F

You know that Ten still has blue maneuvers, right? They key difference between Ten and Braylen is not that Ten always sheds his stress, but that he can shed his stress. Sure, it's not ideal when Ten has to keep a stress going through into the next round but it's still manageable. He's got blue maneuvers, or just keeping the stress token lets him keep a mod. Braylen likes Cassian so much because he is always stressed going into the next round. What Cassian offers is reliability. Without Cassian, you know that every turn Braylen takes that stress, he's not performing a red maneuver next turn. It's too limiting. You also know that if he wants options other than re-rolling, he's doing a blue. The problem is only that that is the case every turn. Ten is in the same boat but only sometimes. It's big. And here's the thing. Cassian was a pricey support tool for Braylen even when Rebel beef was viable. Since the huge points hit they took, Cassian and Braylen is too expensive to bother with as is. Investing Cassian points into Ten just doesn't make sense when there's a really good chance that Cassian won't even be needed. If Ten doesn't get to trigger then ah well, just dial in a blue. Yeah, it's predictable. But you're banking on it being only for one turn. And it doesn't take much to fly Ten in such a way that the turn after first engagement, he wants to be slow rolling with a blue anyway. The times when Ten comes in clutch and clears the stress from your 1 t-roll so you can 1 t-roll next turn will make up for it. Sure, he helps out the rest of the list but it's still diminishing returns. Back to back t-rolls or k-turns aren't that strong. Look at the TIE Defenders. They can turn around all day long, and it's a strong ability. But they're not played because, for their points, they just don't get enough offensive power. Dice mods are king. There's nothing wrong with investing in movement options, but in general investing in dice mods gets you a better return for your points. Taking an upgrade to improve movement is fine. Just look at Slave One. Taking a whole ship to support the list with dice mods is usually fine too. But taking a whole ship just to support movement..... Idk, it's rarely good. To go to a more pointed example, if back to back t-rolls on an X-Wing were really all that, then everyone would be bringing the Jek Porkins + Chopper + Elusive combo, because he's guaranteed stress free k-turns and usually gets to keep his action too. Like I said, Cassian pairs way better with Braylen but any Cassian/Braylen list is basically dead in the water these days because you can't pack in enough other stuff. So if the best possible pairing isn't viable, then how is Cassian supposed to be any good. If back to back k-turns are what you're after, then Leia is the better upgrade all day, every day. Granted, Partisan Renegade + Leia is only one point cheaper than Cassian, but this is a problem with U-Wings as support in general. U-Wings work fine as no frills blockers and medium base gun turrets or beef spam, but they're seriously lacking as support ships at the moment because their cost with upgrades just doesn't compare favourably with simply adding more generics of whatever dogfighting ship you're running. If you want Wedge to back to back k-turn, you take Leia on a better ship. Either on AP-5 as a cheap support bot, or on something like a Han or Lando Falcon so that she's on a ship that can also fight and contribute. Lol. For the current points, K-2 is probably the best limited U-Wing pilot out there. He's three points cheaper than a Blue Squad Scout or Partisan Renegade + Tactical Officer. Red co-ordinate means he gets a calculate. This means he's the only U-Wing pilot that still gets a dice mod when co-ordinating, and he does it for cheaper than removing the disadvantage of red co-ordinate for any other U-Wing. He's also the only U-Wing pilot who gets a dice mod after the red stop other than damaged Saw. The red stop and pivot is the bread and butter of U-Wings, and K-2 does it the best. You're not trading a focus for a calculate. You're getting green tokens when no one else does. If all you're doing with your U-Wing is slow rolling forward and taking focus actions, why are you taking a U-Wing at all? You're taking a U-Wing so it can stop and pivot, in which case no other U-Wing pilot is getting actions anyway and for the occasional co-ordinate, in which case K-2 is the only pilot who actually increases the action economy of the list. Magva and Cassian might be the same Initiative but they're 4 and 6 points more expensive respectively and Magva is arguably pretty terrible against anything other than really specific match ups. Bodhi is 2 points more expensive than K-2 and totally useless unless you're running low Init ordnance spam, which Rebels are terrible at. Heff is only okay. His main problem is that his ability doesn't trigger anywhere near enough to be useful, because U-Wings do their best blocking with that red stop, and the red stop shuts off Heff's ability. Maybe you're just better at flying than me, but I really don't like Dutch as a support piece for Wedge. Wedge taking locks with his own actions at I6 is way better. If he's not in range to lock when he activates, then you're not shooting anyway unless it's against high bid Soontir or Vader or whatever (and if that's the case, Dutch won't have helped anyway). And if they are in range when he activates, then he didn't need Dutch. There are much cheaper options for getting focus tokens out there, and Wedge works way better with someone like AP-5 co-ordinating him a focus before he locks at I6. Dutch + Ten is a different story, though.

Really interesting episode for me. And kinda hard to talk about without spoilers, but I'll give it a shot. So, first up I need to state that I think that was 35 of the best minutes of live action Star Wars I've ever seen. Admittedly, I'm a crotchety OT-er these days but still. I want to be very clear about that before people start their retorts to what I'm going to say later. This was a really entertaining episode. Whether it's Jon and Dave's doing I'm not sure, but someone on this creative team really gets how to do Star Wars. This is the sort of stuff I dreamed about as a teenager, it really is like parts of the EU or the RPGs coming to life on screen. Some of the detail stuff is just perfect. The use of non-humans is so spot on. I wish so much that the people making the ST could have had this sort of sense for continuity. I'm not even talking about using familiar OT aliens either, I'm talking about using aliens in ways that make sense. This planet could have been another Mos Eisley cantina of random aliens, but it's not. It uses believable communities. It's not just one Quarren on a water planet thrown in as an easter egg, it's a community of Quarren that settled somewhere like their homeworld together. Just like the village in S1 was all humans who had chosen to settle somewhere out in the fringes, this is a community who presumably all came together. It makes sense. It looks good. It feels right. Plus, the Quarren were all universally dicks. I love it. I do wish a little bit that the Quarren could have been speaking their native tongue as it seems like it would physically be really difficult to push out Basic, and one thing the Star Wars movies always did well was have aliens speaking their own languages. But I guess it would be pushing it that Mando understands Quarren, and the writers have wisely left out super convenient translators. So whatever. The second thing I loved is the spoiler territory. Anyone who has seen the episode knows exactly what I'm talking about, but those three characters were awesome. Seriously. I'm not the biggest fan of the Clone Wars series, but there are parts I really like. That character was one of them. To see her in live action, played by the awesome actress who voiced her..... It was just perfect. What a cool character. Finally getting a bit of information on Mando's particular creed and filling in those gaps created by the portrayal of Mandalorians in other sources was spot on too. I think everyone probably had guessed what was up, but it's nice to finally get a bit of progression and confirmation. Now, the reason I think this episode was 'interesting'. As cool as all the stuff above was, I really feel like this episode sidelined Mando in his own series and I'm sort of worried where it's all going. I'm so torn on what I think about this episode. On the hand, the continuity and tie-ins to other SW media were awesome, but on the other I don't want this series to become a sequel to Clone Wars and Rebels. I want this to be its own thing. I want Mando to be a protagonist with agency and I feel like he's losing that. He's just going around being told what to do by other characters and I don't really feel like he has a personal stake in this any more. This is made even worse by how the episode ends. They send Mando off to a character we all knew was coming because it was an even worse kept secret than the cameo from the first episode, but rather than get me excited all that name drop did is make me feel weary. That's the third series this character is going to appear in and potentially dominate and I'm personally not stoked about it. Baby Yoda has also become a thing the writers need to write around rather than driving any of the story himself. They seem to need to come up with more reasons to keep him out of scenes than put him in them at the moment. I have no idea of knowing what the writers' original intention with him was, and whether the plan was always to have him be the only other permanent 'cast member', but if it wasn't then, it is now. He's a super popular cash cow and is probably more iconically associated with the show than the friggin' titular character. But I really, really think he should have been a one season plot device. The first episode of this season should have been Mando handing him over and moving on to a new season arc. Something about his own past, or the Mandalorian purge or the Darksaber or something. Hot take, but Baby Yoda has been dead weight all three of these episodes and is now being used as a device to tie in more Clone Wars characters. I would much rather see more of the Mandalorian Covert and the Imperial Remnant. I'd much rather see some brand new underworld stuff. ****, if we need to tie stuff in then I'd rather see what's become of Qi'ra's Crimson Dawn. A weird episode. The three blue characters completely stole the show for me. And that is somehow simultaneously a really good and bad thing. Nah, I'm still gonna **** talk Lucas on this one. What he did specifically hasn't added anything at all. All the interesting stuff has come about through a decade of soft retcons and contributions from other writers. The cool side of the Mandalorians we have now is due to Death Watch, Filoni re-writing the Mandalorians in Rebels and the last season of Clone Wars (basically back to their Legends incarnations) and now from the Mandalorian. And I would argue that what we have now is actually virtually identical to the state of the Mandalorians in Legends pre Karen Traviss (and don't get me wrong, I really don't like her take either). The Mandalorians of the OT era in canon are now armoured warriors who have been all but annihilated and scattered through the galaxy in various tribes of varying adherence to tradition and code. That is exactly what they were in 90s era Legends. The only difference is that in Legends, Death Watch were chaotic evil hardcore Mandos who went even beyond the standard warrior tradition and were bad guys for the 'real' Mandos. In canon, Death Watch now seem like the traditionalist, 'real' Mandos and their culture has supplanted the pacifist mandos. Legends Death Watch were acceptable bad guys for real Mando Jango Fett to kill. Canon Death Watch are Legends Mandos. The pacifist Mandalorians Lucas introduced have been essentially expunged at this point, and basically no reference is being made to them by any of the interesting Mandalorian factions we have now. I want to point out that basically all the cool Mandos we have left are tied to Death Watch in some way. Bo Katan was a member. Clan Wren were part of House Viszla and so presumably part of Death Watch. Mando was saved by Mandalorians with the clan Viszla sigil. And the name of his cult, as we find out in this episode, strongly suggests a relationship with Death Watch. And there's still that whole Paz Vizla/voiced by Jon Favreau question. The pacifist Mandos aren't responsible for any of this. This would all be the same if Mandos had been written the 'traditional' way from the start. You just wouldn't need to explain that by season 7 of Clone Wars, Death Watch had basically 'won' by getting Bo Katan at the head of the Mando people. Having basically the whole population of Mandalore armoured up and split between loyalist and Maul's faction by season 7 is basically a total retcon of all the previous seasons. Worse, as an Imperial gozanti it would have been real easy for them to have a pair of TIE Fighters docked as escorts. It's cool, though. It's the remnant. Lack of resources is a perfectly self explanatory justification. They also got pretty unlucky with the specific nature of their attackers. Kinda hard to predict that happening when your boss is the guy responsible for.... y'know.

Swarms are boring to play with and against and it's only the convenience of TTS and absence of real, in person games that is making people forget that. ^ my entry into the Great X-Wing Hot Take Off

One of the features of the card is that you get the SLAM action for up to three turns. There's a conceivable scenario where you might want to SLAM on turns 1 and 3, but not on turn 2. In that case, if the card didn't give you the disarm token itself, then you would have an effectively normal turn 2. Given the speed 5 on the dial, it wouldn't be too difficult to SLAM turn 1, be in engagement range in turn 2 and consequently shoot, then use SLAM in turn 3 to get away from the ship you just shot. Even without this factor, the choice to flip the card is system phase, but the choice of whether or not to use SLAM is at Initiative order in activation. So the higher Initiative pilots would get to choose whether to SLAM or shoot with good information on any of those first three turns. That's really strong. The purpose of the disarm token regardless is basically to make this a 'no take backsies' card - either you're SLAMing and not shooting for up to three turns, or you can shoot for the rest of the game but never SLAM again. It's neat design, IMO. The benefit of the configuration is that you get access to SLAM on a 5 speed ship for up to three turns. This is sort of ship that would be 100% broken if it could SLAM as a normal action all the time. The benefit of the configuration is to give the ship a unique degree of freedom in pre-engagement positioning, but it self balances by taking that freedom away once the shooting starts

I'd forgotten about the scars not carrying over, actually. That was the only issue from ME1 to 2 though, right? The face gen used the same basic geometry and options so the face shape stayed the same. There was maybe some tweaking to things like alpha shaders for the hair models too, though they were definitely the same 3d assets. The hair models themselves changed from 2 to 3 though. Like, the female ponytail option got thinner and sleeker and gained two little curls at the front. Possibly. There was some reason I couldn't carry over, anyway. I'm not sure I ever had an EA account for the console versions of ME. Or if I did, it was tied to my Xbox gamertag and my PC Origin account used a more up to date email. Something like that. It wasn't a huge deal or anything, just exposed me a bit to what life was like for someone new to the game after all the DLC drops. It was kinda sucky for the first dozen games are so. I got kicked a bunch too. You must have played a lot to max most things by unlocking alone. I never paid for a loot box either, but the grind definitely edged into frustrating over fun for me. I really liked the multiplayer, but I will admit it started to wear on me when every game turned from 'small team of council race specialists' to 'bright pink get juggernauts fighting with volus who use spinny blue balls'. I wasn't a huge fan of what the team that worked on the multiplayer did with biotics. They turned them from cool physics based powers to space magic pretty quickly. Lift, throw, Singularity and barrier all made sense to me with what we're told about the titular mass effect. Charge was the first one I was sketchy on, but that was the core team and a ton of fun so.... whatever. But things like Lash and those biotic orbs were just straight up fantasy ********. Yes, multiplayer was more fun than story - but it still got to a point where my immersion and suspension of disbelief were being seriously tested. Honestly, I'd love it if they rebalanced the multiplayer a little bit for this edition. Maybe do something to reduce the randomness of weapon and character drops too. It'd be cool if they could add a breakdown/crafting system like Inquisition's multiplayer so that if you're getting classes and weapons you don't want, you can take some form of resource instead and build up to weapons/classes you do want.

Wishy washy answer: I'd say 'timely' would be a release shortly (say a quarter?) after a sufficient amount of new content has been released since the last card pack. So you get to a volume of new upgrade cards that fits the size you want for a card pack and then release that card pack in the next wave. Maybe 15-25 new upgrades, with multiples of some? More concrete answer: I think annually makes sense to me. In theory that's three or four waves worth of content. Given the current rate of new content per wave (which seems to have been accelerating, though it may have hit a peak at this point), that seems to provide a decent amount of new content to make a pack worth it (don't forget card packs can also come with brand new content all of their own, like new pilots). And I don't think most players would object to knowing they only have to wait <1year to get content without having to buy out of faction. The problem with both of those answers, and the reason I think this discussion has resurfaced, is that we're already past that point for either option. We should have already had the Hotshots and Aces sequel pack announced for a January release. I think the lack of such an announcement is why people are starting to feel a little impatient. There's been a ton of new content released over the last few waves, and it's been over a year now since Hotshots and Aces was announced. The lack of information about in-faction options for new content is probably worse than the lack of options themselves.

The hypocrisy of this is mad. You're angry about being lumped in with racists and bigots but accuse the whole other political "side" of doing this. Like, surely if you don't like people assuming all Reps are nazis then you shouldn't assume all Dems are ANTIFA or BLM (even assuming those were in any way equivalent, which they most assuredly are not)? Would that not be the most basic *** for tat extension of the benefit of the doubt? The seed of the sort of unity Gecko is talking about? You can't possibly make the case "some Reps are good so why are all the Dems mad about all of us". Blaming the left for being the obstacle to national political bi-partisanship. ****ing hilarious, honestly. This is a gross misrepresentation of what AOC said and a classic case of intellectual dishonesty. It wasn't about 'going after them' at all. It was to prepare for counterargument. What she was talking about is no different from holding a politician to account based on their voting record. It was simply a statement of "remember what these people are posting about now so that you can undercut their argument when they inevitably change their tune". It's effectively an anti gaslighting measure. It's not, in any respect, persecution. And the victim complex possessed by all those who felt attacked by her comments is truly remarkable, given the vast amount of **** flung by the US government towards any voice of criticism over the last 4 years.

They fixed that after like a week. It looked bad at the time, but people very quickly forgot about it. Only problem is that they used different assets and facial structuring for 3, so most people's characters came out looking a bit different. I remember there was even a mod tool on PC that tried to fix some of the worst of it. I did a whole thing of copying my Xbox saves to a USB, converting them to PC format, running them through this tool and then converting back. Huge amount of effort, and while it improved one character, the other ended up with this weird single, untextured vertex sticking out from her chin that meant in some animations there was a weird black dot just floating there. So yeah, if they could fix things so that your ME3 character actually looks like your ME1/2 character, that'd be great. They clearly won't, though, as this is obviously just going to be an elaborate HD texture pack and some lighting improvements. Ehhhhh. I really didn't like how they were mostly just asset reuse from the Cerberus units. I loved the ME3 multiplayer, but it definitely suffered from the issue where the newer classes just dwarfed the originals and made the experience seriously sucky for a newbie. I remember when I switched to PC after a sale, and had to build up my multiplayer stash from the ground up despite having played to a pretty high level on Xbox. Being stuck with the default classes after experience wonky ***** classes like the krogan hammer guy and the ex-cerberus biotics was a miserable experience. I used to have so much fun with my C-Sec inspired basic human Engineer running around with nothing but a Phalanx pistol, a tech drone and nigh on instant recharge Overcharge. But if you wanted to play Platinum difficulty with the big boys, it just stopped being viable. The classic Pay To Win problem. Sadly, something else I don't see being corrected for this version. The multiplayer was definitely popular enough that EA will bank on nostalgia to keep nickle and diming players for upgrade crates even though most of the playerbase will be double or even (as in my case) triple dipping just to buy the remasters in the first place.

Both of which are way easier to do if you know a ship is coming in your faction, or if a card park has been announced. For Rebels and to a lesser extent Imperials (they've had the TIE Heavy, but now that it's out....), there is essentially nothing on the horizon in which you might be able to get new upgrade cards while buying in-faction. That's..... kinda the whole crux of this discussion. Timely announcements of card parks would eliminate like 90% of people's issues with 'buying out of faction'. Without that knowledge, telling people to 'just wait' is super unhelpful.

Good lord, I honestly didn't realise there were people this thick anywhere near these boards. The Nazis used the word 'Socialist' the same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea uses the word Democratic. I.e, it's total bull****. It's a sham. An image. Fascism is, by every shred of cogent political thought and definition, the dangerous extremity of the right wing. The Nazis used the term Socialist as a brazen attempt to appeal to the disenfranchised working class of debt crippled Weimar Germany. There was nothing socialist about them. I'm honestly staggered at how poorly educated you are. The 20th century wars and interbellum period are, like, the easiest parts of human history to study and comprehend. They're incredibly well documented, and for the most part astonishingly black and white.

Only three points, but three points that could be spent elsewhere on something that might be more effective than 'just an option'. R3 Astro on Wedge as just one example. No, but the easiest time to get something out of Jake's ability is the same time you'd be looking for the lock to set up an ion missile shot - the first engagement. It's not too difficult to plan and reliably execute an approach that uses Jake to give Wedge double mods on the first approach - it's what happens once you get in the mix that makes it tougher to use his ability. But that's also when you want the ion to control the second turn of engagement and get your blocks right. But you said yourself that Heff is relying on Wedge for Swarm Tactics to fire before the opponent and not get initiative killed. Once Wedge goes, you've lost one of your only two decent guns and it's now harder for the other one to do its job. This is why Wedge is such an easy first target. Plus, with Wedge out of the way the opponent doesn't have to bother playing Heff's game. All you have to do is not go near him. Double mods are always nice, but they're less effective the more the likelihood that you will have to spend that focus token defensively first. But also the usual benefit blockers have is that there's at least one ship they can't be shot by. Zeb undoes that too. Now all the people that Heff blocks get to shoot him too, and without Wedge on the board they will get to shoot Heff first. And even with Wedge on the board, you're tying your I6 big gun to range 1 of a ship that moves at I2. Swarm Tactics does nothing until engagement. So once you've moved Heff, you've given away information of where Wedge likely wants to be which makes it easier for anyone I3-I5 to block Wedge. I really don't like Swarm Tactics on anything that isn't obviously going to move around as a big jousting block anyway. It just telegraphs too much on ships that would normally prefer a more open dial. I'm not saying there aren't things that this list could do well, just that I think it'd get a bit desperate in terms of damage output after Wedge dies. Heff, Arvel and Jake all being at different Initiatives with two of them wanting to block or at least bump just makes things awkward, IMO. If you drop Ion missiles from Jake and Swarm Tactics, you can take Luke instead of Wedge and I think that already starts to look a little better. It's way easier for Luke to get those Ion torps off successfully and means he can be out in more of a flanking position. Drop Leia and Predator from Arvel and you can take Thane instead of Jake. Not saying that's necessarily better. I think Leia would have even more to do with another X-Wing on the board, so she's a tough loss. And obviously Predator goes so well on Arvel. But I do think your potential damage output goes way up. I love Jake and Arvel individually as pilots, I do think they're strong. But when they're together in a list, I can't help but see almost half the points going into lacklustre attack. I think with that list, it's also way clearer what everyone's job is. If Jake could reliably arc dodge, this would be a totally different story, of course. I really do think that I4 kills him as anything other than a support piece though. When A-Wings either get cheaper or better, I can see lists like this having better legs. But making 2/4 ships an RZ-1 in the current points ecosystem just scans as a bad idea to me.

Have you run missiles with Jake before? Getting a lock with him is an exercise in frustration. You have to suspend pretty much everything about his ability to do it. It's especially problematic with range 2-3 missiles as they discourage boosting after locking which is the only way to get some leverage out of his ability for someone else. My issue with this list is that all your opponent has to do is kill Wedge, and then you basically have no damage output. There's too much support here and not enough things for them to support.

Something I don't get about this.... they presumably have to do reprints of everything at some point, right? Imagine if 2e had never been a thing. Eventually all the 1e ships would have, in turn, run out of stock and been reprinted. It had multiple times to the wave 1 ships, for example. Why can't FFG just run these re-releases as reprints? Not give them the full release fanfare, not count them as part of new waves. Just reprint the models in 2e packaging with the 2e cards they've already printed. If the problem is they're not selling as well, then why not just release in more limited runs as they would have with reprints? That way, ships that have genuinely become difficult to find like the E-Wing, TIE Phantom, Assault Gunboat, Star Viper and Aggressor can be re-released and 2e only players can pick them up without having to scour second hand or expensive 1e versions. Plus any 1e veterans who didn't pick up enough Gunboats in the very limited time they were available (*cough* me *cough*) can finally pick up a second. But FFG aren't losing out because they're not targeting the kind of sales figures they would for a new wave, they're just restocking out of stock content.

How much have you played using Arvel? Because this statement would worry me. Arvel's a nifty little ship, but building a whole list around him just doesn't work. It's the classic Rebel synergy trap. You telegraph your plan from a mile away, and even if you pull it off the results aren't anything spectacular. You reduce one ship's agility by 1 without sacrificing one of your attacks the way you normally would with Intimidation. Okay? The problem is that attack you're not sacrificing via Arvel's pilot ability is only three dice and it's unlikely to have much in the way of mods. Probably just a focus token. Predator really helps Arvel, but you're not taking it here. So either Arvel gets his shot, but is light on mods and max damage or he doesn't and you've maybe achieved the single agility drop. Arvel isn't going to win matches you for. At his absolute best he's essentially a support piece. Here's the other thing with Starbird Slash. You're assuming that failed bump/block = maneuver through opponent. That isn't guaranteed at all. If you miss your block/bump because they didn't maneuver where you thought they did, then more likely your maneuver will just miss them entirely. Also, I don't buy this for a second. If you're not filling that second talent slot on a Green or Arvel then why are you taking them over the Phoenix? The A-Wing is low attack and mod starved, Predator and Crack Shot are still cheap and should absolutely be on Arvel alongside Intimidation at the very very least. Slash is cheaper than them, yes, but way harder to trigger. Slash is a terrible back up plan though. Because look at this list. You've built an entire list around the card. Because you have to. It being limited to a single ship in the faction means to use it you have to bring A-Wings. To make A-Wings worthwhile you need multiple of them. Having multiple A-Wings costs you points you then can't spend on aces or tanks. SS isn't a 1 point upgrade that you add to a list that already works okay just in case the situation calls for it, it's an upgrade that dictates what ships you're bringing from the ground up. You've brought A-Wings to test out Slash then thought "what are A-Wings good at? Ah, blocking" and then finished the list by picking one ship who can make use of blockers and one ship that also helps Blount's ability. To really judge the value of this is a back up, you need to look at the list without it - is 3xA-Wings + Norra + Blount without SS a good list? If it's not a good list, is it going to be fixed by the simple addition of this card? I really, really don't see it. The logic of the list makes sense when you step through from upgrade to pilot who can use it to pilot who works with that pilot, but completely breaks down when you look at it as a whole. Why is Norra there, really? I honestly can't see a reason beyond "I already have Blount who likes ships to be at range 1 and Norra likes to be at range 1". It's synergy for the sake of synergy and not actually driving to a result greater than the sum of the parts. Blount is there because Arvel is, but what is the link between Arvel and Norra? How are those two ships specifically benefitting each other? Do you see Arvel bumping a target and then Norra being at range 1 of that target with a shot as something that will happen regularly? Because I'll tell you now, it won't. Bumping a blocking a target with Arvel and then getting Norra in range 1 but not bumped or blocked herself is difficult. Not impossible, with the activation order and dials in question, but not easy by any means. Honestly, one of the best uses of Arvel is denying the range 3 bonus. Having him block, then having a heavy hitter at range 3 is so much better. It's easier to pull off as the A-Wing is faster than most other ships, and it means you get a defensive bonus on your heavy hitter while denying the opponent theirs. Wedge especially loves Arvel. Everyone but Norra and Blount. Blount is I4. This means all you have is open activation for the A-Wings. Which you'd also get if they were all Phoenix Squadron pilots. And then they'd be better blockers. Arvel is fine at I3 because those ships he can't block he can still boost into and benefit. The Greens don't have that luxury. Any ships of lower I, they can't block. All they can do is bump after, which means the opponent ship has mods and you don't. Yes, Intimidation triggers but frankly that's almost always straight up worse than just having an extra ship shoot them with a focus token. I1 is also probably best for SS because you move first and so know exactly whether your maneuver will overlap the opponent. In fact, this suits their role as blockers really well. Block them one turn, guarantee SS the next. Yes, your opponent will see that coming and dial a blue to clear the Strain, but that's valuable too. You've just controlled their dial. I mean, that's fine but if you're absolutely dead set on that then just go for it. Run the list, see how it does and hit up the Battle Reports forum afterwards to share. If you really do want feedback, then my feedback is that SS is probably a bad card on RZ-1s, that I3 A-Wings trying to switch between Intimidation and SS is too much of an awkward middle ground for too many points and that if over half your list is going to be spent on RZ-1s then the other half of the list had better hit like a truck. I'd strongly consider changing Blount and Norra, and strongly advise outright dropping one of those Green Squadrons at the very least. If you want to test Intimidation + SS, then do it with Arvel and one other Green. That should give you plenty of test data. If you really want to keep Blount in there too, then I'd probably suggest something like this: Green Squadron Pilot (32) Starbird Slash (1) Intimidation (3) Ship total: 36 Half Points: 18 Threshold: 2 Arvel Crynyd (34) Starbird Slash (1) Intimidation (3) Ship total: 38 Half Points: 19 Threshold: 2 Lieutenant Blount (30) Ship total: 30 Half Points: 15 Threshold: 2 Ten Numb (48) Fire-Control System (2) Jamming Beam (0) Stabilized S-Foils (2) Ship total: 52 Half Points: 26 Threshold: 4 Horton Salm (37) Ion Cannon Turret (5) R4 Astromech (2) Ship total: 44 Half Points: 22 Threshold: 4 Blount, Ten and Horton are all I4. Gives you that same activation freedom. Horton is also underrated, IMO. He really, really wants Proton Bombs too but that can't be helped here. Ten will draw all the fire. You've just got to hope he puts out some damage before he dies. If you get a chance to double tap with that Jamming Beam, take it. It's normally not worth it, but there's a real chance that Ten won't live to get to use that lock next turn in this list. May as well set up Horton, Blount and hopefully Arvel a little better before he dies. Then your opponent has to pick between stack of health Horton or cheap but killable Blount.

As usual, nail was hit on the head in the first page of the thread. But just to comment a little further on the bolded, I don't think it's impossible to make every card immediately available to every faction. Thus far, Armada has been really good about including all new generic upgrade cards in a wave in at least one ship per faction per wave. Usually, you can stick to one faction and get all the new content that might apply to your faction. But of course, this is far, far easier when you're only dealing with two factions. X-Wing makes this harder, certainly. But not outright impossible. A theoretical release model of 7 ships per wave with a ship per faction would make it doable. The only real barrier is that Rebels, Imperials and to a certain extent Scum have no content out there worth releasing. That said, I'm not expecting anything to change on that front so you're right the only sticking point left is the length of the delay. For what it's worth, I'm not at all mad about not having an in-faction route to new cards. But I'm not exactly happy with it either. The biggest problem for me is that space, of all things, has become a bit of a premium. I have most of the Rebel and Imperial content, a good chunk of Scum and a decent amount of Republic. This is on top of my Armada content. Any expansion I now buy on top of that would require additional investment just to store it, and I'd have to find somewhere else in the cupboard to stuff it. I'll always consider Rebel and Imperial content, but buying Resistance, FO, Sep or even certain Republic ships just for cards really isn't appealing. Card packs are the obvious solution, and I'm sure one is coming eventually. I guess I'd just like them to be a little bit more regular. Even if the card packs were an annual thing, we'd be overdue an announcement at this point. Hotshots and Aces came out in Jan. Next Jan is only two months away. I think length of delay is the big sticking point, and I feel justified in arguing that for most people the delay in certain factions getting new cards is too long. A question to the rest of the thread: how would people feel about 'alternate editions' of existing ships as standalone releases? I'm thinking like the Chimaera expansion in Armada - same ship model, but different paint scheme and all new cards. It's an area FFG have also just trod near to with the the Sep Firespray. Everyone seems fine with the Squadron Pack repaint model, and everyone mostly agrees that not having to rebuy existing ships to get new content was a good move. But what constitutes an existing ship? Is it the physical model, the statline on the ship card? Would a straight up single re-release of a ship that's already been released in 2e only with all new pilots and a new paint scheme with a bunch of new upgrades bother people?

I don't think his ability is particularly good, but it's not exactly a worse co-ordinate. Poe loses his own ability for that turn, but unlike co-ordinate there is still a 'bonus' action happening in that round. You always gain one action above ship count when Poe is on the board, which isn't true of co-ordinate. The timing is interesting too, it basically means you get to react and plan your actions in whatever order you need. It obviously has drawback vs co-ordinate, though. The big one, and the real reason I think no one will ever bother with this Poe unless he gets super cheap is that every other turn restriction. It's just going to require a level of planning and compliance from your opponent that IMO is unrealistic. The other is that while in some ways it's easier to use, there's also less potential for shenanigans than with co-ordinate. You can't bring a low I co-ord bot and use it to give high I ships pre-manuver reposition, or focus tokens before red maneuvers, or take early locks. NuPoe works great with other I5s and I6s on the table, especially when they've got free actions or economy abilities of their own. But he's always going to suffer himself as an I6. He'll always be costed as an I6 who can PTL every other turn and never costed as a support piece, so why bother? Just take OldPoe, another high I ace and a co-ordinate bot.

Norra likes to get in close because it helps her survive, though, not because she's good at killing things. She's either a three dice attack at best or an ion attack limited to one damage. There's no point running all these debuffs if you don't have someone to capitalise on them. LUZ is right, you don't have a heavy hitter. Blount is your only pseudo 3 dice attack, but he's 2 across the board in every other stat. He's super easy to kill and probably the priority target now in this list. Blount and Norra are both pieces who work best when you can punish an opponent for ignoring them, which means dangling juicier bait. If they take the bait, Norra and Blount shine. If they don't, then whatever makes that ship juicy (eg. an I6, three dice primary with a strong ability like Wedge) gets to do its work. Honestly, I feel like this is a card you need to back yourself on. Either you get the maneuver call right or you don't. These sorts of hedging strats rarely pay off. See upgrades like Composure. Either Arvel is there to bump every time he possibly can, or he's not. Every turn you try and trigger Starbird Slash on Arvel is a turn you're wasting the points you invested in him + Intimidation. Granted, SS is only a point. If you've got it free, you may as well take it on Arvel now that Crack is 2 points, I guess. My problem there is that now you're kinda just building an Arvel/Norra/Blount range 1 shenanigans list and the two SS Greens are largely irrelevant. Also, if you're going for Intimidation As, then why go for Greens when you'll find it easier to set up blocks with Phoenix Squadron pilots? You see what I mean? Cheap Intimidation blockers want to be moving as early as possible. But if you drop to a lower I, now you can't also take SS. That said, we're now going to get into my problems with Starbird Slash as a card for Rebels (hint: I don't think it's very good). It's a card that works best if you've got multiple copies in a list to give yourself a better chance of being able to use it, and it's a card that works best when you've got a heavy hitter to take advantage of that. Problem is, when it comes to Rebels I think those two goals are incompatible. Rebel A-Wings are too expensive for what they offer relative to other ships, and their high damage pieces are also expensive. You just can't put together a list that makes use of both. Closest I've got so far is this: Phoenix Squadron Pilot (29) Starbird Slash (1) Ship total: 30 Half Points: 15 Threshold: 2 Phoenix Squadron Pilot (29) Starbird Slash (1) Ship total: 30 Half Points: 15 Threshold: 2 Phoenix Squadron Pilot (29) Starbird Slash (1) Ship total: 30 Half Points: 15 Threshold: 2 Wedge Antilles (55) Servomotor S-Foils (0) Ship total: 55 Half Points: 28 Threshold: 3 Ten Numb (48) Fire-Control System (2) Jamming Beam (0) Stabilized S-Foils (2) Ship total: 52 Half Points: 26 Threshold: 4 Total: 197 3 points for R3 on Wedge, Crack on either Wedge or Ten, a bid, or however else you like to flavour your ships for 3 points. (EDIT: Lol, @LUZ_TAK just went to the next topic down and saw you'd suggested this exact list. Didn't mean to copy, but interesting that we both thought the same thing about how SS would work) Do you see what I'm going for here? Three blockers/SS carriers to mess up the opponents formation and potentially ship some Strain tokens, an anvil down the middle who both takes a bit of killing and can dish out the hurt, and a high I flanker who is there to hit hard for as long as he lasts. Your opponent won't go for the A-Wings, but they will have to pick between Wedge and Ten. You're looking for a favourable trade early on, and then whittling down the rest with whoever you have left and chip damage from the A-Wings. I don't think this is a very good list. But if you specifically want to use SS, it's about all I can think of. Other than running a more standard Arvel range 1 shenanigans list with ARC Norra, Blount and maybe Luke or Corran and just squeezing SS in there as a backup.

That's why Elusive is there. You use its charge to regen the shields back. Sure, the ratio sucks but that's why I said it's pure jank.

Not sure if anyone else has pointed this out yet, but you can run False Transponder Codes on Saw's Renegades' X-Wings. This is relevant because Rebels are the faction with Chopper, who can regen non recurring charge upgrades. And Chopper fits in X-Wings. Kullbee Sperado + Chopper + Elusive + FTC Pure jank, but basically on demand range 3 I4 jamming for 51+ points.

Who did? When? Where? The only time anyone has moaned about Han was one specific, broken build that got nuked by rule and slot changes after only a couple of weeks. We only got to a point last points changes where people stopped complaining that Han was overcosted.

Double Post, soz.

Hard 1s are nice, but I don't think the ease or difficulty of blocking a ship has to do with the specific maneuvers it pulls; rather, it is to do with the range of possible maneuvers it can pull off. And the Firespray lacks the 3 hard turn, so it has the same number of turn options as the X-Wing and the same difference in terms of the distance over which the ship can end up. Blocking is essentially just a question of predictability and being able to guess correctly. More available maneuvers makes that guess harder, fewer options makes it easier. Having to guess between a 1 hard and a 3 hard makes things way more difficult than either between a 1 and 2 or a 2 and 3. Having hard 1s and straight 4 does extend the range of the area the Firespray can end up, vs the X-Wing, I'll concede that. But personally I think it's more than made up for by the medium base. There's no getting around the fact the Firespray needs a larger area of clear board to land in. To flip that around, a ship can successfully use an obstacle or other ship to help the block while being further away from that obstacle or other ship than against a small base. Vs all other I6s in the game, the Jango's dial is most similar to Wedge's. That was the root of my comparison. They also have similar (i.e none) access to pre movement reposition. The Firespray does have the significant benefit of that rear arc, and I did acknowledge that in the part of the quote you left off. Maybe I'm wrong in saying Jango is easier to block than Wedge - it's possible I'm overstating the effect of the medium base - but I really don't think he's much harder to block than Wedge, and Wedge really isn't hard to block. And yeah, Jango's a stack of HP that you still have to grind through. But he's always going to be expensive enough that you need to maximise his attacking dice rolls to justify taking him over two ships. Especially in Swarms: The Faction. And even with Force crew, a blocked Jango is just going to have so little offence to work with. 5 damage past 2 agility (less than an X-Wing ) and you've got half points on a ship that now really needs to work to get equal damage back out.

I'm not mad. I'm not even worried. His ability sucks. Stop worrying about him 'controlling your dial and actions' - he doesn't do that at all. Any Jango player is going to be way more stressed about dial setting than you are. Every single maneuver is going to be an internal debate of 'do I do the maneuver with the best positioning, or do I try and trigger the ability?' Every now and then, the 1 bank or 2 straight will be the optimum move and the Jango player will be ecstatic that he finally doesn't have to pick.... only to find you also did a blue forward and it still doesn't trigger. Even when it does trigger, ask any Garven or Ten player about relying on eye results coming up when you need them. I don't know why maybe changing your ideal action priority counts as 'controlling your actions'. You're better off taking a lock against Jango than a focus, so what? On attack, that still gives you the same odds normally. It means Jango compromises your defence a tiny bit. Big deal. While FFG have said he won't be as expensive as Boba, he won't be far off. And Sep Force crew are expensive. If that stacking worries you, then Force Jango is going to be a good half a list. Slightly compromised defence on one ship isn't much of a problem against that. Not to mention I quite like the idea of an ability that might give you pause against using a focus. Seriously, the focus action is one of my least favourite things about the game. I hate that it's the default action, I hate that most of the time it's the best action to take because of versatility. Because it's the same odds as the attacking action and often better than the defensive action. If there was no focus action, and most action phases required you to make an actual choice between the offensive lock action and the defensive evade action, I actually think the game would be better. So if Jango gets people out of that comfort zone and makes them actually consider actions other than focus, I'm all for it. And that's literally all he does. You haven't somehow lost the benefit of your action by taking a lock. You still have a lock. That's a perfectly valid thing to do. And you can still take a focus if there are any other ships around you might be worried about. You still get to benefit from that focus if you shoot someone else or someone else shoots you. Jango isn't taking your actions away. All he does is lightly persuade you to take a different action if you're one on one with him. Is an I6 Firespray really all that much to worry about? I don't think so. Yes, he can boost out of some arcs. If he gets to boost. You seem to be forgetting a major part of why Boba is problematic. Because he benefits from being blocked. Throwing in a ship to block him just puts a ship at range 0 to fuel a re-roll. Jango has no such gain. As it is, he's a medium base ship with an X-Wing dial that moves after everyone else. Meaning 95% of the pilots in the game can block him. Jango isn't Fel. He's Wedge. Wedge with a bigger footprint. He's easier to block than Wedge, and Wedge is not hard to block. Yes, he's got that rear arc so he has the option of scooting straight past. There's maybe a bit more of a chess element of getting the block maneuver right, but I still don't think it will prove to be too hard. Jango has no tricks. He has nothing that other I6 pilots use to offset their cost and make most use of their I value. No double reposition, no dial changing (outside of Seasoned Navigator, which interestingly virtually guarantees his ability gets turned off), no free re-rolls, no pre-movement reposition. He can't Collision Detector his way through an obstacle as an escape. He can't even buff his own dice. He's fat Wedge. He even has a similar, but way worse ability. Like, if you're not worried about Wedge I can't think why you'd see Jango as a problem.

XX-23 Thread Tracers is the kind of design space I don't like - it's drawback actually almost synergises with its benefit. Thread Tracers are essentially trading one attack to get the rest of your list better quality attacks on the same target. The drawback is losing out on the damage of one attack (normally a pretty strong drawback) and the benefit is gaining damage on other attacks. So the best way to mitigate the weakness of Thread Tracers is by putting it on a cheap ship in a list with lots of ships. Losing one attack from 6, 7 or 8 is no where near as bad as losing one of 3 or 4. On the other hand, the benefit of Thread Tracers also scales with ship count. The more ships that can take a lock from each use, the more value you get from the points investment. So whichever you look at it, Tread Tracers are way better in high ship count lists. That trade off isn't really much of a trade off. Meanwhile the upgrade is virtually useless in other list archetypes. Really curious to see the points cost anyway. If it's 6 points or less, you can run 4x Gray Squadron Bombers with Proton Torpedoes and a Bandit Squadron designator with Thread Tracers for 200. Or 5x Scimitars with the same loadout, only in that case the designator also gets to run Concussion Missiles or Proton Bombs.