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https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/5/4/these-are-your-first-steps/





PS9 POE!
YAAAASSSS!

A card that grants an illicit slot to the Falcon!

The Falcon now has a 3-speed Sloop!

I like it. Also worth noting- there is now an illicit card granting the SLAM action.

Black one will be great for countering Omega leader.

From what I can see of Pat-Ana, it looks like it switches the "Check Pilot Stress" and "Perform Action" steps.

Poe: Being PS 9 is not only thematic, it also probably opens up a lot of builds for him, since you no longer "need" Vet Instincts. If I'm right on Pat-Ana, Poe, PTL R2, Black One and Pat-Ana sounds nasty (Green Maneuver, Regen, PTL to boost and Focus, then clear stress).

Also, nice to see Rey adding another turret ship that wants to have arc on its enemy.

The only upside I can see from this kit is that there might be a fix or two for the T-65 hidden in there, beyond that it just seems like FFG are making things that were already strong, stronger. The new title could easily have been Reys pilot ability for example

Interesting choice for the Poe reprint: adjusting base stats, but not the pilot ability itself. You do pay a premium, so I expect that PS8 Poe will remain a strong option.

If I read it correctly, Black One also works on your own ship (friendly ships at range 1). Possibly a good upgrade in an ordnance-heavy or Imperial Aces meta, especially since there is not competing X-Wing title. Doesn't look like we're getting any other X-Wing fixes in this pack other than the extra Integrated Astromechs, so the T-65 will continue to languish. Unless that new astromech is godly.

Rey's pilot ability is very good if you can trigger it every turn. The title obviously helps, and she has high enough PS that she can take advantage of an EU to adjust her ship's arc. Hera crew seems like another obviously good synergy; while it doesn't work with the Pseudo-sloops that the title allows, it does allow her to perform infinite K-Turns.

I wonder if the new Chewbacca or Han Solo pilots will have new abilities. That would be a further departure from how unique pilots are handled, but another change is that we now have more "Resistance" faction pilots. If FFG eventaully wants to branch out the game into more factions, this is a way to start doing that.

I hope that PS3 YT-1300 is a revamp of the Outer Rim Smuggler, hopefully with a 3 dice primary. Since I'm going to own two of these ships, I might as well be able to take workable generics. It also looks like that YT-1300-only modification will allow it to take illicit upgrades.

We don't know too much else. Good to see Snap, Jess and Nein Numb pilots - they were conspicuously absent from the core set and T-70 blister. I hope they are strong pilots, anything to break down Acewing even more. We also see a new Tech upgrade, but no real clue what it does (something to do with stress mechanics).



(Finn's card art looks goofy as hell)

 DanielBeaver wrote:

I wonder if the new Chewbacca or Han Solo pilots will have new abilities. That would be a further departure from how unique pilots are handled, but another change is that we now have more "Resistance" faction pilots. If FFG eventaully wants to branch out the game into more factions, this is a way to start doing that.

They say "New Versions" of Han and Chewie, so I suspect that there will be new pilot abilities. It's not too much of a departure if you consider the resistance to be a different faction from Rebels- remember, Kath and Boba got new (better) abilities when they moved to Scum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Did anyone else notice that the picture of Black One appears to be a CG mockup, instead of the actual model?

Gotta admit, I didn't see this one coming. The cards, sure, but I figured they would be in the Rebel Vets box. Not entirely sure how I feel about buying another Falcon.

Rey at PS8 ... WTF ...

But I guess if we were to follow the logic of the movies, she should be PS11.

 Siygess wrote:
Gotta admit, I didn't see this one coming. The cards, sure, but I figured they would be in the Rebel Vets box. Not entirely sure how I feel about buying another Falcon.

I can still see a place for Rebel Vets- I suspect that this is a box resulting from FFG actually having an idea of what happens in TFA, as opposed to a handful of vague descriptions. Notice that it's a "Heroes of" rather than "Veterans" or "Aces" Box.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that you get the new Falcon and Black One in the same package.

I get to fly Poe in the correct plane, and I have another freighter for my "convoy escort" scenario. Cool.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest gat Pat Ana will end up being Pattern Analysis. Also the black and swooshy T70 looks nifty!

I wonder if the new YT-1300 will end up with a different dial.

 megatrons2nd wrote:
I wonder if the new YT-1300 will end up with a different dial.

EDIT: With the new title, you basically get a 3-Sloop. But I would expect that the dial doesn't change at all.

I'm glad Poe got an update with PS9, I expected them to do that for the T70 expansion, so I'm glad it finally came. I figured they made him PS8 because no one knew what was going to be in the movie, but after the movie it just seemed wrong that he could be anything less than PS9.

 Smacks wrote:
I'm glad Poe got an update with PS9, I expected them to do that for the T70 expansion, so I'm glad it finally came. I figured they made him PS8 because no one knew what was going to be in the movie, but after the movie it just seemed wrong that he could be anything less than PS9.

Also, it could be because he's in Black One and not the generic T-70.

Well, I figured the Falcon w/ Rey was coming soon, but the black X-Wing was a bit of a surprise (I've been using a micromachine up 'til now).

I do wish they would make a set of Scum cards for the YT, but other than that, this looks like fun!

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 Siygess wrote:
Gotta admit, I didn't see this one coming. The cards, sure, but I figured they would be in the Rebel Vets box. Not entirely sure how I feel about buying another Falcon.

I can still see a place for Rebel Vets- I suspect that this is a box resulting from FFG actually having an idea of what happens in TFA, as opposed to a handful of vague descriptions. Notice that it's a "Heroes of" rather than "Veterans" or "Aces" Box.

Sure, but I was honestly expecting the Rebel Vets box to be like the Most Wanted set, with ships and pilots for those ships.. and then more pilots for existing ships. I have no doubt we will still see a Rebel Vets box around the time Rogue One comes out.

Still, it gives me something to look forward to now Wave 8 has been and gone!

 Stormonu wrote:

I do wish they would make a set of Scum cards for the YT, but other than that, this looks like fun!

that wouldn't be a half bad idea having a scum YT. just imagine some of the antics you could get up to with it.

This really frees me up to mod one of the other two falcons I have. *digs out razor saw...*
Hopefully PS 3 Resistance Transports will be a thing.
Excited for Snaps Wexley, Jessika Pava, and Nien-Nunb.

I was expecting something like Smuggling Compartments... Giving your ship an Illicit Slot... but at what cost? What is the last line about Modifications?

Is there any idea on a possible release date?

 captain bloody fists wrote:
Is there any idea on a possible release date?

Article says 3Q 2016. So January 2017 sounds about right.

 House Griffith wrote:

 captain bloody fists wrote:
Is there any idea on a possible release date?

Article says 3Q 2016. So January 2017 sounds about right.

Thank you. i must of skipped over that section.

Initial impressions:

Millennium Falcon title: good, but tough to justify because the original title is so good. I suspect the difference is going to come down to pilot abilities. In-arc abilities like Rey's are probably going to benefit most from the new title, since failing to keep a target in your arc is a really big problem and rotating 180* at high PS does a lot to help with that. Everyone else will take the old title since changing the position of your arc has very little value while negating one damage every turn on an important ship is incredibly valuable.

Rey (pilot): I'm not convinced. It's essentially an in-arc version of predator with an occasional defensive benefit, letting you keep your EPT available for something else. But she's competing with old-Han, who is very good, and new-Han, who is probably going to be at least as good as old-Han. Natural PS 9 is worth a lot and I just can't see new-Han having a weaker pilot ability.

Smuggling compartment: clearly a modification that gives you an illicit slot and allows you to equip an additional modification that costs no more than {unknown number} points. So you pay an unknown number of points and cap the point cost on your "real" modification in exchange for an illicit slot. There are obviously some good illicit options, but how useful this is will depend entirely on what those unknown numbers are. It could be great, it could be garbage.

{SLAM thing}: an illict upgrade that gives you a SLAM action, but is discarded once you do it, for an unknown point cost. Is one SLAM worth giving up glitterstim, especially on a ship that can't make use of it to bomb stuff like the k-wing can? I suppose it has the potential to save you from certain death in a bad situation, but only once and at the cost of shooting back that turn. It just seems to me that you'd be better off taking drugs and going down shooting.

Poe Dameron: natural PS 9 is a big deal, even at +2 points to get it. I suppose there are some situations where you can't justify the extra cost, but most of the time you're going to want new-Poe. One important factor is that there's an implied cost for a better EPT. You probably aren't taking VI like old-Poe, since going from PS 10 to PS 11 isn't really worth much, which means you're probably taking predator/PTL/lone wolf/etc and paying 1-2 points more. So it's a big power upgrade but you do pay for it.

Black One: AKA " you, Omega Leader". Obviously this is a hard counter to Omega Leader, the most overpowered ship in the game right now, with a side benefit of being at least reasonably useful in a few other situations (Vader, ordnance, etc). You're always going to take this if you're taking a high-PS T-70, unless you play in some weird anti-competitive metagame where nobody takes OLeader/Vader/etc. But I don't really like it from a game design perspective. It's way too binary and R/P/S-ish in its outcomes to be an elegant nerf to OLeader, and I think there's still a problem when the only counter to a 26-29 point ship is a 40+ point ship. But it's what we get, so I guess we make the best of it.

Pat*** An***: reverse the order of "perform action" and "check stress", which translates to "you can do an action after a red maneuver". Finally, a tech upgrade that is useful on the T-70. Now the only price for doing a t-roll or k-turn is having to do a green maneuver next turn, you're no longer throwing unmodified dice and pretty much wasting a turn every time you have to do a red maneuver. And that's a big deal on Poe. Now you can t-roll and focus, re-roll with predator/lone wolf, turn eyes into successes, and recover a shield HP at the end of the turn with R5-P9. Or you can t-roll/k-turn and boost, making it very difficult to dodge your arc. Unless the point cost is really high (and I doubt it will be, since this is clearly the "buff the T-70" expansion) this is probably an auto-take.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DanielBeaver wrote:
I wonder if the new Chewbacca or Han Solo pilots will have new abilities. That would be a further departure from how unique pilots are handled, but another change is that we now have more "Resistance" faction pilots. If FFG eventaully wants to branch out the game into more factions, this is a way to start doing that.

The article explicitly states that Han and Chewbacca have new pilot abilities.

I'm guessing the Elicit is something like "Burst of Speed" and gives you the Slam action. That's gonna make my Emon Azzameen builds so much more fun!

 Smacks wrote:
I'm guessing the Elicit is something like "Burst of Speed" and gives you the Slam action.

It clearly is. You can see enough of the card to tell that it says "add the SLAM action to your action bar. After performing a SLAM action discard this card".

You'll find that if there's an associated points limit on other modifications, the one it's garuanteeď to disallow is engine upgrade, though, so unless you come out a long way ahead on points, swapping boost for a one use slam is a bit so so.

And....yeah Poe just got even more ridoculous whilst Ello Asty just took a swift kick to the vulnerables if you can now get sort of advanced sensors on a T70....

You could still argue Asty is better off than Poe as there is no need for a green maneuvre after, which leaves your dial wide open

Cost threshold for Smuggler's Compartments is probably "under 4 points", otherwise any cost limit is purely future proofing. I would also hope at that point that SCs COST 4 points, or Rebels would have the only ship capable of double illicit slots. At which point I give up on this design team entirely.

 Peregrine wrote:
Pat*** An***:

I'm gonna go with "Pattern Analysis/Analyser".

 Smacks wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Pat*** An***:

I'm gonna go with "Pattern Analysis/Analyser".

That is where I am too for the name. I bet Tarkin would have paid dearly to have a Pattern Analyzer on the first Death Star.... oh. Too soon?

 Peregrine wrote:

Black One: AKA " you, Omega Leader". Obviously this is a hard counter to Omega Leader, the most overpowered ship in the game right now, with a side benefit of being at least reasonably useful in a few other situations (Vader, ordnance, etc). You're always going to take this if you're taking a high-PS T-70, unless you play in some weird anti-competitive metagame where nobody takes OLeader/Vader/etc. But I don't really like it from a game design perspective. It's way too binary and R/P/S-ish in its outcomes to be an elegant nerf to OLeader, and I think there's still a problem when the only counter to a 26-29 point ship is a 40+ point ship. But it's what we get, so I guess we make the best of it.

To be honest, it's less a "40pt ship to counter Omega Leader", and more a "Counter Omega Leader Countering your 40pt ship" upgrade. While I agree that it's an auto-include on any T-70 Pilot with PS 8+, I doubt that people are going to take T-70's just to counter Omega Leader.

Another counter to Omega Leader is to just mass generics on them- They aren't super maneuverable on the level of Soontir or Vader. You just need too target them first.