How bout this.

Players are to create a damage deck of exactly 33 cards, of which exactly 7 cards are direct hits. You may have a maximum of 4 of any damage card in your deck.

During a game, you will exchange damage decks with your opponent. You will be drawing from his damage deck, and he will be drawing from your damage deck.

This way, your Damage Deck has a level of customizability involved, and does influence the gameplay. For example, if you are having a hard time dealing with HLCs and ion turrets, you can try and include 4x Munitions Failure. If you are playing anti pursuit lasers, 4x Stunned Pilot would be a good mix. At the same time, it helps make crit based effects more powerful, eg. Maarek Steele, Winged Gundark, Determination (to counter opponent decks heavy in pilot crits), Saboteur, Proton Bombs etc etc. There is also an additional deck building element, and you can also create new damage cards with updated critical hit effects (eg. affects new upgrades like sensors, crew, modifications etc). These new crit cards could be released together with the usual ship booster packs (ie. Imperial Aces, TIE fighter expansions etc), and maybe come with only 2 copies each so you are suckered into buying 2 copies of that same ship if you want to net-deck your crit deck XD. It also makes critical hits more scary and sought after, especially after you removed those crits that you deem useless.

what do you guys think?

During a game, you will exchange damage decks with your opponent.

If you do that, then wouldn't it make most sense to stack the deck with crits that don't hurt you?

Lets say I'm flying a interceptor list, I'd want at last 4 munitions failure in the deck, because those don't do anything to me.

Or if I'm flying lots of AP's put in damaged cockpit, because the difference between PS1 and PS0 is pretty meaningless.

This effectively lets me cut down the number of crits that actually will hurt me by 4. More if they put in a crit card that harms System Upgrades or other systems that I don't have in my list.

During a game, you will exchange damage decks with your opponent.

If you do that, then wouldn't it make most sense to stack the deck with crits that don't hurt you?

Lets say I'm flying a interceptor list, I'd want at last 4 munitions failure in the deck, because those don't do anything to me.

Or if I'm flying lots of AP's put in damaged cockpit, because the difference between PS1 and PS0 is pretty meaningless.

This effectively lets me cut down the number of crits that actually will hurt me by 4. More if they put in a crit card that harms System Upgrades or other systems that I don't have in my list.

You make a Damage Deck to pass to your opponent. He will be drawing his hits and crits from YOUR damage deck which you built.

You make a Damage Deck to pass to your opponent.

You're right, I was thinking backwards.

But do you allow some sort of sidebar action? If you load the deck for secondary weapons and he doesn't have any, you have the same issue as above. A number of crits that don't have any effect.

maybe there could be some sidedeck system, like with TCGs, but shouldn't be necessary. Since you are building the damage deck after all, so you would already know the risks involved.

eg. If you are really having problems dealing with high PS pilots but are alright with swarms, you would probably fill your damage deck with Damaged Cockpit. Against Howlrunner and other effect-centric decks, perhaps Injured Pilot would be good. Damaged Engine or that stress token crit would probably screw up enemy formations, etcetc

Stop it. Stop trying to make the game complicated.

Stop it. Stop trying to make the game complicated.

you could simply stick to using the 33 card basic set provided in the core set.

I like this in theory, but like every attempt to modify the damage deck, the impact on games will be minimal much of the time while the time added to squadbuilding and tournament setup would be enormous.

well, you would simply bring that 1 damage deck which you tailored against specific lists which your current list would likely have problems facing against, and use that deck for all matches, so shouldn't incur any additional setup time etc since you are just shuffling and exchanging damage decks.

Impact on games would likely be minimal / not that drastic, since crits are relatively difficult to land, even if you are going all out with things like Winged Gundark, Marksmanship, Ten Nunb etc

I like the idea. It adds another element to the strategy. And by doing it this way, you're not "forcing" anyone to buy extra cards since they can use the standard damage deck. It would allow you to tailor your deck to squads that you have issues with, and remove cards that you dont' really care about. For example, I hate the "receive a stress" card because it screwed me over once by having Fel draw the card, and then take a focus, and then live through the next attack because of said focus. I would remove both of those. And on certain squads I run, I make an init bid, and get really PO'd when my opponent draws the injured pilot, and then moves first anyways.

I like it. I don't think it'll ever happen, but that doesn't stop me from liking it.

nvr mind