X-wings is the best that it gets in Wave 1 only.  Make sure you're playing in the 3' x 3' game space and using the requisite 6 asteroids to litter the play field. Wedge + Swarm tactics should bring the pain. I saw great use of Garven plus Wedge to get multiple focus shots.  I'm not going to say it's easy, I think Wave 1 skews towards the Empire as having more ships can be more forgiving.

Also, keep your 4 X-wings in a group.  That way your ships should all have shots at the same targets.  Try to make sure you are hitting and destroying targets of lower skill to limit the return fire.  As ClearDave points out, that first shot should bleed off the Evade token.  Even with the Evade, Wedge has a 70% chance dealing damage with a 3 dice + focus attack.  This gets really great if attacking at close range and/or target lock + focus (achieved in one round by locking on target with Wedge and have Garven shoot first, burning his focus and giving it to Wedge).  Wedge firing at an Evadeless TIE with target lock + Focus should be putting 2 damage on one.  If Garven did a point of damage, that should wipe out a target per round. One of the 3rd or 4th X-wings can also play clean up. 

I don't mention Y-wings because they usually just suck up points and require even more skill.  If you're going that route, don't make it even harder on yourself: take an Ion Cannon.  You can play a bit sloppier with a 360 turret.  Try using it to strip off those Evade/Focus tokens and try to blow past the TIE Fighters so your can shoot them on your 6 after you pass.

Good luck!

I tend to play a lot of 31 point games with 2 TIE against a single X-wing. I'm still trying to drum up support in my gaming group so when ever I get the chance to pull someone in for a quick game I just run the basic ships. Inevitable I end end up playing Rebels in these games and I'm not tooting my own horn, but overall I think people would say that I'm a competent gamer, understand tactics and game strategy. I've yet to win one of these games. I just have not found a single Rebel pilot at 31 points which can hold up to the Imperials. I have not had a chance to play with A-wings yet. I have played with some of the new elite pilot skills and ship upgrade cards but haven't found a combo that works.

The best results so far has been Biggs w/Stealth and R2-F2.

So from my experience and from the experiences of others I think Imperials have a distinct advantage at 2 to 1 odds and they get worse as rebels achieve ship parity. I think it shows that ubered out Rebels can't compensate for numbers.

BigDogg said:

why not Luke + R2F2? or Luke + expert handling + R2 astro

Two things I'd like to add to this conversation- 

1) Bear in mind that it was only supposed to be a couple of months before we got Wave 2. 

I think a lot of the imbalance between Rebels and Imperials is actually a meta problem that shouldn't really be here to start with. That said, I think the main problem for the Rebels is that…

2) The TIE Swarm is pretty powerful and easy to pick up and play

We're all still pretty new at this game as it's not even been out for six months and as I think everyone agrees, being able to move and manuever effectively is the most important facet of this game. If you're an Imperial player who rolls the swarm, the main thing you need to learn is how to not crash your ships into each other. You don't have to worry quite so much about being efficient in your movement because you have so many more movement options with a standard TIE that it's hard to paint yourself into a corner of predictability with that ship, and even if you do, oh well- you probably have 3-5 more floating around the board. 

The Rebel player has to be more efficient in his movements, has to do more pre-planning to try and ensure he's not setting himself up for failure in the next couple of turns by getting too close to a board edge or other obstacle, and still has to try and bring his guns to bear.  He also needs to bear in mind his ships simply don't have the range of the Imp ships, so he has to play both preventive and reactive at the same time. Now, once we all get really good at movement and manuevering, it won't be such a big deal, but as it is, it's a lot for a new Rebel player (which again- we all are) to try and handle at this point. 

Additionally, the Imperial side is generally much more forgiving when a mistake in movement is made- it's still fairly uncommon for a Rebel player to completely erase a standard TIE in a single round of shooting, regardless of range, Actions, Pilot Talents, etc. Does it happen? Sure. Does it happen to a degree that it can be planned on in the movement phase? No way. As such, As such, a Rebel player has to commit usually half of his squadron (i.e. 2 ships) to downing a single TIE in a round. Does the Imperial player have to focus fire similarly? Of course, but again- they have more ships so they have a much greater flexibility in this committment. Getting back to the original point, if I bump into an asteroid with one of my X-Wings, I've just lost 25% of my Actions for the turn. If an Imperial player does it? He loses 20% of his Actions, tops (at least in my experience- I rarely play against Imp lists with less than 5 ships). 

TL;DR- There really isn't that much of an imbalance, but with only Wave 1 available, the counter for the Imperial Swarm is being a smarter/ better/ more efficient Rebel player and that's harder to achieve than figuring out some awesome counter-tactic or synergistic list. 

Cid_MCDP said:

I'd add (3) the powerful named Rebel pilots are all familiar and attractive options, but a squad full of named Rebels doesn't work well.

I played for a long time before I got my first Rebel win. That win coincided with a switch from 3-ship Rebel lists to 4-ship lists, and since switching I win with Rebels at least half the time. I plan to experiment with 3-ship lists again once Wave 2 is available, but at least in Wave 1 I would never recommend playing a small Rebel list.

Vorpal Sword said:

Yeah, I think a 3-ship list is something that is definitely fieldable, but to use it with any repeatable success, you have to completely be comfortable with moving and maneuvering, especially ships that are moving in what amounts to a formation, and also with the way Pilot Ranking causes you to select and prioritize your moves and combat. It's just too many eggs in one basket if you don't know exactly where those ships are going to end up and who's doing what, when. In other words, once a player becomes fully versed, practiced, and experienced in X-Wing, a 3-ship Rebel build is completely viable. For a new player though, it's unlikely they'll field it to any degree of success. 

Duraham said:

I've tried him and he is good but I like Biggs better

BigDogg said:

Wait, why would you field Biggs at 31 points if he's your only ship? His ability doesn't do much (read "anything") when he doesn't have a wingman. You could drop to a Red Squadron Pilot with R2-F2 and get a Proton Torpedo. Granted, I am the kind of person that keeps the Proton Torpedo manufacturers in business. If there's a way to get them into my squad, I will.

As far as balance, I've played a 3-ship Rebel build with wild success:
Wedge Antilles(Proton Torpedoes, R5 Astromech, Determination)
Horton Salm (R5 Astromech, Ion Cannon Turret, Proton Torpedoes, Proton Torpedoes)
Rookie Pilot (R2-D2)

I use the Rookie as my decoy, sending him up against the larger group of ships, then run away to recharge shields. The Proton Torpedoes work magic, but sometimes those nimble TIEs just evade away and I get nothing. Oh well, it happens. The only builds I've lost to so far are 4-ship Rebel builds (though I've beaten a few, and they're always close matches), and Imperial squads with 7+ ships. So is the game imbalanced towards Imperials? Maybe, but I second what's been said earlier: more ships is more forgiving on mistakes, and experienced players being able to wield fewer ships more effectively.

That said, a squad with 7 or more ships AND an experienced player…that's just a nightmare to fight against. It really makes you feel like the desperate Rebellion trying hopelessly to topple the oppressive Empire.

EDIT: I just remembered that I did manage to beat an 8 TIE swarm with my squad, and it was a guy who ended up winning the Kessel Run in town, so he knows his stuff…but he is primarily a Rebel player. He took the Evade action the entire game, but with my ships ganging up on TIEs to bleed off the evade, or preferentially attacking stressed and asteroid-ed ships, they dropped like…TIEs.

Parakitor said:

The Biggs thing makes no sense to me either in a one-ship Rebel list. The only thing that might make this work is if he only has a core set (reference to Stealth upgrade notwithstanding). Biggs' PR 5 would go before anything on the Imperial side save the named TIE pilots. Admittedly, it still doesn't make much sense, but that's the only way I can think of that Biggs sort of work for any reason in a one ship list. 

Completely agree with you on everything else and I'm happy to hear you have the nuts to run a 2x Torp Horton Salm. I've been considering it just to mess witih people's minds in my local club as I've fallen into a fairly constant rut of 4x X-Wings of various configs.

ScottieATF said:

That's the problem I had in one of my first games. I faced a squad of the 6 named TIEs and just barely managed a win by killing a second one at time for a points win. The 4 that survived each did so with 2 hull damage.

I'll have to give the 4 ship Rebel build a shot.  I have an idea as to who to field.

In regards to the Wave 2 ships, I think the Imperials may get an ever bigger advantage if I've seen the Tie Interceptor accurately.  3 attack and 3 agility with an Evade action is going to be very difficult to deal with.  I like the A-wing, but I'm afraid that 2 attack dice isn't going to give much when opponents generally have at least 3 evade dice.  Guess we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, the Rebels will try their luck with 3 X and one Y or maybe just 4 X.