My gaming group has gradually come to believe that large numbers of low quality ships is nigh unbeatable by a smaller fleet of higher quality pilots with upgrades. Evidence - 3 of the 4 finalists at our local official game store tournament were running rebel swarms, seasoned to taste, and 2X+2B was by far the most common build present. We feel this is to the game's detriment as it reduces variety. As a possible fix, I/we suggest the following new upgrade card -

Electronic Warfare Specialist (or system?) - Crew card or maybe System Upgrade - "Friendly ships within range one cannot be targeted for attack by more than one enemy ship this round."

This is sort of an anti-swarm card since it compels the swarm to un-focus its fire. Of course, it doesn't protect the ship carrying it, so the onus is on the card-holder to fly in such a way as to protect the EWAR ship. The threat of this card might motivate some of those swarm players to consider running lower ship count lists. This is sort of like a Biggs pilot skill except that you are not compelled to attack the EWAR ship as you are with Biggs. On the other hand, it's better than Biggs in that you can put it on a high hit point ship and it has potential effectiveness even if the ship itself is just beyond range 3. I'd rather make it a system upgrade to give Lambda something uniquely useful to do. My cohort prefers to make it a crew card so Falcon can run it. It might need to be a unique card.

What say we?

I disagree with your thesis that Quality and Quantity are out of balance.

Four ships is not a swarm, unless the 2X+2B were lists that weren't part of the top four...if they weren't then what was the "seasoning?"

My hunch is the issue you're are having is a B-wing issue and not a swarm issue.

I agree with you Alex. I have also noticed that four rebel ships almost always beats 3 rebels ships. That is not exclusively, and I am discounting the Falcon in two or three ship squads. Although I'm not sure that one new card would fix it, I also think the op example would be cripplingly limiting to tie swarms.

That being said. I have no ideas.

The game is not broken, please stop trying to fix it.

That is all.

3ship rebel lists need to focus on 3 areas simultaneously in order to function well. Offense, Defense and high PS. If you can combine Offense with High PS, you could take out ships before they fire, which in turns increases your Defense a bit. If your Offense is lacking, Defensive cards like R2D2, Chewbacca, Flight Instructor, Sensor Jammer etc would help you buy time and a few more turns to help squeeze in a few more shots. If your 3 ship rebels only hits 1 or 2 areas weakly, it WILL be defeated for sure.

it's not that 3 ship rebels are weak, or requires skill to fly, but that it requires a lot of skill to come up with a deckbuild that can work. Common combos that I see in successful 3 ship rebels are:

Luke + R2D2 + DrawFire

Wedge + PTL + R2 astromech

Ibtisam + Elusiveness + Sensor Jammer

The game is not broken, please stop trying to fix it.

That is all.

Agreed, the answer is not to come up with some house rule. The answer is to learn how to build better lists. Most elite three small ships have significant deficencies when trying to fight certain lists, first and foremost being the TIE swarm. Just because you built a list that struggles to overcome another's strength doesn't mean that the TIE swarm is broken. The fact is that three ships are likely to get their arse handed to them by eight ships simply from a Firepower/Hit Point point of view.

This is a complicated issue, but I don't think that anything is fundamentally "broken". Of course, if you want to do house rules, then I'm certainly not going to hold that against you, go nuts - that's the whole point of having house rules.

At it's core, the effectiveness of a squad is proportional to the number of your ships squared , so getting more is a big deal. You can read my stupidly long MathWing post here if you are really interested.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/100360-using-lanchesters-square-law-to-predict-ships-jousting-values-and-fair-point-values-work-in-progress/

Remember: Fly Casual.

Let them field their low PS squadrons, then show up with a Wedge (Swarm), Biggs, Rookie, Rookie list (or another hard hitting high PS variant) and watch them burn?

Low PS squadrons have disadvantages, fairly obvious ones, use those against them.

The game is great as it is. If you want to make it better suited for your group by reducing the number of swarmy lists you can do this without changing the balance or making new cards that would alter the basic strategies (like flying in formation) you can do it in a much simpler way - out of the 100 points limit only 85 or 90 to be used on ships. Done.

maybe swarms are easier

First everyone was crying about 7-8 ship tie swarms now the op is tryin to convince people the 2x/2b rebel list is a swarm? just because it is now the new elite list doesn't make it a swarm. Seriously when did 4 ships become a swarm? That's pretty much the standard list size!

Btw I do like the op idea for a special character who is able to designate a ship to only be targeted by one ship a turn. That's like the ideal wingman card. But be forewarned that only makes protecting ships like howl runner better.

It all comes down to the fundamental game design aspect where higher PS pilots are barely any harder to kill than the cheapest generic version of their ship type, with the exception of any unique pilots that happen to have a defensive ability

It's pretty much built into the game and I am not sure what you could really do at this point to "solve" it

Isnt that how the game is balanced? You pay the pretty penny for a high ps ship so you can kill the low ps ship before it fires?

I say if you want your squad to not get shot at by 8 TIEs, fly it in such a way that they can't focus the fire of the entire squadron on one of your ships.

Agreed CW, learn to fly these ships and your game improves.. not saying I'm the best out there, or thatni don't lose game, but how you fly these ships makes a world of difference.

There's a reason swarms are still a dominant force (just not necessarily the dominant force any longer) after all this time.

They require skill to pilot well, but put out a lot of attack dice and can generally wear down your squad faster than you can wear down theirs, going head to head.

They're going to have as many or more attack dice, and almost always have more defense dice per ship, making it tough to go at head to head.

The trick then, is not to ever DO that - go head to head. Use the terrain - make him shoot through or maneuver around rocks, splitting up his formation. Fly so that he has to make several changes of direction as he closes, further complicating the process of staying in formation without bumping.

Do it right and when he finally does get into shooting range, he's going to be doing some combination of the following:
1. Shooting at range 3

2. Shooting through rocks with some of his ships

3. Bumping into his own ships and denying some of them critical actions

4. Having some ships pointing off the wrong way without a shot on the ship he's trying to target

5. Having some ships staggered at different range bands so that some of them are too far back to shoot.

The more of these you can force him to do, obviously, the better. But if you're flying a smaller, tougher squad of something like 4 ships with bigger guns, and you can focus your fire on one of his TIEs, while denying him the ability to bring the massed firepower of all of his TIEs to take good, coordinated, possibly Focused shots on any one of your ships, you're setting yourself up for a very favorable first round exchange.

Too many people fly straight into the head of a swarm, underestimating how quickly they can peck you to death with those two dice guns (especially if getting free rerolls from Howlrunner), and then think swarms are hideously overpowered. They're not. Powerful, yes, but if you try to straight up joust with them you're making his job way too easy. Flying swarms well is tricky - make his job HARDER and you've got a good chance.

Like the OP, I too wish there was some mechanic in the game to force a little more "quality" into our builds, or at least some additional incentive to have quality over quantity. Right now the only real incentive to take a named pilot in most situations is their pilot ability and higher PS, both of which may or may not be worth it, depending on the build. But I don't really think there is a way to do it without A) breaking the balance of the game to favor quality over quantity and B) Pissing off a lot of people. So its better left alone. But in your house games, do whatever you want. Try a game where both players are only allowed to use named pilots and set the point limit at 150. Sounds like fun to me!

The game is not broken, please stop trying to fix it.

That is all.

Amen brother!

Further more, while it may (I say may because it is, in fact, an opinion) be easier to win a game with 4 rebel ships, I have won many with only 3. And one of those 3 IS NOT the Falcon. Any 100 point squad can beat any other 100 point squad. It comes down to who plays their side better (and sometimes the dice make it harder/easier to win).

Right now the only real incentive to take a named pilot in most situations is their pilot ability and higher PS, both of which may or may not be worth it, depending on the build.

What other incentive should there be?

Right now the only real incentive to take a named pilot in most situations is their pilot ability and higher PS, both of which may or may not be worth it, depending on the build.

What other incentive should there be?

I wasn't saying that there should be others. But in the current game meta those incentives are not enough in most circumstances to use a build with 3 named rebels over a 4 genereic pilot build for example, which is what the OP was saying. Most competitve builds i see use the generic pilots because the named pilots just don't bring enough to the table to justify the added cost. This isn't always the case of course as it really depends on the pilot's specific ability and PS and synergy with a build etc.

But just for kicks and to answer your question more directly, other incentives could be:

Upgrades that only can be used on named pilots

Upgrades that can only be used on PS? or higher pilots (starting to see that with Royal Guard Title)

Some sort of bonus for using certain combo's of named pilots (Rogue Squadron pilots, Death Star Trench Run pilots, 181st pilots, etc)

Do I think the game NEEDs any of these to be "fixed"? Nope, it aint broke.

Do I think we will see any of these in the game? Not Likely

Do I think they could be a fun addition? Yeah if done properly and not over powered

Do I think that I will get blasted by some people for even suggesting such nonsense? Probably a little

Do I think that it is stupid and childish to ask yourself questions and then answer them? I sure do

Upgrades that only can be used on named pilots

One fairly small difference in design could of had a major impact in the meta.

If they had limited EPS to only named PS6-7 or higher pilots it would of made for a different Meta.

What I think it would take honestly, is an improvement to the stats of named pilots.

Why take Gaven or even Luke, when a Rookie has the same attack, defense, hull and shields? I'm not sure that giving Luke or Wedge 4 attack is the right answer, and it's far too late to change the system now I think.

But if they had done that from the start it would of changed the game a lot, but might of also turned this into another version of Herohammer.

I remember that when I first started playing this game we were driven to fly more cheaper ships. But as we continued to play and we found that certain well upgraded high skilled pilots were really really powerful the balance started to swing back.

4 ships is not a swarm, for Rebels you need like 5, for the Empire you need at least 6 to call yourself a swarm. 3 ships is about a few as I have ever seen flown.

I will point out that if you are building a swarm then you are not wasting points on upgrades, which is really easy to do otherwise. Just about every upgrade in the game is good in certain circumstance, but not as a blanket every time upgrade. Yes I even include PtL in this list.

Finally there are special anti-swarm cards, they are called Assault Missiles. If you are afraid of swarms load them up. They don't hit quite as often as other torpedoes/missiles, but when they do they really mess things up. Auto Damage in this game is a really really big deal.

My last point is that higher PS skilled pilots reward better players. If you know how to use you higher PS it can be a huge advantage. If you don't it is still a pretty good advantage. Especially over (easy to kill) swarms.

I'm legitimately confused here. On this thread, someone is concerned about the domination of swarms (quantity over quality), and they get torn into. Over on the Wave 4 Speculation threads, however, an overwhelming concern is that the new, expensive (quality) ships won't be played because of the efficiency of quantity. Just because they used a Rebel list that is not a true swarm as an example, doesn't mean their point is irrelevant.

I'm not a tournament player, and I'm not that concerned about what's statistically found to be best, so I really don't have that much of an investment in the topic. However, I constantly see threads about how powerful the TIE swarm is. That doesn't mean everyone runs it, and it doesn't mean it's unbeatable, but we shouldn't just ignore it. From what I understand, the basic strategy of the swarm is "focus fire." When people discuss how to beat it though, their strategy is vague, and essentially boils down to "play extremely well." Some might say, "What's wrong with that? You should play well in a tournament." The problem is, when the counter to something really simple is really complex, it's not balanced. It's not rock, paper, scissors, when scissors takes an elaborate gesture that not everyone has the physical dexterity for.

All that said, I'm not saying it's that much of a problem. I honestly don't know, and I have enough experience elsewhere to say that sometimes tournament-dominating strategies aren't always widespread because they're that broken. Sometimes strategies dominate tournaments just because they're the flavor of the month, until someone famously comes up with something new.

I do think it's something FFG should keep an eye on though, because experience has also taught me that this is a precarious game design feature. Why take a special ship that's a huge points investment when you can stick a couple of extra bodies in? Upgrading a ship into a powerhouse instead of running a swarm reminds me of Auras in Magic: The Gathering. Auras, spells that attach to/upgrade existing creatures, are pretty much jokes to any seriously competitive player, because all they do is put all your eggs in one basket, making it really easy for your opponent to gain a huge advantage all at once.

As casual as I am, I can still recognize when I'm massively handicapping myself. In the future, I don't want to know that I'm guaranteeing my defeat by using named pilots and upgrade cards.

Rogue is OP. Nerf Rogue. Pls? K, thx!