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Someone in our local X-Wing group linked to a reddit forum, the link was taken down, but apparently someone thought their NDA was too restrictive for such massive news.

Grain of salt.

Adv. SLAM will now be restricted to action bar actions.
JM5K lose the Illicit, Salvaged Astro and a torp slot.
Punishing One title gives back Illicit ans Salvaged Astro slots, at the cost of your last torp slot.
Atanni Mindlink is limited to two per list.

Gnashing of teeth may begin.

No salt needed, it's legitimate. Unfortunately there's a situation where if you're friends with the playtesters a lot of them leak information, and most of them give limited feedback and only "playtest" to get information on the upcoming rules for all of their friends. So, it's definitely coming unless FFG kills it in response to the leak, and most people in that group have known about this stuff for a while (I've known for a few weeks).

That said, I have mixed feelings. Advanced SLAM is a major over-nerf and kills off the entire point of the k-wing having special bomb options (you know, the thing FFG used to sell you k-wings), which makes it a really stupid change. The u-boat nerf is necessary, the ship is blatantly overpowered as a result of one designer trying to make his mark on the game and the only real question is whether this nerf is finally sufficient to bring it in line with the rest of the game. Mindlink is probably in need of a nerf, but I'm not sure if this is the nerf it needed since it probably kills off mindlink lists as a viable option.

I saw there was a lot of discussion on the reddit, but like I said, the link we used to get to it was "unavailable" on our FB group a few hours after that.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I saw there was a lot of discussion on the reddit, but like I said, the link we used to get to it was "unavailable" on our FB group a few hours after that.

Not sure why it's missing from your group, this link works just fine: https://www.reddit.com/r/XWingTMG/comments/6pwctu/xwing_faq_leak/

U-boat nerfs seem heavy-handed, but will probably get rid of this thing as a huge threat. Still, Dengar will probably remain viable, as will Manaroo with Punishing one, but not to the same extent.

Attani Mindlink and Advanced SLAM seem to be a little excessive.

A Mindlink nerf was necessary, this one is also probably too heavy handed. But I'm not sure they could be much lighter without actually failing to nerf it at all.

If you made Mindlink 3 ships max, you change nothing. If you removed the cap on Mindlink giving stress, you don't change anything either. First ship does a green and clears 1 stress each. 2nd ship clears off the last stress and gets an action to give everybody focus. 3rd ship gets to move freely, getting the 2nd focus for himself. You'd only kill it if you could get 3 stress onto them, which still results in them all getting a focus if they all do greens.

At 2 ships max its probably the best result possible. Even if it's probably technically too hard of a nerf.

Adv Slam is a bit of a shame. But hyper accurate no skill needed bombs were majorly OP. Sabine needs to get nerfed next.

JM5K deserves all of these changes.

I think one has to look at these changes not exclusively as balance measures, but that FFG has used these errata to break up the meta periodically.

Therefore, to nerf the problem stuff sufficiently just to bring it in line doesn't really do that, bringing something from "too good" to "just the right amount of good" doesn't necessarily dissuade people from playing it and look for something new, whereas giving it a solid kick in the nards disrupts the play environment a lot more and stops the meta becoming stale.

Not saying it's the right approach, but at least in a non-collectible format like X Wing where you can get the stuff you need at will (unlike say Magic where you may have to scramble around for the cards you need in the aftermath of a similar update) it isn't too traumatic to accommodate.

Being in the gaming culture for 15 years now, I can say that bringing something down from "too good" to "just the right amount" definitely does dissuade people from playing it. The reasons are many.

1) You have the kneejerk reaction people who overreact and say that it's "awful and worthless now". Who then move on completely to other stuff.

2) You have the more measured response people who realize that this amazing thing is still good. But that it's now much weaker to it's previous counters, and a bunch of other counters may have just appeared. So these people also start looking elsewhere.

I think you'll see a lot more variety in scum lists from now on. At most probably 1 Jumpmaster with the full kit it had before. No more multiple jumpmaster lists. Probably a lot of lists without any jumpmaster at all.

Well, being in the gaming culture for near 30 years (not sure why that's relevant but we appear to be doing it?) I was taking a more holistic view. What you're saying is absolutely correct in the competitive environment, players will simply dump the list and try and find the next "too good" option. I'm thinking beyond that, at the casual club/store level where you've got lads who have found a list they're happy with, perhaps have played consistently with the same one for weeks or even longer. Those guys aren't likely to be shaken loose if they drop from winning 80% of their games to 60%, but if they suddenly start struggling to win 20% they may start looking elsewhere.

X Wing isn't just the store/regional/national/worlds treadmill, although feth knows it's easy to forget that sometimes.

Well, generally when you talk about a game on a forum you don't really consider the players who aren't in the competitive scene. They'll just play what they like to play, and as you say only change if they suddenly completely tank their win rate.

Competitive viewpoint is the standard PoV when discussing a game online.

No, I always take a bigger picture view, which is probably why you'll rarely see me casting about and throwing a fit when rules changes come along like some other posters.

But you do you.

Including the non-competitive players however doesn't really do a good job of balancing the game though. It's much easier to focus on the competitive aspect and get that balanced. If you do that, the non-competitive scene will follow along by also being balanced by proxy.

Using the non-competitive scene as a yard stick just ends up being an excuse not to fix certain things because the non-competitive players still use X, Y, and Z. Even though X, Y, and Z actually need to be fixed still.

The competitive scene is the canary, that's what's showing you is the most egregious and highlighting the outliers, and that's very useful, but equally in most, if not all, systems it is just the tip of the iceberg, and while a dude on the internet may have the luxury of just focusing on that element, the designers don't, they have a responsibility to the whole player base. I just try and take a similar position.

I guess as my regular play group ranges from mono listers to guys who regularly attend sanctioned tournies, and I play to win but don't generally attend events myself, I'm kind of in a Venn diagram that covers all possible bases. Otherwise you end up in the very binary position of things are trash or they're broken which, while true if you're shooting for the top table, can really eat in to your enjoyment of a game if you let that attitude infect your thinking every time you play.

But I think this is getting too existential to be considered on topic any more.

Having just played the hell out of Miranda with Sabine and bombs on board, I wouldn't say it's a hyper accurate and no skill needed option by far. Maybe you'll think I'm daft, but it did take me the better part of 3 months to reliably win games against lists I had never met before.

And I don't know how you calculate your stress removal for mindlink, but being able to pile on multiple stress would be a tough thing to overcome, since even your ship does a green, he doesn't remove stress from the other ships, as your math seemed to imply. For a 1pt upgrade, it might have been appropriate, actually...

I think you may have the wrong thread...

Grey Templar wrote:A Mindlink nerf was necessary, this one is also probably too heavy handed. But I'm not sure they could be much lighter without actually failing to nerf it at all.

If you made Mindlink 3 ships max, you change nothing. If you removed the cap on Mindlink giving stress, you don't change anything either. First ship does a green and clears 1 stress each. 2nd ship clears off the last stress and gets an action to give everybody focus. 3rd ship gets to move freely, getting the 2nd focus for himself. You'd only kill it if you could get 3 stress onto them, which still results in them all getting a focus if they all do greens.

At 2 ships max its probably the best result possible. Even if it's probably technically too hard of a nerf.

Adv Slam is a bit of a shame. But hyper accurate no skill needed bombs were majorly OP. Sabine needs to get nerfed next.

JM5K deserves all of these changes.

Azreal13 wrote:I think you may have the wrong thread...

He was refrencing this earlier reply.

Yeah Templar, your math is a bit off there mate, it does in no way get rid of stress from every ship, honestly giving out more stress from mindlink would be a big deal and could gimp it for at least a round until everyone cleared off all the stress individually before they get back to focusing up.

Ahh derp. I thought Mindlink could also remove a stress from the other mindlinked ships.

Now I'm ready to buy a Jumpmaster. I just started playing several months ago and wasn't interested in investing playing time in something that was OP and was enroute to a nerf.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ahh derp. I thought Mindlink could also remove a stress from the other mindlinked ships.

Now that, that would have been strong for a 1 pt upgrade. Honestly, if they'd have kept the cap at 1 focus and no cap on stress, it could be a big liability. And it would have had a direct counter that you still see from time to time in the meta.

Bit late to this party but I would love this leak to be true. I play exclusively Scum and think these nerfs would go along way to balancing the factions back up. The only thing that really bothers me is that Dengar with title has no torps, despite Dengar modding his ship to carry torps in the first place (yes I know fluff doesn't equal game play but it annoys me). Guess we are only ever going to see a Miranda K from now, not going to mourn triple bombing Wardens one little bit.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ahh derp. I thought Mindlink could also remove a stress from the other mindlinked ships.

Now that, that would have been strong for a 1 pt upgrade. Honestly, if they'd have kept the cap at 1 focus and no cap on stress, it could be a big liability. And it would have had a direct counter that you still see from time to time in the meta.

Yeah, that would have been kind of a nice change, instead of two per list. Fenngar is still mostly unchanged, and it's still a powerful upgrade, but 1 focus/evade is still a good limit, and unlimited stress means you can be shut down, giving some more counterplay.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
U-boat nerfs seem heavy-handed, but will probably get rid of this thing as a huge threat. Still, Dengar will probably remain viable, as will Manaroo with Punishing one, but not to the same extent.

Attani Mindlink and Advanced SLAM seem to be a little excessive.

Yeah. If the Mindlink limitations in the FAQ are true, it's going to kill my go to tournament list:

Serissu w/Mindlink, Mangler and Heavy Scyk title (27)
3 x Tansarii Point Veteran w/Mindlink, Mangler and Heavy Scyk title (24) x 3 (72)

Total: 99

I seem to do very well with this list. I placed 3rd in a 16 player tourney and 6th in a SC tourney 2 weeks ago, going 3-1 in each tourney.
It would be sad to see this list go but, as the wise Jedi master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway once said "Adapt, improvise and overcome".