There's nothing wrong with debating rules. there is something wrong with any of us making a ruling as if it is official when there are multiple competing interpretations. In this case there are, and whether you agree with the precedent behind them, they are valid. That means the best way to handle a situation is to say, Personally ruling A is probably right for reason B, but it could be wrong, leading to this situation. We'lll see what's in the Faq. If it were something easily answerable people wouldn't be debating.

Actually yes, people still debate easy ruling all the time.

Can a focus token on a Phantom let me pick up the ship and put it wherever I want? What do you mean, no? How do we know until FFG tells us?

We have a solid rule which says you can do it once. You claim it's different because it's a token. Fine. You have made two points to support that. First, that it would have implications for evade tokens. I disproved that by showing the actual rules for evade tokens don't have an opportunity trigger.

Second, that the ability is on the token. There's nothing in the rules which even approaches wording to suggest this. You have yet to offer anything to back this up, and just leave it out there as something we can't possibly know until FFG tells us.

Frankly, this argument is unicorn poop. It's a fantasy made up in support of a fictional invention. You have no rule to support it, and the only example you thought you had has been disproven.

So yes, I will say that this is a perfectly established rule. You claiming without support that it's not doesn't make it any less established.

That's because there's never been anything like cloak. We've never had triggered tokens before. We don't know what they associate with. Therefor we have no precedent. Tokens clearly have rules involved with them. The cost of removing the token may very well alter the ruling, could be justification for doing so, and should be treated as such.

Beyond that, I don't necessarily agree with your ideas on how it affects evade or focus tokens. They are also spent based on an opportinity during parts of the attack sequence. Is that a Trigger? It could certainly be looked at as one in the same way "before the dial is revealed is" There'ls ambiguity here, whether you're willing to see it or not. The fact this debate has happened before and wasn't resolved then is proof enough of that. And we should be responsible enough about respecting the rules not to declare our opinions on those rulings as fact for the community.

Given such definitive proof, I don't know how I could possibly question the ambiguity you see!

So yeah. If you've got some evidence, offer it. Until then, I'll just go right on considering this as settled.

There's nothing wrong with debating rules. there is something wrong with any of us making a ruling as if it is official when there are multiple competing interpretations. In this case there are, and whether you agree with the precedent behind them, they are valid. That means the best way to handle a situation is to say, Personally ruling A is probably right for reason B, but it could be wrong, leading to this situation. We'lll see what's in the Faq. If it were something easily answerable people wouldn't be debating.

Actually yes, people still debate easy ruling all the time.

Can a focus token on a Phantom let me pick up the ship and put it wherever I want? What do you mean, no? How do we know until FFG tells us?

We have a solid rule which says you can do it once. You claim it's different because it's a token. Fine. You have made two points to support that. First, that it would have implications for evade tokens. I disproved that by showing the actual rules for evade tokens don't have an opportunity trigger.

Second, that the ability is on the token. There's nothing in the rules which even approaches wording to suggest this. You have yet to offer anything to back this up, and just leave it out there as something we can't possibly know until FFG tells us.

Frankly, this argument is unicorn poop. It's a fantasy made up in support of a fictional invention. You have no rule to support it, and the only example you thought you had has been disproven.

So yes, I will say that this is a perfectly established rule. You claiming without support that it's not doesn't make it any less established.

That's because there's never been anything like cloak. We've never had triggered tokens before. We don't know what they associate with. Therefor we have no precedent. Tokens clearly have rules involved with them. The cost of removing the token may very well alter the ruling, could be justification for doing so, and should be treated as such.

Beyond that, I don't necessarily agree with your ideas on how it affects evade or focus tokens. They are also spent based on an opportinity during parts of the attack sequence. Is that a Trigger? It could certainly be looked at as one in the same way "before the dial is revealed is" There'ls ambiguity here, whether you're willing to see it or not. The fact this debate has happened before and wasn't resolved then is proof enough of that. And we should be responsible enough about respecting the rules not to declare our opinions on those rulings as fact for the community.

So just to reiterate here, you cannot cite a single rule to actually support you position. You can't provide the related opportunity trigger for spending during the attack. You cannot provide a single example of an ability on a token itself. You have nothing that suggests it would work the way you say it might. Nothing at all. Just a bunch of unicorn poop spewed up with not even a single relation to the rules as we know them today.

Given such definitive proof, I don't know how I could possibly question the ambiguity you see!

So yeah. If you've got some evidence, offer it. Until then, I'll just go right on considering this as settled.

Ion weapons have only 3 attack dice. Punching through a ship with at least 4, and sometimes 5 or 6 agility with 3 dice could be difficult.

Ten Numb or other b-wings with autoblaster would be good though.

What I like most about the Phantom is that it drastically increases the value of ion weaponry in the upcoming meta. An ionized ship cannot decloak, and thus cannot shoot.

Yup... Y wings will rule supreme in the new era! They can use their turret to actually be able to hit the phantom, and then the ionization will make impossible for them to decloak since they didn't reveal their dial... Which means that not only can they not do crazy stuff, but they can't shoot either! Taking an Ion shot is going to be the death of a phantom I feel. But, thankfully, if you go with a PS bid, then you should be able to get out of the way of the ICT almost every time since it's only R2, especially since you and BR 2, and then BR 1 more, for a total movement of 4, which is almost the full distance of R2, from BR alone! High PS is a requirement for a phantom then.

I wonder if Salm will start to see some play time?

As shown in the image above, I also feel a Phantom V38 could be very useful in a straight up joust situation. A 1 forward is the SLOWEST any ship can go and no matter what the Phantom would be able to get behind them, possibly even with focus when using advanced sensors and starting from even a bit outside of range three. With an EU this would even increase the range to which this could be done. Higher pilot skill would of course again be required here.

I know there is the possibility of this not working as well when there are two ships, one right behind each other but it is just another option in the huge amount of maneuverability the Phantom has as well as another thing that can potentially be shaking up the standard Rebel lists.

Awesome to see that presented visually.

The Phantom is gunna be a beast to run against. All the possible end locations for it could really break up a rebel formation/focus fire, as they scramble to try and get the phantom in somebody's (anybody's) firing arc.

I see one problem with phantom, from tournament point of view. Its gonna be huge time eater. With all those possible points of appearance players will take hell of time measuring it to all sides. It can even be used as stalling tactics by less honest players, But maybe its just my twisted imagination

I see one problem with phantom, from tournament point of view. Its gonna be huge time eater. With all those possible points of appearance players will take hell of time measuring it to all sides. It can even be used as stalling tactics by less honest players, But maybe its just my twisted imagination

It will be a pretty big point sink though, which means less points for other ships. The time usually spent on those ships would now go onto the Phantom.

I hear you though. When people are presented with too many options, they tend not to make a decision.

Enter Phantom.

The entirety of my argument is We Do Not Know. There isn't enough to work off of. Saying you know is arrogant and a lie. There's no way you can possibly know. You suspect. You have valid reasons for that suspicion. But the lack of defintion for the things I've mentioned creates a whole lot of ambiguity. There can't be evidence there isn't enough evidence. That would mean there is evidence.

The thing is, we do know. You're declaring ambiguity where there isn't actually any. The fact that you're so dead-set on ignoring the evidence that we have does not mean there's no evidence.

But we know how often you can use an ability which depends on an opportunity. We know what game elements have abilities, and we know tokens aren't on the list. We know what an opportunity text looks like, and the text for spending focus, evade, or target lock tokens doesn't include it.

If you want to declare some unknown, you have to actually produce evidence to counter some piece of that. What you have done instead is drop unicorn poop - They are also spent based on an opportinity [sic] during parts of the attack sequence. Is that a Trigger? It could certainly be looked at as one in the same way "before the dial is revealed is" ... but this isn't true. We know what opportunity text looks like, and there's no match there. There's not even anything that hints at linking it to the attack itself in the text of the token. Do you have anything that gets even close to an opportunity trigger? No, you really don't. You claim the ability text might be on the token - well, it might be on the thicker piece of cardboard, too, because you offer just as much evidence for each suggestion. Or maybe cloak will be different because it's not round token, and not in a pair like target locks are - we haven't had one of those yet, how do we know the different shape doesn't matter?

Pfft.

I see one problem with phantom, from tournament point of view. Its gonna be huge time eater. With all those possible points of appearance players will take hell of time measuring it to all sides. It can even be used as stalling tactics by less honest players, But maybe its just my twisted imagination

It will be a pretty big point sink though, which means less points for other ships. The time usually spent on those ships would now go onto the Phantom.

I hear you though. When people are presented with too many options, they tend not to make a decision.

Enter Phantom.

I don't think it really adds all that many more options. You really have 3 choices on your decloak. A B-wing with Advanced Sensors has 2 of those. There's really not all that much more to it.

If something slows people down, it's not options - it's commitment. Advanced Sensors lets you skip the roll, the Phantom doesn't. That will lead people to trying to plan much farther again, and slow them down as the branches from the game state make their eyes bleed.

I don't think it really adds all that many more options. You really have 3 choices on your decloak. A B-wing with Advanced Sensors has 2 of those. There's really not all that much more to it.

If something slows people down, it's not options - it's commitment. Advanced Sensors lets you skip the roll, the Phantom doesn't. That will lead people to trying to plan much farther again, and slow them down as the branches from the game state make their eyes bleed.

Yep. So many options, they can't commit.

Edit: Options meaning with all of possible uses of the Decloak Action/Advanced Sensors/Barrel Roll/"Echo's" unique ability/Engine Upgrade/Intelligence Agent/Navigator/etc... look at the possible movements a Phantom can pull:

And that is a fraction of all the possible results and only accounts for a fraction of the possible upgrades.

It is gunna take players a while to figure out where it benifits them most when it comes to using their Phantoms .

I see one problem with phantom, from tournament point of view. Its gonna be huge time eater. With all those possible points of appearance players will take hell of time measuring it to all sides. It can even be used as stalling tactics by less honest players, But maybe its just my twisted imagination

New Variant of X-wing Tournaments, speed X. Each player is given a stop watch with 10 min on it when you have a choice to make, or your opponent has all of his dials down and you don't the clock runs, when you make such choice "official" such as place your dial down or perform your action you stop the clock. If the clock runs out on you it is an auto lose.

Realistically a player knows where they want to go a head of time(or where their opponent will want to be) that it narrows down the choices, IE Hmm, There is an asteroid in that direction he won't go their or if he goes there i get a R1 shot with an X-wing etc

Ion weapons have only 3 attack dice. Punching through a ship with at least 4, and sometimes 5 or 6 agility with 3 dice could be difficult.

Ten Numb or other b-wings with autoblaster would be good though.

Right, but how is that more of a disadvantage than what any given primary weapon brings to the table? The last time I checked, the only ship that has more than three attack dice is the Phantom itself.

Ten Numb with Ion cannon and Marksmanship and FCS should keep a Phantom where you want it. A Flechette torp will stop him doing anything to escape.

I love flying low numbers of elite pilots in my builds and am looking forward to taking these guys for a spin!

Edit: Would having Nein Nunb on board make decloaking forward green? The decloak card says it is a forward 2 maneuver. That would counter any stress related issues it may have if it works.

Edit: It goes on to say it is not a maneuver the sentence after it says it is one....

Edit: Would having Nein Nunb on board make decloaking forward green? The decloak card says it is a forward 2 maneuver. That would counter any stress related issues it may have if it works.

Well Nien Numb is Rebel only

Derp..

I see a lot of people in here going on about Y-Wings vs. Phantoms, and hard counters and all that jazz. Personally, I'm looking forward to killing them with Phantoms. Interceptors do great things against them, but now I can put Outmaneuver on Echo and almost assure that I'm going to be out of the Y's arc (because turret Y players rarely care where they're facing their forward arc, they just cruise around the field looking for easy hits). So possible range-1 with 5 attack dice against a ship that can't evade any of it? With a target lock, or maybe focus token, or whatever other goodies i can render with a system upgrade or crew member?

Yes please. I like my Y-wings with soy sauce.

Ion weapons have only 3 attack dice. Punching through a ship with at least 4, and sometimes 5 or 6 agility with 3 dice could be difficult.

Ten Numb or other b-wings with autoblaster would be good though.

Right, but how is that more of a disadvantage than what any given primary weapon brings to the table? The last time I checked, the only ship that has more than three attack dice is the Phantom itself.

3 attack primary weapons at R1 get the extra die that I believe is what they are referring too

What about this Phantom build?

Echo +VI+ Navigator+AdvS+ADC=41

The pendulum swings both ways: Ion Cannon prevents a bonus agility die at range 3.

Actually, I think their point was that being ioned is much worse for a phantom than it is for other ships.

Echo is quite obviously a lady's name . Anyone who disagrees is welcome to take it up with Artemis, but I hear she's getting trigger-happy with her bow in her old age.

I don't make the flavor text, FFG does. Besides, it is a callsign and is in no way related to Greek mythos (galaxy far, far away and all that).

Oh, I know it's FFG making up the flavor text. I just still think they're wrong.

Why are people putting PtL and EU on the Phantom this sounds terrible! The Phantom has a good dial, but it does not have a tone of green manuvers. And the Phantom needs its actions! If anything stress is the one thing I think the Pjantom is going to want to avoid.

Also you don't want to buy EU you only get one modification, I think that should be advanced cloak so you can dissapear before you get fired at, or Stigium projector to help you stay alive.

You also probably going to want VI in you Elite slot so you can fire and get cloaked before everyone else fires at you.

I think the build that looks best to me is VI+Advanced Cloak and then if you have the points the recon specialist.

First turn cloak - each subsequent turn you focus an fire which lets you cloak again. Hopefully you will have a focus on attack and defense each round. Focus + 4 attack dice = 3 expected hits. Focus + 4 agility dice = 2.5 expected evades. Focusing when you already have a lot of dice is awesome.

Why are people putting PtL and EU on the Phantom this sounds terrible!

Because people have a hard time thinking beyond PTL.

Because people are still addicted to Push the Limit? And lack of green never really stopped people from using it before.

There are some fascinating combos that can be done. I can't wait to experiment.

3 attack primary weapons at R1 get the extra die that I believe is what they are referring too

The pendulum swings both ways: Ion Cannon prevents a bonus agility die at range 3.

Well B-Wing and Imperial Ion cannons do, Y-wings cant shoot their Ion to range 3, and if you can catch a phantom with its "pants" down you want to do more than just the 1 damage to it

Can I just point everyone to an article I've written on the Phantom based on all the juicy stuff FFG have just released?

http://teamcovenant.com/tuskenraider/2014/05/05/it-is-far-harder-to-kill-a-phantom-1/

Thank you.