Morning Chaps,

Just started into X-wing myself, Literally just received the starter sets last Friday, and thoroughly enjoying the game, infact my whole family, suprisingly has really taken to the game.

My local hobby shop just yesterday had a new stock take of X-wing and bought my first expansions. I went for a B-Wing and a Tie Interceptor. Reading through the B-Wing I came across the Ion cannon. Now please forgive me if this has been asked before but I just wanted to ask exactly what the Ion cannon does and what does Ionisation of a ship mean?

Appreciate your patience and help.

Regards

Mike

You should have recieved a card called Ion Token Reference Card which explains the mechanics of Ionisation.

Essentially an Ion cannon temporarily disables the electronics of the ship (think EMP).

How this works in game terms is that if you successfully roll damage (you complete the attack and there are uncancelled symbols left) then you ignore the result of the damage roll and give the ship 1 damage (1 shield or 1 card) and an ion token.

On the next turn, the affected ship does not get a movement dial, and instead does a WHITE 1 straight manoever and then removes the token. This allows you to know exactly where that ship will be next turn and plan accordingly.

Even more powerful than the Ion cannon that the B-Wing can take, is the Ion Turret (can shoot 360 degrees) that the Y-Wing or HWK can take.

It is worth mentioning that once you perform the ionized white 1-Straight maneuver, ALL remaining ion tokens in the ship are discarded. So, you can't stack ion tokens on a ship with the hope of keeping it ionized for several rounds. If you want to keep a ship ionized, you have to hit it with ion weapons each round.

Also worth mentioning that large ships (YT·1300-Lambda-Firespray) require having 2 ion tokens to be affected. In this case, if the large ship has only one token, it keeps that token from round to round until it gets a second (or more) token(s), at which time, the ion effect will be resolved in the next round, and all tokens discarded, as usual.

Thanks a million chaps that clarifys my question perfectly. I just completed reading the FAQ which i just noticed this morning. Looks like the Ion cannon could be rather handy.

How this works in game terms is that if you successfully roll damage (you complete the attack and there are uncancelled symbols left) then you ignore the result of the damage roll and give the ship 1 damage (1 shield or 1 card) and an ion token.

It's worth being careful with some of the terminology here. You don't "roll damage" in X-wing. You roll attack dice and defense dice, and defense results cancel attack results. Those uncanceled results may become damage, or they may not. The roll for an ion cannon actually has nothing to do with damage.

If there are uncanceled results, the target is hit - a common and important term in X-wing. It's important to distinguish between hit and "successfully roll damage" because a ship can be hit without suffering any damage, and can suffer damage without actually being hit. This has a lot of impact for game effects including Blount, Assault Missiles, ion weapons, Stealth Device, etc.

Looks like the Ion cannon could be rather handy.

The Ion Cannon itself is an iffy choice, IMHO. The problem I have with it is that every ship that can carry it (cannon slot) has 3 base attack. Since ion weapons do a maximum of one damage, you're giving up a LOT of damage potential. As godofcheese says, this is why many players tend to prefer the Y-wing or HWK-290 with an Ion Cannon Turret - you put it on a ship that wouldn't be generating a ton of damage anyway, so you don't actually lose much, and with the addition of the turret you compensate for the maneuverability issues on both those ships.

I can see the Ion cannon working well on a TIE Defender with its white K turn

I can see the Ion cannon working well on a TIE Defender with its white K turn

I know a lot of people are really loving this idea, but I'm not convinced it's going to work out well. The idea of a solid, reliable control is nice - but the Defender is so expensive you're going to be committing something like 1/3 of your fleet to it. Unless you're ionizing an equal or greater point cost, you're coming out on the short end, and it's not like the rest of your opponent's squad (which out-points you) is going to sit there and ignore the Defender while it trails along.

It's also important that the Defender doesn't have a 1 ahead. Which means that if you're consistently ionizing from a tailing position, you're going to be overtaking the target as you do.

So we'll see, but color me unconvinced.

I can see the Ion cannon working well on a TIE Defender with its white K turn

I know a lot of people are really loving this idea, but I'm not convinced it's going to work out well. The idea of a solid, reliable control is nice - but the Defender is so expensive you're going to be committing something like 1/3 of your fleet to it. Unless you're ionizing an equal or greater point cost, you're coming out on the short end, and it's not like the rest of your opponent's squad (which out-points you) is going to sit there and ignore the Defender while it trails along.

It's also important that the Defender doesn't have a 1 ahead. Which means that if you're consistently ionizing from a tailing position, you're going to be overtaking the target as you do.

So we'll see, but color me unconvinced.

Ive thought about this, and my thought was better on the Delta squad, as he can crash into the back and stay behind. The fact you have 6 points to chew through with 3 evade dice means you can potentially ignore a ship for a time while you ion, get behind and ion again, and then smash with a big range 1 shot

Would I be right in saying that perhaps with these new ships coming out the points base in normal and current competitive games may need to be pushed up to the 150 point level?

No. 100 is still the line, and will continue to be. It forces you to be strategic and selective as you cant have all the toys you want under the cap.

Would I be right in saying that perhaps with these new ships coming out the points base in normal and current competitive games may need to be pushed up to the 150 point level?

The new ships are expensive, but have some impressive abilities and are going to be pretty durable. I think they'll function well either as an expensive centerpiece with some cheaper support, or as part of a very elite small build. Either way, they'll work fine at 100.