Hello,

just played a game yesterday where Han Solo had a bad time due to his high piloting skill. The scenario was a 60 pt. game, Han on the YT-1300 with Luke and some other stuff, vs 4 TIE fighters. As a newbie I am not sure if we got the rules well, but it seems that an high PS pilot can't decide to act early, he is forced to move last. While this is normally an advantage, it put Han in trouble.

The TIEs (with help of the asteroids) were always in his moving arc. Since the YT-1300 has a turret, staying in the back was useless, instead blocking his movement caused the large ship to consistently lose its action due to bumps.

That PS of 9 caused Han to move after the TIE were placed in front of him, so he lost his action, while the TIE didn't. Result: Han not moving and (that's the problem) consistently losing actions.

In the same situation, a simple Outer Rim Smuggler with his PS 1 could have avoided the TIEs before they could move. PS1 winning on PS9 seems an oversight to me (situational but unrealistic). What are we getting wrong?

Thx!

You are right, low pilot sill goes first at movement, the side with initiative going first. High Pilot skill goes first for combat, so concentrate and blast them, the Falcon can take the damage, Tie Fighters can't. Bumping can be used as a tactic, sometimes you have to get out of there and use your 360 to hit them as you pass.

Even taking an Outer Rim Smuggler may not help if your opponent decides to take Academy TIEs. Always look at the table and imagine where the best place to put a TIE Fighter would be, in order to get in the way of the Falcon. Then move to the least likely spot to avoid getting blocked. You have a 360° weapon and there's no way he can block you every time with every ship.

Actions are crucial and the effect of getting blocked and losing your action can make it hard for you.

Anti-Pursuit Lasers are a nifty way to deter to those TIE rammers.

Tactician is another option. If your opponent likes to deny you your actions, give him some stress. See how he likes having no actions. Either that or it'll force him to do some greens to get rid of the stress.

APL would not work with Han as he moves last and it is the low PS ties that have to move into him to trigger APL.

The best defence for Han is to use his 360 firing arc to maximum effect by becoming unpredictable in where he flies. He doesn't have to worry about having a target ship in arc, only in range. Also, even if Han is denied actions, you can still use his reroll ability to great effect.

Another option is to take Engine Upgrade and keep all the tie fighters behind you by boosting where you want to be.

Thanks for the suggestion! My first goal was to be sure that we understood the rules as they are. Second step is finding countermeasures :-). The biggest problem is that we play for fun, so we swap sides and change ships continuously making specific planning a bit difficult. Both the suggested cards are good (I don't have tactician but I'll look for it). Still I would not use an aimed ship modification and a crew member against a totally unknown fleet. Btw, I'll try it next time: my friend will go for TIEs if he sees me glancing at the Flacon and he'll try to deny me actions.

Concentrating on shooting TIEs down is what Han did, but it proved to be more difficult than expected. The match went down to lucky rolling, with the YT-1300 not packing a punch with 3 dice vs 8 of the TIEs. Factor in that one of them was Howlrunner, and Han was constantly without concentration because he was swarmed. After some time standing still at the mid of the board, without shields and facing sure death, my friend gave up and Han hyperdrived out of the match. :-D

The best defence for Han is to use his 360 firing arc to maximum effect by becoming unpredictable in where he flies.

It may just have been a matter of experience. We are both newbie, so I am not trying to state I am right.

Btw, I have to admit that with my 4 TIEs I constantly denied Han of his move. Probably Han should never had put himself in that position, but he could not move away: whatever move he did, he landed on one of my TIEs because of that large miniature base. I kept swarming in front of him, and (maybe it was also bad luck) I consistently was in his path. After looking at his choice, we also considered other options but there was always some parts of the YT-1300 base hitting the base of some TIE.

As an example, we also played a TIE + Slave vs B-wing + X-wing and the game was totally different: the large Slave vs only 2 enemies had a lot more options than the large YT-1300 vs 4 enemies.

What my friend contested was that having an higher piloting skill, Han should have the option of moving last or first, if needed. Having to move after all TIEs did proved to be more difficult than if he could move knowing where the TIEs where. Should have the PS been reversed in that situation, probably Han could have moved away more easily and have TIEs bumping into him and losing action.

But again, I suspect the big difference here is the piloting skill of the player, not of the character. :-)

This issue is being addressed in a new release. The card "Stay on Target", that comes out with the YT-2400 expansion soon to be released, fixes this problem.

Here's one to try on Han.

Give him his action before moving.

@Sergovan: APL on Outer Rim Smuggler.

Good point.

Thanks mates, you are giving me a lor of good ideas. :-)

Since when can a YT equip Advanced Sensors?

Here's one to try on Han.

Give him his action before moving.

@Sergovan: APL on Outer Rim Smuggler.

As much as I'd love to try that on Han, he doesn't have the required upgrade slot.

It's not a disadvantage, but having a large base is. What really happened is that your opponent guessed (correctly) where you were going to fly. High PS is always an advantage, but it can't stop you from being outflown.

Here's one to try on Han.

Give him his action before moving.

@Sergovan: APL on Outer Rim Smuggler.

As much as I'd love to try that on Han, he doesn't have the required upgrade slot.

Indeed, he doesn't. My bad.