Dropping the mat to 2.5' by 2.5' is probably the only way you'll reduce game time without cutting games abnormally short, but at what cost?

Most players won't qualify for the cut, so 5 rounds of swiss seems reasonable to give everyone a fair dose of X-wing for their money. If you make the cut, it is a long day, but that's half the point of a tournament.

I would trade Midnight and Null for 3 Epsilons in a heartbeat. I hate to say it, because I loved Omega Leader in 1.0, but Midnight is just a really bad ship for the points. FOs in general just don't work well as aces due to the lack of double actions and limited repositions. And while Null is fun at I7, he's also incredibly ignorable.

A couple thoughts: Only joust if you are confident you can control the engagement range. X wings are sturdy and you're unlikely to kill one in a round unless you've already hit it for a couple damage. Spread your ships out and approach in such a way that all of your ships have an escape vector, or at least can duck behind an obstacle. Drag them through the rocks. X wings have a hard time making turns around obstacles, which is your best bet to split their arcs and only take a couple shots. And if they close wings to maneuver, you can worry a little less about their offense.

SFs with optics are still very good in hyperspace. For me, I think the main issue with the prior squad is that Ace + Mini swarm is tough to fit into the First Order, especially with a Silencer. Another option would be to drop Blackout down to Holo, at which point you can upgrade the Epsilon to a 4th Optics SF. I've toyed a bit myself with Kylo, Vonreg, and 2 ties, though I haven't put it in the table yet. Be careful with Vonreg; he can be surprisingly predictable and can't dodge arcs as well as Kylo. If I were your opponent, he would probably be my first target, unless Scorch/Rivas made themselves obviously vulnerable

Just me, but I would trade an SF for Scorch, use the remaining points to put Fanatical on Blackout. I'd then run Scorch separate from the other tie block to force my opponent to commit to one or the other. If they turn on Scorch, he will most likely die, but not before doing some damage and putting your opponent out of position. This same strategy won't work with an SF, since a lone SF is largely ignorable for the first few rounds, but Scorch poses a significant threat. If you do keep the list as is, spread out your SFs. They will lose any straight joust, so force your opponent to commit to one Tie who can then turn away and use the butt arc.

A ship that is afflicted with buzz droids can barrel roll to leave them behind. However, buzz droids are launched at the start of the engagement phase and do damage at the end of the engagement phase, so if they land on a ship it's at least 1 guaranteed damage. And on a ship like Boba that can't br, it puts a timer on him. Discord missiles are super cheap at 4 points. You can easily run 8 ships and have 3 discords. ****, you can even fit a tactical relay on there. Case in point Duncan Howard won the Texas System Open without a relay, but I suspect it's a much harder list for the average player. Anyway, I'm not necessarily saying that discords are an auto include, but they definitely provide a lot of value.

Discord missiles are good against the following: • Lists that like to joust (easy to predict enemy ship movement and hit them with the Buzzes) •Lists with hard to damage ships (Auto damage, need I say more?) The thing to remember is, even against ships that can barrel roll off of Buzz Droids, if you can nail them with the launching of the buzz droids, it will do a damage before they have an opportunity to barrel roll. I will pay 4 points to do one damage to Obi-Wan any day. Technically, your opponent can shoot the Buzz Swarm, but I've yet to see anyone make that choice (also, every shot your opponent doesn't take against you is about 1/2 a vulture's worth of health saved.)

I mean, the classic is full health Soontir with focus vs an unmodded Sunny Bounder range 3 obstructed shot. Obviously Soontir dies.

I've run tons of Scorch and absolutely love him as bait. I threaten to joust/flank with him and if I feel my opponent is coming after him, I dial a 1 hard and barrel roll towards my own board edge. I can then either run across my board edge or turn back in, depending on whether my opponent is advertising that they are coming for Scorch or not. Worst case is my opponent Jousts Scorch when I predicted otherwise. In That scenario, I'm still alright because my opponent is pointing their whole list at 35 points of mine (I like just Fanatical). Not to mention that Scorch has a decent chance to survive most jousts.

I'm not sure I understand your point. It's true that you may need to spend your focus on defense and thus not get to use AO. However, if you triggered passive sensors, then you won't have any mods for defense. The optics player could also choose to save their focus for offense if they weren't concerned about the damage coming through. Meanwhile, to the point @Deffly made, you should still have 3 ships with focus who can get good mods. I'm in complete agreement with you here.

Here's my biggest question: who are you bidding against? Boba Fenn is the only list that typically bids deep. And at 12 points, you stand no chance. 13 points is a low bid for that list. CLT Jedi can bid comfortably at 12, so it's a coin toss for that matchup. I would recommend upgrading Holo to Vonreg. Vonreg can bully opposing I5s regardless of bid. And if you drop down to 2 epsilons, you'll outbid everyone but Fenn Boba.

Blount is a conditional 3 red; you only get it if you're flying other ships into range 1 of your intended target. Scorch just has to be unstressed, which it can do easily with that amazing dial. Most importantly, Scorch can hold his own as a wing of 1. That's pretty impressive for 1/6th of your squad. Lets me set up as below and now there's nowhere my opponent can go to dodge shots. Vnreg Holo Eps Eps Scorch

This has been my main takeaway over the last 6 months of bowing to the First Order. Even before the points change I had a lot of success with 6-7 Tie swarms. Although I've flown purely Tie swarms in the past to solid success, they do suffer a bit from low red dice. It's why I'm convinced the Focho has a ceiling that it just can't break through, as opposed to droids which can fit upgrades to supplement their offense. However, as filler? Absolutely fantastic. My favorite squads in FO right now all start pretty much the same way: Fanatical Scorch and 2 Epsilons. The Epsilons fly together in the middle, Scorch flies by himself up a board edge, and the other 125 points fly up the other edge. Essentially, I have 3 wings now that my opponent can't ignore. If my opponent turns towards Scorch or the rest of my list, I can usually disengage with the target for a turn or two and set up positioning. If they joust the 2 Epsilons in the middle, They'll have to put in a disproportionate effort to kill them (It takes on average 8 2-die focused shots or 4 3-die focused shots to kill an epsilon).

I'm not trying to say that 5x can't beat Boba, but it's going to be a tougher battle than just raw fire power. The hypothetical situation I gave was about the best engagement you could realistically hope for (If you can trap Boba at range 2, the math changes, but it is not an easy feat thanks to Slave 1) and yet, even with 18 focused red dice you can still only expect to get half points. I don't know what the optimal 5x strategy is; you need to keep those guns on target as much as possible because Boba Fenn has the ability to erase one every 1-2 turns. Boba dislikes agile ships that move after him, effectively turning off his slave 1 ability. Boba is usually over 100 points for a really big gun, and if he never gets to shoot it meaningfully he gets quite sad.