Snubfighters is a slang for fighters that are good against both squadrons and ships. They are seen in most fighter heavy fleets, to help supplement bomber wings with a little more ant squadron punch. In the current state of the game you really ether see little to no fighters, or tons of fighters, you don’t see very much middle of the ground fighter groups. Uses of snubfighters might help bring about a possible resurgence of the mid weight fighter complement in lists, but before we get to deep into it lets look at some examples of snubfighters.
Looking at snub fighters I am not looking at ships that benefit from upgrades like Sloan or Toryan Farr, as Sloan turns ties into snubs, and Toryan makes it so VCX’s can get reliable damage onto ship, we are just looking at as is squadrons. The Imperial Snubfighters are: Decimators, Tie Phantoms, Tie Advances, Tie Defenders, Firesprays, and Aggressor fighters, on the Rebel side we have A-wings, E-wings, Lancers, X-wings, YT-2400’s, and B-wings (sure B-wings want to bomb ships and are a bit slow but with 3 blue anti-squadron dice I had to put them on the list)
Rebels have a bit of an advantage in the snubfighter game in that a majority of their snubfighters also have bomber meaning they can resolve critical effects, and they only become more reliable if a Bomber command center is brought in tow, in addition to that 4 of their snubfighters have the ability to do 2 or more damage, while the imperils only have 3 that can do that however the Tie phantoms can spike 4 damage, but it’s very inconsistent.
So why is it that we see ether little to no fighters and then maxed out fighters and how can snubfighters help counter this, well it’s all about return on investment. So for example if you take max squadrons 134 points, you want to make sure you are getting 134 points of value out of it the same is true for lower numbers of squadrons. If you take 0 points of squadrons you get 0 points of value but if you take 30-50 points in squadrons can you get 30-50 points of value from them, when playing against other fighters most the time they can buy you a turn maybe 2 against heavy bombing lists, but unless you have snubfighters not just CAP/Air superiority fighters, if you face another list with 30-50 points of squadrons or even no squadrons you will get little to no value from them, the 30-50 points of squadrons is also vulnerable to Intel and that decreases their value in certain engagements.
So looking at medium fighter coverage 60 to about 100 points of squadrons, what can that give us over the heavy and the light coverage, well with the inclusion of snubfighters, we can get something very flexible in that if we can thin out and tie down larger fighter wings, also as we have more fighters making it a little harder for intel to give heavy to all of our squadrons especially with clever play. The Medium fighter screen can tie up squadrons for longer, and also take out more opposing squadrons, to really help thin out the heavy fighter list, but it is not without downsides, it can still be chewed though and ignored by intel by larger squadrons wings, it is possible that the smaller squadron wings tie you up for too long, and you don’t get full value out of your fighters, but I have been exploring the medium fighter complement the past month or month and a half, and well it works, you can really make large squadron wings life hard, and you can get some pretty good value from them in fights with small or no squadron wings once you start going after ships. I have a few examples from both sides of medium squadron wings that I have had success with by using snubfighters.
• IG-88 (21)
• Saber Squadron (12)
• Ciena Ree (17)
• Captain Jonus (16)
• Gamma Squadron (10)
• Valen Rudor (13)
= 89 Points
So this one is pretty simple one of my favorite small squadron build for the Empire is Valen Ciena and two tie bombers its solid and really does some heavy lifting I once took out nearly 80 points of fighters with it before its just very solid, but is very weak against intel, all this does is add IG-88 and saber to help counter the intel issue IG-88 adds another black dice to the mix keeping the squadron wing versatile and Jonus is amazing in that he is a tough “escort” for Valen, and his ability to support ship attacks by giving them a accuracy is great.
• 4 x A-wing Squadron (44)
• Green Squadron (12)
• Gold Squadron (12)
= 68 Points
This is a very simple squadron wing, but let me just say I honestly think point for point A-wings are the best fighters in the game (excluding aces) they are fast they have a black dice against ships 3 blue anti squadron and counter 2 they are just super a solid squadron, their down side is only 4 hull, but its not terrible it will take 2-3 attacks most of the time to kill them meaning they should get counter off at least twice and the black dice is still solid damage against ships, this wing performs very well for me no matter what I find myself up against, Gold squadron adds a little bit more punch but also does not have heavy like other y-wings. This wing will hold up and chew up a good amount of fighters from fighter heavy list, and can do a respectable amount of damage to ships.
• Mauler Mithel (15)
• Tempest Squadron (13)
• Soontir Fel (18)
• Zertik Strom (15)
• JumpMaster 5000 (12)
• TIE Advanced Squadron (12)
= 85 Points
This one has been though a few revisions it had Bossk at one point, but this is what I have settled for its quite nice at killing squadrons with the auto damage from mauler and soontir, and if they don’t kill your escorts they can chip in against ships, you could upgrade the Jumpmaster to Dengar for more anti-ship power and the counter would be nice, but if you want to keep the price down its not absolutely necessary.
• Ketsu Onyo (22)
• 3 x X-wing Squadron (39)
• Biggs Darklighter (19)
• Gold Squadron (12)
= 92 Points
This is the complement I have had the least experience with, but it is very interesting in that it deals with intel is a whole new way, by using ketsu’s ability to slow squadrons down to make it difficult to get into bombing range of your ships and the X-wings protect her. Once all is said and done you can start bombing, this works best with some way to speed up the X-wings. It is one of the more interesting and fun fighter wings I have run. It is better against ships with a Bomber command center in the list, but it runs the risk of that being a dead 8 points, if faced with a large squadron wing.
• Valen Rudor (13)
• Whisper (20)
• Ciena Ree (17)
• Saber Squadron (12)
• Maarek Stele (21)
• Colonel Jendon (20)
= 103 Points
So this one is a bit expensive its over the 100 point threshold, flirting with the line of being a large squadron complement and a medium fighter wing, but I really love this complement. You have your standard Valen and Ciena and you add in Maarek, and Jendon as “escorts” Saber with the help of Jendon can take out intel, and whisper can reposition to tie up any lose ends or to make the other player’s intel ship have to reposition constantly to free up squadrons its solid damage to squadrons, and ships with the consistent damage of Jendon and Maarek and the spike damage of Whisper, I simply love it.
• Corran Horn (22)
• Hera Syndulla (28)
• 2 x E-wing Squadron (30)
• 2 x A-wing Squadron (22)
= 102 Points
Okay so this one does the same as the last one it toes that 100 point threshold again, but it’s solid. This is rouge E-wings having a Fighter coordination teams can help bump up the threat range of the E-wings if you like, its great as first player or with bail as you use rouge to last your opponent and then first them at the start of the round, snipe helps take out the key pieces and you can use the A-wings to tie squadrons down. Again bombing is better with a bomber command center because of the E-wings red die, but could be a dead 8 points.
I ended with that last list for a reason, because you might say “it would be better if the A-wings where Shara and Tyco,” and you would be right; that is why medium squadron wings are sparse, aces they are just better. I love the squadron game they way it is but I do think things could be better, aces are a bit too good right now, and I wish intel just gave friendly squadrons grit, but this is a whole new can of worms. As it stands the reason we see ether none or very few to a very heavy squadron complement is because aces are so good that if you are taking squadrons you just want to load up on aces and by the end of it you’re at 100+ points like these last two squadron complements, and it does not benefit you to take 10+ generic squadrons because you can rarely activate that many.
Take for example this complement:
Squadrons: • Norra Wexley (17) • Ten Numb (19) • Keyan Farlander (20) • Dagger Squadron (15) = 71 Points
So here we got a medium fighter wing, but is it 71 points of value if we run into heavy squadron fleet not really we just don't have enough attacks to do that much, that is why I found that the medium fighter group its sometimes more about quantity then quality necessarily its more about overwhelming the key aces defense tokens in large fighter groups, while still keeping your squadron wing versatile enough to get some value from attacking ships when/if the time comes.
So how do we make our fighter group feel this way we need to take key aces like Ten Neb, Howlrunner, Mauler Mithle, Shara Bay, etc. its also not a bad Idea to take flight controllers or other such upgrades when playing a medium squadron wing lets look at another example, this is a very common heavy rebel fighter complement:
Squadrons: • Norra Wexley (17) • Jan Ors (19) • Dagger Squadron (15) • Wedge Antilles (19) • Ten Numb (19) • Gold Squadron (12) • Shara Bey (17) • Dutch Vander (16) = 134 Points
in total even if we assume wedge gets his extra dice we are looking at a total of 26 anti squadron dice, but lets look at another squadron complement:
• 4 x X-wing Squadron (52) • 2 x A-wing Squadron (22) = 74 Points
So with this complement of squadrons with a flight controllers in tow on an assault frigate or MC-75 with a squadron token we can get the same amount of dice, 26 out of this 74 points of squadrons, and sure the other list could take flight controllers as well, but think of the rebel ships that can take that upgrade they are more expensive ships and start to suck up points that need to go other places in the fleet our medium squadron complement gets us the same amount of anti squadron dice while saving points for the ships to buff it to perform on the same level as a heavy fighter list, its all about point efficiency, hopefully you can make your 6 squadrons feel like 8 and your opponent will say
I have been trying to make medium squadron wings work; and I have had some success doing it so far. Medium squadrons wings have done some good work for me, they have held off larger squadron groups for a bit longer then smaller compliments have, and also when I have faced little to no squadrons they have for sure given me tons of value when attacking ships. I have used them to take out key pieces in the fighter game making the heavy squadrons player list have less value as they where counting on Jendon, or Ten Nub etc and was able to take it that pieces off the board before it got much value. I have played against several Imperial two ship builds with a medium fighter wing and taken out Jendon before he could let one of his friends to double tap then started to work on one of them. There was a game I took out Marrrke, Morrna and Jendon before they got to work their magic making the squadron wing hardly a threat, and even though I lost more points in squadrons then him in the end it was definitely worth the time it bought me and the value it made him lose.
Using versatile snubfighters, or a combination of specialized fighters to get medium fighter force can be worth the points just remember to keep it versatile and you may be supersized how things work out with a medium coverage group. I am going to continue Messing around with medium squadron groups, and I would encourage everyone to do the same, even if they only buy you an extra turn in the figher game or deal just one extra point of damage, sometimes that one point of damage is all you need to win the game.
have a great week everyone!
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