Well said Vorpal

In short no.

Plenty have given the reasons.

Keep it civil though. Both sides have barked out a little too loudly here.

TL;DR Is the base 4 attack on a Phantom too much?

Discuss.

There's little to discuss imho. Especially on the named pilots, as they won't get to fire every turn.

Unless you like to gamble.

My only concern has nothing to do with game mechanics per se, and more to do with the fluff.

The Phantom may be a beast of an attacker, but compared to a ship like the Falcon with upgraded weapons systems it just seems out of place as there is no real mechanism to reflect the more powerful weapons of larger ships like the Falcon and now the Decimator for example.

And where do we go from here? Fluff wise there are plenty of ships, both big and small that have more powerful weapons relative to the Phantom. Do we start reflecting that? I think that's a slippery slope that could lead to some unwanted power creep. Thus far, I have been very happy with the balance in this game. I'd hate to see ships become obsolete or less useful because of power creep.

I say this without having played against a phantom yet, but the concerns may still be valid..

My only concern has nothing to do with game mechanics per se, and more to do with the fluff.

The Phantom may be a beast of an attacker, but compared to a ship like the Falcon with upgraded weapons systems it just seems out of place as there is no real mechanism to reflect the more powerful weapons of larger ships like the Falcon and now the Decimator for example.

And where do we go from here? Fluff wise there are plenty of ships, both big and small that have more powerful weapons relative to the Phantom. Do we start reflecting that? I think that's a slippery slope that could lead to some unwanted power creep. Thus far, I have been very happy with the balance in this game. I'd hate to see ships become obsolete or less useful because of power creep.

I say this without having played against a phantom yet, but the concerns may still be valid..

Judge me by my size, do you?

I think that's about the time Yoda kicks ass. I think anyone expecting not being kicked hard by the phantom is in for the same kinda day. Not all lazers are created equal.

Some people are saying that it is meant to punish the meta of swarms and lower pilot skill ships. Well, I tend to think the Phantom is only going to reinforce the meta. You're going to want to get as many arcs on this thing as possible, so no, I'm seeing that this is not going to shift the meta as people are claiming.

The meta isn't loads of low PS ships. It's loads of low PS ships in formation. Besides, if you spam low PS ships the Phantom will just dance into the one hole you left. You want to get it into the arc of higher PS ship that can whack it with its guard down before it ACDs.

The Phantom may be a beast of an attacker, but compared to a ship like the Falcon with upgraded weapons systems it just seems out of place as there is no real mechanism to reflect the more powerful weapons of larger ships like the Falcon and now the Decimator for example.

The phantom has 4 dice because it appears out of nowhere.

Let's be clear about something: I literally made the thread not to troll anyone. I literally thought it was a good topic to discuss, since some of us have had the opportunity to fly the Phantom many times. When people come back and tell me that my thread is ridiculous or stupid or that I don't have balls irl or that I'm not a man, yeah, I'm going to get a little snappy.

People are going to disagree when you throw out an opinion. That's the internet. People are going to get even more upset when you try and stand up for yourself and your opinion. That's the internet.

Now time for some facts: I've played approx. 25-30 games on Vassal with the TIE Phantom. I've played approx. 15-20 games on Vassal where my opponent was using the TIE Phantom. Besides the initial 1-2 games to get a feel for the ship, the majority of the games (I'd say 85-90%) were won with the player who had the Phantom. In the games (about 3-4) where both me and my opponent were flying Phantoms, the game went to the person who had the higher PS phantom.

In the post-discussion with the people whom I've played in these game, we both agree how ridiculous the Phantom is, especially with it's 4 attack.

Some people are saying that it is meant to punish the meta of swarms and lower pilot skill ships. Well, I tend to think the Phantom is only going to reinforce the meta. You're going to want to get as many arcs on this thing as possible, so no, I'm seeing that this is not going to shift the meta as people are claiming.

If people want to be irritated that I made a thread that implies the Phantom is broken and yet I personally haven't taken a side, that's for you to get upset about and not me.

Need unlike button.

-You chose to get snappy rather than discuss your thread.

-"That is just the Internet" is a cop out for jerks who want to be jerks. You are what you say and do and that includes what you type on the Internet. People's personas don't change when they think no one is watching, they change when they are being watched.

-your experience is your experience. It doesn't have to match everyone else's but when most others disagree maybe you need to re-examine your experience.

- the phantom only changes the meta for those that embrace it. Loads of players fly casual: for somethst means never adapting, they get to choose what "fun" means to them. Some choose "fun" to mean only flying red squadron quad xwings regardless of win or lose.

- you chose a side when you used the word "mistake" in your thread tile, reacted against those who didn't agree it was a mistake, and are still reacting to those who said "it's not a mistake". That is on you. You just pointed out that its still thier issue and not yours. Failure to accept your own choices and actions that are clearly documented here doesn't come off well.

I am always amazed how brutally dismissive and pointlessly aggressive people are on this forum. I don't see anything that was stated in the OP as unreasonable. He is concerned that giving the ship a primary attack value of 4 was a mistake. Given that this is the first ship to have that, how on Earth does his concern justify the mini fits of the internet tough guys?

That said, the OP is wrong. It is not a mistake. Keep in mind that the phantom pays a ton of points for its cloaking potential. This potential is wothless if the ship is not pilotted with a high level of care and skill. Also, every opponent has access to ion weapons, which are great against the phantom and useful against any other ship. A single ion token will result in the phantom's inevitable demise unless you opponent is severely out of position. Like the interceptor, the phantom's biggerst weakness will always be it high cost compared to its fragility.

I don't know how mush you have played with this ship and I won't, unlike many others, assume that you didn't spend the time to form an educated opinion. But, I will echo (get it?) their belief that the game will even out once the community at large become aquainted with the ship.

Sorry but the Op kind of had it coming.

In his second /third post he gets snappy at some because he doesn't like their response, but then goes on to contradict himself.

The title of the thread and his Original post he basically says that it's broken, and when you read it, along with the title feels as though it was a mistake by ffg.

Only to Change his story and back peddle in the next page.

So if he didn't think so, then why start the topic.

What I didn't like was his tone with others as at the sameme time contradict himself.

In fairness, a lot of the initial replies were along the lines of YOU just haven't allowed enough time to pass to form that opinion.

Then they'd go on to state their that it's balanced just fine. Either stating or implying that THEY DID allow enough time to pass to form their opinion.

So how is it that anyone who suggests that it might be broken is inexperienced but anyone who says it's not has had sufficient experience? Its hypocritical to say the least.

As I said before, I don't have any experience so I'm just curious. I came to this thread hoping to see a thought out debate over this but that's not what happened. The replies boiled down to "your opinion doesn't matter and you shouldn't have asked this question."

I think the OP was trying to ask an honest question, and he made his stance on it pretty clear. Did he back-pedal later? Sure, but what do you expect when people ignore the question at hand and undermine him instead?

As far as whatever other recent posts, I don't know what people are referring to and I don't care. Don't bring the mistakes of other threads into sully whatever value could be garnered from a new one. It's petty.

People are going to disagree when you throw out an opinion. That's the internet. People are going to get even more upset when you try and stand up for yourself and your opinion. That's the internet…

If people want to be irritated that I made a thread that implies the Phantom is broken and yet I personally haven't taken a side, that's for you to get upset about and not me.

If you don't see how those two paragraphs are logically incoherent when taken together, I can't help you. As for the opinion you apparently think you're simultaneously expressing and not expressing:

Now time for some facts: I've played approx. 25-30 games on Vassal with the TIE Phantom. I've played approx. 15-20 games on Vassal where my opponent was using the TIE Phantom. Besides the initial 1-2 games to get a feel for the ship, the majority of the games (I'd say 85-90%) were won with the player who had the Phantom. In the games (about 3-4) where both me and my opponent were flying Phantoms, the game went to the person who had the higher PS phantom.

In the post-discussion with the people whom I've played in these game, we both agree how ridiculous the Phantom is, especially with it's 4 attack.

Again, this doesn't surprise me. I've discussed (twice, now) the fact that I have no doubt the Phantom is going to be destructive in the current metagame--which also happened with Wave 2 when the Falcon was introduced, and to an extent again with Wave 3 when the B-wing was introduced. Whether it was a mistake depends on whether the losses you're seeing are about whether the Phantom isn't being countered or can't be countered.

Some people are saying that it is meant to punish the meta of swarms and lower pilot skill ships. Well, I tend to think the Phantom is only going to reinforce the meta. You're going to want to get as many arcs on this thing as possible, so no, I'm seeing that this is not going to shift the meta as people are claiming.

Swarms of what? You can get 6 fighters to PS5-6 with Howlrunner as backup, but that leaves you rolling 2-3 red dice against 4-6 green dice, assuming you can get an arc. How often is that going to be successful?

What will hurt a Phantom is increased investment in PS (getting at least one ship reliably into the 8-12 range), increased ability to deliver large single shots (meaning ordnance, HLCs, etc.), bombs, ions, and stress. And you aren't going to get those things in a swarm, which means I suspect lists that can actually hurt a Phantom are going to enter the metagame, and lists that can't hurt a Phantom are going to be pushed if not out, at least toward one side.

And you aren't going to get those things in a swarm, which means I suspect lists that can actually hurt a Phantom are going to enter the metagame, and lists that can't hurt a Phantom are going to be pushed if not out, at least toward one side.

Problem is, the phantom counters will get killed by the current low PS metagame (which is why we don't see them currently), it effectively sets up a rock/paper/scissors for the netdecks. This is going to seriously hamper the formation of any sort of static meta, the squadbuilding game no longer has a solution. Unpredictability becomes the best weapon. Don't play the same list as everyone else.

I would love to see Soontir and friends fly against Phantoms. It would be fun to watch.

I had a Soontir vs Whisper endgame the other day on Vassal. Whisper wiped the floor with him. Despite Soontir being one of the slipperiest ships in the game, Whisper just flew circles around him.

EDIT: BTW, Phantom + FCS + Gunner. Opinion of some smart X-wing guys I know is think that it is overkill. I played a game against a Phantom the other day on Vassal and it just kept missing with its 4 dice attacks (mostly because it wasn't taking focus actions - it was using BR to reposition, and had VI for PS bid, as opposed to PTL). After the game we were musing about it and it occurred to us ... "Hey, Phantom + FCS + Gunner, scary."

And indeed I ran it a few days later and it was blisteringly bad ass. Whisper tore through an elite Imperial build (Soontir, Jax, and Vessery) like butter, and the FCS/Gunner combo was very effective in stripping off evade/focus tokens to soften the target up for my OGPs.

Thoughts? Overkill? Against B-Wings, Y-Wings, and Falcons, the Gunner just isn't great, and those are exactly the sort of turreted lists that a Phantom build is scared of.

People are going to disagree when you throw out an opinion. That's the internet. People are going to get even more upset when you try and stand up for yourself and your opinion. That's the internet…

If people want to be irritated that I made a thread that implies the Phantom is broken and yet I personally haven't taken a side, that's for you to get upset about and not me.

Which is it? Do you have an opinion or not have an opinion? It's like Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder.

Edit: Whew that only took 5 pages.

I have had close to 20 games IRL by proxying the wave 4 stuff, and I too think that the phantom is really way too powerful. I don't think the 4 attack dice is the main problem, as compared to the following points, in order of "importance" from the msot to the least


> The fact that when decloaking, you can choose left, right or center at the moment of decloaking. This means that an Echo facing the opponent at a 45deg with a straight maneuver can attack from 2 completely different directions, of which he can choose the direction at the PS8 moment when he reveals his dial. Not even Fettigator is that powerful. Perhaps a 2nd dial should be given to the TIEphantom for the purpose of choosing which direction to decloak?


> The TIEphantom is not glass cannon-y enough, especially when paired with recon specialist. 4 hp is way too much. 2 hull 1 shield would be a much more reasonable statline IMHO, although if you asked me I'd give it 1 hp 1 shield

> Veteran Instincts spoils everything. PS6 and PS7 was really extremely reasonable, PS8 and PS9 is really too much. Rebels have turret weapons so they do not have that much of a problem, but tough luck if you are Imperials and do not have any ships in that PS range. Enjoy your TIE 2 attack dice vs their 4 green dice + double focus from recon spec

> The reasonably good basic dial, when paired with decloak, makes it a tad too maneuverable. Especially fluff wise, for a larger ship with cloaking devices and a 2nd crew member and so on. I was somewhat expecting a dial more like a cross between the TIEbomber and TIEadvanced

> it's a bit ugly compared to the other TIE variants we currently have.

Need unlike button.

-You chose to get snappy rather than discuss your thread.

-"That is just the Internet" is a cop out for jerks who want to be jerks. You are what you say and do and that includes what you type on the Internet. People's personas don't change when they think no one is watching, they change when they are being watched.

-your experience is your experience. It doesn't have to match everyone else's but when most others disagree maybe you need to re-examine your experience.

- the phantom only changes the meta for those that embrace it. Loads of players fly casual: for somethst means never adapting, they get to choose what "fun" means to them. Some choose "fun" to mean only flying red squadron quad xwings regardless of win or lose.

- you chose a side when you used the word "mistake" in your thread tile, reacted against those who didn't agree it was a mistake, and are still reacting to those who said "it's not a mistake". That is on you. You just pointed out that its still thier issue and not yours. Failure to accept your own choices and actions that are clearly documented here doesn't come off well.

It's people like you that makes threads go sour. All you are doing is scolding me for just about everything. You do nothing to help further the discussion of this thread.

With the rebels getting another turret in thier arsenal and the imperials getting thier first, more stress inducers, and ion turrets and missiles and torpeados on the horizon, it feels very skill rewarding to win with the phantom. You beat the odds, you outbuilt your opponent and outflew them. There are a lot of hard and soft counters and more coming soon, I worried that cloaking wasn't going to do enough to protect an upgraded phantom but the movement shenanagins reward skilled plays... The opposite of thier one counter, turrets, that don't reward poor play but mitigate a lot of maneuvering errors.

Totally Broken. Yes... not being sarcastic. That's my opinion.

Right, your opinion. What's your experience with the Phantom?

What's yours? Wait no one cares about your trolling that you vomit all over these forums.

Btw, Ribann has only been "berating" the idiots who think you can't post an honest question. Just because you're annoyed by the question doesn't mean others are, and it appears that people do have constructive criticism here.

This is also a way to get those who have the Phantom to express their experience with it and either agree or disagree.

So would you be so kind as to shut up for once? Oh wait I mean, would you be so kind as to STOP "berating" everyone for once?

I've actually played with the Phantom. Got something smart to say now?

If you don't see how those two paragraphs are logically incoherent when taken together, I can't help you. As for the opinion you apparently think you're simultaneously expressing and not expressing:

Fine. You want me to take a side? Four dice on Phantom is too much. Done.

And if you'd done this in the OP, we could have skipped several pages of you pretending to be surprised that people thought you weren't just innocently and neutrally trying to ask a question.

Swarms of what? You can get 6 fighters to PS5-6 with Howlrunner as backup, but that leaves you rolling 2-3 red dice against 4-6 green dice, assuming you can get an arc. How often is that going to be successful?

What will hurt a Phantom is increased investment in PS (getting at least one ship reliably into the 8-12 range), increased ability to deliver large single shots (meaning ordnance, HLCs, etc.), bombs, ions, and stress. And you aren't going to get those things in a swarm, which means I suspect lists that can actually hurt a Phantom are going to enter the metagame, and lists that can't hurt a Phantom are going to be pushed if not out, at least toward one side.

This all goes back to my original argument that unless you can get shots on the Phantom, it won't matter. If you're flying against someone who is amazing with the Phantom, you will not get shots on it unless you have a 360* turret or you have a higher PS. Even then, it would still be difficult. I do agree that people will be flying a PS 10-12 ship IN CASE they come up against a Phantom. But are you going to base your tournament list off of 1 variable (i.e. high PS Phantom)? Probably not, unless you'd care to explain. You don't know what list you will ever fly against in a tournament.

If the Phantom turns out to be an 85% matchup against lists that don't run a counter, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to base your tournament list on the possibility that you'll see one--particularly when many of the Phantom's counters are perfectly acceptable choices against non-Phantom lists.

Btw, Vorpal: how much have you played with the Phantom?

I lost count after about the fifth or sixth game, but my guess is about 20 total matches between proxies on the tabletop and Vassal play.

Some people are saying that it is meant to punish the meta of swarms and lower pilot skill ships. Well, I tend to think the Phantom is only going to reinforce the meta. You're going to want to get as many arcs on this thing as possible, so no, I'm seeing that this is not going to shift the meta as people are claiming.

As those some people would be me, i will answer to this.

To be honest, i'd rather have 7 Ties or Z-95 shoot at my Phantom than one ship with 4 dice. With 4 green dice you can pretty reliably dodge 1 or two per attack. But if that one attack gets 3-4 hits, you are going to take serious damage unless you roll ridiculously well.

The phantom will butcher you if you spam low PS ships. It's FFG's way of destroying the "more gun is better, to hell with Pilot Skill and Uniques" mindset.

.

I would like to say and it may be abnormal but low PS can still be used

I ran in the Assault finals, Coran with 2 Prototype A's and a Bandit....absolutely demolished the Phantom and Defender....while losing a single Proto

I think the trick is no longer just all low PS but a high PS thrown into helped make the phantom go "uhhhh"

Also good grief, go to bed late wate up very late and the thread goes nuclear :/

With the rebels getting another turret in thier arsenal and the imperials getting thier first, more stress inducers, and ion turrets and missiles and torpeados on the horizon, it feels very skill rewarding to win with the phantom. You beat the odds, you outbuilt your opponent and outflew them. There are a lot of hard and soft counters and more coming soon, I worried that cloaking wasn't going to do enough to protect an upgraded phantom but the movement shenanagins reward skilled plays... The opposite of thier one counter, turrets, that don't reward poor play but mitigate a lot of maneuvering errors.

Well, yes we will be getting all this new stuff in the future that will hurt the Phantoms, but what about right now at the current moment? Obviously, they haven't hit shelves yet, but you're talking about stuff in the future and probable outcomes against the Phantom based on x, y, and z.Also curious, Rakky: how much have you played with the Phantom?

1. Sweet! It's like an interceptor on steroids!

2. I would have never have crashed into that if I was flying my beloved interceptors.

3. Ran. The. Table. This thing is unstoppable.

4. That's a lot of blank green dice.

...

It goes on. The comparisons to the interceptor are apt in many ways but not all ways: the first time you fly it "right" you feel it's potential and power; first time it gets one shot by a mistake you made you learn a lot; first time you get one shot even though you flew it perfectly you learn it's limitations. The entire ship design is amazing, it is so much more than just the sum of it's red dice. The biggest difference is your planning: interceptors are brilliant at reacting, if you're reacting with a phantom you're going to find yourself out of position much more often (cloaked when you don't want to be, bailing out when your caught, defenseless when in arc).

I hope to get even more games with it soon. In the mean time I'm practicing flying with it with the exercises from my "Boot camp" thread. I don't look forward to trying to those exercises with the decimator.

Here's my 2 cents:

The problem with Echo and Whisper is that they require a hard counter or you won't have a chance against them. This is destructive to the game as previously strong lists have no chance. Earlier in the thread someone mentioned that in Wave 2 the Falcon release is a similar situation to the release of the Phantom. I definately disagree with that. Strong lists from Wave 1 can still beat the Falcon. Swarms can beat Falcons, 4 Rebs can beat Falcons, 5 Rebs can beat Falcons, 4 Squints can beat Falcons, Firesprays can beat Falcons etc... Most strong lists have a chance against other strong lists in Waves 1-3. The Meta DID change with each Wave release but it did not change the fact that there is a LARGE number of VIABLE builds. With Wave 4, Phantoms (Echo/Whisper) will be the first ships in this game to overwhelmingly define what is a VIABLE build. No longer will some current strong lists even have a chance against them...the number of viable builds will go down and this is not a good thing for the game.

I've actually played with the Phantom. Got something smart to say now?

1) How much have you played with the Phantom?2) What were your initial impressions based on what it could do?

Two or three games. It's a powerful ship, but not game breaking by any stretch of the imagination. There isn't much I can add to the conversation at this point that Vorpal hasn't already said.

I hope to get even more games with it soon. In the mean time I'm practicing flying with it with the exercises from my "Boot camp" thread. I don't look forward to trying to those exercises with the decimator.

The body work alone is going to be a huge line item in the sector Moff's quarterly defense budget.

Current strong lists will have a chance. The maneuvering needed to fight the Phantom is just going to take some time to become ingrained. Trust me, I saw what happened when the Phantom single handily killed a squad. But, it was fairly obvious to me that the Rebel player was flying business as usual against the Phantom. You CANNOT fly the standard formation against the Phantom.

My only concern has nothing to do with game mechanics per se, and more to do with the fluff.

The Phantom may be a beast of an attacker, but compared to a ship like the Falcon with upgraded weapons systems it just seems out of place as there is no real mechanism to reflect the more powerful weapons of larger ships like the Falcon and now the Decimator for example.

And where do we go from here? Fluff wise there are plenty of ships, both big and small that have more powerful weapons relative to the Phantom. Do we start reflecting that? I think that's a slippery slope that could lead to some unwanted power creep. Thus far, I have been very happy with the balance in this game. I'd hate to see ships become obsolete or less useful because of power creep.

I say this without having played against a phantom yet, but the concerns may still be valid..

Well, I'd say that judging game balance on the base of lore is kind of terrible. The Falcon doesn't have attack 4 because it compensates for that with a turret, which gives it a 360 degree radius.

Though if you want fluff, the Phantom is shooting with 5 guns, whereas a Falcon's turret only has 4. That's why the max firepower of 5 for a Phantom kind of makes sense fluffwise.

Now time for some facts: I've played approx. 25-30 games on Vassal with the TIE Phantom. I've played approx. 15-20 games on Vassal where my opponent was using the TIE Phantom. Besides the initial 1-2 games to get a feel for the ship, the majority of the games (I'd say 85-90%) were won with the player who had the Phantom. In the games (about 3-4) where both me and my opponent were flying Phantoms, the game went to the person who had the higher PS phantom.

In the post-discussion with the people whom I've played in these game, we both agree how ridiculous the Phantom is, especially with it's 4 attack.

Some details I feel are missing from this analysis is a breakdown of the lists people are playing. Were people playing lots of XXBB? Swarms? Twin Falcons? Firespraying? How many did each of those lists win or lose?

Currently all the data says is "The Phantom performed excellent against unknown types of lists" Which is... a lacking analysis to say the least.

> Veteran Instincts spoils everything. PS6 and PS7 was really extremely reasonable, PS8 and PS9 is really too much. Rebels have turret weapons so they do not have that much of a problem, but tough luck if you are Imperials and do not have any ships in that PS range. Enjoy your TIE 2 attack dice vs their 4 green dice + double focus from recon spec

The only other Imperial ship that can't match the Phantom's PS8 is the Bomber. Aside from that, every single ship in the game has a PS8 pilot or higher.

> it's a bit ugly compared to the other TIE variants we currently have.

You dare mock my Rebel Assault II nostalgia? Dem's be fighting words, friend!

All this rage means the phantom is doing its job of tearing up the meta.

This is destructive to the game as previously strong lists have no chance.

It's destructive to the meta. The game's just fine. A new release should shake things up, otherwise the game becomes netdeck on netdeck.

No longer will current strong lists even have a chance against them...the number of viable builds will go down and this is not a good thing for the game.

It makes the current strong builds no longer viable. This is both amazing as those strong builds were choking out creativity (they could take on literally anything) and variety and exactly what FFG set out to do with Wave 4. With the strong builds dying en masse to phantoms, they cease to be strong. This means previously weaker builds that can cope with phantoms become relatively speaking, stronger. The old metabuilds are lost but many new builds (and old builds that aren't as viable against the old metabuilds) can come to the fore.

More Gun no longer equals More Win. The old logic that you need a lot of combat punch still applies, but you need an ace or two in there. Versatile builds and builds the opponent didn't predict I reckon will take over. You can build to hard counter any build now so netdecking the tournament winners doesn't work: "strong lists" no longer really exist as strength becomes situational.

Likewise, you need to adapt tactics hugely from game to game rather than "keep formation, shoot, keep formation, shoot".

Predictability is now death.