Seems Apropos.

I know @Wazat has done a tonne of good work on the Wiki.

Hrm. The downside with Drea is that she's at least as expensive as 2x Ion Banana Pirates. There are potentially some 7 ship lists that might make sense. Version 1 - Bossk provides Drea with a lock, so she can get in on ordnance... probably not really worth, since she can't afford Plasma Torps. Bossk (XX-23) 30 Drea (Ion Torpedoes) 50 Binayre (XX-23) 24 4x Binayre (Ion) 24 Version 2 - I kinda like this. A mix of different kinds of weapons. Drea (Dorsal Turret) 48 2x Binayre (XX-23) 24 2x Binayre (Ion) 24 2x Binayre (Concussion) 28 Version 3 - FTC does seem pretty handy, tho. Drea (Dorsal Turret) 48 2x Binayre (XX-23, False Transponder Codes) 26 2x Binayre (Ion) 24 2x Binayre (Cluster) 26

My candidate ships are A-Wing (single or pair), B-Wing (single or none), Attack Shuttle (single or none). A-Wing paint job like Sabine's A-Wing out of Rebels. Hera, Sabine, Wedge pilots at least. Maybe Ezra, too. For Hera, probably a new ability, since her current text on an A-Wing is absurd. Wedge might not be I6, but his current ability on an A-Wing would be really nice. B-Wing, if there is one, is bright orange. Maybe a title for the B6 which adds a gunner slot, and a Sabine Gunner. Attack Shuttle might not get any new pilots, but that'd be pathetic. How about Chopper (his ability would be nice on a ship cheap enough to block) and Hondo (he was part of the team that went to Reklam station)? Anyhow, Rebel Kallus crew would be sweet, and maybe even Ahsoka crew. To that end, Ahsoka Gunner probably should have been "Republic or Ezra Bridger" like Maul was "Scum or Ezra." Blade Wing Prototype cannon is a Cannon-Cannon-Command upgrade, since such a thing ought necessarily be balanced around Epic games and huge ships, rather than 200/6, and then it can be truly the awesome blockade buster it deserves to be. It could be essentially a Huge-ship Turbolaser.

Or like, Ahsoka survives the first Jedi Purge. Grogu could survive the 2nd one. Simple as that.

Maybe he's in the back--he's short.

I could see Advanced Sensors and Independent Calculations working well together, tho. Red Calc -> Blue = no stress, leaving you wide open for next round. Then again, AdvS would probably really love to be able to steal tokens from other ships with Networked Calc...

I'm so mixed. In general, I'd love to see at least screen tests for recasts, but no commitment either way recast vs cgi. With Leia's Hope, I'm OK with it because it's so quick, but if they'd just had Billie Lourd in the Leia costume, that would have been touching in it's own way. For Tarkin, dude was major enough in the film that I wish they just recast. Charles Dance would have been an amazing Tarkin. For Luke... I'd be fine with it in general, but the specific moment of handing our beautiful, beloved puppet over, maybe a person would have been better. Is CGI Luke someone you trust with a child? I bet 1983 Mark Hamill is, however. There just isn't the same connection, not like between Grogu and Pedro with his helmet off. That said, I'd be a fan of more purely animated content. I'd love to see a movie or miniseries of the OT cast and the Ghost crew teaming up for a mission of some kind, just after RotJ, and having that be a Rebels-style animation would be perfect. It'd be cool to see the voice cast of Rebels in good costumes and make-up as their normal characters, but if that was little more than a featurette, I'm also fine with that.

You must have caught him on one of his "respectable businessman" days.

Well, it's the combination that she's been actively on the side of the Coronavirus, plus has been doubling-down on her transphobic garbage.

It's worth understanding why, because the solution to better representation is almost always more representation. With Avengers, a lot of these comics characters date back to the 60s, when media representation was a lot more sexist (and all-white). Not MCU, but check out early Fantastic Four and X-Men, and Sue Storm's and Jean Grey's early character development is pretty much limited to being "the girl." Likewise Janet Van Dyne as a founding Avenger. There's other choices the MCU could have made in drawing from the source material (in 2008, the comic book Guardians of the Galaxy had two lesbian members--Moondragon and Quasar--who didn't make the film at all), but mostly the films centered on the big-name dudes from the early comics. There just weren't many women in the MCU. Grand total of two officially on the Avengers: Black Widow and Scarlet Witch. One of which ends up. Contrast Manalorian, where at least as many, if not more, of the baddasses Mando meets are women. For the folks who aren't women, Mayfield and Greef Carga are essentially retired, IG is dead, who knows about Axe, and Boba did his bit already. Meanwhile, the women (Cara, Fennec, Bo-Katan, Koska, Ahsoka) are all vastly different. Personality, body type, racial background. Nobody is all that similar, no one was just the token woman in the cast. (Not that Star Wars is perfect. Rise of Skywalker keeps cramming together the only three Black people in space... and it's what, the first time there are even that many.) Back to the point: the girl-power-run in Endgame stands out because representation has been so poor. The comparatively few women in the many, many films all meet up in the chaos of a battle. OK. But because Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have done a pretty good job at making the cast of the Manalorian be realistic, to look a heck of a lot closer to how humanity actually exists, and to all have personalities and distinct characters, it makes sense and feels natural. More representation usually leads to better representation.

I mean, I still want Tiya Sircar to get her jetpack, but like, I kinda feel this. I'm less mad about a Luke cameo (I'm a sucker for him in black with that giant belt and the green saber) than I am about Rey Palpatine, but it was pretty nice for a while to have a show which had very little to do with The Star War. Season 1 was a kinda slow burn, getting under the helmet of this guy who steps into a father role. One of my favorite moments is when Mando shoots down Toro Celican for threatening Baby Yoda. To me, it kind of symbolized putting this cute little muppet ahead of the bounty hunter fanboys who wanted just a rehash of the old EU and such. That was the moment where I really bought into the show. Sure, the first episodes were solid action, but this felt like the show could be more. Bone broth slurp. The saga of IG-11 and Mando trusting a droid? Cuill saying "I have spoken." Werner Hertzog and Giancarlo Esposito with the right mix of glamor, cruelty, and hubris to make perfect Imperials. This was what made me fall in love with the show, not "oh, he's Boba-Fett-adjacent." For better or worse, Season 2 feels a lot like Rogue One. Fills in a lot of gaps. Looks great. Tonnes of fan service. Fake digital faces (not terrible yet I'm glad there weren't more of them). And ultimately... maybe not as great at telling a story as it could be. A lot of "oh, it's cool to see that on the screen" stuff, but at the end it feels a bit empty. I'm going to say... Chapter 10: The Passenger. It's got everything great about Mando. Peli Motto scamming. Grogu eating things he shouldn't be eating. Madcap droid hijinks. Space Appa Carson Teva and that moment when the X-Wings switch to the second comm channel, open S-Foils, and Mando knows he's deep in the Bantha Fodder. There's other great moments in other episodes. Tuskan Raider Sign Language. Fish man in in a fisherman sweater. Ceiling hose chowder dispenser. Blue-milk flavor cookies. Boba swinging that Gaffi stick. But as a whole, I'm going 10.

Same energy.

Luke willing to train Grogu, while Ashoka is still worried about "attachments," feels right to me. Luke hasn't spent a lifetime learning the wrong lessons about how someone turns to the Dark Side, and knows how Anakin was saved better than how he fell.

Context is that Sabine never really won it in combat herself (hrm... well... maybe Saxon counts, but Ursa put him down ultimately...), and Bo-Katan obviously had it taken from her by the Empire. Regardless of the technical rules, what matters is how things would be seen by the rest of the Mandos. This would have been a circumstance that'd have made Bo-Katan look weak, and she wouldn't be able to use the Darksaber as a symbol to rule. For anything actually important, it took a show of 16 episodes to get here, or a tonne of appearances in Dave Filloni's last few shows (decades newer than Kyle!). If Fennec Shand was just helping in the last episode without any of the build up, it'd have been as dumb as Kyle Katarn would have been in Luke's place. I mean, I've been clear that I think they've just been a bunch of dumb clankers. If they'd have been called Death Troopers, maybe that'd have been better. But did Death Troopers ever actually get named on screen anyhow? They had a cool theme song, tho. One difference, however, is that Dark Troopers could be, like whatever. It's a nasty droid trooper, OK. That's all the info it needs. Kyle wouldn't have been like that. The only place where I'm in favor of bringing back the old EU is where it doesn't matter. Droids and generic ships, pretty much. Mandalorian is better for having a newly minted Moff Gideon, than a rehashed Ysanne Isard. The only real reason I like Rebels Thrawn is that it massively de-mystified him. He's just a brutal psychopath. A bit more clever than a standard Imperial, but not that much. He's just more willing to kill civilians than other imps, and like most Imperials, his own hubris is his downfall time and time again. QFT. I just wish the soundtrack used was The Spark.

I viewed that more as Mayfield was mad that he had to take part in Operation Cinder. Imperials breaking under the weight of the atrocities they're forced to commit is a classic. Kallus is a great example (David Oyelowo is fantastic, plus all the great quiet scenes in Rebels of alienation and emptiness). Heck, in a lot of ways, that's Vader. It's what Hux should have been in IX, as well as Jannah and the Stormtrooper revolt. Finn inspiring something real and consequential against Kylo would have been excellent. A heck of a lot more interesting than the drivel we did get in PoSRoS. It was pretty early in the morning when I watched, but I didn't get that from the scene at all. What stuck with me was him saying the galaxy cheered when Alderaan was wiped out as a blow against "terrorism." It was an unrepentant, unsympathetic piece of utter trash bragging about the greatest war crime to date in Star Wars. I saw it as showing that most of these folks still in the Empire in ABY9 are still worthy of getting blasted on sight. Kyle would have been terrible there. This was the Corridor Scene from Rogue One, but for Luke. Dude as a fully realized Jedi, kicking tail, is part of the bridge taking us from RotJ to TLJ. From a guy who gets winged by a guard at Jabba's palace to someone who can face down the whole First Order with a Laser Sword. You want to take that away from Luke? Really? Kyle who? Like, a few of us onhere know the old EU, but "Big Reveal! Niche video game character from 25 years ago!" is just going to baffle folks. One big thing that The Mandalorian has done is expand SW Fandom, as opposed to contract it. It isn't just looking back at old stories for a few diehards, and that's VERY IMPORTANT. Best to let as much as possible of the old EU remain there. I mean, folks can still go play Dark Forces, or reread the Thrawn novels. No one is breaking into your house to erase them. Telling new stories is just better. I think it looked pretty good, as far as it goes, but... kind of lifeless? There's none of Mark Hamill's charisma. Handing over precious puppet Grogu to a cold-eyed monk... eh, maybe not as heartwarming as it should be. Thank the Maker for R2-D2 to bring some actual soul.

1. I still hold to the idea that Dark Troopers are just Clankers. 2. When you-know-who showed up, and started walking through the hallways, if they used this theme... dang that would have been perfect. https://youtu.be/ZHb9T6WvvW0?t=134 3. That Fennec Shand Blue Whiskey swagger.

"Defense" might not be the right term, but efficient generics take a long time to kill. Aggressor Sloane Swarm (does that still exist?), Spam Scyks, or Malarus + 6 are good examples. There isn't a tonne of individual defense on a per-ship basis. But chewing through a list of ships which are this efficient, given the level of offense in 2e, just requires a lot of minutes.

I'm sure @SOTL would say that they're already usable, and I'd agree. 2/2/6 for 27 points with a respectable dial is incredibly good value. XX-23 S-Thread Traccers, Ion Missiles, and Bomblet Generator are all 2 points each, so there's a tonne of great upgrade options.

Sigmar also has Dinosaurs. If the choice comes down to playing a faction without dinosaurs, or playing a faction with dinosaurs, c'mon. We all know what the right choice is. Anyhow, I used to have Epic (not regular 40K) Tyranids and Squats back in highschool, but haven't managed to get into modern GW. Bought into some Tau once, then the phrase Crisis of Conscience Suits popped into my head and I knew I had to get back out. If I did ever get into GW stuff, it'd be Age of Sigmar Saurus. I don't think it's super likely, though, since my issue with other minis games is I'd rather be playing X-Wing. // I had Hordes Trollbloods, but sold those, since I just couldn't understand how to win at the game. I think I killed like 3 models in 3 games. With X-Wing, even if I'm losing, I understand something about how to win. It's all essentially unpainted so far, and the game is now dead, but I've got Guildball. Engineers (without Miners), Cooks, and about half of Butchers. Probably my favorite non-X-Wing minis game. From a few years ago, I've got a good deal of Imperial Assault (Core, Twin Suns, Hoth sets) and painted it all up, but haven't managed to ever get around to playing.

DnD 3rd edition came out in 2000, and that's what did away with THAC0 from 2nd.

I mean, THAC0 was replaced 20 years ago. It's time for Strength/Toughness to go.

Fair enough. And there's kind of two ways to use Hot Take, that are kind of opposite. First is when something is fast and attention grabbing and probably "controversial". Usually based on simple moralizing rather than nuanced thought. Second is when something is obvious, but in the context of folks forgetting this fact. "Hot Take: Games Should Be Fun."

But you don't need to replace any cardboard. :p *eyeroll* Although... sometimes you need to rebase models, like when Space Marines got bigger...

Is that really that hot? It seems kind of obvious it's way too expensive.