I delayed posting this a couple days, with the horrific and tragic events in Christchurch I didn’t feel like posting anything on Friday. Some things are more important.

Check out Part 1 here

Empire

Empire have a couple of decent archetypes to use in the Hyperspace format.

TIE Swarm

It is no longer Schrodinger’s Swarm as it’s now seeing some play and is unsurprisingly not bad at all.

The 8 TIE variant doesn’t have enough space for Howlrunner, which makes it not interesting enough for me to write more about it.

7 TIEs is more interesting, as it opens up the 2 biggest pieces for TIE Swarms in second edition, Iden Versio and Howlrunner. Howlrunner’s ability gives your swarm easy double mods on offense paired with Focus actions, and Iden keeps Howlrunner alive a little longer. Fair and balanced. Most veteran players know, that TIEs are pretty squishy, and have the happy ability to sometimes just explode, but with Iden on the team, you have a pretty good chance of all your TIEs surviving the first round of shooting.

Just thinking about it intuitively, 3 defense dice with a focus has good chance of defending successfully against any attack. Iden stops the first big (2+ damage) attack that would go through, so your green dice would need to fail twice in first round for ship to die. Or weight of fire could also kill a ship, having 1 damage go through at a time, 3 times, reducing Iden’s power.

(This feels hard to put into words)

X-Wing Probability Calculator has a ship durability function (which I’m not entirely sure how it works, there’s no defensive token option for one, but the numbers sound reasonable) and here’s the numbers it spits out for a TIE fighter with Iden:

• 2 attack dice with focus: expected 7.979 shots to kill
• 3 attack dice with focus: expected 4.652 shots to kill
• 4 attack dice with focus: expected 3.334 shots to kill
• These seem unlikely to happen in one round of shooting!

This 7 Tie variant with Howlrunner and Iden leaves 5 points to play with. Only really 2 options here, promote all the Academy Pilots to Obsidian Sq Pilots or take Talents on Howl or Iden.

Going down to 6 TIEs the squad building decision tree really starts to explode. More named pilots and more Talents. It is one fewer ship, but they start to hit a lot harder. I would still start with Howlrunner (I5) and Iden (I4), then tool up the other 4 TIEs until you run out of points. (base Academy Pilot starts at 23 points, I1)

• Wampa (I1, 30 points) – has a situational 3rd die, even better when Swarm Tactics‘d up to engage at I5
• Del Meeko (I4, 30 points) – defensive rerolls seem good, starts to turn your Iden TIE Swarm into Fair Ship Empire

-I started writing an article about Fair Ship Empire, but apart from Iden and the TIE Swarm, the only other Fair style ship was Kagi, so the swarm stuff is here now.

• Gideon Hask (I4, 30 points) – situational 3rd die
• Seyn Marana with Marksmanship) (I4, 30+1 points) – when the ability goes off it powers up more of the Inferno Squad (Del and Gideon), but doesn’t feel the most reliable with needing to either roll a crit, or line up bullseye on the intended target. There is an advantage taking all the Inferno Squad for the shared Initiative 4
• Valen Rudor with Juke (I3, 28+5 points) – I initially dismissed this as too expensive compared to the other options, but breaking everything down in this analysis, I’ve come around that it’s a good choice. Simply drop a Swarm Tactics, or a couple Crack Shots from other ships and he fits in with the other 30 point-ers. I3 can be tricky as another Initiative step to move in, but workable
• Scourge Skutu (I5, 32 points) – situational 3rd die (bullseye, noting because I kept forgetting this one)
• Mauler Mithel (I5, 32 points)- situational 3rd die
• Black Squadron Ace with Crack Shot (I3, 26+1 points)
• Swarm Tactics – 1 or 2 of these seems good, start a chain on Howlrunner. Getting Wampa engaging at a higher initiative is really good for the pilot ability, as well as creating opportunities for Initiative kills in general.
• Throwing Crack Shots as the last 2-3 points seems like the best option

Sample 6-TIE Swarm Squad

Howlrunner (40)
Swarm Tactics (3) – Total: 43
Iden Versio (40)
Crack Shot (1) – Total: 41
Del Meeko (30)
Crack Shot (1) – Total: 31
Gideon Hask (30)
Crack Shot (1) – Total: 31
Wampa (30)
– Total: 30
Academy Pilot (23)
– Total :30
Total: 199

Here’s my personal preference take on the TIE swarm if I’d got around to trying it (and with Wave 3 right around the corner, odds of trying it now much much lower). Mostly just pick things from the long list of ideas and flavour to taste. Wampa at I5 is good, 3 ships at I4 is good, and only three different initiative levels to manage. Defensive rerolls from Del seem really good.

How to fly a 6 TIE swarm: I just googled it, because writing a guide was way too much like work, especially when there are all sorts of guides and articles out there. Technically they’re all a little out of date since the release of second edition. Shout out to reddit user Olorun for this guide

Another variation takes Darth Vader and 4-5 TIEs. This leans into the next style on imperial squad available.

Empire Good Stuff, TIE Salad, no name in particular

Throw a bunch of good things together. Easy.

One variant that has caught a little bit of attention online after being showcased at Krayt Cup was Vader, Vermeil, Countdown and Gideon.

Darth Vader (65)
Afterburners (6) – Total: 71
Major Vermeil (49)
Deathtroopers (6) – Total: 55
Countdown (44)
– Total: 44
Gideon Hask (30)
– Total: 30
Total: 200

It’s several good pieces put together up to 200 points. Vader is good, Vermeil is good, Deathtroopers are good, especially against self-stressing ships (such as A-Wings), Countdown is good and Gideon is good. And Vermeil, Countdown and Gideon all share I4, was is great for movement and shooting order choices.

The other named Strikers, Duchess and Pure Sabaac, are also good, other TIE Fighters are also good filler ships. The non-Vader TIE Advanced seem pretty meh, action starved needing the Lock for the Advanced Targeting Computer and 3rd attack die.

Nathan’s Nonsense™

Turns out I like flying medium bases. I find U-Wings super fun, I took Kimos to Nationals, and the Empire have their own funky medium base ship.

Something offbeat that looks fun to try is Darth Vader with Afterburners and 3 Scarif Base Pilot Reapers with Tactical Officers. (may well be trash, but is closest thing to original material in this article).

The sneaky idea with this squad is being able to choose between red and white coordinate on the Reapers (99% sure you can do this), and be able to have much more control over whether or not you want to use Adaptive Ailerons.

Reaper A moves, white coordinate to Reaper B, red coordinate back to Reaper A, Reaper B gets to skip Ailerons. Or can even include Reaper C in the chain. Coordinate is silly. Vader gets to do Vader things, can coordinate to him, but with his pilot ability often don’t need to.

Scum

Scum got the short end of the stick for Hyperspace after the January points balance. Boba, Han Gunner and Escape Crafts all went up, but it feels worse than it actually is.

So what do you fly now?

The answer might still be Boba.

Boba Fett is still really good. The Marauder, Han Solo combo probably isn’t worth is any more with it’s much fairer pricing. The new hotness for Boba is Qi’ra and Slave 1 which fills the ‘cheap’ role now. While Slave 1 is pretty self-explanatory, Qi’ra is a bit of a rules nightmare… The first entry on the Official Rulings Forum has 3 paragraphs dedicated to ‘ignores obstacles’ or you can listen to Dión’s voice explain it on a GSP Quick Tips. But as is often the case, rules nightmare = good. Trick Shot also naturally pairs well with this.

Other good choices for Boba include: Perceptive Copilot, Rigged Cargo Chute, any devices, Marauder (still), even Veteran Tail Gunner might be worth it.

Aside from Boba and Boba things, it turns out Hyperspace scum have a couple of decent counters to the A-Wing epidemic.

Both Koshka Frost in the Firespray, and Lando’s Millenium Falcon title benefit from stressed enemy ships. A-Wings (and Poe) generally stress themselves as part of making the most of their action efficiency, which turns on the extra power for Scum. Or making them decide to not stress is also a win. Koshka is a cheaper (but worse) Boba.

Both Han or Lando in Lando’s Falcon are good. Han gets to double down on Trick Shot and paired with the title and range 1 can have the 6-dice god shot. Lando has access to easy double mods, focus action and his pilot ability rerolls. Only issue is the native 2 attack die (which feels wrong on a Falcon, but only from playing too much 1st edition and other Falcons), so extra good flying is needed to turn up the offense.

Fang Fighters are still in an alright place. Fenn is good. Teroch is good. Maybe potential with the generic Fangs, Concordia Faceoff is so good.

Seevor does Seevor things, is generally a jerk, and is really good at it. Ahhav will be amazing at some point, but not this meta with mostly small based ships.

Coordinate caddies Escape crafts are still great. L3-37, Outer Rim Pioneer and Lando all have similar points costs, so can just pick which one fits your squad the best, by points or initiative level. I wouldn’t recommend more than one.

Faction specific talents:

These are a great mechanic, giving more faction identity especially as most of them are great and see play.

• Selfless: really good, Biggs on a stick. I dread the day it sees more play
• Ruthless: not great unfortunately, might improve in the future with a different set of ships to choose from
• Fearless: great on Fangs, not a lot of usefulness otherwise. Could be good on Boba (though note it only works out the front arc)
• Heroic: has the advantages of being both really cheap, and Resistance having an awful lot of Talent slots. It’s not bad at 1 point, but no where near as good as some people claim it to be
• Fanatical: quite good, on FOs and Silencers in particular with their low shield to hull ratio, getting it active early and then can last a while. Quickdraw also likes it, can get an extra dice mod on that last bonus attack from the pilot ability
• Dedicated (Republic) and Treacherous (Separatists) both look cool and thematic, but will have to see points costs before one can really make a verdict

I forgot to mention non-Kylo Silencers in the previous part, but the Sienar-Jaemus Engineer Edit: First Order Test Pilot with Advanced Optics and Fanatical is really solid, with double mods after losing shields, and Blackout is a cheaper alternative ace to Kylo, but the loss of the Force is not insignificant.

Initiative

And the best thing about Hyperspace at the moment? Every initiative level is being used!

3 & 4 melt together a little bit, but otherwise there are choices at every level, and hence the initiative decisions at squad building are very meaningful. Do I want this upgrade card, or do I want to take a higher initiative pilot? It’s awesome!

Part 2 good counter = 35, Overall good counter = 74

-Nathan

Check out Part 1 here

1 month of doing this, and almost written as much as I did for my Masters thesis last year. Good stuff. Hate to think about how many games I’ve actually played in that time though

Requested RSS feed still on the To Do list. If anyone wants to get in touch and do it for me that would be awesome. It looks like a 5 minute job for someone who knows what they’re doing (which I do not).
(I’m just going to leave this note here everytime until I get around to sorting it out)