It is a little bit early to be making judgments on Slicer Tools, as we are still unsure how Energy and the Epic format will play out. Judging it based on the current game might not be the best idea.

My point is, stress is going to become more important to manage in the future. Which means we can't just blindly slap PTL on things anymore. Predator is a good, stressless alternative for an offensive boost without sacrificing manoeuvrability.

Interceptors are probably the best at shedding stress because of all their green turns. They are also probably the only ship that demands PTL because of their innate ability to barrel roll and boost.

Nothing has changed. If you are putting PTL on something else, its cute but its hardly optimal.

Yes and no. Yes, Interceptors are the best fighters at shedding stress... if you can afford to keep that stress for a full turn. The current game allows for this just fine, but if you look at cards like Wingman or Hobbie you notice something interesting, there are more cards coming out that let your shed stress without having to wait for the next turn. Combine this with the Rebel Transport's Slicer Tools and we begin to see why. FFG is upping the risk of keeping stress on your fighters for a full turn. Sure, you could still field an Interceptor with PTL. But you better keep **** sure you don't stick within range of that transport. Because your stressed out TIE with a mere 3 hull isn't going to last long.

Right now the transport is the only craft with a dangerous stress targeter, but there's a good chance this might spread a little further than that. And at that point, choosing between PTL or Predator is going to be a bit harder.

I think it's funny how the link to Slicer Tools is Hobbie!

Really, though, the things on the big ships aren't as big a concern to me because they aren't going to be in "standard tournament" play and I assume epic will be a completely different meta beast. And frankly, I need to see the epic rules before I decide whether that will be worth the time in terms of competitive play, though either way I very much look forward to playing with the new stuff.

I agree that either way, the stress metagame rule structure in standard play will be increasing to some extent, and I'll be interested to see how well it sticks and whether it will just be the occasional list that tries to make use of it or whether it becomes the dominant feature in many lists.

I think it's funny how the link to Slicer Tools is Hobbie!

Really, though, the things on the big ships aren't as big a concern to me because they aren't going to be in "standard tournament" play and I assume epic will be a completely different meta beast. And frankly, I need to see the epic rules before I decide whether that will be worth the time in terms of competitive play, though either way I very much look forward to playing with the new stuff.

I agree that either way, the stress metagame rule structure in standard play will be increasing to some extent, and I'll be interested to see how well it sticks and whether it will just be the occasional list that tries to make use of it or whether it becomes the dominant feature in many lists.

Personally, given that FFG themselves are already working on more methods to shed stress, I think the transport is far from the only stress-targeter we'll see in the near future.

Nothing has changed. If you are putting PTL on something else, its cute but its hardly optimal.

Flat out false. Wedge, PTL and an R2 astromech is murder. Keyan Farlander with PTL will be downright scary. Tycho is made for PTL with his pilot ability.

... Why do you need PTL on wedge? You can target lock anyway and target lock + focus, while nice is overkill. Opportunist on both Wedge and Keyan is arguably better. The only one that holds water is Tycho but he is on the lower end of competitiveness anyway.

Preposterous. Who's going to strip the opponent of tokens before Wedge shoots? TL and focus is overkill? Nonsense. Also on Keyan You can TL then barrel roll and then shed the stress to use Keyan's ability, there is no guarantee you'll be able to trigger Opportunist, whereas PTL is a much more consistent way to trigger Keyan.

Nothing has changed. If you are putting PTL on something else, its cute but its hardly optimal.

Flat out false. Wedge, PTL and an R2 astromech is murder. Keyan Farlander with PTL will be downright scary. Tycho is made for PTL with his pilot ability.

... Why do you need PTL on wedge? You can target lock anyway and target lock + focus, while nice is overkill. Opportunist on both Wedge and Keyan is arguably better. The only one that holds water is Tycho but he is on the lower end of competitiveness anyway.

Preposterous. Who's going to strip the opponent of tokens before Wedge shoots? TL and focus is overkill? Nonsense. Also on Keyan You can TL then barrel roll and then shed the stress to use Keyan's ability, there is no guarantee you'll be able to trigger opportunist, whereas PTL is a much more consistent way to trigger Keyan.

A like for you just for using the word preposterous. Now do it again with an old british accent!

What? You guys mean that there's no be-all-end-all upgrade that works on everything and makes every other upgrade of the same kind obsolete? That's crazy talk.

What? You guys mean that there's no be-all-end-all upgrade that works on everything and makes every other upgrade of the same kind obsolete? That's crazy talk.

I know! The game is probably broken at this point....

<snipped Slicer Tools>

Needless to say, this card will spell utter doom for any PTL Interceptor within range. Imperial ships have no way of bleeding off stress the turn they get it, so any fighter with PTL is virtually guaranteed to have a stress token when the Transport's turn comes along. After 3 turns of combat, every Interceptor with PTL will be either gone or severely damaged. Alternatives needed to be made in order to keep Imperial ships -which have to this point been relying on PTL far too much- from falling out of the sky one by one.

I don't think so, even just based on what we do know about it.

Slicer Tools is an action. Energy recovery is done via an action. It stands to reason that if recovering all your energy is an action, then you're not going to get a whole lot of it back otherwise. There's also the Tibanna Gas Supplies, which is a one-time use to get +3 energy for 4 points. Honestly, it seems very likely that you'll recover either 0 or 1 energy naturally. So you'll potentially have one big burst that hits 3 ships, and after that it's going to be doing 1-2 damage per turn total. It's also going to be mounted on a ship with zero agility and only 12 total hit points, most of which is in hull. So 3 turns of combat against a bare minimum of 9-12 attack dice? Hmmm... Yeah, I'm going with "not likely".

So honestly, I say if you've got three interceptors bearing down and you want to keep throwing your energy into Slicer Tools, please, be my guest. I expect you won't get a second use out of it, honestly.

Is the automatic damage nice? Certainly. But a single damage point is hardly going to doom anything, even with what little we know about how energy works now, and it seems unlikely to get better. What's the point of even having an energy system if you can slap all the upgrades on and run whatever you want anyway?

Edit: Also, the Transport is PS3. That means any PtL Interceptor is guaranteed to be firing before it. Honestly, depending on what you've used your actions for, and what sort of jump they get on you, the transport could be dead before it uses its toys even once. Yes, the card is scary, but it's not a magical button that makes anything it looks at self destruct.

Honestly, running into the Transport is a bigger threat than Slicer Tools.

Honestly, running into the Transport is a bigger threat than Slicer Tools.

In Soviet Russia, transport runs into YOU!

Is it known already what happenes if the transport (or corvette) is hit by ions or assault missiles?

I don't think so, even just based on what we do know about it.

Slicer Tools is an action. Energy recovery is done via an action. It stands to reason that if recovering all your energy is an action, then you're not going to get a whole lot of it back otherwise. There's also the Tibanna Gas Supplies, which is a one-time use to get +3 energy for 4 points. Honestly, it seems very likely that you'll recover either 0 or 1 energy naturally. So you'll potentially have one big burst that hits 3 ships, and after that it's going to be doing 1-2 damage per turn total. It's also going to be mounted on a ship with zero agility and only 12 total hit points, most of which is in hull. So 3 turns of combat against a bare minimum of 9-12 attack dice? Hmmm... Yeah, I'm going with "not likely".

So honestly, I say if you've got three interceptors bearing down and you want to keep throwing your energy into Slicer Tools, please, be my guest. I expect you won't get a second use out of it, honestly.

Is the automatic damage nice? Certainly. But a single damage point is hardly going to doom anything, even with what little we know about how energy works now, and it seems unlikely to get better. What's the point of even having an energy system if you can slap all the upgrades on and run whatever you want anyway?

Edit: Also, the Transport is PS3. That means any PtL Interceptor is guaranteed to be firing before it. Honestly, depending on what you've used your actions for, and what sort of jump they get on you, the transport could be dead before it uses its toys even once. Yes, the card is scary, but it's not a magical button that makes anything it looks at self destruct.

Energy recovery an action? I can't quite recall where that is mentioned. The Transport's four actions are as follows:

• The recover action allows the GR-75 to spend all its stored energy to regain a number of shields equal to the energy spent, possibly taking your transport from zero shields back to full.
• The GR-75 is divided into two sections, fore and aft, and if you take the Reinforce action, you can reinforce one of those sections, adding an evade result to all defense results against attacks directed at that section until the end of the round.
• The jam action allows the GR-75 to assign stress tokens to an enemy starship within Range 1–2 until that starship has a total of two stress tokens.
• With its coordinate action, the GR-75 can grant a free action to any friendly ship within Range 1–2.

I don't see "recover energy" as one of its actions. Given how vital energy is to anything the transport will be doing, its far more likely the transport automatically recovers the amount of energy displayed on its card in one of the games phases. Which would be 4.

Additionally, Slicer Tools is an energy action. Important distinction, because the epic ships seem to be designed to allow the player to make multiple actions as long as they have energy. Which makes sense, because one action per turn for a ship that expensive would be ridiculous. It'd make the ship a handicap, not an interesting addition.

Is it known already what happenes if the transport (or corvette) is hit by ions or assault missiles?

I imagine that, just like the large-base ships, you're going to need multiple tokens to affect it.

The front and back of the corvette have seperate shields and hull, so would probably both take damage. 1 damage is kind of fail, though - given that it has no agility at all (short of Reinforce), a crud-tonne of cluster missiles seems more dangerous.

Once epic play rolls around Ten Numb is gonna be an Advanced Sensors, Predator, HCL genius. (In mah dreams)

Bear in mind that epic play is mostly around scenarios (you know, those mission things in the rule book and large expansion boxes that no bugger seems to use?) - it'll be interesting to see how that affects the rebel fleet choices because - at least at the moment - it's always the rebels playing escort to a large ship, rather than the other way around.

Bear in mind that epic play is mostly around scenarios (you know, those mission things in the rule book and large expansion boxes that no bugger seems to use?) - it'll be interesting to see how that affects the rebel fleet choices because - at least at the moment - it's always the rebels playing escort to a large ship, rather than the other way around.

It's kind of weird thematically, given how most TIE's require a transport of their own to be near when they're doing ambushes.

So I haven't read all 15 pages of this thread and I'm a really new player with about 10 friendly games under my belt. Most have of mine have been played as the Rebels and I have notice a few things. The shields are beastly. The ability to eat crits is just really strong. Our fleet is really limited as we have just started out but here are a few observations. The Imps just don't hit all that hard outside of having more ships. The Advance is pretty much useless even with Vadar because of the 2 red die. We still haven't learned to fly the interceptors all that well, but they will be really fun when we do. They are still squishy without def. upgrades. The Imps require good piloting and more ships. Here are a couple of suggestions but not sure how they would really impact the rebels

Mod-primary weapon gains 1 atk, Agi is reduced by 1. (This would essentially allow the tie advance to become an x-wing in terms of stats, with a different dial. This would allow tie swarms with Howlrunner to become easier to hit, but the hit back hard. Interceptors could roll 6 die given certain ranges and EPTs. This would also allow the Rebels to hit harder but be limited in agi even further. B-wings would not be able to equip it. It would need to be costed out so that it's not a gimme, but more risk reward.)

Mod- Shield bypass. 2x hits or 1x crit can be converted to 1x damage to the hull. (Obviously directed right at the Imp player. Rebels wouldn't really bother till Adv and defenders become reliant. Right now, only Interceptors could utilize this and the above Mod. Thus making them even more of a glass cannon. As more and more Imp ships come with shields, the Rebels could utilize this.)

Again, I'm a new player. Still learning all of the cards and combos and not really up-to-date on whats on the horizon. I think the game is really well balanced right now if the Imps fly better (ie slip in and out of arcs, focus fire with a swarm) and have more ships than the Rebels. I haven't played with the bigger ships so I can't comment on how those affect the game. But it seems the bulk of this thread is that the small ships can't compete firepower to firepower with their counterparts.

Thoughts?

Yeah, increasing the attack die of the basic TIE in the Swarm is a bad, bad, bad, bad idea. 3 Attack is good in this game. You should not be able to make every ship able to have a base 3 attack. I would hope any boost for the advanced doesn't merely make it an X-wing clone.

Bypassing shields is a very, very dangerous ability. Yes, the B-wing is a bit of a tank. But you can chew through their shields fairly easily. Your primary weapon should never be able to bypass shields. B-wing doesn't need that much hate.

Things will even up a bit once the ISD is released.

Things will even up a bit once the ISD is released.

This is quickly becoming the local version of the old do Balrogs have wings debate.

Things will even up a bit once the ISD is released.

This is quickly becoming the local version of the old do Balrogs have wings debate.

Things will even up a bit once the ISD is released.

This is quickly becoming the local version of the old do Balrogs have wings debate.

Yeah, but this one has a possible ending.

As soon as the entire game goes OOP we will know. .

Energy recovery an action? I can't quite recall where that is mentioned. The Transport's four actions are as follows:

Additionally, Slicer Tools is an energy action.

Hrm, could have sworn I read somewhere that you needed an action to recover energy. Fair point - looks like you may very well get a full allotment each turn, and the Tibanna Gas gives you bonus energy for a turn.

But unless I'm missing something on the card, Slicer Tools is just a standard action. There are a few labeled with the Energy header, but Slicer Tools is just Action.

And even if you take it to every turn, I doubt it's relevant - if you're trying to use all your energy and an action to nail stressed ships, you're going to evaporate under the return fire. Especially in the higher points of Epic, concentrated fire is going to drop it quickly.

Energy recovery an action? I can't quite recall where that is mentioned. The Transport's four actions are as follows:

Additionally, Slicer Tools is an energy action.

Hrm, could have sworn I read somewhere that you needed an action to recover energy. Fair point - looks like you may very well get a full allotment each turn, and the Tibanna Gas gives you bonus energy for a turn.

But unless I'm missing something on the card, Slicer Tools is just a standard action. There are a few labeled with the Energy header, but Slicer Tools is just Action.

And even if you take it to every turn, I doubt it's relevant - if you're trying to use all your energy and an action to nail stressed ships, you're going to evaporate under the return fire. Especially in the higher points of Epic, concentrated fire is going to drop it quickly.

Whoops, goofed on Slicer Tools. You're right, was reading both Slicer Tools and Comms Booster at the same time and overlapped them. My mistake.

But at higher point epic games that's still going to be a risk you might not want to afford. Because the higher point games are going to see more than just a sole transport. There's going to be fighter cover at the very least, and unless the rules will explicitly forbid it I can see people squeezing in several transports as well.

Rexler will take care of the B-Wings

These are the kinds of statements that make people discount anything you might have to say, because... well, you're clueless.

I love Rexler, but against a ship that's 60% shields, he's going to do approximately nothing.

Rexler has some hope of screwing with A-wings/Headhunters, because there's the threat of a Direct Hit. He is going to be solid against Shuttles/Firesprays/YTs/Bombers/Y-wings because they have so much hull. The B-wing is, honestly, the worst ship in the entire game for Rexler to have to face.

<sigh> I'd feel better about being concerned about the new Rebel toys if so many other Imperial pilots weren't so **** embarrassing.

Well, the academy is graduating them at such an alarming pace these days... they do need a bit more seasoning.

Not to mention that Interceptors rely on their actions to avoid return fire, so being able to re-roll a dice while still being able to boost or barrel roll will make Interceptors all the deadlier. Especially since the upcoming Rebel Transport is going to severely punish ships who can't get rid of stress tokens as they acquire them.

Action Economy is what is keeping the interceptor competitive. I'm guessing defenders will mostly replace interceptors at epic/cinematic level. I hope I'm wrong, still love my ceptors.

Yeah, Slicer Tools isn't as major detriment as one might think. Once we get the point total of Epic games, I think we can determine how effective the 1 damage to up to 3 ships, if they are stressed, will be. And if you are really, really worried about it, start packing Wingman. It is amazing how many gloss over how the Black Squadron Pilot is the most effect Wingman.

Black Squadron is going to be awesome as a wingman. Probably not for interceptors but for SHUTTLES! I've been playing around with 2 shuttles, an interceptor, and a black squad wingman and it's great. You can absolutely use wingman to make the shuttles more effective, and occasionally, help out an interceptor. It's going to be a fun build. I'll do a Developing List Thread about it in the future.