Nothing immediately spring to mind. It looks like it should be legal.

HOTAC has been revamped for 2E, but when I played it had some balance issues. Picking up Sabine's ability was stupid good.

That I'll definitely agree with that, that doesn't seem to be what Blail was asserting. If they were using that logic, offense would have increased, as well, or at least not declined.

With the niche exceptions of the ETA and Zizi Tlo, I fundamentally disagree with this sentiment. How has defense gotten better?

Probably because Sun Fac is a menace to Boba/Fenn. He and ensare are still really good, you just need to only move them with the tractor if you can put them onto a rock to deny shots. If you don't move them, the don't get to rotate. The 69 points for Ensnare Fac is comparable to the 71 point Fearless Fenn, but yes, it can be unforgiving. Sun Fac + 6 Vultures with toys is strong, and it won the St. Louis Grand champs. For a two ship list, I would move to Zam at i5. Zam gets free mods. Give Zam Dooku crew and a bomb, and you have 40ish points to play with, or the stonkingly largest bid out there.

More or less this is true. Not everything is truly viable, but they are moreso than 1st Edition, and the points/slots adjustments really help to reign in the overpowered while buffing the underpowered. They are slowly dialing in each ship, pilot, and upgrade to their optimal price point. Mistakes are sometimes made, but they can now be rectified with a simple adjustment, rather than an errata to a card or the rules most of the time.

I believe this was why the ruling for Worlds was made. Points is one things, doing math every turn is another. Well this, and the fact that most folks keep track of points on their phone, and you could be checking other dice probabilities or messaging about the match on the phone.

attack SHUTTLE

100% agree. Zeb used to be that 3 die filler for me until, X-wings dropped to his price. I still think Hera is a steal, and Sabine is probably always worth her points.

Doug Howe flew 5 TIE/sa's with Skilled Bombardier and Thermal Detonators and a Nu Squadron Starwing with a Tractor Beam. One of the Bombers has Thread Tracers, and one might have had an Ion missiles.

Is that a rolling pin or the most symmetrical piece of bread ever?

You definitely are allowed to have you opponent's list in front of you, and it is typically a requirement for organized play. This includes the point value and half point value of ships. Note taking was disallowed in organized play for the potential of slowing the game down. Keeping track of points is not note taking, but rather part of the game.

I don't see how creating a ship that eliminates and obsoletes the majority of your products in the competitive scene is a cash grab. Certainly, you are making plenty of money on Jumpmasters, but that is at the cost of losing sales on the 30 or more other expansions.

Simply requoting for emphasis.

I'll admit my "knowledge" of that was hearsay. My bad for perpetuating it. But the point still stands, I'd rather like some veterans like yourself if you really are Max, I wouldn't put it past folks to create an alt and claim your name. still working on the game to be able to veto missteps that have already came before. Also, thanks for all the effort and creativity put into the game. Best of luck in your future endeavors!

I'm not certain that this means they must have both "would" and "instead". Only that the words "would" and "instead" are the indicators of replacements effect. For both to be necessary for a replacement effect, it would likely be word as "These abilities use both the words 'would' and 'instead'." or "These abilities must use the words 'would' and 'instead'."

I agree on the diminishing returns. As much as I love the game, if a 3rd edition came out this quick, even I would have to question whether I want to changeover. I need at least 2 more years. Relaunching seems a bad choice to me though, as X-wing is regularly in the top 5 selling miniatures games (although 2020 is going to weird for sales for all industries). Listening to Team Covenant talk about the X-Wing transfer, they were saying that starting up a new game is a harder sell to a producer than just continuing a game. AMG would probably have to intentionally tank X-wing to start their own.

You mean, "an updated version of TLT would be fine in 2.0". The range bonus, single arc, need to rotate - all of these are the lessons learned and applied. But if Newey McNewface at AMG makes a 360 degrees weapon that grants no range bonuses, and almost always does 2 damage - it most certainly would not be fine.

We also need at least some continuity in the design team, otherwise we will see the mistakes repeated that Alex and Max already learned from. Max came in with new ideas in first edition (TLT) and it hindered the game, but he learned lessons from them. There is 0 guarantee that new ideas won't be TLT without a veteran to veto obvious bad stuff that have already iterated through.

19 different frames is a valid point, but these squad packs going to be rerelease of already available ships. FO have an average of 6.5 pilots per chassis, while Scum have 4.5 per. If you want FO to get more chassis, that is totally cool and I am with you on that, but do they really need more pilots for the FO (12!) , SF (6), VN (7), Upsilon (6!), or Xi(4)? Only the TIE/ba seems a decent candidate for getting new pilots. Also, I take exception to that "near exclusive access" on the illicit. Only two factions do not have access the illicit slot. They do have more chassis that can use it than any other faction, but it seems fair to point out that 1/3 of Scum ships cannot take illicits. FO can have illicits on 1/2 of their ships by comparison. I'm not saying that this isn't a boon for Scum, but just that "near-exclusive" is a bit off.

I'm not certain anyone is saying that the flu is not a deadly virus, only that Covid-19 is more so. Because of exponential growth. Below is a comparison between linear growth and exponential growth. In linear growth, if three people per day are infected, it would take 333,334 days to infect 1 million people. That's 913ish years. But if we start with 3 people, and each one infects 3 more people each day you get this: 3 infected 9 infected 27 infected 81 infected 243 infected 729 infected 2,187 infected 6,561 infected 19,683 infected 59,049 infected 177,147 infected 531, 441 infected 1,594,323 infected 13 days instead of 9 centuries. Now lets add in social distancing, face masks, and quarantine measures. Let's say 1/2 of people follow these measures and they are hypothetically 100% effective (just for math, since this isn't the case). In linear growth, again starting with 3 people and removing 1/2 per day, increases the days to infect 1 million to 499,998 days or 1,369 years. Now, let's do exponential which each person infecting 3 more per day, and we'll round down the quarantine number because cutting a person in half kills the patient: 3 infected 9 infected - 4 quarantine = 5 active 15 infected - 7 quarantine = 8 active 24 infected - 12 quarantine = 12 active 36 infected - 18 quarantine = 18 active 54 infected - 27 quarantine = 27 active 81 infected - 40 quarantine = 41 active 123 infected - 61 quarantine = 62 active 186 infected - 93 quarantine = 93 active 279 infected - 139 quarantine = 140 active 420 infected - 210 quarantine = 210 active 630 infected - 315 quarantine = 315 active 945 infected - 472 quarantine = 473 active 1,419 infected - 708 quarantine = 709 active 2,127 infected - 1,063 quarantine = 1,064 active 3,192 infected - 1,596 quarantine = 1,596 active 4,788 infected - 2,394 quarantine = 2,394 active 7,182 infected - 3,591 quarantine = 3,591 active 10,773 infected - 5,386 quarantine = 5,387 active 16,158 infected - 8,079 quarantine = 8,079 active 24,237 infected - 12,118 quarantine = 12,119 active 36,357 infected - 18,178 quarantine = 18,179 active 54,537 infected - 27,268 quarantine = 27,269 active 81,807 infected - 40,903 quarantine = 40,904 active 122,712 infected - 61,356 quarantine = 61,356 active 184,068 infected - 92,034 quarantine = 92,034 active 276,102 infected - 138,051 quarantine = 138,051 active 414,153 infected - 207,076 quarantine = 207,077 active 621,231 infected - 310,615 quarantine = 310,616 active 931,846 infected - 465,923 quarantine = 465,924 active 1,397,772 infected 31 days instead of 13 days with no quarantining. A great improvement, but you can see that once that ball got rolling somewhere around day 20, even removing half of the pool did little to slow the growth. That is where America is at. And if you add in a Halloween or a Thankgiving where people relax their safety measures during the high tide, the exponential growth grows faster. Compare this to say Singapore, South Korea, or New Zealand who either made masks mandatory or commonplace (S Korea has 98% adoption rate without a law) and/or used vigorous testing, and they either curbed the cases in Singapore and New Zealand's case or prevented infection rates from even growing over 1,000 cases in South Korea's case. They took it seriously early on and didn't belittle the virus, and by effect, have largely been able to carry on with life as if Covid wasn't a thing. Addressing the issue early is key, but also universal adoption is key. And because of this, their economy's haven't faltered, their population is healthy, and their hospitals aren't anywhere near capacity. If America, or any other country for that matter, took masks, testing, and contact tracing as serious as those countries, their Covid numbers would be significantly reduced, and would be able to carry on about life as if there wasn't a pandemic happening.

CC at 3 points and Leia at 2. Yeah, that was bonkers stupid.

When people die from jumping out of a plane even when they have parachutes, it doesn't mean that we abandon parachutes. Masks and distancing minimize transmission, but do not stop it, as you posited. Can you show me where the CDC tracks worldwide deaths? I am unable to find those numbers from them. It's almost as if face masks and social distancing reduce the chances of contracting a disease. Of course the numbers are going to go down. Every communicable disease is likely going to see a decline this year, because of reduced contact and increased protection. Additionally, if Covid kills the more susceptible, high-risk patients, influenza cannot kill what is already dead. Certainly, plenty of co-morbidity cases are likely under-investigated, but that is partially because Covid is killing off so many people that treatment is taking precedence over paperwork. As someone that has recovered from Covid and has lost family members to Covid, please, ease your foot off of the conspiracy theory pedal.

Dee Yun is pretty much the the go-to non-FFG judge authority in the US currently, especially with Chico dropping from X-Wing. He was the head judge for all of the Galaxies events that happened recently, and has judged at various levels of play including the World Championships. If you ever see people talk about the X-Wing Illuminati, they are typically talking about Dee and a handful of judges across the world that make supplemental rules calls when FFG has not addressed an issue, and they X-wing community by-and-large accept those unofficial rules judgments until official calls are made.