Have you seen how much money FFG is making on this game? It's a huge chunk of their sales. I find it really unlikely that they would dump the game.

I have a feeling that the maneuver is going to be underwhelming. Now, if the Defender has a way to create more and hand out evade tokens, like Kyle can, then I'll be excited! Kir Kanos needs a buddy... A support ability on a ship that expensive seems like a bad idea.

As a backdrop of some sort, perhaps. But I don't really think most people will be happy with that. If you mean a new ship that's balanced and fits with in the game? Sure, but it won't be a ISD. There is no way to make a ISD fit in this game. It's simply too large and powerful to ever work in a game scaled for individual fighters. Even in the Epic Rules, from what little we know, they're not really changing the basic scale of the game, it's still 1 model = 1 fighter. I agree an ISD is way out of scale for the game, I was talking about the Lancer. Changing the power of a ship that roughly the right size is one thing (especially changing from a description in a novel which it is safe to say most players haven't read) Making an ISD which anyone who has seen Star Wars knows is several times larger than the CR90 for a dogfighting game is crazy. Still, I wouldn't be too surprised if FFG made an ISD in a few years.

The problem is that according to Wookieepedia, it's 250m long--more than half again the length of the CR-90, which is already a big model. It also substantially outguns the CR-90 to such a degree that you'd struggle to oppose it meaningfully on the fighter scale. (In the Rogue Squadron novels, IIRC, Corran Horn "kills" one by having a full squadron of 12 Y-wings each fire torpedoes at him while he maneuvers to put the Lancer between the torpedoes and his X-wing. One fires late, so the Lancer should have ~2.7*11 = 30 hit points.) So I really think FFG will find something smaller and more suited to the game's starfighter-skirmish theme. It's a game, they can ignore a description from the book and make a balanced ship that fits the idea of the ship.

I wonder how 4 PS 8 Interceptors would do. http://xwing-builder.co.uk/view/54619/ps-8

The Shuttle and HWK aren't even really close to being the same thing. Even if you consider them both support ships, they don't do it anywhere near the same way. Plus it's been proven that the shuttle is actually a fairly effective fighter. Saying that the Tie bomber is the same as a Y-Wing is pushing it a lot. They don't function at all the same way. Bombers function nothing like B-Wings do. Same goes for the Advanced vs X-Wing, they're not even close the same thing. The larger point is though was that there are 2 large imperial ships and only 1 rebel large ship. So while it's likely that they'll produce Imperial ships on the same scale, it's not a given. I said similar, not the same. Obviously there are considerable differences between each pair of ships and those differences make the ships unique. Hwk and Shuttle are both ships not really intended for dogfighting, obviously they are viable ships because it's a game. B/Ywings are secondary weapons focused like the bomber and are more hit points, less agility counterparts to the xwing or TIE. X-Wing and Advanced are the same point cost for swamping a torp for a missile, an attack for an evade, and a better dial. They fill different roles, but there are obvious similarities.

I recently moved back to NJ after living in NC for about a year. As far as I can tell, the nearest regular x-wing group a little over an hour from where I live. I love this game, but driving for an hour to game for about 4 hours is a bit much. Any individual players or groups anywhere near Linden, NJ?

I don't think higher PS interceptors suffer too much from R3-A2. Move -> can R3-A2's pilot shoot me? -> If yes, but can boost/roll out to safety do so. if yes, but can't boost/roll then evade or focus (remember Fel will get an extra focus when/if R3-A2 shoots you anyway). if no, GREAT play as normal. The generic pilots will suffer from it quite a bit though . . .

Squad leader and Lando wouldn't work because they give free actions and stress makes actions impossible. Dutch letting you acquire a target lock would work, notice the word action isn't in the phrase.

If it wasn't we'd lose all game balance. I don't think it would be anywhere near that bad, 24 points for a ps 4 x-wing with an EPT but no astromech slot seems pretty balanced.

Is black squad with opportunist really worth it over and alpha squad for the same points? Giving up an attack die, boost, and a better dial for a situational attack die and 3 pilot skill?

Not so. They just couldn't use their blaster turret. R1 they are rolling 2 dice with the primary weapon. =) Which if you get really lucky might do some damage, but it would be pretty rare, and Dark Curse shouldn't find it to hard to avoid R1.

Sadly Dark Curse kinda ruins a swarm of blaster turrets having any chance at being competitive. But if know you won't face Dark Curse/get your opponent to agree not to it could be fun.

wut? Almost every ship has a similar counterpart on the other faction: TIE Fighter - Headhunter TIE Advanced - X-wing TIE Bomber - Y-wing/B-wing TIE Interceptor - A-wing TIE Defender - E-wing Firespray - YT-1300 Lamba Shuttle - HWK 290 TIE Phantom - some ship that isn't out yet? maybe no direct counterpart I'm sure there will be huge ships for the imps, FFG probably didn't want to release $300 of large ships in between waves

I've never understood giving Vader PTL, is the third action really worth letting your opponent that you're going to do one of like 4 maneuvers?

Vader's dial is usually effectively better than an interceptor with PTL because in order to use PTL every round, you have to perform a green maneuver every round. Not say thing that along with 3 PS is worth the attack die, but it's not quite as clear cut.

I love the idea of super-fighters that cost up half a standard squad, so the E-wing, Defender and Phantom are very exciting, but I have to say I think that the Defender looks pretty dumb (still going to buy and use it). I also like the Rebels are getting a ship as cheap as the basic TIE while still being different enough to show the different styles of the factions.

There might be variably for pilots of different species.

That's actually not true. The color determines how stressful it is to the pilot. If it applied to the ship itself, then there would be no reason not to perform Focus or Evade after a red maneuver, because those two are things the human pilot does to either stay alive or make it easier on himself to accomplish his goals. Therefore, I predict that there will never be a white K-turn for any ship unless the TIE Droid is released, and even that is iffy. Given that focusing or evading represents flying in a way to gain an additional advantage, it would make sense that stress on the ship would prevent a pilot from doing flying in such a way.

I figure if the license runs out they'll make an identical game in the Twilight Imperium universe or something. I don't know about most people, but I'd still be into this game with a different theme, because for me the primary draw to this game is the variety and balance of the ships. To be honest, I don't really care too much for the Star Wars setting, especially pretty much all of the pilots except like 6 are from books I haven't read or games I haven't played. Not to mention with wave 4 coming out, the ships I'm going to be making squads around aren't from anything I'm familiar with. Not that I mind the new ships or pilots from books I haven't read, a lot of them sounded cool enough for me to give the books a shot.

Completely useless pilot, you pay 2 points over a generic Saber Squad to add 1 to pilot skill and give up an elite slot. The ability is not quite useless, as you could put him right into the face of the enemy fighters and then give them the choice to either shoot the guy who will get a shot anyway with extra dice or shoot a target further away and maybe take a shot away from you this round. It's still a pretty horrible ability because it requires you to play him in a way that makes it likely for him to die to use it effectively. Every other pilot in the game could be improved enough to be used without having to directly change them. The TIE advanced pilots can get a buff from abilities/upgrades that have synergy with secondary weapons or new missiles. Arvel is good against high PS large ships so if there's a new popular high PS pilot for a large ship he'll get a buff. I can't imagine anything that will make Fel's Wrath better than the alternative interceptor pilots.

I've tried Yorr a couple times, I don't think I ever will again. The Lambda is hard enough to maneuver without taking extra stress tokens.

I hope that if there are any good generic pilots that come with the transport, they come with multiple cards/bases copies so I can run more than 1 of them without dropping an extra $60.

You can still use the extra focus for evade dice, it's far from useless.

b-wing