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Bottom line is Amg made about 1/4 of the ships mostly the low initiative generics useless and worse choices because there are other options of the same ship that cost the same but have higher loadout values and more upgrade slots… I don’t know how people justify this as a good change, but there are always fanboys willing to defend obvious bad design decisions.

chaos0xomega wrote:

You're misunderstanding entirely. Theres a specific word/phrase that if I could remember what it was could convey my point more succinctly, but in essence the points are built around a designers vision and expectations of how things should fit into gameplay and what should be prioritized. The points essentially craft the internal balance of a faction and by extension the wider meta.

Ok. I think I get where you are coming from.

In essence, points craft the experience, the experience is dictated by what the designers want gameplay to look like, rather than what the playerbase thinks it should look like - sometimes this causes a lot of problems where the points system encourages a certain type of gameplay while the players want or believe the game should play differently because the mechanics favor or imply a certain style of play... but we generally consider those to be badly designed games.

To me this immediately conjures the split between competitive players and the fluffy/narrative players. The competitive players will adapt to whatever playstyle, army composition etc that is rewarded/encouraged by the state of the game's balancing system whatever that may be while the fluffier players will prioritize adherence to the fluff making fielding less powerful armies in the process.

Yeah, I would agree that at a glance it seems weird and nonsensical, I'm hoping that once I get a chance to play a few games the rationale behind it because apparent.

I played my first 20-point game last night. YASB has a 2.5 builder up already. It played mostly the same mechanically. We used the scenario with one objective in the center. I got 2 VPs off of it, but victory was still determined by destroying the opposing squadron which I managed to do on turn 11. I had two ships left, one had given up half points. Just from the list-building side, the clear emphasis in this update is on heroic named pilots loaded to the gills. You are generally punished for taking generics. Many of the loadout point decisions seem nonsensical within the context of heroes. There are three Decimator pilots that come in at 8 points. Each has a different level of loadout points. Oicunn gets 25. The others 22 and 20. Oddly the Patrol Leader gets more than Morna Kee. But really you are never going to take any of them because moving up to 9 squad points gets you Chiraneau with 35 loadout points.

My regular opponent commented last night that maxed loadouts is not noob friendly since it requires them to keep track of far too many abilities and triggers. In the past we'd start new players out with naked ships in order to focus on the basic mechanics. His other comment is that this all feels half-baked given they were still putting this stuff together in December.

 Arschbombe wrote:
My regular opponent commented last night that maxed loadouts is not noob friendly since it requires them to keep track of far too many abilities and triggers. In the past we'd start new players out with naked ships in order to focus on the basic mechanics. His other comment is that this all feels half-baked given they were still putting this stuff together in December.

That was what I was seeing from the points lists. Simple, stripped-back ships are gone. Unless both players agree to leave them off, upgrades are taking up too much space for new players.

AMG wrote:We have changed the minimum ships that must be taken in a squad to 3, up from the previously allowed 2. This was done because two ship lists were generally not very successful in engaging with the scenario play we want to emphasize in the new direction of X-Wing. We’ve kept the same maximum of 8 ships – and let me say from our testing - there are some potent swarm lists out there!

This looks to be the reason for expensive Academy Pilots. "Night Beast” and Obsidian Squadron Pilot now cost less, due to the 3-point mod slot on the Academy Pilots.

 Arschbombe wrote:


I played my first 20-point game last night. YASB has a 2.5 builder up already. It played mostly the same mechanically. We used the scenario with one objective in the center. I got 2 VPs off of it, but victory was still determined by destroying the opposing squadron which I managed to do on turn 11. I had two ships left, one had given up half points. Just from the list-building side, the clear emphasis in this update is on heroic named pilots loaded to the gills. You are generally punished for taking generics. Many of the loadout point decisions seem nonsensical within the context of heroes. There are three Decimator pilots that come in at 8 points. Each has a different level of loadout points. Oicunn gets 25. The others 22 and 20. Oddly the Patrol Leader gets more than Morna Kee. But really you are never going to take any of them because moving up to 9 squad points gets you Chiraneau with 35 loadout points.

My regular opponent commented last night that maxed loadouts is not noob friendly since it requires them to keep track of far too many abilities and triggers. In the past we'd start new players out with naked ships in order to focus on the basic mechanics. His other comment is that this all feels half-baked given they were still putting this stuff together in December.

I've now played 3 games using all of the non-dogfight scenarios. You're correct that the new squad building is not new player-friendly. I actually got my own upgrades mixed up in my 3 ship list because the ship I normally put Mag Pulses on didn't have them - it was a different ship that had them because of the way Loadout Values work. That's a minor problem, but it highlights how easy it is for confusion to happen. You even need to remember which TIE Fighter has a cannon equipped because consistent upgrade slots are a thing of the past.

For the games themselves, I was left deeply underwhelmed. There's obviously still a fair amount of nuance and changes in thinking to get used to. However, we were struck by two things straight away. Firstly, the rules for placing the objectives are really quite restrictive. You end up with quite a narrow area in each quarter to place them, resulting in very little opportunity to mix things up with objective placement. This carried forward into obstacle placement. You're now basically placing obstacles to try to make grabbing objectives harder, but that felt like it took away from the other aspects of obstacle placement like using them to split up swarms, or to limit lanes for big ships. It made the scenarios all feel very samey, possibly even more so that just dogfighting, which sounds counter-intuitive. Secondly, the games were over very quickly. Neither of us were ignoring the objectives but what ended up happening is one player would get a slight advantage on the scenario, then a ship would die and suddenly the game enters a state where it's likely to be over in one or two turns. In our last game we did the Scramble the Transmissions scenario and we ended up calling it two rounds from the end because I was so far behind and my opponent was so in control of the scoring there was no point in continuing. At the very least I think they need to tweak the victory conditions and scoring limits.

Overall, the scenarios don't really feel like Star Wars. I never really got a sense I was doing anything reminiscent of any of the cool scenes from the movies or TV shows. In fact, they were so painfully generic and uninspired it actually pulled me out of the moment. Where's the convoy defence? The capital ship assault? The planetary blockade breakthrough? After each of the games we both reflected the result seemed anti-climactic. Games 1 and 2 (Assault on the Satellite Array and Salvage) ended with just a single ship dead. In the latter, I won after forcing my opponent to drop their cargo and killing a single Z-95 worth 3 points. That felt really underserved. As with most of AMG's changes, I find what they've said they're trying to achieve and what they've actually done are completely at odds. This isn't more thematic, it's not easier for new players and it's not more satisfying to play.

Very disappointing to hear, its not like Star Wars doesn't have a rich history of dogfight video games that could have been referenced for scenario design for a tabletop game. Nope, nothing like that exists. No sir.

Sounds very much like they stuck with their Privateer Press chops of designing extremely bland competitive play scenarios.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Very disappointing to hear, its not like Star Wars doesn't have a rich history of dogfight video games that could have been referenced for scenario design for a tabletop game. Nope, nothing like that exists. No sir.

Sounds very much like they stuck with their Privateer Press chops of designing extremely bland competitive play scenarios.

I'm not even sure they're good competitive scenarios. The balance of points scoring seems off, for example. A lot of games seem to degenerate into a rush to kill the enemy, then rack up the remaining scenario points with your numerical superiority. It's really anti-climactic, and about the furthest thing from Star Wars I can think if. Even the dogfight scenario suffers from this. There's often no chance for a player to use their flying skills to come back, because once you're down to a single ship your opponent can often just do doughnuts around the central objective while you run off to regroup and come back in to try to kill them. It's really annoying to be in a position where you think you might have a chance but the stupid scenario means you have to stay close to the middle or you lose because...reasons.

The Salvage mission is probably the best of the 3 non-dogfight ones, but that's not saying much. It still suffers from the game ending too early with neither player feeling particularly fulfilled. I think we're likely to see a solved meta within the next month because squad building lacks granularity and the fixed Loadout Values mean there's probably one or two "correct" loadouts for each ship.

They are very odd, particularly given what AMG has done with the Marvel scenario system. To a certain degree it feels like an alpha design to test the waters with an established community. These things feel very early and generic and really don't take advantage of any of what makes X-Wing special. In many ways its worse, because it distracts from outthinking the opponent and maneuvering based on where you think they'll go.

I don't feel like its a total wash though. I think the new points system is fantastic for providing sideboarding options and I think that could enable some really creative scenarios. Scenarios that require a freighter while another might be based on an action given to ships with a certain upgrade type. Score points by firing torpedoes into the opponent's deployment zone, stuff like that. The new point system lends itself to a lot of scenario variety. The scenarios provided, sadly, do not really take advantage of it.

 LunarSol wrote:
They are very odd, particularly given what AMG has done with the Marvel scenario system. To a certain degree it feels like an alpha design to test the waters with an established community. These things feel very early and generic and really don't take advantage of any of what makes X-Wing special. In many ways its worse, because it distracts from outthinking the opponent and maneuvering based on where you think they'll go.

I don't feel like its a total wash though. I think the new points system is fantastic for providing sideboarding options and I think that could enable some really creative scenarios. Scenarios that require a freighter while another might be based on an action given to ships with a certain upgrade type. Score points by firing torpedoes into the opponent's deployment zone, stuff like that. The new point system lends itself to a lot of scenario variety. The scenarios provided, sadly, do not really take advantage of it.

I agree. My worry is that AMG so far seem pretty incompetent and unaware of the consequences of anything they're doing. I'd love to think there's some master plan here to develop better, more interesting scenarios. From what I've seen of AMG I don't have much faith that will happen.

Another big worry is how new players will get involved in the game. At the moment the Quick Start guide is very inaccurate and all the info in it talks about FFG and the squad building app that is now discontinued. I'm not sure how a couple of new players, eager to dive deeper into the X-Wing experience, find out about the new rules and points. I'm really not sure how they go about building squads from the PDFs. Why AMG combined all the faction points in a single PDF instead of splitting it like FFG did is a mystery to me. If this is supposed to get new players involved in the game I think they've massively missed the mark. There's also now the problem that the player base seems pretty splintered right now and that's not great for introducing new players via the FLGS.

Slipspace wrote:

I agree. My worry is that AMG so far seem pretty incompetent and unaware of the consequences of anything they're doing. I'd love to think there's some master plan here to develop better, more interesting scenarios. From what I've seen of AMG I don't have much faith that will happen.

I don't think it's straight up incompetence. I think it's mostly that they just don't care and/or aren't particularly interested. AMG didn't ask for this to get dumped on their lap. They're probably not even star wars guys. If they're younger it's perfectly understandable that they would prefer Marvel stuff over Star Wars.

What's the consensus on MCP? Is it any good? If so that would indicate that they are competent designers when they care about the game.

I've never played MCP but most people I know who have say it's fine, bordering on good. That may well indicate a higher level of competence, but it may just be they had one good idea that worked out well. It doesn't seem to have the player base of many other games so it may be that it's actually flawed and unbalanced but that's not readily apparent for the most part.

I do think a good designer should work within the general context of the game though. I'd say that's the mark of a good designer, in fact. I'm not saying X-Wing has to remain a strict dogfight-only experience, but if scenarios appear they should at least be thematic for the game and not...this.

MCP is my favorite game of the moment. It's just got a great pace with a really compelling mix of mobile and static objectives and core mechanics that give a great back and forth in momentum most games. It's been quite well balanced too, with great diversity and relatively little in the way of errata. The biggest weakness is honestly just that it launched 4 months before COVID did and most of its competitive testing has been regulated to online games. It's proved pretty popular there though, with the current league running 273 players. Its very popular locally too, for whatever that's worth.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

I agree. My worry is that AMG so far seem pretty incompetent and unaware of the consequences of anything they're doing. I'd love to think there's some master plan here to develop better, more interesting scenarios. From what I've seen of AMG I don't have much faith that will happen.

I don't think it's straight up incompetence. I think it's mostly that they just don't care and/or aren't particularly interested. AMG didn't ask for this to get dumped on their lap. They're probably not even star wars guys. If they're younger it's perfectly understandable that they would prefer Marvel stuff over Star Wars.

What's the consensus on MCP? Is it any good? If so that would indicate that they are competent designers when they care about the game.

I mean if this was the case and they didn’t care the logical thing to do is not try to change the entire system and put a bunch of work into it. Just make a bunch of card packs, raise prices and throw in a few scenario packs and move on… but they chose the path of major revamp.

To be fair I like the loadout point pool and I see merit in bumping changes but I think they have a poor grasp on ship point balance, scenarios isn’t what people wanted for competitive play (they should have leaned into scenario play as a narrative epic development Not as a revamp of the championship series), I don’t even like how loadouts are done on ships it is all over the place with certain names ships getting odd loadouts that make no sense. Friendly Bumps is to negative now. And I think a 20pt ship pool is entirely to restrictive and needs to be more granular (aka higher like 50pts) so that generics aren’t just useless trash that cost the same as named pilots w higher loadouts.

Lets be fair though. No matter the granularity, X-Wing is just a massively bloated game. It would be a massively bloated game with just a single pilot per ship, but when a single ship has enough pilots to fill multiple squads without generics... something is definitely going to be trash and when you're talking Star Wars its probably better that something is "Rookie Pilot" rather than Wedge Antilles.

There's some absolute headscratchers though. I suspect it comes down to there being a formula for the conversion and some stuff just not getting a second look. The most obvious example is Academy Pilot vs Black Squadron Ace. I don't think anyone could look at that and not see a problem, which probably means... nobody actually looked at it.

At the same time, I think X-Wing has always been the flagship of the problems with highly granular points. Part of the reason the game is so bloated is that FFG was happy to make a new pilot but slapping an extra upgrade slot on something, which made it technically better than not having that slot, so the points go up, but nothing could fill that slot that was worth paying the "tax" for the slot so it was just trash. The game has always been loaded with this stuff and for the most part, as long as a whole ship wasn't trash, people just kind of got numb to a huge swath of cards being filler. I don't think in that regard, all that much has changed here.

 LunarSol wrote:
Lets be fair though. No matter the granularity, X-Wing is just a massively bloated game. It would be a massively bloated game with just a single pilot per ship, but when a single ship has enough pilots to fill multiple squads without generics... something is definitely going to be trash and when you're talking Star Wars its probably better that something is "Rookie Pilot" rather than Wedge Antilles.

That's definitely true. The design (and sales) model is based around an ever-increasing number of ships with an ever-increasing pool of upgrades. That's going to lead to bloat. I would argue, however, that much of that bloat was at a more abstract level, in the sense that it definitely existed but wasn't often encountered on the tabletop. You still had to figure out which ships and upgrades were good, versus which were trash, but that tended to be done away from the table. AMG's approach is to explicitly increase that bloat through the Loadout Value. There's no reason not to load up a ship to the max and many ships have 20+ points available to spend. that's led some of our test games to become almost comical with the number of upgrades in use, many of which you don't necessarily want but you sort of need to take otherwise you feel like you're at a disadvantage.

 LunarSol wrote:
Lets be fair though. No matter the granularity, X-Wing is just a massively bloated game. It would be a massively bloated game with just a single pilot per ship, but when a single ship has enough pilots to fill multiple squads without generics... something is definitely going to be trash and when you're talking Star Wars its probably better that something is "Rookie Pilot" rather than Wedge Antilles.

Odd. I don't consider X-wing to be bloated at all. I can see how you might if you're looking at just the number of cards that the game has. To me X-wing is a small game, barely up to skirmish size when swarms are involved. I hesitated to pick it up after it was introduced to me in 2013 because the low model count was a turn off. I didn't pick it up again until 2015 once I learned TIE swarms were a thing. The rules are clean and all in one place. X-wing has 7 factions. In contrast, 40k has around 30 and the shoddy rules are all over the place: BRB, codices, supplements and WD. That's what I consider bloated.

I'm speaking bloated only in terms of the percentage of options that can be competitively viable. There's always been a pretty small subset of pilots that see play and in 1.0 it was worse with it being a pretty small subset of ships that hit the table.

Now to the point, its pretty well organized bloat. I'd like to see the app reestablished to make sure it stays that way, but I don't use 40k as reference. It's bloated AND disorganized, which is of course, much much worse.

I also appreciate the concern that putting more upgrades in play complicates the actual gameplay, which is definitely a valid issue. I think its the kind of thing that will work itself out in time and I'm curious how it "feels" from a starter box perspective as opposed to when you're a long term player with piles and piles of upgrades to manage.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Lets be fair though. No matter the granularity, X-Wing is just a massively bloated game. It would be a massively bloated game with just a single pilot per ship, but when a single ship has enough pilots to fill multiple squads without generics... something is definitely going to be trash and when you're talking Star Wars its probably better that something is "Rookie Pilot" rather than Wedge Antilles.

Odd. I don't consider X-wing to be bloated at all.

I think it depends on your definition of bloat. X-Wing's rules are (were) pretty streamlined in general and games tended to flow very easily once you're playing. Rules interactions were usually pretty consistent and logical and the FAQs/errata covered almost all the edge cases pretty well. The bloat was mainly just from the sheer amount of stuff you acquire. I think that's generally seen as slightly more acceptable bloat compared to a game like 40k where the act of playing the game itself feels bloated and complicated. My problem with 2.5 is playing the game is now a little bit less streamlined and set-up is a bit of a nightmare, while the effect of bloat is now felt more keenly on the tabletop itself due to the increase in upgrade cards and named pilots.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Lets be fair though. No matter the granularity, X-Wing is just a massively bloated game. It would be a massively bloated game with just a single pilot per ship, but when a single ship has enough pilots to fill multiple squads without generics... something is definitely going to be trash and when you're talking Star Wars its probably better that something is "Rookie Pilot" rather than Wedge Antilles.

Odd. I don't consider X-wing to be bloated at all. I can see how you might if you're looking at just the number of cards that the game has. To me X-wing is a small game, barely up to skirmish size when swarms are involved. I hesitated to pick it up after it was introduced to me in 2013 because the low model count was a turn off. I didn't pick it up again until 2015 once I learned TIE swarms were a thing. The rules are clean and all in one place. X-wing has 7 factions. In contrast, 40k has around 30 and the shoddy rules are all over the place: BRB, codices, supplements and WD. That's what I consider bloated.

It feels bloated to me. Everytime I seem to buy a new ship, there's multiple new tokens in it that weren't in the core rules with new rules on an insert sheet. Many of the sheets are different sizes, so to play, I'm needing dozens of differently sized bits of paper with new rules.

Also, I've not really got the hang of this loadout value change. I usually play with my teenage lad. We normally only have 1 or 2 cards per ship to keep rules down and spent the points on ships. Now it seems that if I pick a 7 point ship with a loadout of 28, I'm obliged to use all 28 loadout points or I'm 'wasting' ship points. It means my one ship card has like 6-7 extra cards with rules on it to use, covering the table. For 3 ships like this, I need a 3'x3' space just for my card layouts. Have I missed something? Is there a limit to loadout points or is it intended we spend as many as we can for the ships? It feels like I now have less ships to use and forced into using loads of cards.

Slipspace wrote:
I think it depends on your definition of bloat. X-Wing's rules are (were) pretty streamlined in general and games tended to flow very easily once you're playing. Rules interactions were usually pretty consistent and logical and the FAQs/errata covered almost all the edge cases pretty well. The bloat was mainly just from the sheer amount of stuff you acquire. I think that's generally seen as slightly more acceptable bloat compared to a game like 40k where the act of playing the game itself feels bloated and complicated. My problem with 2.5 is playing the game is now a little bit less streamlined and set-up is a bit of a nightmare, while the effect of bloat is now felt more keenly on the tabletop itself due to the increase in upgrade cards and named pilots.

I agree for the most part. 1st edition had a lot of material bloat in cards and tokens which was exacerbated by the fixed points printed on the cards and the development pipeline which meant that pilots and upgrades were often priced incorrectly at the time of their release making them broken auto-takes or DOA. Now, the community was often horrible at evaluating these pilots and upgrades in the short term too. I'm thinking here of atanni mindlink and emperor palpatine which were both dismissed by the community early on and then became meta-defining cards. But in terms of gameplay, x-wing never felt like the bloated mess that 40k is.

Gimgamgoo wrote:

It feels bloated to me. Everytime I seem to buy a new ship, there's multiple new tokens in it that weren't in the core rules with new rules on an insert sheet. Many of the sheets are different sizes, so to play, I'm needing dozens of differently sized bits of paper with new rules.

I've never used the paper inserts. Each time a new token and associated mechanic is added to the game, the rules reference is updated. You only ever need the one rules reference to play. The reason the expansions always include a bunch of stuff that you don't need is to ensure each pack is usable immediately without relying on any other packs. If you collect a bunch of ships, you'll end up with buckets of tokens, generic upgrade cards, and rules inserts.

Also, I've not really got the hang of this loadout value change. I usually play with my teenage lad. We normally only have 1 or 2 cards per ship to keep rules down and spent the points on ships. Now it seems that if I pick a 7 point ship with a loadout of 28, I'm obliged to use all 28 loadout points or I'm 'wasting' ship points.

Yes, this is a deliberate change in design direction. The new design team has one game under their belt and it's a superhero game. It would appear that they have brought the same hero mindset to x-wing now. So the emphasis is on a couple of decked-out heroes and not a bunch of nameless scrubs. For list building efficiency you are not so sublty encouraged to pick the ships with the high loadout values to maximize their value on the tabletop. The long term effects of all this remain to be seen. It'll take a while for everyone to adjust.

It means my one ship card has like 6-7 extra cards with rules on it to use, covering the table. For 3 ships like this, I need a 3'x3' space just for my card layouts. Have I missed something? Is there a limit to loadout points or is it intended we spend as many as we can for the ships? It feels like I now have less ships to use and forced into using loads of cards.

You aren't missing anything. You've got it. If the new system isn't to your liking, then you and your son can continue to play the old way. Lots of people still play 1st edition apparently so there will likely be people who stick with 2.0 and not move to this 2.5 version. My regular opponent is not taking the change in direction well and we might stay with the 2.0 paradigm for a while too. The only issues you'll have are playing in organized play events and dealing with future expansion that were never assigned a regular 2.0 point value.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

As another person said, many of these changes feel like change for the sake of change... and I don't really see this reinvigorating the X-Wing scene.

I don't think that's the case. We got here because Asmodee reorganized itself in preparation for sale and moved miniatures games away from FFG to AMG. So the boys at AMG are handed these licensed properties and told they're in charge now. They've been handed some else's baby and told to raise it.

When they look at it they don't understand it or its 10 year history and as they come to grips with it, there are lots of things they don't like. They talked about some of this stuff on some streams as even their approach to communication is completely different from FFG. They called out bumping as something that was never considered in the initial design and was brutal for new players to deal with. So they changed it to make bumping an enemy ship less onerous. Why they then turned around and made bumping your own ships much more punishing I can't say.

They also didn't like the deathmatch gameplay of 200 point lists and six obstacles. They're not alone in that. Lots of people complained about that on the old official forums, but it remained the standard for tournaments and pickup games. AMG now changed it to a bunch of scenarios that aren't really evocative of the fluff, but may turn out to be fun anyway. This change makes me think these guys aren't star wars guys and aren't invested in it.

Another weird change is the way they upped obstacle damage and effects. This doesn't seem to jive with their stated reasons for changing the bumping/blocking mechanics.

Anyway, to me this all less about change just for the sake of change a la GW, and much more about a bunch of new guys rolling with a game they didn't want and don't particularly like. I have no idea how this will impact the community going forward.

Well, if it's any consolation, it's not just AMG. Edge Studio is thoroughly gaking the bed in the RPG department, too.

While I like the concept that ships get their own pools of upgrade points it is way too heavily skewed in favor of Herowing instead of allowing a diversity of lists.

A standard no-name Tie Defender has 4 upgrade points, and Darth Vader has 14? Or even Captain Dobbs, who costs the exact same as the generic has 12 upgrade points.

Ridiculous. And I can only image the Rebels and Scum will be just as bad.

I weathered 2.0 and while I'm not out of the game I will definitely be doing fewer games.

Gimgamgoo wrote:

It feels bloated to me. Everytime I seem to buy a new ship, there's multiple new tokens in it that weren't in the core rules with new rules on an insert sheet. Many of the sheets are different sizes, so to play, I'm needing dozens of differently sized bits of paper with new rules.

That's not been my experience at all. X-Wing is one of the few games I play where I rarely need to refer to the rules at all. When I do, it's all in one place because the rules reference is updated whenever new mechanics are introduced. You really don't need all those inserts to play - they're just included to make each expansion "complete".

Gimgamgoo wrote:
Also, I've not really got the hang of this loadout value change. I usually play with my teenage lad. We normally only have 1 or 2 cards per ship to keep rules down and spent the points on ships. Now it seems that if I pick a 7 point ship with a loadout of 28, I'm obliged to use all 28 loadout points or I'm 'wasting' ship points. It means my one ship card has like 6-7 extra cards with rules on it to use, covering the table. For 3 ships like this, I need a 3'x3' space just for my card layouts. Have I missed something? Is there a limit to loadout points or is it intended we spend as many as we can for the ships? It feels like I now have less ships to use and forced into using loads of cards.

Nope, you're not missing anything. That's the idiocy of the new squad building. You now have multiple situations where generics and named pilots cost the same, even when the named pilot is higher initiative and the named pilot usually has more Loadout Points to spend too. It's stupid and makes list building much less flexible, IME. It also leads to actual bloat at the table because most ships you're encouraged to take have at least 2 upgrades and some can have way more than that.

ScarletRose wrote:While I like the concept that ships get their own pools of upgrade points it is way too heavily skewed in favor of Herowing instead of allowing a diversity of lists.

A standard no-name Tie Defender has 4 upgrade points, and Darth Vader has 14? Or even Captain Dobbs, who costs the exact same as the generic has 12 upgrade points.

Ridiculous. And I can only image the Rebels and Scum will be just as bad.

I weathered 2.0 and while I'm not out of the game I will definitely be doing fewer games.

This is the biggest problem with the list building for me. I think we're going to see a solved meta very quickly because so many ships are simply not an option any more, which narrows the list of viable ships considerably. It also reduces the ability to experiment. I predict we'll see players settling on the "correct" loadout for most of the good ships fairly quickly and the nature of the system now means there's hardly any room for experimentation. I can't decided to load one ship up with upgrades at the expense of my other ships, for example. Or I can't slim down the upgrades on something to squeeze in an extra ship, or upgrade one from a generic to a named pilot.

 ScarletRose wrote:
While I like the concept that ships get their own pools of upgrade points it is way too heavily skewed in favor of Herowing instead of allowing a diversity of lists.

A standard no-name Tie Defender has 4 upgrade points, and Darth Vader has 14? Or even Captain Dobbs, who costs the exact same as the generic has 12 upgrade points.

A no name TIE Defender COSTS 7 points and Darth Vader costs 11. I'd hope I get some upgrades for that kind of bump. Dobs vs the Onyx Ace is a LITTLE interesting. The Onyx at least has a better pilot skill and I'll happily argue that generics serving the purpose of "second Dobs at diminishing returns" is honestly a fine design space overall.

Now, if we really want to talk madness, we need to compare the generics against themselves. Onyx Ace is the same cost as the Delta, has a better pilot skill, more upgrade points, AND more upgrade slots. These are the places I keep finding things that are actually strictly better options with no, even minor arguments otherwise. Personally, I'd be fine if they all dropped down to one generic pilot though, which is basically what we have now.