Thread:Green Squadron/@comment-2001:410:A014:667:5CFB:EF96:B0D2:7A32-20171026182149/@comment-31354887-20171027043200

There are a number of reasons TLTs are good on Y-wings and why you see them as the most common "TLT boat". The first reason is that statistically the the TLT is very accurate, you're throwing 3 dice out at range 3 without the fear of the defender getting a bonus to their agility, so in most cases you'll be evenly matching their defense with your attack and as far as dice rolls go the game favors dealing damage over evading it (there is a slightly higher chance of 'good' results on a red dice because of the crit while there is only another blank on the green dice in place of where the crit on the red dice is). And because it's the only turret that can reach out to range 3 most often you'll get the range 3 bonus to your own agility if whatever you are shooting shoots back (unless they also have a TLT). You are of course also getting to attack twice, any focus or evade tokens your target spends are only good for one of those attacks, and forcing them to spend their tokens to avoid 1 damage is a great way of softening up their defenses for your heavy hitters. They're also accurate because of how little damage they deal, you only have to worry about pushing one of your hits through to get that single damage while the defender has to worry about evading -all- of your hits, each attack forces your opponent into accepting the chip damage in hopes of preserving their defenses for attacks that can cause more damage or wasting their tokens on one of two of your attacks to avoid death by a thousand paper cuts.

But that's just what makes the TLT good in general, there are 3 reasons specifically related to the Y-wing that make the TLT good on it.

1. Horton Salm. He lacks a EPT but has access to powerful rebel astromechs to regen his shield or repair his hull and his pilot talent was a match made in heavy for the TLT. Being able to re-roll blank dice for secondary weapons at range 2-3 orginally made Horton suited to being a munition ships, launching torps at long range and not having to worry about spending the lock because he could re-roll blanks anyways, then the TLT came along. Because Horton's ability only works at range 2-3 and the TLT can only fire at range 2-3 he is always getting his ability. This increases the already strong accuracy of the TLT at no cost leaving Horton free to spend his action on say, focusing so he can use R5-P9 or using his action to try and repair some hull damage with R5-D8.

2. Kavil. The scum's best Y-wing pilot for turrets bar none, Kavil doesn't have the repair power of rebel astromechs but he does come with a native elite slot and his ability to add an addtional dice when firing out of arc means each of the TLT's attacks are bumped up to 4 dice, this provides a major boost to accuracy but where Horton gets his boost from re-rolls Kavil pushes the TLT"s damage through by sheer numbers, only a 3-agility ship with stealth device will be able to match Kavil's dice. In all other cases Kavil simply has too many dice for opponents to avoid, not even the almighty autothrusters can save Kavil's prey. With his native EPT you can even combined the TLT with Expertise for god-like accuracy (at god-like costs). Kavil can also reap the benefits of the cheap unhinged astromech, turning the Y-wing's red 3-turn moves into green ones allowing him to keep a comfortable distance between himself and his targets.

3. Four Y-wing squads. It just so happens that if you fly nothing but the lower skilled generic pilots for the Y-wing (Gold Squadron for Rebels, Thugs for Scum) fit them with TLTs and 1-point astromechs (R2 units for rebels, Unhinged for scum) a single ship comes out to exactly 25 points letting you fit 4 of them into a single squad. At 5 hull and 3 shields that's a whopping 32 health for the enemy to chew through while you are throwing 8 individual attacks at them that don't care about firing arcs or being at range 1. Four ships is also a lot of targets to have one's attention divided up by and if you fly them unpredictably and out of formation your opponents may not be able to chase them down fast enough. These days the 4 TLT boat list is rarer, it's considered a boring and stale list that doesn't require much skill to fly and ships can be geared somewhat better to defend against multilple attacks now than they use to making the TLT less of threat than it use to be.