Does Rexlers ability apply to the 1 ion cannon damage?

Yes. Ion cannon does 1 damage, and Rexler applies to damage cards.

So to use the car analogy....

The TIE Defender is like a 4000 lb American muscle car with 600 HP: it can go really fast in straight lines but it doesn't handle turns well. However, unlike the muscle car, the Defender is quite costly for what you get.

Actually really really awesome muscle cars cost a hell of a lot in the long run, particularly due to the gas mileage and any potential replacement parts. So the analogy does work 100%.

Noteworthy, the ship seems like an excellent thing to buy... But... Can I simply say that uh, I... Think there's something wrong with the wings on the PS1 card, and I dunno'. The art seems kinda' lacking for typical FFG quality here.

Is that just me or..?

Outmanuever will be better than predator on any high PS ship with a barrel roll. The ability to know where the opponent will be will make it very easy to stay out of its arcs. I do it all the time with Boba Fett.

And then there is the case of Whisper and outmanuever. The decloaking manuever will be glorious at getting out of fire arcs. It will be very easy to trigger Outmanuever, and use your action to focus or TL, then get a free focus.

Does Rexlers ability apply to the 1 ion cannon damage?

I don't see why it won't. It just states that if you deal at least 1 damage card to the defender, that you can focus to flip it face up.

The Defender is going to be a pain in the butt to kill if flown correctly. 6 total HPs, and 3 evade will keep it alive quite a while. I just wish the generic pilots were 2 and 4 PS respectively.

Half the ships you face have 1-2 PS.

I would like to see the numbers for a PS2 defender. But the numbers that Vorpal posts does match up with the general concept that more dice is better.

Outmaneuver won't be useful on every ship, but it can be quite effective on the ships that can make use of it, like the Phantom, Defender, A-Wing and Interceptor.

To further buff this, if you take Janson then his ability comes into play. So long as he shoots first, he can strip that focus away. Completely nullifying Rexlar's ability. Which means you just have to rely on his shooting, and that is alot of wasted points if you strip away his ability.

He also counters the PS6 Defender: Wes removes a blue target lock token, which means the red token goes away as well.

Wedge + Outmanuever + Engine Upgrade + R7-T1.

Start in enemy firing arc, use R7, obtain target lock, boost out of fire arc, then benefit from out manuever.

Expensive, bit of a gamble, but reducing an Interceptor to 1 evade dice = priceless.

He also counters the PS6 Defender:

To be fair he's the same cost as Wedge, 1 PS lower and less useful to him ability.

Half the ships you face have 1-2 PS. That may change, but currently it's the way the metagame works. Rookies, blue Squadron, and Academy Pilots are EVERYWHERE!

Sure, and that tips things back toward Predator. But how much it tips things is a function of the metagame in general and the matchup in particular, and I can't model that effectively, let alone control it.

EDIT: Also worth noting that it doesn't tip things very much, because rerolls are subject to pretty severely diminishing returns; the first reroll is really effective/useful, the second is much less useful than the first, and the third hardly matters.

Beyond that I hit modified defense ships with unmodded attacks ALL the time.

Statistically speaking, you hit them no more than 40% of the time.

But even modded defense dice never seem to pan out. Statistically there is a huge difference between 3/8ths and 1/2.

My point was, and is, that even if there were 4 successes on green dice, the game would would still heavily favor offense. The statistical difference between the dice is swamped by effect of the game mechanics, prominently including the action economy.

Yes, cutting a defense dice when they have a focus is better. But reliability of use is king, and Outmanuever requires a manueverable ship with the ability to reroll dice to come anywhere near as effective as Predator, which is great on every ship in this game. There are... Two of those. A-Wings and the Defender. Maybe the Firespray. Maybe.

Outmaneuver doesn't require rerolls to be as effective as Predator; it just requires being out of arc. And since no one questions the effectiveness of Wedge--whose pilot ability Outmaneuver mimics--I'm pretty comfortable forecasting that it will be an effective EPT.

The more I think about it, the more I believe the upcoming stress giving abilities of the republic ships and the stress giving weapons are more a counter against the Defender.

Oh, you have a stress, if you want to shed that stress, you can only choose, straight, straight, straight and straight. The defender is the only ship that has its greens only on straights.

The stress giving that hurts the Interceptor is an added bonus I guess.

The Defender can still K-turn while stressed, so I'm not overly worried about the new stress inducers. With Predator, lacking an action isn't the most terrible thing.

Outmaneuver should force YT-1300s pilots to use the MF title and use evade a lot more. Bs/Ys will just be sitting ducks.

I love Rexler. Yes, you need a focus, but I think it's a serious mistake to focus (pun intended) on "He can't get a second focus so he's useless". At a minimum, it introduces another damage vector for using focus - two hits and an eyeball makes for a serious choice in how to spend that focus, which is cool. More importantly, it gives a completely separate option for when you roll no eyeballs on the attack. Playing last night I had a crazy good set of attack dice - two back-to-back 4-{Hit} rolls from different ships. Both had focus sitting there, which was useless. Rexler says "Yes please, I'll take 4 crits on Lando, thanks!"

That's the sort of ability I was hoping to see out of Imperial Aces!

Vessler, though... Meh. Is it possible to coordinate the TLs? Certainly. But I think it's going to be difficult. All the ships that can TL naturally are either expensive (Firespray, Defender), hard to fly/bad ships (Lambda, Advanced) or typically run in dedicated squads (Bombers). Unless you want to basically just be handing off an action by taking an otherwise useless TL, you've got to coordinate those attacks. I feel like that's going to be tricky, given how differently the Defender is going to fly than anything else we've got (although it does turn about as bad as a shuttle, so it's got that synergy going, I suppose). I think Vessler's going to be in that category of "not worth the effort" and is unlikely to see a lot of use.

Wedge + Outmanuever + Engine Upgrade + R7-T1.

Start in enemy firing arc, use R7, obtain target lock, boost out of fire arc, then benefit from out manuever.

Expensive, bit of a gamble, but reducing an Interceptor to 1 evade dice = priceless.

Outmaneuver should be awesome on HWKs and Y-Wings. It doesn't specify primary weapons, so you can use it to apply Defense penalties to Ion Turret attacks as long as you can slip behind them.

Half the ships you face have 1-2 PS. That may change, but currently it's the way the metagame works. Rookies, blue Squadron, and Academy Pilots are EVERYWHERE!

Sure, and that tips things back toward Predator. But how much it tips things is a function of the metagame in general and the matchup in particular, and I can't model that effectively, let alone control it.EDIT: Also worth noting that it doesn't tip things very much, because rerolls are subject to pretty severely diminishing returns; the first reroll is really effective/useful, the second is much less useful than the first, and the third hardly matters.

Beyond that I hit modified defense ships with unmodded attacks ALL the time.

Statistically speaking, you hit them no more than 40% of the time.

But even modded defense dice never seem to pan out. Statistically there is a huge difference between 3/8ths and 1/2.

My point was, and is, that even if there were 4 successes on green dice, the game would would still heavily favor offense. The statistical difference between the dice is swamped by effect of the game mechanics, prominently including the action economy.

Yes, cutting a defense dice when they have a focus is better. But reliability of use is king, and Outmanuever requires a manueverable ship with the ability to reroll dice to come anywhere near as effective as Predator, which is great on every ship in this game. There are... Two of those. A-Wings and the Defender. Maybe the Firespray. Maybe.

Outmaneuver doesn't require rerolls to be as effective as Predator; it just requires being out of arc.And since no one questions the effectiveness of Wedge--whose pilot ability Outmaneuver mimics, I'm pretty comfortable forecasting that it will be an effective EPT.

Being useful on every attack made is a huge deal.

And I agree, the game does make defense dice worse. But the fact is that even before the game segregates against them they come up blank more often. And over the course of the game that difference adds up. Especially when it's much easier to have more red dice than green dice.

Oh, and Outmaneuver on Wedge is just going to be dirty.

I was really hoping they would spoil the Onyx Squadron pilot. I would really like to know its cost and whether it can take an EPT upgrade.

other than that I guess I'm set to print a couple dials and start playtesting with my shapeways defender models

Based on how some of the other regular sized ships fit their respected 2nd cheapest pilot slot, my guess on it would be:

Onyx Squadron Pilot = 32 points

We'll see how close I came soon I hope.

The Defender can still K-turn while stressed, so I'm not overly worried about the new stress inducers. With Predator, lacking an action isn't the most terrible thing.

True, like someone has posted it before, easy to fly, hard to master.

Onyx Squadron Pilot = 32 points

4 pilot skill with no Elite upgrade option

You can see that it's 3 PS in the pic.

Given the PS1 for 30, I think 32 points is right. The EPT is probably up in the air - I can see it paralleling the A-wing because of the Defender's history, and the Imps usually have a generic with EPT. Just have to wait and see.

Outmaneuver should force YT-1300s pilots to use the MF title and use evade a lot more. Bs/Ys will just be sitting ducks.

Glorious!

Onyx Squadron Pilot = 32 points

4 pilot skill with no Elite upgrade option

You can see that it's 3 PS in the pic.

Given the PS1 for 30, I think 32 points is right. The EPT is probably up in the air - I can see it paralleling the A-wing because of the Defender's history, and the Imps usually have a generic with EPT. Just have to wait and see.

So to use the car analogy....

The TIE Defender is like a 4000 lb American muscle car with 600 HP: it can go really fast in straight lines but it doesn't handle turns well. However, unlike the muscle car, the Defender is quite costly for what you get.

Actually really really awesome muscle cars cost a hell of a lot in the long run, particularly due to the gas mileage and any potential replacement parts. So the analogy does work 100%.

I'm pretty sure that by the time you get to 600HP in exotic cars, even the maintenance and gas costs are going to be more than the equivalent for any american muscle cars. Otherwise we would all be driving Ferraris and Lambos.

Wedge + Outmanuever + Engine Upgrade + R7-T1.

Start in enemy firing arc, use R7, obtain target lock, boost out of fire arc, then benefit from out manuever.

Expensive, bit of a gamble, but reducing an Interceptor to 1 evade dice = priceless.

You don't need the Engine Upgrade to use R7's boost. It does allow you to boost when outside of range 1-2 Target Lock range.

Outmaneuver should be awesome on HWKs and Y-Wings. It doesn't specify primary weapons, so you can use it to apply Defense penalties to Ion Turret attacks as long as you can slip behind them.

Outmaneuver does not work on turret upgrades (unless within your firing arc of the primary weapon, which is the 90 degrees forward) because Outmaneuver specifically states within the firing arc and the turret cards states that you can target ships outside your firing arc.

Now Outmaneuver on YT-1300s, they have a 360 degree arc, hm...

Or, the Slave-1 ships, forward and back firing arc.

That'll be interesting.

Onyx Squadron Pilot = 32 points

4 pilot skill with no Elite upgrade option

You can see that it's 3 PS in the pic.

Given the PS1 for 30, I think 32 points is right. The EPT is probably up in the air - I can see it paralleling the A-wing because of the Defender's history, and the Imps usually have a generic with EPT. Just have to wait and see.

I doubt it gets an EPT, but I hope it does.

Given the cost, and the fact it's Onyx Squadron, I don't see why it doesn't get an EPT. The Black Squadron Ties got an EPT because they were elite tie pilots under Vader.

Onyx Squadron Pilot = 32 points

4 pilot skill with no Elite upgrade option

You can see that it's 3 PS in the pic.

Given the PS1 for 30, I think 32 points is right. The EPT is probably up in the air - I can see it paralleling the A-wing because of the Defender's history, and the Imps usually have a generic with EPT. Just have to wait and see.

But the generic ships with EPTs are those that are incredibly dangerous to fly in combat, and so have low survival ratios, but the veterans are very skilled. Also, all but the A-Wing have a second generic pilot without an EPT.

That said, between Brath's quote (he's Onyx Leader) "...we're either the best pilots in the Empire or the luckiest", how the Defender (and it's pilots) were designed and selected, I'm leaning towards an EPT.