Guess we forgot about Carnor when it came to opportunist. I mean that card did come with his pack.

Well yeah, that's what happens when you only consider upgrade cards that say "imperial only". By that standard the only thing rebels have had since wave 3 is a droid or two and some mediocre crew options.

Opportunist: better for rebels so far.

Outmaneuver: awesome on awings, great for turrets. Only ok for imperials because of competing EPTs.

Hull upgrade: more HP. xwing light for bandits. Interceptors like it best but often take it only as the 3rd or 4th upgrade.

Tactician: More stress to combat the empires best

Predator: Just as good for rebels

That's just out of the Imperial based products. Add in 6 rebel only crew and a number of rebel only droids that you are VASTLY under rating and the "standard" is set.

What has been released upgrade wise that has been significantly better for the Empire?

Opportunist: I agree works best for rebels mainly because of Wes token removal and on A-Wing because we tend to don't care about them anyway.

Outmaneuver: good on A-Wing, very bad on turret since the target needs to be in your firing arc. I believe it works best on imperial ships since they almost all have barrel roll and its more useful to outmaneuver than boost.

Hull upgrade: Depends for each player, but the more I use it, the more I prefer to take an Hull upgrade over a Stealth Device on my Interceptors, it tends to keep them alive longer.

Tactician: While the Empire is more vulnerable to stress tactic, currently the two ship that can take crew for the rebels are the YT-1300 and HWK-290, two ship that use a turret and like outmaneuver, the target needs to be into the firing arc. It will change once the B-Wing can take a crew, but currently, I think the two ship that can benefit the most from tactician is the Shuttle and Firespray since they can combine it with the Ion cannon for a beautiful stress+ion token.

Predator: Benefit both side but, since all rebel already have access to TL and not the Empire, I believe the Empire will benefit more from this one.

I agree with this except Predator. I believe this is best on the Xwing, Awing (along with ptl), YT-1300, Firespray, and Rexler Brath. I think the Xwing benefits the most due to R2D6.

You know why that is? Because Howlrunner swarms are overpowered. There's no chance she would have been printed with that ability at that cost in a current expansion. So FFG has two choices: they can continue to release balanced ships and accept that competitive players will keep using their overpowered option and dismiss the new stuff, or they can try to compete with the overpowered option and bring in serious power creep with each new expansion making the previous ones obsolete. Thankfully FFG have chosen the first option.

(Technically there is a third option, errata Howlrunner's ability and/or point cost, but I can understand why this is not an appealing one.)

They took the fourth: print Blount.

Haven't read the last 100 posts or so, but I assume using Jan's ability would preclude Jake's from triggering?

Yes and no. If he takes a focus action his ability triggers. If Kyle or Garven assign him a focus token without it being an action then it doesn't trigger, because he was assigned an evade rather than focus token.

I still think it's tricky.

The focus action is not the same getting a focus token. The Focus Action causes you to be assigned a focus token, Jan intervenes at the assign part. So you take a focus action (giving you your free boost or barrel) and are assigned a focus token, which Jan converts into an Evade.

The tie is great. But what else is there that is truely a build around. Firespray. Yep and because of cost what is the only other thing that you can run RIGHT NOW besides the Firespray... swarm or another Firespray.

You know why that is? Because Howlrunner swarms are overpowered. There's no chance she would have been printed with that ability at that cost in a current expansion. So FFG has two choices: they can continue to release balanced ships and accept that competitive players will keep using their overpowered option and dismiss the new stuff, or they can try to compete with the overpowered option and bring in serious power creep with each new expansion making the previous ones obsolete. Thankfully FFG have chosen the first option.

(Technically there is a third option, errata Howlrunner's ability and/or point cost, but I can understand why this is not an appealing one.)

Everything that has made the empire better (with the exception of Rebel Captive and Royal Guard title) has also made the rebels more customizable and further expanded options

Well yeah, that's what happens when you only consider upgrade cards that say "imperial only". By that standard the only thing rebels have had since wave 3 is a droid or two and some mediocre crew options.

By the time Rebel Aces is available, it will be 5 droids, or almost double those that were available Wave 3. 6 crew, 3 or 4 of which I think will see regular play in competitive lists. That makes 9 to 2 in terms of unique crew cards to each side (assuming I counted correctly). That adds up to 18 more unique cards that the rebels have access to, some of the most flexible cards in the game in terms of the wide variety of game rules they can affect, and most of their ships have access to one or the other.

They're not game breaking because the game is very balanced and point costs are mostly appropriately assigned to make these upgrades interesting choices. I'd just like to see the same interesting choices in game design available for the empire-- not better, just some added flexibility.

I also don't think that simply saying the Imperials have Howlrunner, so they don't need this kind of variety is correct (even if I agree Howl is too cheap). More variety might actually cause people to move away from her. There's nothing that was game breaking in Imperial Aces and yet it seems to have had exactly that effect -- interceptors are getting used more and there is more variety in the Imperial builds.

I'd think doing action triggers jakes ability as that is how his card reads. The token doesn't matter.

I'd think doing action triggers jakes ability as that is how his card reads. The token doesn't matter.

I think I agree with you. Now if only Captain Yorr matched...

The focus action is not the same getting a focus token. The Focus Action causes you to be assigned a focus token, Jan intervenes at the assign part. So you take a focus action (giving you your free boost or barrel) and are assigned a focus token, which Jan converts into an Evade.

Jan also triggers at the performing action part.

Shortened versions:

The way that I see it, as some others have said above, when Jake performs a focus action and it is converted into an evade, his ability still triggers because he performed a focus action, as stated on his pilot card. If he is assigned a focus token by another means and this token is converted, I wouldn't think his ability triggers, as the focus token is never assigned to his ship, it is intercepted and converted beforehand.

I do believe that it work with Jake.

Jake ability trigger when he takes a focus action. Jan ability change a focus token into an evade one, but it still is a focus action, it does not change it into an evade action. You could not with a 2 action ship do a focus action, turn your token into an evade one, and then do a second focus action, because the first one is still a focus action.

So Jake do a focus action, perform a free barrel roll or boost and can switch his focus token for an evade one.

I don't think it works with the assigned part though. So you could not assigned a focus token and switch it to an evade. In that case, you would be assigning an evade token.

I also don't think that simply saying the Imperials have Howlrunner, so they don't need this kind of variety is correct (even if I agree Howl is too cheap). More variety might actually cause people to move away from her. There's nothing that was game breaking in Imperial Aces and yet it seems to have had exactly that effect -- interceptors are getting used more and there is more variety in the Imperial builds.

Personally I don't think Howl is the end all be all either, because if you take the more fun ships to fly (Phantom, Interceptors in my opinion) Howl has trouble keeping up, she only has 2 attack dice, she can't use her own ability (unless you slap predator on there increasing the cost), I also don't like keeping my ships at R1 of each other, I prefer to be able to break formation with little loss of performance

Speaking of which, that thread seems to have been glossed over today. Did I heap too much logic on you people?

I've decided your name from now on is Wobbly Headed Bob.

I also don't think that simply saying the Imperials have Howlrunner, so they don't need this kind of variety is correct (even if I agree Howl is too cheap). More variety might actually cause people to move away from her. There's nothing that was game breaking in Imperial Aces and yet it seems to have had exactly that effect -- interceptors are getting used more and there is more variety in the Imperial builds.

It's not that Empire shouldn't have variety due to Howrunner, it's that FFG has to be extraordinarily careful with any squad enhancing abilities that they give them. They have to assume that any AoE ability can and will be stacked with Howlrunner--and this severely limits some of the variety that Imperials COULD have.

I do believe that it work with Jake.

Jake ability trigger when he takes a focus action. Jan ability change a focus token into an evade one, but it still is a focus action, it does not change it into an evade action. .

No, jakes ability triggers after performing the action. Jan however replaces the action with assigning an evade token, so there never was an action for Jake to trigger. At least, that's how I read it.

I do believe that it work with Jake.

Jake ability trigger when he takes a focus action. Jan ability change a focus token into an evade one, but it still is a focus action, it does not change it into an evade action. .

No, jakes ability triggers after performing the action. Jan however replaces the action with assigning an evade token, so there never was an action for Jake to trigger. At least, that's how I read it.

Jan is only replacing the TOKEN not the ACTION.

Sounds like a replacement effect to me.

I also don't think that simply saying the Imperials have Howlrunner, so they don't need this kind of variety is correct (even if I agree Howl is too cheap). More variety might actually cause people to move away from her. There's nothing that was game breaking in Imperial Aces and yet it seems to have had exactly that effect -- interceptors are getting used more and there is more variety in the Imperial builds.

It's not that Howlrunner means imperials shouldn't have variety, it's that Howlrunner makes it very difficult to add variety without breaking the game. FFG can't make new cards that equal Howlrunner's power level (since she's blatantly overpowered), so it's very easy for a new imperial release to end up collecting dust while competitive players keep using their Howlrunner swarms. And FFG have to be very careful about their choice of new cards to ensure that they don't give Holwrunner swarms any additional power. Those are two major design constraints to deal with, and there's no easy solution.

Rebels, on the other hand, don't have a Howlrunner equivalent to deal with. So it's safer for FFG to be ambitious in designing new rebel cards, and it's a lot more likely that new rebel releases get a lot of interest instead of "nah, cool card but I'll keep using my current list".

I do believe that it work with Jake.

Jake ability trigger when he takes a focus action. Jan ability change a focus token into an evade one, but it still is a focus action, it does not change it into an evade action. .

No, jakes ability triggers after performing the action. Jan however replaces the action with assigning an evade token, so there never was an action for Jake to trigger. At least, that's how I read it.

It's still a focus action that he performed. Jan just replaced the token.

If Jan ability would read: 'When a friendly ship at Range 1-3 performs a focus action, he may perform an evade action instead.', I would agree that Jake ability cannot trigger.

But it reads: 'When a friendly ship at Range 1-3 performs a focus action, you may assign it an evade token instead.' It is still considered a focus action, you just take an evade token instead of a focus one.

But it reads: 'When a friendly ship at Range 1-3 performs a focus action, you may assign it an evade token instead.' It is still considered a focus action, you just take an evade token instead of a focus one.

No. What you're saying here would require the ability to be "when you take an evade action get an evade token instead of the focus token". What the ability actually does is replace the focus action with assigning an evade token, replacing the focus action entirely. Jake's ability won't trigger because it happens after a focus action, and a focus action never occurs.

Now, if Jake's ability said "when you take a focus action do X" it would be a case of simultaneous abilities and you could take the free action and then resolve Jan's ability, but it doesn't do that.

But it reads: 'When a friendly ship at Range 1-3 performs a focus action, you may assign it an evade token instead.' It is still considered a focus action, you just take an evade token instead of a focus one.

No. What you're saying here would require the ability to be "when you take an evade action get an evade token instead of the focus token". What the ability actually does is replace the focus action with assigning an evade token, replacing the focus action entirely. Jake's ability won't trigger because it happens after a focus action, and a focus action never occurs.

Now, if Jake's ability said "when you take a focus action do X" it would be a case of simultaneous abilities and you could take the free action and then resolve Jan's ability, but it doesn't do that.

As many people have stated, Jake is still performing a focus action. It doesn't matter that he has a different token, he still performed a focus action, not an evade action. It has nothing at all to do with order of operations/simultaneous abilities.

What the ability actually does is replace the focus action with assigning an evade token, replacing the focus action entirely.

Yeah? Show me on Jan's card where it says that. All I see is "... you may assign an evade token instead." Doesn't say anything about replacing an action.

Maybe it's in the same hidden rules that allow you to use altered dice.

But it reads: 'When a friendly ship at Range 1-3 performs a focus action, you may assign it an evade token instead.' It is still considered a focus action, you just take an evade token instead of a focus one.

No. What you're saying here would require the ability to be "when you take an evade action get an evade token instead of the focus token". What the ability actually does is replace the focus action with assigning an evade token, replacing the focus action entirely. Jake's ability won't trigger because it happens after a focus action, and a focus action never occurs.

Now, if Jake's ability said "when you take a focus action do X" it would be a case of simultaneous abilities and you could take the free action and then resolve Jan's ability, but it doesn't do that.

It seems redundant to me as it seems clear that they meant the focus token. Looks like it's not that clear.

By the way you read it, if you use Jan ability on a PtL ship, say a X-Wing, he could do a focus action, use Jan ability to change it into an evade token, and do a second focus action since suddenly the first is not considered a focus action? It doesn't seems right to me. The ship still performed a focus action, he just get an evade token instead of a focus one.