Is Rebel captive too powerful?

[Magnus Grendel 11,691]

No.

 

There are ways to handle the stress and a cheap filler ship works great at taking the stress,

Academy Tie Pilot or Banded Z-95.

 

Unless you've got a way of boosting their pilot skill, it's less useful - because they'll fire after your named elite pilot, who'll therefore be the one to end up stressed.

[eagletsi111 1,115]

In today's meta.   always take swarm tactics, so your low PS ship can be stressed saving your big guns for the real fun.

Edited January 19, 2015 by eagletsi111

[eagletsi111 1,115]

As for being a rebel captive and working with Scum.

 

I think they should have just called it Captive.        And made it imperial only.       

 

That way it would just make more sense Fluff wise, but I totally think it will work.    It's just a poor name for it.

[ShakeZoola72 979]

As for being a rebel captive and working with Scum.

 

I think they should have just called it Captive.        And made it imperial only.       

 

That way it would just make more sense Fluff wise, but I totally think it will work.    It's just a poor name for it.

They probably had no inkling that scum was ever going to be around when they created this card...

Not a poor name...you can't really plan for something that hasn't been conceived yet.

[GeneticDrift 387]

Rebels have two high PS ships that don't hate stress. Keyan and Tycho, Porkins also is not to upset by it.  It helps to have multiple ships at the same PS so you can decide which is stressed. Also stressing the Decimator keeps it so all of your ships can chase better, focusing it down quickly.

[PenguinBonaparte 517]

I actually stumbled into a good way of keeping it from affecting my PS9 Whisper on Saturday: PS10 Chiraneau (with Engine Upgrade of course!). I'd been expecting others to put RC on Whisper (as I did) so I was just thinking about giving away initiative and not letting the  Enemy Whisper shooting at my Whisper cloak before I shot back, but this had huge benefits and I think I'm going to put my captive on the Decimator from no on too and just fly my phantom a little more cautiously in mirror matches.

Edited January 19, 2015 by PenguinBonaparte

[PhantomFO 9,103]

It's a hard counter against high-PS PTL ships, and has minimal effect against builds that rely on Swarm Tactics, Predator, Corran Horn, etc. There are lots of ways to build around it if you know what you're doing.

[DarthSidious 847]

The real question is, will there be rebel and imperial captives for the a Scum ships.

Probably not.  If someone takes an Imperial captive, the Empire will just blow that ship up.  Rebel captive works because the Rebels are the Good Guys .

[PenguinBonaparte 517]

"Good Guys," you mean?

[DarthSidious 847]

"Good Guys," you mean?

Thus the .

[phild0 1,735]

It is powerful in certain situations, such as being a Phantom vs a Decimator with RC or running something with PTL, for those situations it is very strong. Other situations it is an average 3 cost card that is helpful when you use it to your advantage, and mediocre if you don't plan to use it to your advantage.

[Stelar 7 888]

The real question is, will there be rebel and imperial captives for the a Scum ships.

Probably not.  If someone takes an Imperial captive, the Empire will just blow that ship up.  Rebel captive works because the Rebels are the Good Guys .

Just have to get the right imperial. For instance the guy that cooks Palpentine's favorite jedi tear souffle. Or Vader's cape starcher no one else can get it to billow correctly.

[Punning Pundit 4,746]

I'm thinking Decoy should start seeing more use. If you can get it on a PS 7 or 8 ship, then your PS 9 ship doesn't have to take the hit from Rebel Captive.

Or Mux.

[X Wing Nut 2,311]

Only makes Farlander over powered

[WWHSD 9,273]

Or Mux.

 

Mux is never going to be able to affect the order of any ship that would be shooting at a Rebel Captive unless you are playing some sort of weird three way dogfight. 

[Sethis 222]

It's a balanced part of the game, providing a useful tool to deal with 2-ship lists. In the same way we have Assault Missiles and Ruthlessness to deal with Swarms. It enables you to have an answer to a specific type of enemy list, which is exactly what ought to exist - everything should have a counter of some kind, somewhere, otherwise it becomes overpowered. So yeah, it really annoys Fat Han, but 8 APs give precisely 0 damns about it.

[TheAngryTemplar 83]

If the Rebel Captive is "too powerful" than C3P0 is "godlike".

I find Rebel builds with C3P0 to be vastly more annoying and difficult to play against than Imperial ones with Rebel Captives. 

[StevenO 2,996]

The Rebel Captive is definitely NOT too powerful.

 

It just happens that it currently is a very good counter to a number of things in the metagame.  That PS9 Phantom with ACD may REALLY hate it but a TIE Swarm can generally care less about it.  Look at what the RC hurts most:

 

1.  High PS ships because they are likely to shoot first but are what you'd prefer to keep the stress off of.

2.  Low ship count squadrons because the RC Stresses a much larger percentage of the list.

3.  Ships that want to perform actions before they get another chance to clear stress.

 

Now does that list happen to describe the metagame?  Is it the Captive's fault for the meta shift to the point it is now something good against many lists being face?  As the meta shifts off of those things the power of the Captive will also go down or will you say that this is the first upgrade that is "too powerful" yet time as shown that it will not stay that way.