Hi all

I was playing in a tourney today when my opponent used an ion turret against my phantom. After looking up the rule I found that this meant I was stuck in cloak. I couldn't move, I couldn't shoot, I couldn't do a sith-damned thing! My 37 point (with upgrades) ship had been completely neutralised by a 5 point upgrade!

I don't understand this ruling.

Fluffwise, it makes no sense, an ion cannon overloads the electrical systems so would shut down the cloak, not lock it on.

Rules wise, it makes no sense. Lack of maneuver dial means I don't get a before maneuver step?

Wouldn't it make more sense for ion to automatically decloak, with no decloak move? The phantom becomes a sitting duck, but isn't completely wiped? He hit me turn 2, my phantom never got to do anything again. 1/3 of my squad, gone in one hit!

Please help me understand, because my favourite ship has just become not worth using.

I think you were probably playing the ion rules wrong if the phantom never got to do anything again...

- Once it is hit by an ion turret it would take 1 damage and receive an ion token.

- In the planning phase you would not assign any dial.

- You would then not be able to decloak because you don't have a dial to reveal so you can't trigger things that happen before revealing a dial.

- In the activation phase you would move the Phantom as if it had been assigned a white 1-forward, then remove all ion tokens. The Phantom can then take an action as normal.

Basically, in order to keep it locked in cloak he'd have to keep hitting you through your 4 defense dice with a defensive/positioning action, which isn't easy.

Side note: in order for the ion turret to hit there must be [hit] or [crit] results left after you have canceled results with any [Evade] results you've rolled.

3 attack, +1 for range 1. 4 die of attack vs 4 defence. And due to turret it doesn't care about arc.

It's a powerful weapon, and should be, but it just makes more sense to me to force decloak rather then lock cloaked

3 attack, +1 for range 1. 4 die of attack vs 4 defence. And due to turret it doesn't care about arc.

It's a powerful weapon, and should be, but it just makes more sense to me to force decloak rather then lock cloaked

Try 3 attack dice. NO bonus for Range 1 as it is a secondary weapon = 3 attack v 4 defence, and you should also have an evade token.

Lack of maneuver dial means I don't get a before maneuver step?

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

Maybe it makes more sense fluff-wise to have the decloak turned off by the ion effect, but that matters not here. The rules are the rules. Can't expect FFG to make tiny little sub-clauses to cover every possible contingency.

Game was a few hours ago, forgot the lack of range die. That's still 3v4, not exactly impossible. I didn't have an evade, (can't remember what I did instead) I don't mind losing, first game of the day I accidentally ended my phantom on an asteroid and got obliterated. I don't mind dice going against me, third game I lost 2 TIEs in the second turn to X-Wings rolling 3 hits and me rolling 3 blanks. He had the Y-wing that lets him take a stress to give me one, further shutting me down, incredibly cheesy, but I can cope with that. But no matter how I look at it, stuck in cloak is just not right.

I don't expect FFG to cover every single possibility, but 1 line of errata, or even in the FAQ means that ion goes from "why bother with this ship" to "watch out for that, it can ruin your plan"

This also seems to be my first ever experience with poorly written rules in a FFG game. Why say you get no dial, but otherwise act as normal, if you mean skip the whole manouver step?

As I said, I'm just trying to understand how this ruling came about, because my favourite ship is now removed from all lists because of 1 upgrade

don't let one game convince you that Phantoms are all bad or broken. First of if your enemy has an Ion Cannon Turret, stay at Range 3 and you can't be Ioned by the Turret. Try a Phantom with Intelligence Agent. If the ship comes into Range 1-2 you can look at it's dial, and decloak in a direction that either gets you clear of the turret where it ends up, or into a position where you can use your 4 attack primary weapon against it.

Cloaking is a double edges sword. being cloaked has benefits and drawbacks. And everything in the game has some kind of counter. Ion and Stress are the bane of Cloak. But rebel ships with Ion Cannon Turrets usually have low Agility so they are also vulneable to high value attacks,

Getting behind the ship with Ion Cannon Turret, while uncloaked means that you will probably stay behind then if you are Ioned, and they will suffer 2 rounds of 4-5 attack dice vs 1 or 2 Agility.

The trick to flying Phantoms is to learn when to cloak and when to decloak.

Deal with it. That's how it works.

Why say you get no dial, but otherwise act as normal, if you mean skip the whole manouver step?

You don't skip the whole "maneuver" step. You don't assign a dial in the Planning Phase. Then, when the ship is activated in the Activation Phase you move it as if it had been assigned a white, speed 1, forward maneuver.

Yes, having a 3-dice attack (likely with target lock or focus) hit you through 4 agility + a focus/evade token is possible, but it's unlikely to happen a bunch of times in a row, eventually allowing you to get your decloak. In the meantime, the Phantom is much more maneuverable than the 2 ships that can carry around the ion cannon turret, especially with a possible decloak movement, and can probably manage to stay away from the ion turret with some fancy flying.

You have to understand that every ship is meant to have a weakness or two. If you are expecting any ship to be all powerful, you will be very disappointed. Learn to magnified the strength of the ship and minimized its weakness and pray for good dice rolls. Good luck.

10/10, would read again.

As stated previously, Ion weapons are the bane of Phantoms. But if you get ionised, it's only your maneuver that's hampered. You still get actions, so there's always a barrel roll, focus or evade you can do. Focus can be your friend here. It's pretty rare that the Ion turret will keep consistently hitting against your 4 agility, but if the opponent was adding an illegal die for range 1, that obviously didn't help.

Fluff wise, there's a lot of things that don't make much sense, but when it comes to this game you've got to put the fluff aside and focus on what each ship does. I flew against a Phantom in my last game, and could not hit it at all. I can only think you were doing something very wrong for it to be nullified for the game.

My advice: when you do avoid getting hit, place a long maneuver to get you out of there and keep that turret at range. It's on a Y-Wing with 1 agility. You can hit it from range 3. And check this out, it's gold:

http://randolphw.github.io/echolocation/

Wow.

And I thought I had an interesting day.

... He had the Y-wing that lets him take a stress to give me one, further shutting me down, incredibly cheesy, but I can cope with that. But no matter how I look at it, stuck in cloak is just not right. ...

R3-A2, the droid in question, only works inside the printed forward-firing arc of the ship in question:

R3-A2

When you declare the target of your attack, if the defender is inside your firing arc, you may receive 1 stress token to cause the defender to receive 1 stress token.

It doesn't work in the full 360-degree of the turret, as that is not inside the actual firing arc of the ship. If a Y-Wing can keep itself pointed at a Phantom *every* turn so that the actual firing arc is on target all the time, I'd like take some flying lessons from that player then.

Also, Ion Turrets only fire at Range 1-2, not out to Range 3, as was mentioned earlier.

Sounds like the y-wing player doesn't know the definition of his fire arc. The whole scenario just sounds like too many mistakes being made. Learn from it I guess.

As I said, first post was several hours after game, some details became fuzzy with time. He did line me up properly for the stress, (I double checked each rule as it came up). As I was ionized, I couldn't use a green manouver, stayed stressed and couldn't focus or evade. This left his turret with 3 dice and focus vs my 4 die, no modification. Against that, he kept hitting. As I said, I lost 3 out of 4 that day, I'm fine with loss, I can see what I did wrong in the first game, 3rd game had terrible dice take out 2 of my 5 ships in the second turn (I think I did very good after that, but couldn't come back from the early damage), and even if I had of decloaked, I would've lost the last game. I just cannot get my head around why ion locks cloak on. Ion hurts anyone, but 1 miscalculation letting it lock you in cloak, and then quite easily keep you there, knocks the phantom from my favourite.

As I was ionized, I couldn't use a green manouver, stayed stressed and couldn't focus or evade. This left his turret with 3 dice and focus vs my 4 die, no modification. Against that, he kept hitting.

That's kind of the entire point of sticking the droid onto a Y-wing; if you can pull it off you have the ultimate ghost buster.

I just cannot get my head around why ion locks cloak on.

Because you don't assign a dial, and thus you never get the trigger for decloaking (ie. revealing a dial). It also shuts down Advanced Sensors for the same reason.

I get that you don't like being on the receiving end of it, but that is the way the two game effects interact and it will not change. Your only option is to live with it.

As for in-game options, just stay out of the Y-wing's forward arc and make killing it a priority. Get rid of it and your Phantom should have much less trouble handling what's left.

Don't get into Range 1-2 of a Y-Wing, you don't want to be there anyway, problem solved!

As I said, first post was several hours after game, some details became fuzzy with time. He did line me up properly for the stress, (I double checked each rule as it came up). As I was ionized, I couldn't use a green manouver, stayed stressed and couldn't focus or evade. This left his turret with 3 dice and focus vs my 4 die, no modification. Against that, he kept hitting. As I said, I lost 3 out of 4 that day, I'm fine with loss, I can see what I did wrong in the first game, 3rd game had terrible dice take out 2 of my 5 ships in the second turn (I think I did very good after that, but couldn't come back from the early damage), and even if I had of decloaked, I would've lost the last game. I just cannot get my head around why ion locks cloak on. Ion hurts anyone, but 1 miscalculation letting it lock you in cloak, and then quite easily keep you there, knocks the phantom from my favourite.

Fluff wise, when you get ionised, it shorts certain things out on the ship, like the "Cloaking Device Off Switch" and the throttle control and joystick. The joys of "fly-by-wire" systems, I guess.

Some days, your dice are against you and it sucks to be at the game that day. But try not to lose faith in the Phantom. It is a truly potent little ship if played carefully, and it does require care. Unfortunate that your opponent had you so well lined up for so long. How many turns did he manage to ionise you?

Interesting take on the fluff parravon. All game. He kept ionizing me until the ion damage had killed it!

I'm still going to try the phantom again, but this has seriously hurt it in my eyes.

I think the problem I'm having is all other games I've played arrange more like;

1) Start of manouver phase actions

2) before dial reveal actions

3) reveal dial

4) move

5) after movement actions

6) end of phase action

It feels like we're skipping one bit, and losing all the others just for fun!

I sometimes have trouble understanding rulings, and have found in the past that if I can make it make sense, I'm more likely to remember it!

Ion alone doesn't affect actions. If I recall you also suffered stress from the attack due to an astromech.

This is a ship tailored to counter phantoms and should not appear in that many games. If you face anu other list or if your sice rolling beats the opponent's you wouldn't have had this bad experience. So don't give up on it yet.

IT can be frustrating with dice. I had a full health Royal Guard Interceptor hiding behind an asteroid and was range 3 from an attacking X-WIng. He had done a boost action. He had 5 defense die. The Royal Guard died with no evades.

Phantoms are killers but have weaknesses. Change your tactics and don't fly too close to an ion turret y-wing. Y-wings are not very maneuverable so it won;t be a problem to keep a distance. Stay at range three and fire with your 4 attack dice against the y-wing 2 defense dice. Also your other ships in your squad can keep the y-wing occupied while the Phantom attacks other ships.

Also, if this person was expecting you to bring Phantoms, they probably teched to it (and effectively, it seems). I made the mistake of announcing that I was running Phantoms and met an opponent with Fett + Veteran Instincts and a Rebel Captive. Murdered my Phantoms quick, nothing I could do.

Of course, with that same 90pt list, I tabled Chewbacca/Biggs/Wedge and only lost 2 shields. Same tournament. I stopped playing Phantoms after the Fett-teching. Maybe I'll surprise everyone and bring them back out of the blue. :-)

Yep, keep them guessing.

Phantoms are good but they aren't the best thing since sliced bread. They've got their weaknesses. If you get stuck in a fight with an ion turret, just make distance as soon as possible.

Phantoms do have hard counters and a Y wing with ion turret and R3-A2 is one of them. Make the Y more of a priority target and shoot him from behind and take him out, then go after the rest of the squad.

Phantoms are made to fly like sharks, circling around to find that time to bite hard.

Don't try to joust with them. They are much better flankers.