I disagree. Sure, 3 Interceptors against a Falcon is pretty tough, but it can be done. You can still block the Falcon denying it taking the evade action and guaranteeing that your ship can't be fired at. You can switch off between all your ships to spread their life out as long as possible. With blocking, 3PO only guarantees 1 evade a round. Not hard to overcome that. I also disagree about 3PO being overcosted. You count it as having the same value as a Hull Upgrade, but it really doesn't on a 1 agility ship. A hull upgrade on a 3 agility ship is worth WAY more than on a 1 agility ship. You need to really look at it as how many extra rounds of life it grants you, not hits. Chances are, 3PO has the potential of granting you one extra round of life. So, one more chance to shoot. Hull upgrade on a 3 agility ship also has a good chance of granting you an extra round of life. So in that case, they are worth exactly the same.

Just to throw this out there, a squad that can poop on Falcons and Phantoms: Blue Squadron Pilot w/ FCS, HLC & Flechette Torps (x3) Or if you're worried about Predator: Dagger Squadron Pilot w/ FCS & HLC. They'll pretty consistently roll 4 hits. Even with C-3PO they have a good chance of killing a Falcon in two rounds. For Phantoms it's all about staggering your formation to cover all approaches. Good luck dodging out of range 3 and an HLC could care less about 4 defense dice.

...You have firefox. Yet you were using IE. ...Is this some sort of parallel universe? Even though IE isn't my main browser...it's been pretty good since IE10. Honestly I would probably pick IE11 over Firefox.

This thread is pants-on-head crazy and I can't believe its hit 11 pages. C-3PO only grants you 1 evade a turn. That is hilariously easy to overcome. But wait! If you use an evade action, then you get 2(!) evades a turn! ::gasp:: If a falcon is using an action to evade, they aren't boosting. If they aren't boosting, they aren't getting out of arc and are getting shot at more. If a falcon is evading, they aren't modifying their attack. The falcon pays lots and lots of points for a single 3-die attack. At best, C-3PO might keep the ship around for one extra round to roll 1 more 3-die unmodified attack. The overuse of Falcons really has nothing to do with C-3PO. I guarantee if C-3PO didn't exist, we would still be in a Falcon-heavy meta just because of the Phantom. Once more people figure that thing out, Falcon use will naturally drop off.

Royal Guard Pilot w/ Opportunist is an unholy monster of death at 26 points. At PS6 he moves after most ships and can potentially roll 5 dice at range 1. It's like a cheaper phantom with a dramatically better dial. Just give him a higher PS buddy (pairs well with Soontir or Jax) and add Hull Upgrade, Shield Upgrade or Stealth Device to taste.

If you were to go by averages stealth is probably better, but hull will save you from bad luck. Both are kind of a waste of points on an Alpha though...

As I think about it...I actually use Imperial Aces stuff a lot. Carnor Jax is amazing and is easily my second-favorite Interceptor. I use Royal Guard Pilot a lot and I used to use Lorrir before Falcons became super-popular. I also use Hull Upgrade a lot and Targeting Computer since I like to use Vessery a lot nowadays. Oh and Opportunist on an RGP is fantastic. You shoot before Chewie and in my opinion it's better than an HLC. As long as you have someone shooting before you to strip tokens, you can toss out 4 dice at range 3 and 5 dice at range 1! Not to mention the whole thing comes in at 26 points. You can even throw a Hull Upgrade, Shield Upgrade or both on it. With all of that on it, 33 points for something with almost as much health as a Defender, fires at PS6, basically has an HLC and a WAAAAY better dial.

Honestly they probably couldn't think of anything to do with the Advanced. The Advanced is a tricky ship to improve. How do you improve it without encroaching on another ship's design space? They've probably been working on a fix for a while and according to the Devs, we should be seeing something soon. As for the Bomber, the bomber is a really, really good ship and aside from maybe some new pilots doesn't really need anything. The real problem with bombers is ordnance and we're getting more and better options all the time.

The stress from using PTL to perform two actions would prevent the use of the free action. Yep. That's why you want to use PTL on Turr AFTER he does his free boost/barrelroll.

Those ships NEED good dials or they would be useless. Those turret ships have a LOT of points invested in one ship that only has one attack. They are already a big target. The only way to be successful with a ship like that is to avoid other arcs as much as possible. If those ships had the same dial as a shuttle, they would be easily focused down in a couple rounds and there goes your 50-60 point ship. They need a good dial to be at all viable.

Shuttles can't take Expert Handling. Advanced Sensors and Engine Upgrade work beautifully together though.

No one is disputing that, but you kind of make my point. You have to fly ships more effectively as the Imperials, its less forgiving. If you make a mistake in an Imperial ship which have no shields or fewer shields, the punishment for that mistake is greater than if a Rebel player did the same thing because again, their ships come with shields and with more shields (per points or ship class or whatever you want to compare). The evade action does matter, but then again, shields are still better then evades. It basically is an evade and while your evading you are more likely to roll fewer evades and since we are counting action, most Rebel ships have a safety net there too. Target Lock. Not only can they take that action that allows them to re-roll (statistical anomoly failsafe) but it carries over from round to round if not used so it can be stacked with focus. More then that however if you add evades to the TIe vs. Z95's scenario, the odds situation balances out. I don't particularly agree in a non hard-counter matchup. I just don't consider using a barrel-roll or evade as a display of superior skill. Your comparison also assumes that shields will always block crits, but they are more often lost by regular hits. The rebel player also has a higher chance of taking damage from an attack. Focus is much better with three evade dice than two after all. If you look across both factions as a whole, they are pretty balanced. Imperial players often have higher numbers than rebels which helps balance things out even further. Sure, a TIE fighter will most likely go down faster than an X-Wing, but you'll be rolling more dice overall with the TIEs as you'll just have more of them. The TIE swarm dominated the meta for a long time for a reason...

The MathWing / statistics aspect is actually significantly more complicated than that, but I think Vorpal Sword touched on most of the points, so I'll just leave it at that. Absolutely, no dispute from me. Obviously there are a lot of variables that go into what makes the mechanic tick and clearly skill plays a huge roll in the game but the point I was trying to make is that most Imperial ships are affected by poor dice rolls more then Rebel ships and because they rely more on green die, they are statistically more likely to have terrible dice rolls because of the bad odds on green die compared to red die. This is true for many Imperial ships including the Tie fighter, Interceptor and Tie Bomber. Additionally due to the nature of point costs for ships with shields on the Imperial side being more expensive (Tie Advanced, Defender, Phantom for example) the counter parts to those ships for equal points generally have more shields and are equal in firepower so spread out (ignoring skill) statistically are more likely to have the same problem. For example take a Tie Defender. 3 on everything, this is a great ship, but the cheap version of this ship comes in at 30 points. the rebels can field a B Wing for 22 points and even though they have 2 less evade die, in a joust match the Tie Defender is more likely to lose the fight simply because it has less shields and more likely to be affected when the dice go south. For example say that the Tie Defender rolls 3 hits, but the defender rolls no evades. He is already into hull and becomes susceptible to critical hits starting the very next round. Do the same to a B win and he still has 2 shield remaining, you would need 2 more hits before a 3rd hit would start taking critical's. Its better to have shields then evade dice and points being equal (even though in this case like most cases with Imperial ships and shields its actually cheaper to fly Rebel ships) the advantage goes to the B wing. Based on the math folks used in this thread (and there was at least one more): http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/103583-how-hard-is-it-going-to-be-to-kill-a-tie-defender/ it's just not true that it's easier to kill a defender than a B-Wing. Sure, in your scenario it is, but on average that just doesn't hold. And, while there are times it might not survive as long as a B-wing, it can also far outlast its own average, too, thanks to the variance of the dice. A B-wing's lifespan is much more narrow, both good and bad, it's more consistently going to shrug off the same number of hits, but it's also going to die to a similar number as well. as an imperial player (mainly) i can definitely vouche for that i'd say the defender is actually likely to outlast a firespray in terms of staying power more often than not when played properly I don't disagree with either of you, your infusing elements into the discussion that aren't being disputed, in fact almost all the responses are. Yes, skill makes a different, how you fly makes a different, what ships vs. what ships make a difference, lots of variables make a difference. We are still talking about the effects of shields on the game and why Rebels as a result of having more ships with more shields are less likely to be affected or lose a game as a result of few terrible dice rolls (uncharacteristically bad rolls), while because imperial ships have no shields (or fewer shields) on all ships are more likely for their game to fall apart with the same results. Again... imagine an X-Wing gets hit by 2 critical hits and rolls no evades. Now imagine an Tie Fighter, interceptor or Tie Bomber getting the same result. For X-Wings it has virtually no effect, bad roll, no problem. For any other ship without shields its going to cost them dearly, in the case of Tie Fighters and Interceptors is most likely game over. This is something Rebels simply don't have to contend making them much easier and much more forgiving to play. Except for the fact that the shieldless Imperial ships have more options to get them out of arc altogether AND have the evade action. It all pretty much evens out.

The thing with Defenders (especially when armed with cannons) is that you really want to stay far away from what you're shooting at. It's much easier to keep ships in arc at range 3, your opponent doesn't get an extra evade when you have a cannon, but you do. Defenders work so much better when you have some ships blocking for them. 1 Defender plus some TIEs, a shuttle or bounty hunter just works so much better than 3 Defenders.

PTL doesn't work well on Defenders. Their dial is pretty bad for clearing stress. Run Predator on Brath it was made for him. You can get a TL lite with predator and re-roll to save your focus to flip crits or use on defense. Brath + two deltas could be good. Use the Deltas to block and have Brath blast ships with no tokens. 3 Defenders will suffer against numbers and slippery ships, but will do pretty good against other lists of 3 ships or less. I also like Vessery w/ Outmaneuver + an Onyx and Delta. Send Vessery on the flank, if he does turn into Vessery he will have two Defenders on his tail. Stress really isn't a big deal on defenders. If you're far away from your opponent, do a 1 straight and you're fine. If you're closer, you can do a 5 straight and shoot past them. Or you can ignore it all together and do a K-Turn. Most ships when stressed can only move in a tiny area, but will most likely still have a shot. The Defender is really good at getting out of Dodge when stressed. Sure, your opponent KNOWS you're going to go straight if you need to de-stress, but chances are they can't block an entire 5 range band. I'm also not a big fan of Predator on Defenders. You're most often only re-rolling 1 die out of 3 or 4. I'd rather pick Outmaneuver or PTL. Outmaneuver just wrecks large ships and PTL really helps with action economy.

I think leaving it up to your opponent to offer a take-back instead of asking for one is a good start. If you make a mistake just say, "Argh! I forgot to X!" Then your opponent could either ignore it, or could make the offer to let you fix it. It gives the other person the opportunity to give the other player an advantage if they want to, without turning it into an awkward situation.

I DID play this as a youngin'. Soooo far ahead of its time. I also remember it being hard as hell.

Because its dial is better, and because sometimes trimming a point from your list is necessary. Meh, I'd find a point somewhere. I never run Rookie Pilots or Red Squadron Pilots, but I do run Blue Squadron and Dagger Squadron Pilots. Generic X-Wings just lose so much in points efficiency. Especially when you can toss in someone like Airen Cracken for only 19 pts. Tarn Mison on the other hand is amazing and costs as much as a Red Squadron Pilot.

Point-for-point, the Advanced is not as good as an X-Wing. Looking at generic pilots, an X-Wing is also not a good ship. Why pay 21 points for an X-Wing when you can pay 22 for a B-Wing? They solved that problem for the X-Wing with named Pilots. The Advanced only has 1(!) decent pilot. So you have a ship with weak attacks, that isn't very point efficient and only has 1 decent pilot. It's a recipe for disaster.

For me, the easiest way to keep my list building fresh is to start with a limitation. I will require that any list I build contain a specific ship, upgrade, etc. I then build variations on that theme. Often times I'll take ships that people generally think are "bad" and try to see what I can do with it. I learn a lot this way and often find very unexpected synergies that I end up incorporating into my tournament lists. It's very, very difficult to be creative in a vacuum, but setting limitations for yourself makes it far easier and can help knock your brain out of a rut.

Kagi with a sensor jammer would really ruin his day.

TIE Fighter. Still holds up to this day. Amazing game.

I think Armada will become my main game when it comes out. It will really scratch my itch for capital ship combat that I just can't get in X-wing. Also, wave 6 doesn't intrigue me much. For me, Star Wars was always about the Rebels vs Imperials, not SPAAAAACE PIRAAAAATES!

Honestly, just an Imperial CR-90 conversion would make me happy. Just SOMETHING for the Imps in Epic play. I really, really like epic play...but it's just kind of a half-formed idea at this point.

All of these new announcements keep pushing me further and further towards Armada being my main game. I wanna fly me some big ships!