Just wondering; what *is* a good indicator to you of the quality of a ship? You argument about Paul heaver means nothing. It says more about him than you. With the Paul Heaver thing that's kind of the point. I can take what people consider to be an excellent list and he can take what people consider a substandard list and he'd most likely beat me. Performance at worlds has a hell of a lot more to do with the player than the individual ships, though they do matter. But that is more about figuring out what will counter the meta, which again...is about the player. So using Worlds as the indicator of the quality of a ship is not good. For me, a ship is good if I can consistently get more out of it than what I put into it. So, if it consistently kills more points than what I put into it, it's performing well. But, as this game is really about squads and not about individual ships...it's more if that ship performs well in its squad and helps the whole squad consistently win games. Which for me, the Defender does that so it's a good ship. The Defender lacks the panache of a lot of the other ships, but it's a solid workhorse that gets the job done.

Performing well at worlds isn't necessarily a good indicator of the quality of a ship. Case in point, if Paul Heaver was flying a sub-optimal list and I was running the current hotness I would put money on him beating me. Also if I remember correctly, the Firespray barely had a showing at Words and the Firespray is an excellent ship.

This has been my goto list for a while: Colonel Vessery (35) Outmaneuver (3) Ion Cannon (3) Cluster Missiles (4) Omicron Group Pilot (21) Sensor Jammer (4) Weapons Engineer (3) ST-321 (3) Academy Pilot (12) Academy Pilot (12) Total: 100 The Academy Pilots fly with the shuttle and act as blockers. Vessery flies as a flanker. If on the first moves the opponent goes for Vessery, he runs towards the shuttle's arc. If the opponent goes after the shuttle, Sensor Jammer helps it tank while the other team gets pounded by the TIEs and Vessery. If the opponent goes after the TIEs, they break off and come around again after getting damage. The shuttle can target multiple targets for Vessery, making the opponent not exactly sure which one it's going after, or target for Vessery & himself. Whatever works at the time. If the shuttle dies, it's usually late in the game where most of the other team is dead anyway. It's even good at taking out Phantoms. Even without Outmaneuver, Vessery has a pretty good chance of landing an Ion on a Phantom. Then, every ship that can gets arc on the Phantom which can't shoot back next turn. Vessery then moves to Outmaneuver and launches his cluster missile. If the Phantom survives that, it gets killed by the shuttle & TIEs. You can also remove Sensor Jammer to give the shuttle an Engine Upgrade, or give Vessery a shield, or promote an Academy to Backstabber...whatever floats your boat.

Biophysical has been with a 2 Defender build no less... https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/136321-putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is-on-tie-defenders-step-2-the-store-championship/

That sentence alone makes clear that you never actually flew Yorr as stress support for fighters. I actually fly Yorr quite a lot. Even ships that dish out stress don't dish out enough to where they can overcome Yorr. And range 2 is a large distance from a large based ship, giving you lots of room to maneuver. I usually run Yorr as a doom shuttle. 27 points keeps him nice and cheap, let's him do damage when he needs to and you don't mind if he explodes for the late game.

Except the Defender doesn't have a problem shedding stress. It just does it in a different direction than most other ships. If your opponent is far away, 2 straight and you're fine. If you opponent is really close either 4k behind and shed stress next turn or 5 straight out of there for the next pass. Or, since Defenders LOVE shuttle support anyway, bring Yorr & never worry about stress again. Oh and not to mention Vessery who doesn't care about stress most of the time. Just because a ship handles things differently from other ships doesn't make it bad.

Whisper isn't that great as a closer, especially vs a Defender.This is complete nonsense. If you lose a late game vs a defender as whisper you have made made terrible choices. Ps10 Rex has a SLIGHT chance of victory(limited by Whisper's ability to easily block a K then randomly firing in from the sides every turn thereafter). Every other build of defender has no chance at all short of the phantom beaching on a rock or flying off the board. It doesn't matter if you can K turn with actions against a ship that can fire at you from three different positions(+barrel roll) that it picks after you have moved. This makes like 4 people now who have claimed that a defender can get the jump on Whisper. I'm about ready to call Poe. You seem to think that Whisper has unlimited movement and positioning potential. Most of the time you'll only have 2 good decloak positions and maybe only one. You still have to pick your movement ahead of time and that movement usually only works well with one specific decloak direction. Whisper is usually pretty easy to guess. Now if you said Echo on the other hand...

Whisper isn't that great as a closer, especially vs a Defender. Whisper can't turn around easily unless you don't mind being uncloaked with a stress. A Defender can turn around all day long. Soontir is trickier, but if you can keep him out of knife-fight range, it's a pretty even fight unless the Defender has an Ion. A lot of it comes down to how each ship is kitted out. Personally though, I feel that 1 on 1 comparisons are pretty pointless, since you fly with a squad instead of a single ship.

Yea the damage is really nice. But competent arc dodgers kind of eat it alive. It's great fun. It's just not that good. Competency isn't really an argument. A competent Defender pilot won't get arc-dodged. Arc dodging is really easy at range 1, but very hard at range 3. A Defender never wants to be at range 1 unless he's behind you. Range 3 is the sweet-spot for Defenders. If they have a cannon, their opponent doesn't get an extra defense die, but the defender does. Vessery w/ Ion, Outmaneuver and Cluster Missiles also makes a fantastic Phantom Killer by the way. A competent defender won't get arc dodged? WUT. How in the chocolate Jebus does a ps1-8 defender or even a pair of them get eyes on Whisper? Pretty easily. It's often pretty easy to tell where Whisper is going to decloak. A Phantom also only has one post-movement maneuver, the barrel-roll. At long ranges, a firing arc is so large that it is very difficult to get out of. Also, Whisper is terrible at turning around. A Defender on the other hand is quite good at it. Basically if you keep distance between you and the Phantom and have a cannon, it's pretty easy to get shots on it. And a Phantom just needs to get Ioned once...and then it's pretty doomed.

Yea the damage is really nice. But competent arc dodgers kind of eat it alive. It's great fun. It's just not that good. Competency isn't really an argument. A competent Defender pilot won't get arc-dodged. Arc dodging is really easy at range 1, but very hard at range 3. A Defender never wants to be at range 1 unless he's behind you. Range 3 is the sweet-spot for Defenders. If they have a cannon, their opponent doesn't get an extra defense die, but the defender does. Vessery w/ Ion, Outmaneuver and Cluster Missiles also makes a fantastic Phantom Killer by the way.

Miniature Market is my FLGS...so...yep.

Or Keyan barrel rolls with advanced sensors and never bumps. He then has no action to modify dice. If they're lined up across from one another, they'll either both have shots or neither will have shots after the barrel roll. If neither have shots, a barrel roll to avoid bumping is pretty much the same as bumping. If they both have shots, the Defender will have an action to modify attacks and Keyan won't. If they're not on anti-parallel flightpaths, arc dodging for Keyan becomes possible, but at that point it really comes down to whoever anticipates movement better. The brute force of the white K-turn with the Defender's stats give it an edge in almost any 1vs1 scenario with a non-turreted ship. I'll agree with Ficklegreendice that it's largely a pointless comparison, but this is a Defender thread, and I'm trying to point out how tactics using its unique dial lets it do some pretty amazing stuff in a situation where basic mathwing suggests it would get eaten up. Not to mention if they are both armed with Ion Cannons. Keyan MAY be able to land an Ion, but that Defender will be landing that ION every time. The first time Keyan gets Ioned puts him way behind for the rest of the match.

Recently picked this up. Was wondering if there are any players in the St. Louis area.

I'm kind of amazed at the lengths people go to just to increase their chances of winning a game with plastic toys.

Also Advanced Sensors is WAY better than Accuracy Corrector on an Aggressor. You can make tighter turns by boosting before you make a hard turn and you can still get an action when you s-loop.

Mine too, but what the heck does that even mean? Your order is put together, they just haven't gotten a shipping label for it yet.

That would kinda make sense. I'm near Kansas City and it hasn't shipped yet, though I did order fairly late too. What ticks me off is that if I had waited to order until last night when they claim to have Wave 6 in, and then choose fast(er) shipping, by now they would updated my status from "Pre processing" to shipping. I would know that my stuff would be delivered in time for the Collectors Cache Tourney on the 28th. However, I hope that the quoted poster is correct and they are shipping out based on distance and nothing else........ I to am in the KCK Metro area....... Also, as another posted has said, HELP ME UPS, YOU"RE MY ONLY HOPE! MM is my FLGS. I've found that they do ship based on how early you order for the most part. When I order early, my orders are ready for pickup before the street date. I didn't order my Scum & Villainy until earlier this month, so I'm not expecting my order to be ready for another day or so.

I like it now that they've darkened it a bit since yesterday. I still wish they darkened the forum overview page a bit though, it still has a pure white background. Oh, and I actually AM a front-end web developer.

Prockets are pretty worthless on a Defender. You are paying 3 points for 1 additional attack die, at range 1, once... 3 points are better spent elsewhere in your list. You would be shaking 6 attack dice. base 3 and 3 additional attack dice for your 3 agility. It's 5 dice. It's actually base 2 and maxes out at 3 additional dice.

This is my favorite Vessery build which also does really well against Phantoms: Colonel Vessery (35) Outmaneuver (3) Ion Cannon (3) Cluster Missiles (4) Total: 45 With a TL and Outmaneuver, Vessery is pretty much guaranteed to land an Ion on a Phantom. When he does, the next round he unloads his Cluster Missile and every other ship in my list moves up to finish him off. I've never had a Phantom survive after getting Ioned. Vessery is also good against a Rebel Captive Phantom. As long as there's a TL on the Phantom, Vessery could care less about being stressed.

In my league, they know when I pull out the shuttle that it's time for serious business. It's so points-efficient and has such great upgrade slots. Once you learn how it flies, it becomes a monster.

Don't really see the issue. If you've played this game for any length of time, straight distances are easy to extrapolate marked templates or no. If it's a big issue for the opponent anyway, there's already a rule that handles that exact issue. So what's the problem?

But you can already do that with both Homing Missiles and Prockets. Yet we don't see those used all that often as is. How do you know? You said you weren't even here then. So quit trying to tell us that Han wasn't as popular back then or complained about as much, because most of us know better. I said I started post wave 4, but before the meta was dominated by the Phantom. There were a handful of people playing the Falcon. More people played the firespray than the falcon in my area. If you started at that time, it's probably because no one could get their hands on a Falcon. I've been one of the only people in my area with a Falcon for a long, long time.

I'm probably one of the few people on this board that doesn't have a problem with ordnance. With the right build and the right ordnance, it's actually pretty great. I think the big problem is that the various missiles/torpedoes are very specialized and since most everybody only cares about tournament play, they aren't really worth it. An assault missile is totally worth it if you catch a few ships in the blast, but how many swarm lists are you going to come across in a tournament? Ordnance is pretty great in epic play, but struggles in 100pt tournament play because your opponents keep changing and you may not have the best ordnance for the list you're facing against. This is also coming from a guy who uses Ordnance in his tournament list. Cluster Missiles on Vessery is pretty brutal.

The same way any other swarm does: blocking decloak locations and just plinking damage. With a swarm, you try and herd Phantoms into specific locations. If you get a few shots on a Phantom a turn - even with 2 attack ships - you have a good chance of dropping one or two points of damage on it. A Phantom will die in 4 hits. A-Wings are also very, very tough. They have 4 hits behind 3 dice. A lot of people think A-Wings are worthless because of the two attack dice, but they've always been pretty amazing for me.