Sure it's really boring to play, I don't know anyone who feels it is a challenging list, but then again, phantoms and interceptors are really easy to fly too.

Phantoms are easy to fly? I flew against a new player who was running a Phantom, having demolished one of our better local players earlier in the afternoon (and I think he was feeling confident because of it), and I eneded up taking him apart with Tusken's cutting edge list (PS2s across the board, HLC Blues and Operative Ions). Part of it was because he was parking the phantom in easy reach and hitting rocks because he mis-calculated with the cloak + move. I don't think the phantom is easy, and I think it is very unforgiving if you don't use it properly. It's just perceptively easy because it has the greatest positional control in the game and it has a powerful punch.

Thanks for that, it does put thing in perspective and i'm 100% in agreement with what the phantom has done. But 3po is equally problematic and people would run it on falcons even if the phantom wasn't here.

Skill is a huge factor in every other wargame. There is a reason you see the same people at the top tables constantly.

We will have to disagree with that the most popular scifi wargame is heavily unbalanced and random and has literraly nothing to do with skill past list building. Other popular wargames are very matchup dependent and again very biased towards good list building and reading the meta. (Not giving any names to avoid having this descend into a flame war)

If you didn't have phantoms you would see less falcons I think. But there is another thing that happens in situations like this.

1-for whatever reason, a thing (X) is really good. A lot of people want to run X.

2-at first, X stomps peoples heads in right and left, nobody beats it. 0 fun allowed.

3-after a shot period of time, people start to understand X, because they see it constantly.

4-soon, everyone has played 18 billion games against X, and knows it in and out.

5-X becomes much less prolific as people either build lists to counter it, or just know how to play it.

Sure it's really boring to play, I don't know anyone who feels it is a challenging list, but then again, phantoms and interceptors are really easy to fly too.

Phantoms are easy to fly? I flew against a new player who was running a Phantom, having demolished one of our better local players earlier in the afternoon (and I think he was feeling confident because of it), and I eneded up taking him apart with Tusken's cutting edge list (PS2s across the board, HLC Blues and Operative Ions). Part of it was because he was parking the phantom in easy reach and hitting rocks because he mis-calculated with the cloak + move. I don't think the phantom is easy, and I think it is very unforgiving if you don't use it properly. It's just perceptively easy because it has the greatest positional control in the game and it has a powerful punch.

So you beat a phantom flown by a new guy who flew it onto asteroids, and this is a case for it not being easy to fly?

A tie swarm is the worst possible counter to 3po yet he still won comfortably. that is my whole point.

Yes, we know that's your point, it's just a really weak point. A single game doesn't mean very much because maneuvering mistakes, dice luck, etc are major factors. Even when you have a very bad matchup based on lists you can still win comfortably if you outmaneuver your opponent or just get lucky dice at a key moment. To get any useful information you need to look at lots of games, where the random factors average out and you're left with the "pure" matchup. And when you do that you find that a TIE swarm tends to win that fight.

And this is especially true when you didn't even finish your entire game before conceding. You had Han down to 4 HP with three ships left on the table, which means you still had a non-trivial chance of winning the game. I'd hardly call it a "comfortable win" when the key ship is down to 4 HP without even playing the last turns. That's a narrow margin where a little less luck with the dice or crit draws could have killed the Falcon and given you a win.

I was wondering how long it would take to get another one of these threads. We were dangerously close to not having one today.

OP - Sorry your list didn't work, but the falcon is not broken, 3PO is not broken and as others have pointed out you don't really seem to grasp how the card actually works. The reality of the situation is that the TIE swarm is THE BEST counter for a fat falcon. The reason being that 3PO works ONCE per turn and a TIE swarm fires MORE THAN ONCE per turn. If you think that your single game experience trumps that of this entire board and community of users then you are wrong. So, hate to say it but, if you lose to a fat falcon with a TIE swarm then the problem isn't C-3PO.

I will repeat myself for the last time...

In THEORY, the swarm is the best counter, hard counter even.

In PRACTICE, it is not the case and the falcon still has the luxury of not having to stay in arc or fly in formation.

The falcon can more than stack up to the swarm BECAUSE of 3PO. It has no hard counters.

I agree with this post wholeheartedly. It seems that everyone is falling for the fallacy that because people say it frequently that Fat Han is hard-countered by TIE swarm. It just isn't true in practice. Sure it 'can' beat Han, but it is not even close to an auto win that some people seem to think it is. Throw an engine on Han and it pushes the result further in Han's favour.

Throw an engine on Han and it pushes the result further in Han's favour.

I would say it 'boosts' the effectiveness of Han against everything

This is the last game i played against Fat Han, he had:

Han

Veteran Instinct

Luke

C3p0

Anti pursuit laser

Jan Ors

Predator

Blaster Turret

Moldy crow

nien numb

Shield upgrade

To state my couriosity, how much damage did Jan do?

How many turns did she buff Han?

Did she attack and if so how many hits and crits did she get?

Did she die and if so when?

How was she flown?

Every turn.

See above.

He started facing sideways, moved slowly forward to stack focus on Jan, then turned left to face my swarm on the upper left corner. I blocked Han for 3 turns here but couldn't finish him and he turned left and casually flew away while dishing out att5 on the ties.

Again, i don't want to take anything from my opponent, he had a strong list, a strong plan, and was a good sport. We had a good chat about the game at the end, he told me his list was built specifically to deal with swarm and of course shredded phantoms. Literraly the only way he can loose is with bad dice roll.

He also told me this was coming:

Experimental Interface+ Expose

Fat Han shooting 5-6 dice...

It's not looking good.

I'm curious, just what is it that OP's innocent of?

Also: Han + Expose = no Threepio. Bad combo is bad.

Sure it's really boring to play, I don't know anyone who feels it is a challenging list, but then again, phantoms and interceptors are really easy to fly too.

Phantoms are easy to fly? I flew against a new player who was running a Phantom, having demolished one of our better local players earlier in the afternoon (and I think he was feeling confident because of it), and I eneded up taking him apart with Tusken's cutting edge list (PS2s across the board, HLC Blues and Operative Ions). Part of it was because he was parking the phantom in easy reach and hitting rocks because he mis-calculated with the cloak + move. I don't think the phantom is easy, and I think it is very unforgiving if you don't use it properly. It's just perceptively easy because it has the greatest positional control in the game and it has a powerful punch.

So you beat a phantom flown by a new guy who flew it onto asteroids, and this is a case for it not being easy to fly?

That's not the only case that formed my opinion, no. I've flown it poorly myself through mis-juding how much cloaking and Echo can work. I've parked it on asteroids, put it in plain sight of the enemy without a shot, risked getting into firing range and only realized too late that my target had a higher PS...

If it were that simple to fly none of these mistakes would have cost me the fighter. But they did, and it's easy to do if you aren't thinking. Especially if you're trying to squeak by asteroids with it to get just the right shot.

Because for a Phatom to work the everyone usually flies it, you need to be in a place where you can decloak AND couple it with your selected movement, perform the selected movement properly, and still have a shot lined up to cloak again.

Failing any of these means the Phantom is vulnerable in some way, and if you get a hit from a rock you've now become a 3HP fighter that can't shoot (to cloak again), and relying on 2 agility in a universe dominated by 3 attack dice for damage or special effects. Ships with 2 or fewer agility are cheap or are tanks. An unlcoaked Phantom is neither.

A tie swarm is the worst possible counter to 3po yet he still won comfortably. that is my whole point.

Yes, we know that's your point, it's just a really weak point. A single game doesn't mean very much because maneuvering mistakes, dice luck, etc are major factors. Even when you have a very bad matchup based on lists you can still win comfortably if you outmaneuver your opponent or just get lucky dice at a key moment. To get any useful information you need to look at lots of games, where the random factors average out and you're left with the "pure" matchup. And when you do that you find that a TIE swarm tends to win that fight.And this is especially true when you didn't even finish your entire game before conceding. You had Han down to 4 HP with three ships left on the table, which means you still had a non-trivial chance of winning the game. I'd hardly call it a "comfortable win" when the key ship is down to 4 HP without even playing the last turns. That's a narrow margin where a little less luck with the dice or crit draws could have killed the Falcon and given you a win.

This is why i don't like replying to your posts. Again, disagree with everything, and it looks like whatever i say you won't concede anything. and you don't give any proof yourself beyond vague "you can win if you outmaneuvre" wishful thinking concepts.

I'm curious, just what is it that OP's innocent of?

This goes back to counterstrike days, and i'm terrible with making up new handles

2 cents

*Outmaneuver is not a good counter as it costs too many points on too many ships that I had to pay a PS tax on so I could actually equip the upgrade. And it can be countered through game play as Range three And Obstructed grant bonus dice , not agility, so about once a game vs each ship with Outmaneuver I will still Threepio that attacker. Threepio is bad enough negating a twelve point ship once every other turn. It gets worse when I'm stopping more than that. I'm not a fan of this advice.

*Eight tie swarms might have a chance but lets be real, the tactics necessary to work perfectly leave a lot to be desired. Not to mention without Howlrunner support there are probably one or two attacks that you roll each turn that whiff entirely so the only thing were talking about gaining is reinforcement ships and blockers. We are not actually netting more hits per round. Out of your eight ships, about two fail to connect on their own, threepio+MF title negate another, counter fire negates a fourth. Four ships a turn consistently for the beginning of the game will do decent damage. Even if we were to give them the benefit of the doubt in damage gain, it would be about 1 a turn. And that's not enough for me to buy the 'one could be all you need!' argument.

I have played the Big Bird build in several games since seeing it at Gen-Con and even against great swarm players it is horrendously effective, and forgiving. It has won probably nine out of ten, (the one loss being a forfeit as I had screwed up a turn really bad with a bad maneuver choice AND a poor action choice along with the rest of my squad screwing the hell up critical turn) and I'm not even that good with it as far as I believe. If there are really this many counters, when I think critically about the situation, see all the out cry, see my play data, see tourney postings, then I have to conclude it's about as broken as it comes right now. Defend it all you want but I so far I have been less than impressed with the arguments brought against its "OPness". Is it invincible? No. Obviously from the same data there have been losses. But the ratio speaks for itself.

Edit Note: 19 posts were made between when I started composing my post and it hit the board. Interesting tid bit is all. Fastest thread I've been in!

Edit 2.0: Weird typos fixed. Wow those were pretty bad

Swarm isn't the best counter to Fat Han...swarm is the best counter to everything (besides the mythical unicorn that is the assault z swarm).

But swarm should be a pretty one sided match vs. Han, especially a 2 ship Han build. I can't fathom how your game went down the way you described: blocked him 3/4 firing rounds, lost a tie a round, and still lost... Mathematically improbable.

That being said: I dislike falcons, fat or not. They don't require excellent piloting but in the hands of an excellent pilot, they make it look like easy mode. They would probably have beaten you anyway. What falcons AND turrets do is make bad players ok players, ok players good players, and keep you in games you should lose. Couple that with Fat Han's combo of negating dice swings offensively and now defensively with 3Po and they warp the game in ways I don't agree with.

Fatter falcons will be a thing soon, and be even more potentially disruptive. Bier potential 3-5 "armor" or "DR" or whatever you want to call I will create situations where many builds have no chance of victory and that is terrible for the game. Even great builds will struggle if the dice are middling to good towards the falcon. That is terrible for the game.

Hold on though...help is coming. Bigger meaner turrets are on the way, 2 more swarmable ships come with S&V, an interceptor buff comes with the new S&V "interceptor", 4-5 cannon packing lists do too...I'm no enjoying it as much now but things could change soon. Very soon.

Fat Han is bad for the game right now, might be bad for the future too...but keep flying and fighting and you will win more than you lose if you're flying swarm

What the game probably needs are ways for cheaper ordinance carriers to be able to drop their locks on targets later on in the round. That way things like Bombers and Y-Wings can be real threats to these higher-skilled pilots by throwing tons of missiles at them and blowing them up.

Right now that design space is filled with HLCs (taking away TLs and one-shots), but it doesn't have to be the only viable high-dice secondary.

Jan got a shot on the ap, and with Predator did 2-3 damage. Great target selection by my opponent there by the way. Predtaor did come into play here but the game was pretty much over at this point anyway.

Every turn.

See above.

He started facing sideways, moved slowly forward to stack focus on Jan, then turned left to face my swarm on the upper left corner. I blocked Han for 3 turns here but couldn't finish him and he turned left and casually flew away while dishing out att5 on the ties.

Again, i don't want to take anything from my opponent, he had a strong list, a strong plan, and was a good sport. We had a good chat about the game at the end, he told me his list was built specifically to deal with swarm and of course shredded phantoms. Literraly the only way he can loose is with bad dice roll.

He also told me this was coming:

Experimental Interface+ Expose

Fat Han shooting 5-6 dice...

It's not looking good.

So Han was shooting with at least 4 dice every turn?

ouch.

Next question, did Jan seem like a linch pin to his plan?

With out Jan would it turn out differently?

Can you messure her affect over several turns?

If she went down first what would have Happened?

At least we don't have to worry about exspose+c3po any time soon.

And the Empire will be glad to know that soon they will inflict the same terror in to the hearts of the Rebellion with the armed and fully operational Decimator

2 cents

*Outmaneuver is not a good counter as it costs too many points on too many ships that I had to pay a PS tax on so I could actually equip the upgrade. And it can be countered through game play as Range three And Obstructed grant bonus dice , not agility, so about once a game vs each ship with Outmaneuver I will still Threepio that attacker. Threepio is bad enough negating a twelve point ship once every other turn. It gets worse when I'm stopping more than that on. I'm not a fan of this advice.

*Eight tie swarms might have a chance but lets be real, the tactics necessary to work perfectly leave a lot to be desired. Not to mention without Howlrunner support there are probably one or two attacks that you roll each turn that whiff entirely so the only thing were talking about gaining is reinforcement ships and blockers. We are not actually netting more hits per round. Out of your eight ships, about two fail to connect on their own, threepio+MF title negate another, counter fire negates a fourth. Four ships a turn consistently four the beginning of the game will do decent damage Even if we were, it would be about 1 a turn. And that's not enough for me to buy the 'one could be all you need!' argument.

I have played the Big Bird build in several games since seeing it at Gen-Con and even against great swarm players it is horrendously effective, and forgiving. It has won probably nine out of ten, (the one loss being a forfeit as I had screwed up a turn really bad with a bad maneuver choice AND a poor action choice along with the rest of my squad screwing the hell up critical turn) and I'm not even that good with it as far as I believe. If there are really this many counters, when I think critically about the situation, see all the out cry, see my play data, see tourney postings, then I have to conclude it's about as broken as it comes right now. Defend it all you want but I so far I have been less than impressed with the arguments brought against its "OPness". Is it invincible? No. Obviously from the same data there have been losses. But the ratio speaks for itself.

Edit Note: 19 posts were made between when I started composing my post and it hit the board. Interesting tid bit is all. Fastest thread I've been in!

It's great to have your perspective as a falcon player and your assessment of the swarm as a counter seems spot on, definitely how i feel about it. Thanks for the input.

Swarm isn't the best counter to Fat Han...swarm is the best counter to everything (besides the mythical unicorn that is the assault z swarm).

But swarm should be a pretty one sided match vs. Han, especially a 2 ship Han build. I can't fathom how your game went down the way you described: blocked him 3/4 firing rounds, lost a tie a round, and still lost... Mathematically improbable.

That being said: I dislike falcons, fat or not. They don't require excellent piloting but in the hands of an excellent pilot, they make it look like easy mode. They would probably have beaten you anyway. What falcons AND turrets do is make bad players ok players, ok players good players, and keep you in games you should lose. Couple that with Fat Han's combo of negating dice swings offensively and now defensively with 3Po and they warp the game in ways I don't agree with.

Fatter falcons will be a thing soon, and be even more potentially disruptive. Bier potential 3-5 "armor" or "DR" or whatever you want to call I will create situations where many builds have no chance of victory and that is terrible for the game. Even great builds will struggle if the dice are middling to good towards the falcon. That is terrible for the game.

Hold on though...help is coming. Bigger meaner turrets are on the way, 2 more swarmable ships come with S&V, an interceptor buff comes with the new S&V "interceptor", 4-5 cannon packing lists do too...I'm no enjoying it as much now but things could change soon. Very soon.

Fat Han is bad for the game right now, might be bad for the future too...but keep flying and fighting and you will win more than you lose if you're flying swarm

See a more detailed account of the battle in this post:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/122611-can-we-please-do-something-about-3po-on-falcons/?p=1272256

As others have said, swarm is not the hard counter people believe it is.

He also told me this was coming:

Experimental Interface+ Expose

Fat Han shooting 5-6 dice...

Why would anyone ever want to use that? You take a stress token which means your maneuvering options suddenly disappear, you drop to zero agility which means that C-3P0 only works at range 3 or through an asteroid, and you give up taking VI/predator/marksmanship. If my opponent showed up with this "combo" I'd celebrate and take an easy win.

Again, disagree with everything, and it looks like whatever i say you won't concede anything.

Why should I concede anything when you're wrong about everything you've said so far?

and you don't give any proof yourself beyond vague "you can win if you outmaneuvre" wishful thinking concepts.

That isn't wishful thinking, it's simple fact. And it wasn't advice for how you beat the Falcon, it's an example of how you can lose a game even when your list is favored over their list. And it's one of the reasons why you can't talk about a single game as if it proves anything.

Something people seem to ignore in the numerous threads like this we have, is that these games have their own little foodchain. If it wasn't fat han, it would be phantoms, or royal guard interceptors, or b-wings with advanced sensors that would be the broken thing we all complain about.

Want a perfectly balanced game? Play mirror matches only.

Jan got a shot on the ap, and with Predator did 2-3 damage. Great target selection by my opponent there by the way. Predtaor did come into play here but the game was pretty much over at this point anyway.

Every turn.

See above.

He started facing sideways, moved slowly forward to stack focus on Jan, then turned left to face my swarm on the upper left corner. I blocked Han for 3 turns here but couldn't finish him and he turned left and casually flew away while dishing out att5 on the ties.

Again, i don't want to take anything from my opponent, he had a strong list, a strong plan, and was a good sport. We had a good chat about the game at the end, he told me his list was built specifically to deal with swarm and of course shredded phantoms. Literraly the only way he can loose is with bad dice roll.

He also told me this was coming:

Experimental Interface+ Expose

Fat Han shooting 5-6 dice...

It's not looking good.

So Han was shooting with at least 4 dice every turn?

ouch.

Next question, did Jan seem like a linch pin to his plan?

With out Jan would it turn out differently?

Can you messure her affect over several turns?

If she went down first what would have Happened?

At least we don't have to worry about exspose+c3po any time soon.

And the Empire will be glad to know that soon they will inflict the same terror in to the hearts of the Rebellion with the armed and fully operational Decimator

I have thought about it, however Jan is stacking focus and has shield upgrade, she won't be easy to kill. Even if you manage it, you will have lost ties to Han in the process, and he will be in a great position to kite the survivors. With only a handful of ties left, c3po will shine!

So it's far from a done deal.

IPeregrine, debating with you is sterile. I won't reply to your posts. Feel free to debate with others.

All I can do is whine about how I lost a game, so I'm going to ignore anyone who tries to claim that I'm wrong.

Have fun with that.

What the game probably needs are ways for cheaper ordinance carriers to be able to drop their locks on targets later on in the round. That way things like Bombers and Y-Wings can be real threats to these higher-skilled pilots by throwing tons of missiles at them and blowing them up.

Right now that design space is filled with HLCs (taking away TLs and one-shots), but it doesn't have to be the only viable high-dice secondary.

A change to how missile works would be great, at the moment cannons and turrwts are just clearly the superior option. There are too many hoops you need to jump through to make missiles useful, at their current power level at least.

You know just because one list is not a hard counter to another, does not mean that the same list doesn't have a favorable match-up. You understand the difference right? You realize that actual hard counters would be a very bad thing for the game don't you?

Have fun with that.

I'm your huckleberry.

All I can do is whine about how I lost a game, so I'm going to ignore anyone who tries to claim that I'm wrong.

Have fun with that.

Reported, have fun with that.