I recently attended a small store championship. This tournament had a prize for the jankiest list, and I had been wanting to play a list which used snap shot, so I built a TIE Snap-swarm.
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| Straight up janky trash. Just the way I like it! |
I've played snapshot several times before, and in my experience it's greatest effect is complicating your opponents decision-making. Most players are adverse to proc'ing it, and will overthink their initial approach when coming up against mass snapshot. You either get some extra shooting, or your opponent jumps through hoops to avoid it. Snap shot is generally best at putting extra damage on agility 0-1 ships, or getting chip damage through on low-HP agility 3 ships which rely on green tokens for defence. Against agility 2 ships it's a lot swingier, as they have the green dice to reliably dodge poor shots, and the HP to mitigate any damage that gets through.
My List:
Building this list was fairly simple. I wanted a decent number of ships with Snap Shot, and figured a bunch of 3-cost TIEs was the easiest way to achieve this. I started with four of the 3-costers, which all had 9+ loadout and a Talent slot to equip Snap Shot. After the initial mini-swarm, I decided that I needed an object capper. Lorrir was recently buffed into the 3-slot, so he was a no-brainer to flank and/or cap objectives. His loadout was tricky, but I eventually settled on Enduring over Elusive. In hindsight, Enduring was the right choice, as it saved quite a few crits over the course of the tournament.
That left me with 5 points, which was either a fifth TIE with Snap Shot, plus a 2-cost filler, or I could splurge on a 5-cost pseudo-ace. I chose to try out Second Sister, with a shield for defence, and a Thread Tracer to buff the swarm if needed. Like Lorrir, Second Sister proved to be a really versatile ship, punching out damage, tanking shots, and grabbing objectives, depending on what I needed.
Round 1: Assault at the Satellite Array
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| A rare photo I remembered to take. This is the End-phase of the first turn. |
My opponent had some standard FO good-stuff in Midnight, Whisper-Kylo, and Malarus. He also had 2 tech pieces in Grudge with a Prox Mine (very nasty against my 3HP ships), and Agent Tierny (less useful against my list).
Objectives ended up in a tight triangle on the left-side, and with me placing the final objective deep on my opponent's side. I liked this setup because I had an efficient joust element to fight over the triangle, and two fast ships to flex into the fight, or go for the periphery objectives. The obstacles were fairly scattered, and didn't effect the game much.
I did a fairly standard mini-swarm + flanker deployment. The mini-swarm deploys on one side, and uses the board edge to protect one of it's flanks. It can then either joust whatever is opposite, or cut across the board if the opponent doesn't engage. You generally want the swarm deployed on the objective-heavy side so they can bully the opponent off them, or cap them on the way to the fight.
Lorrir deployed central so he could assist the swarm if the shuttle, and Malarus committed, or switch to objectives if they didn't. Second Sister was on her lonesome on the far side to keep her from stressing my ships, and cap objectives and/or harass any enemy ships on her side. Kylo and Midnight ended up opposite her.
This game started with me getting a lucky kill on my opponent's bomber before it could drop a Prox Mine on Lorrir. This then snowballed pretty quickly, with Snap Shot, into a dead Xi Shuttle the turn after. After all that carnage I just focused on the objectives to guarantee the win. Second sister spent the game capping objectives, and tying up Kylo and Midnight. Some TIEs died, as they do.
Win 22-14
Round 2: Scramble the Transmissions
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| Setup of game 2. |
My opponent had a resistance chonk list, which included four T70s, and Finn in the pod. It was all the usual T70s, except Kare Kun substituted in instead of Jess Pava (PS4 instead of PS3).
Again I setup the swarm on one side, ready to push into the objectives in the centre, and/or on my opponent's side. Lorrir deployed ready to cap the objective on my side, and head into the centre of the map. Second Sister was setup on the far side to bait some X-wings, or quickly flank in behind them if they ignored her.
Snap Shot was a non-factor this game, as I struggled to deal meaningful damage with it against the 7HP, 2 agility X-wings. We fought constantly over control of the satellites, and they were changing hands throughout the game. I lost a TIE in the opening exchange, before he could fire (which always hurts), but did heavy damage to Ello. An unfortunate self-bump on Turn 4 cost Finn a shield, and then his life, and Ello died soon after. I then proceeded to spread a bunch of damage across the remaining X-wings, whilst my other TIEs all died one by one. It was 18-19 in my opponent's favour on the last turn with me controlling two of the three satellites, so a single kill either way would result in a win. Luckily Second Sister survived some concentrated fire on 2HP, with Lorrir managing to kill a heavily damaged T70, which got me over the line.
Gotta love a close game.
Win 24 - 20
Round 3: Salvage Mission
My opponent had Han with Bistan, BoY Luke, a Chop-Saw Ghost, and Sabine in the TIE.
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| A scary list, with lots of heavy-hitters rolling 4 dice. |
Again my TIEs deployed on one side, with the two interceptors loosely paired on the other side. Sabine was opposite my swarm to grab a crate next to her, Han started in the middle of the board. and Luke and Chopper chose to deploy on one side opposite the interceptors.
Han's first move had him committed to a rather restricted flight path due to the obstacles, so my swarm made a bee-line to head him off in the corner. My interceptors both noped out of the joust with Luke, and Chopper. Lorrir went fast through the centre to grab the central crate, and Second Sister slow-rolled, then shot past Luke and Chopper, grabbing a box on the way out. Sabine turned tail and ran from the swarm with her box, while the swarm ambushed Han and took him down to 6 Hull at the cost of a heroic TIE pilot. I missed a follow-up block on Han, which almost cost me the game. Luckily I was able to chase Han down the next turn, and then rapidly drop the Ghost over the next two turns when it finally turned around and came in. This came at the cost of another heroic TIE pilot, and also Lorrir, who died trading fire with the Ghost.
Win 22-18? (I'm a little unsure on the exact score for this one)
Round 4: Chance Encounter
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| A High-quality re-enactment of the last game. The author is a graphics design genius. |
My TIE swarm started on the left side with Lorrir, and Second Sister deployed centrally. Ello, Doza, and Jess were deployed as a group on the side facing the TIE swarm, and Temin and L'ulo deployed on the other side of the board to try and race in and flank the two interceptors.
The Swarm and the three T70s opposite had a good old fashion joust, with my opponent managing to avoid Snap Shot mass proc'ing on a single X-wing, though Doza did lose 2 shields to a single lucky Snap Shot. Second Sister rushed over to assist the Swarm and turn it into an unequal fight. I lost a TIE (before it could shoot, RIP) in exchange for reducing Doza to 1HP. Doza died the next turn, and we went back and forth over the next couple of turns trading ships.
This game really demonstrated how great Lorrir is as bait. L'ulo, and especially Temin wasted a lot of time trying to chase him down until finally giving up and coming in to assist the other T70s. Lorrir danced around, and dealt plenty of damage before finally being felled by Ello on the last turn.
My opponent made two clutch decisions which swung the game. Firstly he chose to Tallon Roll Ello in the midgame, but went in the opposite direction than I expected. This was a big deal as I wasted a TIE doing a hard-1 and BR back to block the obvious Tallon. This left Ello nothing to shoot, but in a decent position to reengage the next turn, rather than spending 2-3 turns trying to avoid the board edge and turn around. Some big-brain moves by my opponent, as sometimes the worse, safer move is the better move. More importantly my opponent took a gamble targeting a healthy TIE later in the game, instead of my 1HP Gideon. This paid off, as the TIE died, and I lost my only ship in range of the central objective, causing a 2VP swing against me.
The game ended with Lorrir dying to Temin, but Second Sister killing L'ulo to tie the game. In return she took no damage from Jess's follow-up shot. This left Second Sister on 3HP, denying my opponent the 1/2 points on her and hence the win. The game was close pretty much the whole way through, and ended in a draw. What better way to end a tournament?
Draw 20-20
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| 2nd place, also known as the first loser. |
Overall Result: 2nd place. All my games were close, so losing out on the tie-break for 1st was unsurprising. Unfortunately, I did not win the title of Jank-master, so it was a hollow podium position.
Post Tournament Thoughts:
I feel Snap Shot was pretty underwhelming. It sprinkled some damage on early, but I don't think it made up for the inefficiencies of getting it into the list. Next time it's probably worth swapping at least two of the TIEs for the more efficient 3 cost bomber chassis, which also have the slot and loadout for Snap Shot:
It could just be that my estimating was a little rusty, and I didn't get as many early Snap Shot triggers as I should have. I'm glad I tried it out, but a more traditional swarm is probably better. Iden and four Black Squadron Pilots is the same cost, and gets me a more efficient swarm with an extra TIE.
The clear MVPs of my list were the two interceptors:
Second Sister was just generally very solid. She constantly applied offensive pressure, flanked, tanked damage, and/or scored objectives. The only part of her kit that was underwhelming was the thread tracer. It just feels bad sacrificing a 3-dice primary, even if it is to get locks for the swarm. Shield Upgrade and Foresight might be a better build to try, which also leans into the activation-phase shooting.
Lorrir was even better at 3 points. His weird movement constantly through off my opponents, and most of them just chose to ignore him. It's perfect for a 3-cost ship so heavily tilted towards offense. Enduring was also clutch in a couple of games, stopping ~4 crits over the course of the day (two from a single Proton Torpedo from Luke, which allowed him to keep his salvage crate on 1HP).
I learned a lot playing this list and it was a fun day of X-wing!
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