Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/4/15/bombs-away/

Card-by-card comments:

TIE defender titles: not new, but confirmed here, taking away the last desperate hope that FFG would realize how broken these are and fix them before the expansion is released. Nope, we're stuck with this trainwreck of a balance decision.

Long range scanners: also old, still garbage. Since the original preview we've seen guidance chips, removing any hope that LRS would see any use. If you're taking this instead of chips to support your ordnance you're almost certainly making a huge mistake.

Gamma veteran: wow has my initial skepticism been proved wrong by wave 8. Guidance chips hadn't been shown yet and are a huge buff to ordnance, while a u-boat heavy meta rewards "kill a u-boat at PS 4+" alpha strikes. Now imperials get a PS 5 alpha strike option with an EPT for crack shot, beating both the PS 3 u-boats and PS 4 z-95s rebel players are going to take to counter u-boats. With homing missiles, extra munitions, and crack shot you have an alpha strike that is at least as good as any other option and a second shot to follow it. I'm not sure if they're quite overpowered enough to compete with Omega Leader and X/7 defenders, but they're really good.

Deathfire: seems mediocre. As a dedicated mine ship you save some points over Deathrain, but only at the cost of a much weaker pilot ability, half the bomb payload, and 3 HP less. As a weird hybrid mine/missile ship there might be some potential on paper, but PS 3 and no EPT probably kills it. Ordnance alpha strikes need to shoot first, and PS 3 isn't good enough. So you're left with a ship that isn't really great at anything, except being cheaper than the good ships. And I don't think that's at all justifiable when imperials have so many overpowered options to choose from.

TIE shuttle: good, but good enough? 18 point tactician bombers seems good, but in a faction with overpowered options like Omega Leader I'm skeptical that "good" is enough to make it viable. And I suspect the support-focused versions suffer from the general principle that support ships are bad in X-Wing's standard 100 point games. Do you really want to spend 20+ points on a support ship instead of just taking Howlrunner with crack shot?

Systems officer: decent on paper, weak in practice. A free action for 2 points and a crew slot seems about right, but the difficult question is where do you put it? Shuttles are already carrying Palpatine (and can't stay in formation anyway), decimators don't want the maneuvering restrictions, firesprays and phantoms want self-buffing crew options, and TIE shuttles aren't really cost-effective compared to just buying another ordnance ship. If you have the spare crew slot then yeah, it's probably worth considering, but I just don't see many lists having a place to put a systems officer.

 Peregrine wrote:
TIE defender titles: not new, but confirmed here, taking away the last desperate hope that FFG would realize how broken these are and fix them before the expansion is released. Nope, we're stuck with this trainwreck of a balance decision.

Proton Torpedoes wrecking the meta. Forums bitching about how Rebel regen is weak-sauce. Major Juggler freaking out about defenders being too good. Scum dominating tournaments. Maybe this time next year, everyone will be complain about how they're sick of losing to swarms of generic X-Wings?

What a time to be alive.

One useful thing about the systems officer is that it isn't an action and it is done after you do a green maneuver regardless of bumping or being stressed. Would have been nice for it to be range 1-2 to make it a bit more flexible.

This maybe a overly specific situation for it to be useful but it can be good on a bump ship or for giving a ship, that bumped by mistake, a target lock still.

There is also the option of giving a ship lock + focus and then the ship does its own action.

I'm kind of liking Gamma Vets, combine them with Cpt Jonus and you can make quite the Alpha List, either with Crackshot for added hurt or Adrenaline Rush to smooth out the usually needed K-turn

I kind of like Deathfire but both Scum and Imps need something like Sabine to help bombs and even then I still don't think Bombs can move out of the funsy zone

The Shuttle thing is okay and lets Imps have a stress list, it won't be as good as a Rebel stress list (stress bot and TLT is a stress list on its own !) but its nice to have the option

 Peregrine wrote:
TIE defender titles: not new, but confirmed here, taking away the last desperate hope that FFG would realize how broken these are and fix them before the expansion is released. Nope, we're stuck with this trainwreck of a balance decision.

Overpowered in a Vacuum, but stuck on such an overpriced ship that they will average out "About Balanced". Agree with everything else other than Tomax Bren being somewhat underwhelming.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
TIE defender titles: not new, but confirmed here, taking away the last desperate hope that FFG would realize how broken these are and fix them before the expansion is released. Nope, we're stuck with this trainwreck of a balance decision.

Overpowered in a Vacuum, but stuck on such an overpriced ship that they will average out "About Balanced". Agree with everything else other than Tomax Bren being somewhat underwhelming.

I've been using the titles since January and I'm undefeated since, furthermore I've not had a defender die yet.

Now I have flown defenders since wave four came out so I'm very experienced so that means I already knew how to win with them, I originally doubted MJ's and biophysical's worries but the proofs in the pudding and now I think they are right.

Vessery with tractor beam is going to become a very common site his ability to reduce agility and do damage with his ability is excellent.

Rexler with x7 PTL and mk.ii engines eats anything.

Combine the two with a tie shuttle carrying fleet officer and systems officer the result is nothing short of horrific, even I felt bad as I took apart my friends aces without taking a hit.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Overpowered in a Vacuum, but stuck on such an overpriced ship that they will average out "About Balanced". Agree with everything else other than Tomax Bren being somewhat underwhelming.

Strongly disagree here. Defenders with the x/7 title have ridiculous jousting efficiency, IIRC better than a Howlrunner TIE swarm (AKA the ultimate jousting list), on top of a white k-turn. The TIE/D title is insane on Vessery and still pretty strong even on generics. It's pretty much beyond argument at this point that TIE defenders are overpowered, the only real question is whether they're overpowered enough to break the game or not.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Overpowered in a Vacuum, but stuck on such an overpriced ship that they will average out "About Balanced". Agree with everything else other than Tomax Bren being somewhat underwhelming.

Strongly disagree here. Defenders with the x/7 title have ridiculous jousting efficiency, IIRC better than a Howlrunner TIE swarm (AKA the ultimate jousting list), on top of a white k-turn. The TIE/D title is insane on Vessery and still pretty strong even on generics. It's pretty much beyond argument at this point that TIE defenders are overpowered, the only real question is whether they're overpowered enough to break the game or not.

Combined with TBs, if they don't break the meta they're certainly going to dictate it. Players will basically be forced to either fly Vessery Defenders, or fly low AGI, high hull large base ships to mitigate the TB effects.

I'm with hobo on this one, the Defenders will be strong and could become the Imp version of Brobots, ie high skill high reward, do we know if there is a Onyx Vet with an EPT ?

the glaive squadron will almost certainly have ps6 an ept and be somewhere around 33/34 points a massive improvement on the redundant onyx.

Basically royal guard defenders.

Long range scanners do have some utility, it's kind of specific - you can use it as an alternative to guidance chips on a one-volley bomber squad - you can field five bombers with concussion missiles and scanners, which is a huge alpha strike, or four veterans.

Guidance chips add a hit, but you get the key problem of getting the lock in the first place. Deadeye makes up for this, but that uses your elite slot. By comparison, scanners gives you the easy lock, then you get a focus to modify your shot, and can use your talent slot for crack shot...

Systems officer seems cool. The range is a critical weakness, but if you can get used to flying a shuttle with a mob of guys, it makes a hell of a support ship. Rather than palpatine giving you one absolute dice mod, systems officer, fleet officer and advanced sensors costs the same and hands out two focus tokens and a target lock. I dunno. Might be useable, especially with advanced prototypes who then get free evades off the free target lock...

People have to remember Epic format is a thing. On a 6x3 table with 300 odd point lists, LRS on ordnance carriers has a much better argument for inclusion than in 100 point dogfights.

 Azreal13 wrote:
People have to remember Epic format is a thing. On a 6x3 table with 300 odd point lists, LRS on ordnance carriers has a much better argument for inclusion than in 100 point dogfights.

I agree.

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that not everything in this game is designed solely for 100 point dogfights

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
People have to remember Epic format is a thing. On a 6x3 table with 300 odd point lists, LRS on ordnance carriers has a much better argument for inclusion than in 100 point dogfights.

I agree.

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that not everything in this game is designed solely for 100 point dogfights

Yeah, but all the other things tend to be casual formats where we don't care about quality as much.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
People have to remember Epic format is a thing. On a 6x3 table with 300 odd point lists, LRS on ordnance carriers has a much better argument for inclusion than in 100 point dogfights.

I agree.

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that not everything in this game is designed solely for 100 point dogfights

Yeah, but all the other things tend to be casual formats where we don't care about quality as much.

There are many things in this game that are not quality at 100 points, but are crazy good at higher points. It's not necessarily a casual format to take some of those things when they can become highly competitive at different point levels. There are many competitive upgrades or ships/pilots that become significantly less effective at higher point matcheso as well.

I play most of my games around 200-300 points and know how to build a high point list pretty darn well.

I'm assuming (never played above 150 pts, and even that was tiring) that 200-300 pts are much more protracted engagements?

Depends how you play it. If you play 300 points following the epic rule-set, it's slower but not as much slower as you'd expect. For example, the ability to deploy range 2 into the board means the fight tends to start a numeric turn earlier, and people tend to field blocks of ships performing matched maneuvers - theoretically you might gain 5-10% efficiency by having a short dozen unique pilots each in different ships, but the mental effort of holding all those different dials and pilot skills in your head at once probably costs you that much in useability.

Epic is a very different animal. Things like Long Range Scanners become very useful, and you really feel the speed advantage of the X-wing over the B-wing on a double-sized board.

Can't wait to get my hands on a Corvette and try it out.

I read in the GRR-75 transport's rules that you can substitue your 3 pieces of scenery with it... is that acceptable in Epic as well?