Article 14: Ships I like #2, the TIE Defender

This article title is a lie.  I don't like the TIE/Defender.   What I have with the TIE Defender is history.  I will start there. 

When I started playing X-wing during first edition, the Defender had just hit shelves.  By the common wisdom of the time, it wasn't very good, compared to the extraordinary pre-nerf TIE/Phantom that released beside it, the Defender was considered laughable.  Nevertheless, I was new to the game, but I was an experienced player of similar games, so I decided I knew better and was going to prove the crowd wrong.  I focused my efforts on a 2-ship list (unheard of for small base ships at that time), Rexler Brath and Colonel Vessery, both with HLCs and as much other stuff as I could cram onto them.  

Through what was probably 30% actually discovering underappreciated things about the TIE Defender (white K-turns and double-modded 4 dice  attacks at all ranges actually make up for a lot of other weaknesses) and 70% just getting a ton of reps in, I racked up a pretty solid local record with the list.  I then went 7-1 at my first regional, going out in top 4.  I went on to accumulate a pretty solid record with Defender based lists: 5-1 at Gencon the following year with TIE/Ds (couldn't play day 2), 5-2 and top 8 at another regional.  These were with a mix of pre-title Defenders, the double shot TIE/D title, and the free Evade TIE/x7 title.  My favorite lists always focused on the offense of the ship, because the offense is more interesting than defense.  The untitled HLC version of the ship and the ion cannon equipped TIE/D were ships that did a tremendous amount of damage, but didn't have a lot of defense.  They had enough hit points to soak a hit or two, but wouldn't hold up to sustained damage.  They ended up trading hit points for position and tried to win the game from that good position.  This forced the player to focus on maneuverability to get ahead in the damage race and control the game.  It was a fun way to play.  

Yet in 2.0, the version they brought forward from 1.0 was the TIE/x7.  They also improved the dial (neat!), added a shield (cool!), added more slots (awesome!), and added boost (the best!).  None of those upgrades, however, helped the direct  offense of the ship.  The interesting builds of 1.0 defenders were abandoned in favor of the rather boring points fortress centered x7 lists.  The only difference was that Defenders were a little more capable, and so pricey enough that you couldn't take 3 (and thank God for that).  

This transition has been a source of annoyance and occasional frustration for me.  I like how the ship moves, I love the ace/jouster hybrid, I love the speed, but high defense, high cost, and a lack of offense meant that the favored way to play was running to time, something that almost never happened with offensively oriented Defender builds.  Consequently, while I've played them a fair amount over the initial year of 2.0, they've not been a ship I've really focused on.  

Then a friend and local player, Joe, brought back the generous and unexpected gift of a small pile of Defender alt arts he got with tickets while at Worlds.  Among them was Rexler Brath, my main pilot of 2.0.  I was getting a little burned out on the list I'd been running lately, so there was no better time to give Defenders another serious hard look.

My go-to Rexler wingman is Soontir Fel, as he's got a lot of maneuverability and offense and still leaves enough points for an okay 3rd ship, so I started cycling through different Rexler builds with different 3rd ships.  My goal is to maximize the offense of the Defender, and there are 3 methods to try to do this:

1.)  Get more offensive mods 

2.)  Keep the ship cheap so it has a higher offense/points ratio

3.)  Take upgrades that help it stay in an aggressive position to make the most of its base offense

These 3 methods are, of course, a little mutually exclusive.  I started trying all 3 in different ways.  

The first upgrade I put on Rexler right now is Lone Wolf.  It helps with method 1 and 3.  An occasional passive offensive or defensive mod is great for 5 points on a ship as heavy as a named Defender.  It gives him double modded offense when he's not taking heavy fire, and triple modded defense when he is.  The amount if fire a Focus/Evade/Reroll/3 dice 7hp ship can sustain is stupid.

Others ways to get offense in the conventional way are support ships (Jendon is the strongest candidate right now), HLC, and FCS.  Jendon is great because he's an anchor for the squad.  He provides support early through long range locks, then he also coordinates and is a big angry gun in the middle of the board that allows your other ships some freedom to maneuver.  If you've got Krennic along for the ride Jendon hits even harder due to his own lock and gives a little boost to somebody's offense through optimized prototype.  He also keeps your spirits up with timely Rogue One quotes.  HLC is probably a little too situational to rely on, as it's not just bullseye, but r2-3 only.  This makes it useful vs high ship count lists and large bases, but aiming for a bullseye on a ship with no repositioning can be compromising, and 4 points is a little too expensive for situational use, especially when a bid of some kind might be wanted.  FCS seems like a good combination with Jendon, but like HLC might be worth more as bid than offensive upgrade as long as ship counts are fairly high. 

To pursue  Method 2 (keeping things cheap), you're really looking at downgrading to Delta Squadron Pilots.  They're the cheapest Defender by a long shot, and their offense isn't substantially less than the more expensive Defenders.  That aside, any build with a Defender involves me looking pretty hard at which upgrades are truly necessary to make the build work.  The ship is enough points that trimming a few here and there can result in  big increase in capability to another ship in the squad, but at the same time, a few points can make a big difference in the Defender's capability as well.  It's a difficult balancing act, sometimes. 

Method 3 is probably the most interesting, because it involves the movement aspect of the game most heavily.  In 2.0, there are no double shot TIE/Ds, and no long range HLC hammers.  This means high offense means getting up close.  This is a practical thing for a Defender to attempt, because the ship is tough as nails and can survive close range exchanges better than about any ship in the game.  At the same time, however, if it gets blocked most of that defense goes away.  As the Defender is a forward arc only ship and it wants to go fast toward the opponent to get its free Evade token, it's easily blocked and torn up by multiple opposing ships.  This conundrum makes the obvious upgrade Advanced Sensors.  AS grants extra maneuverability to avoid multiple firing arcs and it allows the Defender to happily crash into an opposing ship after grabbing a Focus or Evade for defense.  Either of these options go along way to increasing offense.  The option to divert and avoid arcs means the ship can attempt to attack at closer (more damaging) ranges and take the most obvious aggressive moves while retaining a plan B.  The ability to maintain course while grabbing a Focus even if blocked allows the ship to "dodge" an arc by being blocked and still deliver a powerful close range shot.  With Advanced Sensors you increase both the quality and quantity if your shots without having to be reckless in your maneuvers.

The downside of Advanced Sensors is the substantial cost (10 pts) considering its somewhat narrow application.  It's amazing against masses of lower initiative ships, and that's the primary reason to take it, I think. It secondarily lets a Defender make better use of its decent selection of red moves and to more effectively move around obstacles.  As you face squads with fewer ships where the ships are of higher initiative, Advanced Sensors becomes more of an occasional use upgrade than a game winner, however.  With its high cost, it starts working against Method 2 in a big way.  However, Defenders, with their easily accessed defensive token stack and white K-turn, can absorb fire from lower ship count lists (aces) extremely well, so Advanced Sensors is shoring up a weakness more than doubling down on a strength.  I think this is important in a ship as expensive as a named Defender, as you would really prefer to avoid having almost half your list neutralized because of a bad matchup.  

So what the best build?  I have no idea.  The baseline Delta seems pretty okay just to maximize offense per point.  I've played a handful of games recently with Rexler with Lone Wolf and Advanced Sensors.  Some of those games Lone Wolf has been amazing and AS has barely been used at all.  Sometimes it's the reverse.  If you have points in a squad for both, I'd give it a shot, if you can only take one, look at what your squad is worse against and take the upgrade that helps the most against it.  

I know my Defender play has been pretty casual and experimental for most of 2.0, so if anybody has taken these ships more competitively than I have, I'm definitely interested in hearing what you've experienced with them. 

Thanks for reading.