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It's up on FFG's site: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/11/22/turn-the-tide-of-battle/

I saw an unboxing video this morning as well. I have to say I'm not looking forward to 36-48 total hull+shields with 3 die 360 turrets.

And this is the reason why i'm stepping back from Xwing. the game has become centred around bombs and ordinance.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 captain bloody fists wrote:
And this is the reason why i'm stepping back from Xwing. the game has become centred around bombs and ordinance.

Well mate it takes a hell of a lot of paper work to establish two galactic powers in such a short amount of time...
I am overall quite happy with this expansion, the Ordnance Silos could be useful in a number of lists, really like the toss bombing effect of Trajectory Simulator and that is definitely going to find a home on my Havoc. The rest of it is pretty meh, twelve damage behind one green, 2 dice PWT, terrible dial, bad PS spread, no ept, no other ordnance bar bombs, this will likely never be seen in a competitive format and when it does it will be as a damage sponge (guess the PS1 is 25pts or so).
It is interesting that the title calls for resistance only ships, wonder if that's the start of a move to separate the NuCanon from original.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update for the dial;
Red Stop.
Red 1 turns, green 1 banks and forward.
White 2 turns and banks, 1 green forward.
White 3 banks and forward.

PS1 Crimson Squadron Pilot, 25pts.
PS 6 Cobalt Leader, 28pts, "When attacking, if the defender is at range 1 of a bomb token, the defender rolls 1 fewer green dice (to a minimum of 0).

My thoughts:

Overall, I'm not sure how much the rebels needed another bomber, between the K-wing, Nym and Sabine. Add in that this guy has no punch beyond its okay bomb abilities, and I really don't see it appearing outside of fluff builds.

Trajectory Simulator: A nice card, probably the most significant part of this pack, and one of the cards that makes the B-17 maybe okay with bombs. On Havoc with "Genius", this gives you an insane amount of options with where your bomb goes. The TIE Punisher also gets it, but I don't see this card pulling the punisher out of the "Oh yeah, they released that ship..." pile. I expect to see more people running it with Thermal Detonators on a Keyan Farlander+Sabine Build. Because that, while still bad, is at least funny.

Deflective Plating: A good card, on a bad ship. For 1 point, you ignore at least 1 friendly bomb result, with a greater than 50% chance to avoid more than one. Almost an auto-include, but see my final thoughts.

Crimson Specialist: Options are good. I don't have a good feeling about this guy, but that's mostly because of this ship in general.

Crossfire Formation: The second most exciting thing in this pack, as this is a mechanic I've wanted to see (make the Resistance/First Order more than Alt-Art Rebel/Empire). The effect is... okay, I guess. I mean, it's not like I'm going to spend a token attacking, but I don't think that this is a 2 point card. 1 point, yeah, but not 2 points.

Advanced Optics: Neat. A Decent Tech upgrade. Poe likes it, other ships like the action economy, so I can see this being a popular choice. Interesting that it's cheaper than Comm Relay, despite possibly being more powerful.

Ordinance Silos: We don't want to give this ship an extra munitions slot, so here's an extra-text card for it.

Crimson Leader:It's not like my gun is actually going to hit anything now, is it?

Cobalt Leader (Rumor): Meh. I'm really not taking this thing for its gun. Pass.

Dial: Looks like it will do the job, but is very unexciting.


Overall, rather unexciting. I like that it is stressing dial bombs with trajectory simulator, but like I said, the Rebels have a lot of other options for bombspam. I'm most excited for Trajectory Simulator on Havoc, and think that it could be fun for some laughs on Cad Bane/Sabine taxis. The actual ship though, is pretty meh. The way it is, you have 3 copies of 1 type of bomb, and a gun that can pick off damaged low-agility ships. Compare that to Nym, Miranda, or even a generic K-wing with TLT. They get 2 pairs of (potentially different) bombs, for pennies more, plus can fight. The Generic, with Trajectory Simulators, Ion Projectors or Anti-pursuit lasers and a bomb, could be a useful blocker for messing up an opponents movement, but we are talking a 30+pt ship here.

First impressions:

PS 1 generic: yeah, it's a cheap brick of HP, but that's about it. At PS 1 you can't use dial reveal bombs effectively, so none of the ship-specific abilities really matter, and the basic stat line isn't good at all. A 2-dice gun isn't going to kill much of the current meta, and with only a single green die that 12 HP is going to disappear pretty quickly. And being on a large base is a massive drawback. Just think about how few people are using generic k-wings with dial reveal bombs, and ask yourself if paying +3 points for +3 HP on a low-agility ship is really worth it. It isn't. This is a ship that will live and die by the success of its unique pilots, just like the u-wing and similar "brick of HP" type ships.

Crimson Specialist: dammit FFG, didn't you learn from the previous movie? These generic names are ing stupid. Unfortunately, so is this pilot. It sounds like a great ability, but PS 4 just wrecks it. Most targets are either able to boost/BR out of the bomb area no matter where you put it, or similar bricks of HP that don't care much about the damage if it means continuing to shoot you. It's just way too easy to play around and minimize the effectiveness of the ability.

Cobalt Leader: Jesus FFG, did you take my previous comment as a challenge to make a worse pilot? This does literally nothing with dial-reveal bombs (you know, the whole point of the ship), and only works on action bombs if you somehow manage to miss your target. And even in the rare situation where the ability triggers at all it isn't amazing. You're still shooting with a 2-dice gun with no action economy (and probably not even a focus token, since you just dropped a bomb), at best this brings your shooting up to the level of a basic bare-minimum 3-dice ship. Is this really worth only 2 points less than Nym? Hell no.

Crimson Leader: yep, trash again. You have to get your ship in arc, with a bad dial. You have to roll at least one hit. You have to sacrifice that hit, giving you effectively zero damage that turn. You have to get a bomb hit on a subsequent turn, without choosing to apply the condition to a different ship. And what do you get in return? A slightly more powerful Sabine effect that only works on one target. Why aren't you just taking Sabine on a better ship? Oh, and you're only PS 7 with no EPT, denying even the "drop bombs at PS 9" role? Just insult to injury.

Crossfire formation: more trash. This card effectively says "if a friendly ship is at range 1-2 you may add the evade action to your action bar". Is 2 points a valid price for a situational addition to your action bar? No. Maybe you'll take it, because you're struggling to make anything about this ship good, but you shouldn't like overpaying like this.

Trajectory simulator: finally, a decent card. Being able to bomb straight ahead is a powerful effect, just not on this ship. Nym is going to have to seriously consider the merits of this vs. advanced sensors. I'm not sure it's really better than decent though. Turret ships tend to prefer to kite while dropping bombs behind them, and I don't think it's good enough to make the one non-turret option (TIE punishers) worth taking. Calling it "decent" is probably about right.

Deflective plating: if this stopped enemy bombs it might be ok, but as it is it's pretty bad. You only get anything on self-inflicted bombs, on a ship that has plenty of HP to sacrifice if it means trading HP with its target. I mean, it's cheap at least, so you probably take it, but you don't expect to get much out of it.

Advanced optics: comm relay is good. This is also good. Remember how good Rey is? Same general effect, different slot. Poe is going to love this, and other new-era ships are going to have to seriously consider it. I don't think it's as good as comm relay, based on the relative value of banking each token type, but there are ships that can take this that don't have an evade action. This is probably the primary reason to buy the ship at all.

Ordnance silos: yep, back to the trash. It's space B-17 only, a ship that depends on using dial-reveal bombs for its special abilities. And remember bomblet generator? The card that just gives you infinite bombs instead of +3 bombs? As long as bomblet generator exists in its current state this is a waste of a card. Nerf it, as it probably deserves, and maybe then we'll talk.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Interesting that it's cheaper than Comm Relay, despite possibly being more powerful.

IMO it's the other way around. Comm relay is extremely powerful because you tend to have unused evade tokens a lot more often than you get unused focus tokens. Both are good for the opening-turn token bank, but you're a lot more likely to get multiple uses out of comm relay. I think they're both very strong options, but FFG got the relative power and point costs correct.

I'm wracking my brain trying to find a way to fit this into a squad... I'm having a failure of imagination. Clearly.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I'm wracking my brain trying to find a way to fit this into a squad... I'm having a failure of imagination. Clearly.

If this was the only bomber the Rebels had access to, It would be useful. As is, there is just way to much outshining it.

Speaking of which, is Miranda a credible threat when equipped with a TLT, Harpoons and the Bomblet Gen?

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Speaking of which, is Miranda a credible threat when equipped with a TLT, Harpoons and the Bomblet Gen?

Yes. Remember, people have used a super-cheap Miranda with just TLT and LRS (and sometimes C-3PO) in successful tournament lists. I might try to fit Sabine on there somehow, but it's a reasonable idea.

Playing against, I find Miranda/TLT/C3PO a lot more annoying than any other variant, the way it plays with that load out is kyting around the fringes of the furball. Loaded up with missiles and bombs I have found most people play it more as a jouster, which tends to die very, very easily... Generally with ordnance people tend to mix it with either Dash or Rey and whilst the list is good it is just so predictable and is so easy to out play.
The cheaper sniper option seems to get mixed into three ship lists and performs better. A list I have seen to great effect is 2x Wookie Liberator and Miranda built like that.

I need to be corrected, because I had entirely too much fun with a list tonight.

So I loaded Rebel Nym with VI, Havoc, Trajectory whatever, a TLT, EM, Harpoons and 2 Proton Bombs... And Genius.

Now the way I read the card interactions is thusly: I can drop proton bombs either on reveal, or after my manoeuvre, or I can launch my bombs either on reveal or after my manoeuvre. And Genius will remove the EM token instead of the card, or do I lose both token and card?

It was a carnage. I wiped his inqy off the board in one turn and was able to detonate two bombs on his Upsilon simultaneously.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Now the way I read the card interactions is thusly: I can drop proton bombs either on reveal, or after my manoeuvre, or I can launch my bombs either on reveal or after my manoeuvre.

Correct. Genius has you drop a bomb, trajectory simulator allows you to launch instead of dropping.

And Genius will remove the EM token instead of the card, or do I lose both token and card?

Correct. Genius forces a discard, EM allows you to discard the token instead of the card. It gives you one "free" use of Genius.

Now, is it good? I'm not sold. The extra positioning you get from advanced sensors is just so powerful at PS 10. With trajectory simulator + Genius you only get one "special" bomb shot, two if you're willing to lose your bombs forever, before you're stuck dropping the same predictable dial-reveal bombs as everyone else.

I was packed with two proton bombs and Extra Munitions, they way we played it last night that gave me four bombs to either drop or launch. Granted, that was a lot of points, and in a more competitive setting I would probably downgrade one to a Thermal Detonator to save on points. And my Mod was LRS, to set up the Harpoon shot.

I get that Adv. Sensors allow you to reposition before that and it is a lot more versatile, but being PS10 and able to prevent the bomb from blowing if I so wish was also (as I did with my first one, completely misjudged how not far a straight 5 is) interesting.

It's good. It's probably not top tables at a Nationals good. You kinda get predictable if you have that kit loaded up. And the ship is delicate.

It helped that I had Miranda kiting around the board looking for a shot to distract my opponent. I was even able to strip shields on Ryad with a bomblet/Sabine.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I get that Adv. Sensors allow you to reposition before that and it is a lot more versatile, but being PS10 and able to prevent the bomb from blowing if I so wish was also (as I did with my first one, completely misjudged how not far a straight 5 is) interesting.

IMO it mostly comes down to geometry. Nym, like Miranda, wants to kite with his turret. You want to be flying away from threats and forcing them to chase you into your bombs, without ever getting a good shot, while you TLT them to death from outside their effective engagement range/arc. Advanced sensors helps you cover more approach angles and make sure that, wherever they go to chase you, you can get a bomb in their path. Trajectory simulator, on the other hand, forces you to fly directly at your opponent's ships and joust with them, which throws away Nym's best assets and makes him much easier to kill. And in terms of general usefulness advanced sensors gives you powerful repositioning options and near-immunity to blocking, things that buff Nym's direct combat abilities, while trajectory simulator is a blank card unless you're dropping a bomb.

All true.

Which is why I don't expect this to be top-tier. With proton bombs on a squicky target though, it was great fun.

I'm not that good a player, so since I was loaded with bombs, I actually devided to joust the inquisitor. I was just super-lucky his Defender, for some reason, took the scenic route. I realize those conditions will be absent in a competitive environment.

I'm just really underwhelmed by all the pilots this expansion offers, so I wanted to have fun at least once with one card from it.

Just got mine. You know what I realize? It's not a B-17. It's a submarine, that we are looking at upside down.

As an addendum to this thread, because we had discussed Nym throwing bombs out the front with the Trajectory Simulator, I went to a tourney yesterday with Nymranda outfitted thusly:

Miranda Doni (29)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
Harpoon Missiles (4)
Sabine Wren (2)
Bomblet Generator (3)
Long-Range Scanners (0)

Captain Nym (Rebel) (30)
Veteran Instincts (1)
Twin Laser Turret (6)
Extra Munitions (2)
Harpoon Missiles (4)
Proton Bombs (5)
Proton Bombs (5)
Trajectory Simulator (1)
"Genius" (0)
Long-Range Scanners (0)
Havoc (0)

Total: 98

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

There were some heavy hitters, although not a single gunboat, which was a bit shocking to me. A single Kylo Ren Tie/vn.

As I had predicted, a lot of people were keen to joust my list. Nym made them regret that bitterly. I ended up on top in all those games, and won first place.

I will confess that I think this is anecdotal, and not indicative of much. If I were to travel to another province for a tournament, I would definitely try the list again, but as it stands, once everyone knows the gig, it's not going to last long.