That's why you want this ship on a flank where it's not facing any return fire. It can then do the old 1.0 Inquisitor trick of TL + Focus (and taking the strain) to hammer a ship, then slow-rolling with a 1 Bank the turn after, and do it all again. If you do get caught in arc and aren't confident of the PS kill, you want to take the deplete to BR, then Boost/Evade to dodge arc or be defensive. Optics is also only 4pts and makes the focus token pretty valuable on your 3-dice, giving ~61% chance of 3 hits (up from ~42% without optics). It also makes your TL + Focused shots incredibly consistent. Having said that, I'm not sure I'd bother paying the 4pts, unless I had nothing else to spend it on. This ship already checks every box I'm looking for in an ace: PS6, can double reposition, can double mod 3-dice shots, and has 4+HP to survive 1 defensive 'whiff'. The only other ships that tick all those boxes are: Vader with afterburners, Soontir with Shield and Predator, Poe with R4 astro, and Delta-7 Anakin. The problem is all those pilots are ~10-25pts more expensive, with the exception being Soontir who arguably doesn't tick the double mod box. This leaves you with a decent amount of points to fit in a solid 'anvil' to draw aggro away from Vonreg/Holo, or you can go into 3x ace territory (Kylo does check all but the PS6 box on my ace checklist).

Don't forget the biggest advantage of the FOceptor has over the Interceptor: It's ability to natively get double modded shots. That's a big deal.

I'd argue he's pretty heavily undercosted for what he brings. I was expecting him to be ~65pts, maybe low 60's if FFG wanted to aggressively push him. Having him at 57pts is just nuts, making him essentially an auto include in all FO squads IMO. When the FOceptor drops, I'm expecting to see a lot of Vonreg + Holo + Kylo lists, and vassal hasn't been disappointing.

Yeah block formation is sad against an I1 swarm. In matchups like that, with similar lists, I run it like a 3-ship ace list. Pair off the X-wings on each flank, and run Arvel on his own down the middle. I've been defaulting to that pincer attack a lot lately, not just with generic lists. Yeah it does RAW.

Yeah Arvel's a really underrated pilot, especially against lower PS targets. The only issue I have with the Arvel + 4X list is it's vulnerability to being blocked by a PS1 swarm. Obviously it depends on your play group, but we have quite a few CIS players in our meta, so I always try to get a PS1 dude in my squads.

@Biophysical You are truly a man after my own heart. As soon as I heard people talking about 5X, I started thinking about similar squads that are better. I quite like this: 32 Pheonix Squadron Pilot w/ Intimidation 164 (4x) Red Squadron Veteran w/ Servos 4 Bid Having the RSVs at PS3 allows them to PS kill both droids and other 5X lists, it's just a shame crackshot is out of hyperspace. You could buff the Pheonix up to a GSV, but I like him being at PS1 with a large bid. It allows you to mostly ensure getting initiative against droid swarms. The other option is to drop one of the Reds to a Blue and get Arvel: 40 Blue Squadron Escort w/ Servos 123 (4x) Red Squadron Veteran w/ Servos 37 Arvel Squadron Pilot w/ Intimidation 0 Bid You could also drop all the Reds down to Blues and get Thane to flank (Garven's also OK, but less so as a flanker): 32 Pheonix Squadron Pilot w/ Intimidation 120 (3x) Blue Squadron Escort w/ Servos 48 Thane Kyrell w/ Servos 0 Bid Finally, while it's not 5-ships, I do really like the look of this list: 120 (3x) Blue Squadron Escort w/ Servos 79 Lando 1 Bid Is Lando worth 2x Blues? I think so. Even naked, he's tough, and really good at getting double modded R1 shots. Plus he gives you some 'tricks' with his ability to pseudo-coordinate the Blues. Lando's also great for blocking PS5+ aces (your small 1pt bid means you're likely being given initiative).

I've always felt the free force regen at the end of turn was just lazy design (it's at worst an unblockable calculate every turn). It should have been something like: you only regen a force token after you fully execute a non-red move. This gives it some restriction and the ability to block it. Or better yet: you only regen a force token in the status phase when your force pool is empty. This gives the bigger force pool pilots essentially a couple calculates that go away once spent.

You just slow-roll forward and send the probes in first to get your locks before you engage. It's a steal at 5pts on a Hyena who is unlikely to use his bomb slot anyway.

They're a good cheap ordnance carrier. The Hyena's have several important advantages compared to a torrent, which is basically relegated to a cheap blocker role. The first is cheap access to the probe droid for TLs before combat. This helps all those cheap droids with ESCs hit even harder with double modded shots, and gets the Hyena the TL it needs to fire off those sexy plasma torps. The torp slot for plasmas is the second important difference. A single plasma in your squad to open your salvo is very nice. Grappling struts makes obstacles a bonus for your swarm rather than something to be avoided. I find I don't deliberately factor the rocks into my strategy, but rather struts just allows me to ignore/use them when i need to. Finally, networked calc gives easy access to double modded shots (404 loves these) and makes your key ordnance carriers harder to focus fire down.

CLT has definitely improved with a price cut and 7B's increase, but it still suffers from encouraging poor ace play. Generally ace's should be taking shots out the edge of their arc so they have safe abort lines. I think 7B is still the better choice on you higher PS aces, but CLT now definitely has some promise on lower PS Jedi, especially with a Sense carrier to setup blocks.

Obviously you'd account for any changes with a points increase. Nobody's suggesting the B-wing needs buffs for nothing. It's already a top performer. The problem is the B-wing doesn't do anything interesting. It's just a tanky 3-attack dice fighter. They rarely run any meaningful upgrades. I'd prefer if it was the Rebel's control ship with it's ion cannons, but the Y-wing with Ion turret and Veteran turret gunner does that way better atm. The Y-wing doesn't need to sacrifice damage for control effects like the B-wing currently does.

Here's some more repaints I've done recently. The photos were taken on my phone, so they're not the best quality. TIE Striker Repaint: The striker's wings still move. A resistance A-wing I painted as a CAC prize: A fairly quick ship to repaint as it's really just 2 colours plus weathering and a few details.

As I said in a 1.0 thread; the B-wing needed a ship ability and/or some upgrades that reflected it's role as an assault fighter, designed to fight bigger ships. To quote Wookieepedia: "...it was primarily designed as a "blockade buster" to attack and destroy large capital ships." Hardened Deflectors: (Ships Ability) After you suffer 3 or more damage from an attack, recover 1 shield (up to your shield value). Basically just 1.0 Reinforced Deflectors. This represents how the B-wings shields are calibrated to deflect heavy attacks from capitol ships, but aren't as effective against anti-fighter weapons like a TIE fighter's guns. Linked Ion Cannons: (Double Cannon Slot, B-wing only) Attack 3, Forward Arc, Range 1-3. Attack: If this attack hits, spend 1 Hit or Crit result to cause the defender to gain 1 ion token. All remaining Hit/Crit results inflict Hit damage. This cannon is to represent the B-wing's large number of Ion Cannons. This basically just becomes a replacement attack for the B-wing's primary, which deals 1 fewer damage, but deals an ion token.

I played against that triple 4 list on vassal the other day, and it was legit good. I managed a win, but it was looking dicey for a bit. 72 Mace w/ Sense, R2, 7B. 64 Luminara w/ R2, 7B. 64 Saesee w/ R2, 7B. They're all PS4, so between Sense, Fine-tuned Controls and Saesee, you can block/dodge really effectively.

Dedicated 'blockers' are pretty uncommon, it's more of a situational thing when to block. Sometimes I use Soontir Fel as a blocker if the situation demands it. On the flip side, in some matchups my PS1 Wampa becomes a squirrely arc dodger. It really just depends on what you need that turn. Sometimes it's best not to block, even if you could. So many times I see players block a ship and all they achieve is removing one of their shots that turn. In general your cheaper, lower PS ships are going to be doing the majority of the blocking. PS1 Awings, TIE fighters, Trade Drones, and the PS2 Torrent. The PS1 U-wing, YT1300 and Reaper also make decent medium/big base blockers. Any badly damaged ship that is likely to be PS-killed that turn are usually happy to dive in and stop at least one opponent from shooting at them. It's really more about what should block that turn, rather than having a dedicated blocker to always do it. As I said, I had a game recently where I used Soontir to block my opponent's Vader, then Wampa and Vermeil got the kill.