It really appears people are still not getting that 3PO is good for one shot a round.

• Phantom shoots Falcon
• 3PO guesses "0"
• Falcon rolls "0" evades.
• 3PO provides 1 Evade.
• Defender shoots Falcon
• 3PO doesn't get to guess again!
• Falcon rolls... Whatever it's gonna roll.

I think you miss the fact the longer c3po ship lasts the stronger he becomes. He is not overpowered however he is a bargain and ideal on a ship like the falcon. 1 defense and a lot of hull/shields. Once you are down to one enemy ship you automatically evade one hit every turn. And for the same price as the old Chewie crew You get c3po and falcon title that allows two guaranteed evades each turn. That make it extremely hard for whatever that last ship is to whittle down the few remaining health of the falcon.

Historically the falcons biggest weakness was the swarm and that's also c3po's weakness however you don't see as many 7+ ship builds as much combined with the fact there are much more specifically anti swarm abilities now. Personally while I think it's poor balance by the designers part on what they are doing with the anti swarm focus. I'm looking forward to awing refit support on the fat falcon builds. They are a much better swarm support for the falcon at what initially appears as a nominal cost increase.

There are two important questions at hand, I think:

(1) Is C-3PO influencing the metagame?...

(2) Granting, for the sake of argument, that the answer to (1) is yes, what should be done about it?

For (1), something has obviously changed. Falcon+2 builds have been standard for a while, but seem to have exploded recently. So where did the fat builds come from? Phantoms pushing people to turrets is probably part of it. The Z-95 probably contributes, since you can get +9 points into the Falcon without going all the way down to 2 ships. But I think C-3PO contributing to the durability has to be considered a major part of it. Whether it really works out mathematically or not, people FEEL like they're tougher with it, and can afford to put more points into the single ship. And when you're talking meta influence, perception is just as important as mathematical reality.

I feel like the availability of Headhunters (+6 points in comparison to a pair of Rookie Pilots, or +8 from a pair of naked Blues) is a big part of it, although I think the Falcon is considered such a juicy target that I'm seriously considering going back to the Blues' 3 Attack with the ability to reposition for the next time I run a Falcon--which could be never, because I'm not terribly interested in it right now.

But I think the Phantom is an even bigger part; I think it's hard to overestimate how hard people are still programming against it, despite the fact that it appears to be beating more than its share of Falcon builds on its way to picking up like five Nationals titles.

So I think it really is the perception that Threepio is a great choice, even if he isn't really (you'd have to count how many points of damage he actually prevented, and compare that to the number of hit points you had remaining at the end of a match). And, after all, it has to be good--everyone else is running it!

For fixes on (2)... <shrug> I think ordnance is very RPS, but even then doesn't help much. Unless you run A LOT of it, you're going to blow what you've got without taking down the Falcon. It's also vulnerable to PS jumps - the Falcon is FAST, and will almost certainly have a PS advantage... If it includes an Engine Upgrade it an close from outside lock range to collision point in a single move.

I'm confused: does ordnance come in amounts less than A LOT? It's hard to go wrong with Cluster Missiles supported by Jonus.

For fixes on (2)... <shrug> I think ordnance is very RPS, but even then doesn't help much. Unless you run A LOT of it, you're going to blow what you've got without taking down the Falcon. It's also vulnerable to PS jumps - the Falcon is FAST, and will almost certainly have a PS advantage... If it includes an Engine Upgrade it an close from outside lock range to collision point in a single move.

I'm confused: does ordnance come in amounts less than A LOT? It's hard to go wrong with Cluster Missiles supported by Jonus.

Hehe. I think the problem with this one is that it's very RPS. Ordnance-heavy builds are very vulnerable to high-PS speed, which pretty much exemplifies most of the serious builds right now.

It really appears people are still not getting that 3PO is good for one shot a round.

• Phantom shoots Falcon
• 3PO guesses "0"
• Falcon rolls "0" evades.
• 3PO provides 1 Evade.
• Defender shoots Falcon
• 3PO doesn't get to guess again!
• Falcon rolls... Whatever it's gonna roll.

I think you miss the fact the longer c3po ship lasts the stronger he becomes. He is not overpowered however he is a bargain and ideal on a ship like the falcon. 1 defense and a lot of hull/shields. Once you are down to one enemy ship you automatically evade one hit every turn. And for the same price as the old Chewie crew You get c3po and falcon title that allows two guaranteed evades each turn. That make it extremely hard for whatever that last ship is to whittle down the few remaining health of the falcon.

Historically the falcons biggest weakness was the swarm and that's also c3po's weakness however you don't see as many 7+ ship builds as much combined with the fact there are much more specifically anti swarm abilities now. Personally while I think it's poor balance by the designers part on what they are doing with the anti swarm focus. I'm looking forward to awing refit support on the fat falcon builds. They are a much better swarm support for the falcon at what initially appears as a nominal cost increase.

Then kill the C3P0 ship first. Focus fire kills big ships

There's a big difference between 3po and chewie card. Chewie gives you a guaranteed two extra hit points, 3po is a minimum of one, but likely much more.

3po + MF is 2 guaranteed evades each turn for only 4 points (as long as you get an action). As others have said this is VERY had to kill late game if you're down to 1-2 ships, especially if they are 2 attack ships.

EDIT: And I know everyone says attack the falcon first, but that's is tricky as well, as it means the falcon plus it's escorts are shooting you up each turn. So you kill the falcon, but might be so beaten up you can't finish off the escorts. Or you go for the escorts to have less shots going against you, but then you don't have enough ships to finish off the tanky falcon.

if you guess 0, you either get your natural evade and not c3po's, or you get c3po's. Combined with falcon title thats 2 100% evades per turn.

How is that 2 100% evades per turn? MF title just adds Evade to your action bar.

I don't play tournies, and I own a printer, my solutions are as follows:

"C3PO comes with a $90 (msrp) ship. If you wanna spend that for one freaking card, go ahead stupid"

or

"you can't guess 0 evades"

Can't guess 0? Is that an official ruling?

No, not an official rule, just a house rule.

0 is a number, so it's totally legal.

Porkchop however is not a number. Don't guess porkchop.

For those complaining about 3P0 being packed with the Tantive as a cashgrab, which ship is he depicted as on in the card art? It's like claiming PTL in the A-wing (instead of the interceptor) was a cashgrab: it depicts an A-wing and was designed with A-wings in mind.

Precisely. It's a Epic Level ship card and should stay at the Epic level. It clearly wasn't expected to dominate the 100 point metagame the way it has come to.

Any card which makes a ship invulnerable (2 attack vs 2 evades) has no place in a game where every other ship has the potential to take at least one damage from a given attack.

Vorpal, the reasons C3P0 is a problem have been documented at length elsewhere. Hence the 'its time' post.

I'm not advocating it be banned completely, I'm suggesting it should stay on the Huge Ships it was designed for. Unless you consider Epic play somewhat inferior to Standard, or enjoy playing Fat Falcon 4-5 games out of every tournament.

The people who don't have a meta dominated by Falcons (i.e. don't play competitively) or don't even know what C3P0 does and have to be told probably cannot contribute meaningfully to this discussion.

C-3PO is useless on huge ships. He doesn't make the Falcon invulnerable. He allows you to dodge one hit a turn. That's it. People are using more Falcons because Phantoms just came out and they aren't easy to deal with without turrets.

How often do you play, Vorpal? It seems much of your opinions are theorycraft and not related to direct game experience in tournaments.

The data and results both show that Falcons are dominating the metagame at the moment. If you don't play against them often enough to understand how obnoxious they are, it's hard to from mere theorycraft. The build isn't just strong in pure deathmatch, it's strong in timed games and winning on points killed, i.e. tournament placing. There's a reason no other non-Falcon/Phantom builds made the top 8 at both German Nationals and Gencon.

In the last two tournaments attended, I played against Fat Falcons for 7 out of 12 games. Pre-Wave 4, probably 1 or 2.

Yes, let's ban C3P0.

Then, by extension, let's ban Lando (even though he's not out yet).

And Chewie. Both versions.

Better ban Recon Specialist as well, just in case.

And Gunner...

....you know what? Let's ban turrets full stop.

In Paul Heaver's report on Gen Con he noted how he demolished 4 and 5 ship Rebel Lists which all focused the Falcon again and again to the point where they faded in a blur, and when losing simply ran the Falcon out of reach. His Han escaped on 1 HP numerous times. Focus-firing the Falcon isn't very viable when it can boost out of arc easily.

Ruin, I think your premise is faulty. Removing Threepio will do NOTHING about the prevalence of Falcons in the current meta.

There's a big difference between 3po and chewie card. Chewie gives you a guaranteed two extra hit points, 3po is a minimum of one, but likely much more.

3po + MF is 2 guaranteed evades each turn for only 4 points (as long as you get an action). As others have said this is VERY had to kill late game if you're down to 1-2 ships, especially if they are 2 attack ships.

EDIT: And I know everyone says attack the falcon first, but that's is tricky as well, as it means the falcon plus it's escorts are shooting you up each turn. So you kill the falcon, but might be so beaten up you can't finish off the escorts. Or you go for the escorts to have less shots going against you, but then you don't have enough ships to finish off the tanky falcon.

This has always been the case with the Falcon.

Ruin, I think your premise is faulty. Removing Threepio will do NOTHING about the prevalence of Falcons in the current meta.

People will still run Falcons, but they won't dominate the top brackets of a tournament the way they do now.

The Falcon makes you immune to a 2 damage attack once per turn. C3P0 gives you a guaranteed evade each turn;

C3P0 gives you essentially hull upgrade every time you use it, for 3 points. How is this balanced?

Also, he's not entirely useless on Huge Ships because they can roll 1 evade dice at range 3 and use him.

The data and results both show that Falcons are dominating the metagame at the moment.

The Falcon is dominating the metagame because we have so many Warhammer converts who are used to a game that is fought, won and lost in the metagame with the actual battle being, unless it's netdeck on netdeck, little more than a formality.

Why so many Falcons? It's not because they're broken, it's because of the mass scaremongering over the TIE phantom means next to nobody is playing swarms and firepower squads. Everybody's playing Falcons because they think everybody's going to play phantoms.

People see Falcons win and play Falcons. The number of Falcons increases, so Falcons are played more, so Falcons have more chances to win, so there are more Falcon wins, so more people play Falcons.

If you want to beat the Falcons play a swarm or an XXBB. If you can stomach breaking formation with the swarm you'll be able to tackle the phantoms too: look at the French National results of you don't believe me.

I'm gunna do something I don't do very often so should be noted.... Be very serious.

C3PO like most things in this game has its counters. People will learn and adapt to overcome ( we're human that's what we do ). It takes time so lets give it a few months before we declare this as op and stupid and....

( cliche alert ) at the end of the day this is a game so we all need to calm down just a tad ( me too ). This game will move on from C3PO in a few weeks/months.

Anyway back to the norm where's the **** cookies!?

The Falcon makes you immune to a 2 damage attack once per turn. C3P0 gives you a guaranteed evade each turn;

C3P0 gives you essentially hull upgrade every time you use it, for 3 points. How is this balanced?

Also, he's not entirely useless on Huge Ships because they can roll 1 evade dice at range 3 and use him.

Hull upgrade works against Wedge and Outmaneuver.

C3P0 gives you essentially hull upgrade every time you use it, for 3 points. How is this balanced?

One guaranteed evade roll, once. He's only got a 5/8 chance of doing anything at all, if you roll a natural evade he did nothing. C-3PO gives you 5/8s of an evade result, nothing more.

Darth Ruin, what are you flying against the Falcons?

Whether I agree with the OP or not

I agree with you Buhallin... I don't think 3-CPO needs to be banned, but the OP is taking way more heat then he should for saying so.If people have a logical rational argument to make why 3-CPO isn't OP'ed they should make it, but posts like "Oh look the sky is falling again" is neither helpful, pleasant or fits in the general "fly casual" attitude so many espouse as being a part of this community.Myself I don't think 3-CPO is an issue, because he at best gives you 1 evade a turn, and a 3 point crew that lets you evade 1 damage doesn't seem to be that OP.

3po is not over powered.

I've been playing against a lot of Han and chewy build lately and I win a fair amount. Sure I lose some but it's not due to 3p0 in my opinion.

I just want to say that when we play we always design or squad without the othrt player knowing what the other is taking so there is no hard counter to the other.

One game I used Vessery with a hlc and outmaneuver. 3po was a waste of points.

Another game recently I had a low PS defender, two ties and Krassis with a hlc

Again Han could not live.

And yes surprisingly quite a few times I've beaten Han, Lando and chewy on vassal and local with my phantom and tie swarm build.

If your flying ships that are low PS. The strategy is simple. Get in front of him.

If he can't take actions he doesn't get his evade. So again 3po isn't living up to his full expectations.

In many many cases if you see a fully loaded Han that's usually able 5/8 of their squad points, so ya expect a tank. A tank that when he dies puts your opponent in a real bad position. Plus with Han eating up that much of your squad score there really isn't that much left for room for escorts. So we see three Z, or maybe couple xwings.

If I can I ignore and go right for the big ship. Getting him out of the way asap will hurt your opponent and break his moral.

In some cases I've taken out his escorts first because Han takes the long way around and his escorts are sometimes a much better target.

And honestly I don't really feel all that threatened by a loaded Han because I find his damage out put so low. (pardon the pun lol)

I've tried it a few times and yes it is a beast I just don't like the dmg he does.

Your usually using your actions for engine boost, or evading.

Then your attack.

Get hit focus, focus.

Use Han ability, and get maybe two hits.

Your opponent rolls one evade and hurrah you did one Dmg and gunner didn't activate or he dodges and you use gunner.

Same thing happens.

I don't know what it is with Han, but when ever I see him in the board if by me or others, his damage output is weak.

So long story short, not overpowered.

Block him. Get in his way.

Pilots like wedge and upgrades like outmaneuver are a sure bet against any 3po build, so if you expect to run into a lot then those are a few options.

A couple good round of focus fire will bring him down

Edit

Just wanted to add that its strengths is against two and three ship build so if that is what your flying then that's a risk you take when flying such a build

C3P0 gives you essentially hull upgrade every time you use it, for 3 points.

No it doesn't. It gives you 5/8 of a hull upgrade every turn, assuming you always use it against a shot where you have only one defense die. If you are forced to use it against a shot where you have more than one defense die then you're getting a smaller fraction of a hull upgrade.

How is this balanced?

1) Because it's a crew slot upgrade compared to a modification slot. Modifications slots are usually available, crew slots have very tough competition. So you can't just compare C-3P0 vs. a hull upgrade and ignore the slot issue.

2) Because it's nearly useless against mass attacks. You can only use it once per turn, so if you're focusing multiple ships on the Falcon you can kill it quickly.

3) Because it takes 3.2 turns of one-defense-die shooting to break even compared to crew Chewbacca. The biggest advantage C-3P0 offers is that you can use it on pilot Chewbacca. In a lot of other situations you're better off taking the guaranteed 2 HP and crit canceling instead.

C3PO makes the falcon tougher. Generally super han will stretch to 60+ points. In tournament games, you have an hour to kill as much as possible.

In a recent tournament in Brighton, a super han with 3 headhunters list won. 6 games and he didn't lose the falcon once. closest he came was vs a 7 tie howlrunner swarm (last shot of the game left him with 1 hull remaining).

That means that as long as han survives he only needs to kill 40+ points and survive the game to win. Chasing a falcon with boost around the board can be rather difficult, making it harder to get multiple shots on target, and thus making C3PO more efficient.

Ban cards? no, I feel that this game is still balanced (I haven't fought against super han, but I can see how I would have issues).

I also still feel that you cant just break this game down to list vs list, deployment, opening gambits, asteroid placement, responding to your opponent, this still means an awful lot.

The Falcon makes you immune to a 2 damage attack once per turn. C3P0 gives you a guaranteed evade each turn;

C3P0 gives you essentially hull upgrade every time you use it, for 3 points. How is this balanced?

Also, he's not entirely useless on Huge Ships because they can roll 1 evade dice at range 3 and use him.

Hull upgrade works against Wedge and Outmaneuver.

So does the Chewie crew card, for that matter.

Even if the OP posted in a ranty mode, this is a discussion worth having to be honest.

You can say whatever you want, but numbers don't lie, and they show falcons reigning at tournaments along Phantoms. You could say it is because the players having adapted yet (which shouldn't be true in my opinion), but anything you are saying, is pure speculation. If you had played Fat Han builds,

To everybody who is here posting, i would encourage you to play 10 practice games if you haven't. 5 Playing as the Fat Han. 5 Playing as the opponent. You will understand a lot more about the frustrations that the allowance of so many stacked passive dice proof buffs on the falcon can do. Playing as the falcon will help you understand why it is so solid.

Yes, i hate falcons with a passion. I don't think they are unbeatable, but they are certainly the most solid list performer at the moment, there is no discussion about it.

How often do you play, Vorpal? It seems much of your opinions are theorycraft and not related to direct game experience in tournaments.

The data and results both show that Falcons are dominating the metagame at the moment. If you don't play against them often enough to understand how obnoxious they are, it's hard to from mere theorycraft. The build isn't just strong in pure deathmatch, it's strong in timed games and winning on points killed, i.e. tournament placing. There's a reason no other non-Falcon/Phantom builds made the top 8 at both German Nationals and Gencon.

In the last two tournaments attended, I played against Fat Falcons for 7 out of 12 games. Pre-Wave 4, probably 1 or 2.

In answer to the question you asked earlier, I haven't seen any conclusive demonstration at all that fat Falcons are broken (rather than annoying), and there's even less basis for believing that Threepio is the game element responsible for breaking the combo. I'll say it again: how different would the results of any of your recent games have been if your opponent had been running Chewbacca instead of Threepio?

Yes, i hate falcons with a passion. I don't think they are unbeatable, but they are certainly the most solid list performer at the moment, there is no discussion about it.

I see five pages of discussion. The Falcon winning tournaments isn't MathWing, it's everybody copying it because everyone claims it's unstoppable. Falcons are winning because there's so many of them. We don't have stats on the number of Falcons loosing tournaments.

I ask you the question I asked Darth Ruin. What are you flying against these Falcons?