ForceM said:

A 6 ship vs 7 ship swarm probably wouldn't have made a difference in my last tournament game - more than likley vader would be replaced by howl runner and another academy.  The torp that cleared vader's shields and landed a direct hit would have outright destroyed a tie - ideally that would be a dead Howlrunner, but I would settle for mauler if I couldn't get a lock on Howlrunner.  Given the same rolling, Luke and Dutch would have killed another tie and I probably wouldn't have taken as much damage on Dutch as I did, since most of the damage on Dutch came from good rolling on cluster missiles.  After that, it would still be the same number of ships I had to deal with.

3 Ties in range of howlrunner + howlrunner's shots only manage 4.75 hits, of which at least 3 should be dodged by X wings, or 1 by a Y Wing, and thats if there aren't asteroids in the way.   I also thinks this is where we are seeing drastically different levels of power with the rebel ships - I don't normally lose rebel ships in the first 3 turns of the game, unless I'm playing against multiple Advanceds w/ Concussion missiles.  I hide in asteroids as best as I can and typically refuse to take a 6 pack of Ties head on until the formation breaks up some.  If you're consistantly having 4 ties wipe out a rebel ship on turn 2, I can see how rebels would have a really hard time of it.   

I usually only take torps on Wedge and Horton.  With the A-Wing on its way, I may consider adding an A-Wing with a concussion or homing missile to my lists, but those 4 and 5 point missiles and torps add up so fast I don't really see taking more than 2 in a list, tops.  If only torps cost 2 points…

First, there is nothing wrong with the Y-wing. Learn to use it effectively and you will be fine. 

About swarms, they don't matter any more.  Those of us that havemultiple wave 2 ships have already learned that the swarm is a thing of the past and are going to fewer ships where each ship can hit HARD!  I'm playing a three ship build right now and I have YET to get beat by a swarm list (7 or 8).

Now things that are going to hurt y-wings and x-wings now more than ever are missiles. The big V with a homing missile will lay down the law fast on a ship. The slave one packing a torp and a missile with a reroll, destructive.  Han with a missile is sick btw.  The trick to this game now is to find away to stack up your ships green dice so you are rolling four or more. 

For more on this see my thread, "putting wave 1 and 2 together."

Endgame124 said:

I did not kill the Y-Wing with 4 Ties but 6 as i said. If 4 do 3,75 damage 6 should do what? About 6? So we are 2 damage above average even if we ignore the fact i had focused with the range 3 ties and he had a dodge die mire as a consequence. This should roughly balance itself out. I don't do it all the time but a kill on first pass happens very very frequently. And that is nothing that extraordinary as your own calculations show it.

You say you evade or don't fight a swarm, or hide. But you will have very few very bad shots too and wont wittle down the swarm fast enough. If you keep exchanging a ship for a ship you lose as rebel. A Rebel player can wait, delay, hide… But there will be the moment he will have to face the swarm and the longer he manoeuvers the longer the swarm also has time to position itself.

Also i try and keep howlrunner on range 3 for the first exchange so she gets the bonus defense if the enemy has no torps. That plus evade is usually enough to save her from all but the hardest efforts to kill her. And these efforts usually cost the enemy dearly because he shoots a very elusive target that also has already shot most of the time. Leaving another Academy to shoot back.

Also there is not a lot of reasons i would take vader over 2 Ties except for his 9 Skill or if i needed a missile. Because 2 Ties also have 2 Actions and he can't do a lot  2 ships can do for you, besides perhaps presenting a bigger target to your enemy. In your case, yes you kill a Tie, the other survives though. Vader survives with 2 shields, which is slightly better in that case i guess.

Picasso said:

I have read your thread. It's okay and shows a few new combos of course. One is even posted by myself. 

But in no case it shows why wave 2 should magically solve all the problems with balancing, swarms and Y-Wings especially.

What could balance swarms is the 2 new missiles of course, but this means you need a lot of A-Wings (or the falcon). I do indeed believe that these missiles can do sone harm to swarms. But you still need to hit, and that is easier said than done. And not everyone will play 4 A-Wings with 20 points of missiles of course. So i do believe the try to balance out swarms might be successful, but the fact that they just try to balance it out shows there was a problem in wave 1 with it. Also if you don't focus on these swarm counters, you will end up just as helpless as before.

For the Y-Wing i am afraid, wave 2 makes things even worse in many respects. Imperial ships with even more attack dice means an agility 1 ship will just melt no matter how many hitpoints… The ion cannon is good against elite builds, that is where you are right. When someone posted a squadron consisting of 3 Bounty hunters, i could not help but smile and think of how 4 Y-Wings with Ion cannons would escort them off the table with ion tokens. But something like 5 Interceptors might just ruin any Y-Wings day.

ForceM said:

When I'm playing against a block of tie fighters, I don't move in such a fashion that all of them can fire on a single ship in one pass without an asteroid inbetween.  The problem with the normal formation of ties that I see is that they typically move as one really big ship - all of them follow the same movement but its 2-3 ships wide and 2 deep.  This works great in the first pass if they can all get in range 1 or 2 of a ship and all fire at the same ship, but its a problem when the block approaches an asteroid.    You either have to split up the big block of fighters, or risk damage pushing through the asteroids.  Very rarely do I see people push through the asteroids, but instead they break the formation into two smaller groups.  Once the formation breaks you can get 3 rebel ships against 3 or 4 ties before the ties regain the formation, and thats enough to swing the battle in favor of the rebels.   By turn 4 or 5, I've killed enough ships that even though the second group of ties is shooting at me again, its 4 on 3 instead of 7 on 4. 

@ ForceM,

There is a fundamental flaw in game design with expansions.  Part of it is marketing, part of it is prolonging a game to get the most money out of that game’s run, and part of it is breaking up a completed game into parts to sell in stages.  X-wing suffers from being a game that was broken up into parts. 

I have no inside scoop into this game.  I do have an inside scoop into others and I can tell you from experience that this game smells of the third flaw.

However back to wave two being the end all be all of Y-wing difficulties, I never directly said that.  I did say it “will be the end of the swarm.”  I’ll also be the first to say there is nothing wrong with the Y-wing.  I’ll agree with you that the five squint lists will be brutal and I do plan on facing a ton of them at upcoming events.  Do I think 4 Y-wings can crush this list?  It is possible.  Difficult as all Hell, YES!  No question.  With the PS of four the grey squadron Y-wing will shoot before these fighters.  You need to Ion them and then maneuver so that you are out of their firing arch and set up to keep doing this.  The downside is there is a squint moving around free no matter what till you drop one. 

Back up to before wave two.  People in events used to say there is no way a four Y-wing list could beat four X-wings.  HOWEVER, I watched my girlfriend destroy two rebel lists with her Y-wings just by blasting them with ion canons and then moving out of their firing arch. 

The Y-wing is the most underestimated ship in the game.  I worry more about facing a player running four Y-wings and knowing how to use them than an eight-tie swarm.  In all honesty the Y-wing should do better against smaller lists!  Would I play four Y-wings, No.  Doesn’t fit my playing style.  Have I seen others play them and destroy?  YES.

Also as for my thread, I haven’t posted all of my combos.  There are some I’m saving for myself.

I only fly Rebels in this game.

I've only flown Y-Wings.

Last game I played I blew away 7 ties…and it was a Kessel Run winner.

Not claiming to be an expert…but that's all I know….that and the fact this game is a BLAST!

(and yes…I won that game against the swarm)

…but I don't necessarily win often with my Y only philosophy….to be sure.

Picasso said:

Ah someone read Rogue/Wraith squadron… Nice XD

I really doubt that wave 2 will be the end of the swarm since meta will counter it for a time, after all it was the dominant wave 1 build. But then elite builds will come up and will themselves be countered again. Probably by swarms as in any game, spam lists are a possibility of countering elite lists.

I think maybe swarms are not dead but not the game breaking problem as in wave 1. And thats okay.

But the Y-Wing stays overcosted and underpowered. Is it absolutely unplayable? No. It is though a seriously handicapped ship and very very situational. So i would not exactly say it is "fine" nor that it is okay because it is a "support" ship. (What is a support ship? Either you can hold your own or you can't and the Y-Wing cant against most other ships and their respective costs). Also the more Y-Wings you take, the bigger your problem gets usually. Against 3-4 dice attachers you will take 2-3 damage per shot and that means you go down extremely fast.

ForceM said:

People have explained that the swarm isn't the dominant list of the Wave 1 meta. They've explained that the Y-wing isn't overcosted, underpowered, or handicapped. People have explained what a "support ship" means. People have discussed successful Y-wing builds, both in theoretical and empirical terms. 

In fact, in four pages, only one person has agreed with your opinion of Y-wings. As I mentioned way upthread, when something like that happens it's time to reconsider whether you might be mistaken.

@ForceM,

I'm not tryi g to be harsh on you but Vorpalsword is right, you need to learn to play the Y-wing.  Every ship in this game has a learning curve and I don't think you hit it with the Y-wing yet.  Honestly that's ok. It took me playing everyday and loosing over and over again before I got the swing of playing TIE swarms.  Once I figured that out I had a much better understanding of the rebel ships and it took me no time at all to learn the x-wing and the Y-wing.  It also helped that I play against someone who is devastating with Y-wings.  I've seen her set up and do all the tricks. 

My advice, mix it up. Try new things and expect to get your butt kicked. The Y-wing is the hardest ship to fly in the game. 

Karon said:

Remember it's two ion tokens to ion a YT-1300 or a Firespray. 

Ions are.  It isn't as destructive against the falcon because of the 360 ability however you can skirt the sides of a slave one and ion it all day without worry of being shot at. The three attack dice to the two evade on the slave one favors the ion cannon. 

Karon said:

I wouldn't want to be a Y-wing pilot going up against either ship considering the firepower :) although I speak from the prespective of a real fight, not with models.

This thread is going around in circles now.  ForceM isn't going to concede his point and neither will anyone else being this is the internetz, so everyone should agree to disagree and keep playing X-Wing OK?

And even if it was proven to be a fact that Y-wings are the worst thing ever in Star Wars I would still run them in my rebel builds.  If you didn't then you aren't a real Star Wars fan =p