Has anyone had any luck using phantoms? I mean, I find their ability super situational, their dice are OK (even the odd-duck swingy 2 red ship dice) but they feel way too fragile and cost a good bit! Are they one of those squadrons that just will never get much play (looking at you, Lancer) or is it that its one of those you really should only ever field one of at a time?

Or at the very least you can bloody demos nose before he it can come say hi!

Snipe is not great, until you have your intel sniped from out of your bomber ball, or as happened to me, a critical shuttle that was relaying all my squad commands. 1 a-wing in an engagement blind spot and a pair of e-wings sniping past my escort and bu-bye shuttle

Also, see Tie Phantom for REAL over-costed squadron garbage.

Wait, this dude thinks snipe is worthless? Sorry, don't have much interest in anything else he says.

As has been stated, yes you can interpret it to be on/off, it DID get errata'd so in my opinion, to use it RAW would be in extreme poor taste and bad sport. Clearly they did not call out that they removed that errata in their "these be the changes" article so its likely a mistake, and to take advantage of that would be lame AF. Incidentally, @NebulonB the new FAQ does not take effect until the 26 so any tourney this weekend would still obey the previous FAQ with the errata'd fields so you would be cheating. (after the 26th you would just be a D***)

I know exactly what happened to those kits. You can DM me for the story... I am confirming now. It's possible they will coordinate the dates but it's going to be a tight squeeze.

US release date. Bastards. Canada is probably week after from what I hear.

Is that the official release date or the estimated? My source doesn't have an official one as of yet..

The 13th is a likely street date at this point from all sources. I'm going for 3 of each because reasons.

Just do what I've done with pre-clarification rules problems. Poll the field day-of and give people 15 minutes to adjust their fleets if necessary.

right? lets see how these changes track and then maybe relay won't be quite as big a deal?

Definitely. ETs are still great for making demo speed 4 for flanking purposes. and in fact, I would often PREFER to shoot BEFORE ETs as my ETs were ususally GTFO of the death-arc part of the activation!

RBD need to be used at the start of the ship Phase IIRC. Now if you have a bunch of fragile-*** HHs making a ramming run for an ISD or whatever and you cinder them before they get to you the ramming list player has to make a choice as to which he keeps.

Also by this logic, Demo should cost less now as well...but I think even after this change 10 points is just fine.

I think important to note as well that this change makes Hammerhead ramming lists somewhat less a "thing" much like rhymers nerf makes Sloane tie-swarms less likely as well. Pre-nerfing Jank, well done FFG, well done.

Even if there is a choice, at least now there IS a choice, makes it far more interesting both to play and to play against.

Quite so.

Keep in mind it's a "when" You don't choose. First thing that dies and is unique triggers him now. Period.

Oh for sure. People were already having wet dreams of massive tie balls with rhymer flying around blessing them with medium range I think for skilled Rhymer players this is a minor change that won't be tremendously huge. Most good Rhymer players are masters of ball placement anyways and shuttles made this all too easy. Reeikan nerf is great. It very specifically addresses things like Aceholes without pitching the whole commander in the garbage. As a reeikan-crutch player now you need to choose if you bring all those unique non-ace squadrons and also how you play them. A well timed and placed squadron alpha can "use up" reeikan and leave a ship open to insta-gib (preferably the one carrying reeikan, now that he isn't in a corner in a transport). It keeps the archetype viable but raises the skill cap to keep it so.

Only troubling piece of info is that there is no official release date yet, not even a confidential one. This can sometime mean there is uncertainty in the mix somewhere.

Fresh news from the grapevine, and it's good news! First or second week of July are looking like winners. Third week is a possibility and August is no longer on the radar.

I heartily second this. I'm not worried about 9 HHs, I'm worried about 4 with disposable racks and balanced support

I know if I was flying 9 HHs the fleet I wouldn't want to see on the other end of a table is...actually a LOT of stuff. Anything Min/Max in this game tends to have a hard counter and this one has several. An ISD 1 with GT and a Rhymerball in the same fleet + other stuff to taste would be a nightmare to this fleet as the rhymerball threat range and mobility makes flanking the ISD Safely much much harder, anything fast and maneuverable that is difficult to pin down and ram would be a nightmare (you might get the odd ram off but you would struggle to do much damage without smashing into yourself and by the time you get your one ram off that MC30 or his buddy is behind you and having a wonderful time! Honestly I am zero percent worried about this, it might be a fun list to fly but I seriously doubt it will be competitive, and if it is, it won't be meta defining. I currently have 3 HH packs on order but 2 extra down the road are not off the table. Yes Mad, I am one of "those" people. I will likely buy this just to try it because why not?

I did preface that whole thing with a "Sorry" And I didn't even mention how my source was of the opinion that August was not an unreasonable possibility...