You can have an EPT on Salm when the Empire gets a 4 pt reduction on Major Rhymer.

I would like to see a title or something that can grant an EPT to squints with PS 5 or higher. That way they can gain an EPT, but lose the ability to become a heavy interceptor with the Royal Guard title. Hell, if you were nervous you can make it 1 point, but I think making it zero would be fine.

I'd like it as well. He feels pretty over-costed for his ability and so I've never used him. Much like Rhymer actually, who does have an EPT. Maybe they intended him to buddy up with Dutch?

As far as other pilots, Kir Kanos and Lt. Lorrir really could use them too, maybe for a 1-point cost increase. At the moment they rarely see use and I doubt it would unbalance anything. Lorrir would just be an Echo-lite, not doing anything another ship isn't already doing better. Kir Kanos with PtL would ramp up the damage output a lot, but would also be a big target prone to flaming out for being low in the shooting order, so maybe a +2 cost there. Then he'd be at 29 points with PtL, much easier to take down, and still doing less damage than a phantom, although with potentially a little more consistency. Given the amount of damage mitigation keeping big ships in play too long for squishy evasive ships to outlast, I'm not sure this would be a huge problem. All the high-PS phantom killers would be even more effective against him.

Based on the costing of the Royal Guards, I don't think you'd need to add anything to their cost for adding an EPT slot. The Royal Guard is PS 6 with an EPT for 22 points. Lorrir is a point more expensive with PS5 and an ability that would be pretty good but generates a stress to use. Kanos has the same PS 6 as the Royal Guards but costs two additional points, adding the extra hit result is nice but it is range limited and requires spending a token. Fel's Wrath is another Interceptor pilot that would probably see a decent amount of play if he had an EPT.

EDIT: Also, adding 2 points to the cost of Kanos would make him a point more expensive than Turr, and the same cost as Carnor Jax.

Interceptors are off-topic, but my House Rules for Interceptors are pretty well balanced, and it doesn't involve increasing Kanos' cost. I actually have him at 23 with an EPT. So he pays 1 point over a Royal Guard for his ability. It's completely fair.

I would take elusiveness paired with R2D2 for longevity - easy greens with a turret removing stress and gaining a shield each round. Alternatively an unhinged astromech for green 3 speeds would change the dynamic.

For more aggressive play, an unhinged astromech and marksmanship is nice - move aggressively, roll your blanks again and then change your focus to a crit and hits.

Ya' know? I actually like him without it.

I'm a big fan of Y-Wings in general and Salm in particular, and I like that despite not being flashy in the slightest, they are absolute workhorses. There's a line in one of the Rogue Squadron books (maybe Wraith Squadron?) where Salm tells Antilles that his pilots will never be as good as the Rogues and Wraiths, but that their teamwork and proficiency will get the job done anyway..

Yeah, it would make him better gameplay-wise, but I like that some unique pilots have EPTs and some don't; it creates more interesting and complex choices when building lists. If anything, I'm a little unhappy that so many Wave 3 and 4 uniques got EPTs.

It was indeed in Wraith Squadron. Kudos to you sir.

Im not sure where the argument for a Ywing not getting to have a EPT has any merit. It doesn't matter what you're flying, thats why its an Elite Pilot Talent, not an Elite Ship Talent. And I'm willing to bet if they released versions of pilots who also flew in other ships (Janson, Corran, Maarek) and they didn't have an EPT at high PS there be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. C'mon, you wanna sit there and tell me Horton shouldn't be able to take something like squad leader or swarm tactics? He was a trainer after all not to mention a General so he had to have some good leadership abilities. The probable reason he doesnt have an EPT is that when Ywings were released FFG thought torpedoes were good. Unfortunately we are sitting on the cusp of Wave 5 and we know his ability is friggin good for them, but not so good that he outweighs torpedoes' drawbacks(and ordinance in general).

There's no droid-EPT that he could have that Wedge, Luke, Wes, Corran, ect... couldn't also have.

The issue really is cost. Is it balanced to give a pilot a EPT without it increasing the cost of that pilot?

Consider that Hobbie, Biggs and Garvin all cost about the same and none of them have EPT's either.

That too.

I would like more pilots for Y-wings, Bombers, Advanced, Defenders, Phantoms E-wings and Z's. Because each of these only have 2 specials, which i don't feel is enough. (A, B, X wings Interceptors and Tie fighters have all the pilots). But yeah you're right on a costs level.

With non EPT uniques I think many of them have pilot abilities that out does any EPT upgrade you could give them. "Biggs Darklighter comes to mind as it is one of the most used X-wing, I would dare say more than Wedge (and he has a great pilot ability and an EPT slot). Now we all would like Horton to get EPT but face it his ability with 2-3 torpedoes (which is all torpedoes save adv. proton) and that it is still good even without torpedoes makes it that he really doesn't need EPT. Same for Dutch as the extra TL provides enough of an upgrade that you get value into the points beside a higher pilot skill.

Of course we would like more options for each ship but 4 pilots is the standard for almost every pack. Each regular ship pack has a low skill generic, an average skill generic, a medium skill unique and a high skill unique. There are some exceptions, large ships have 3 unique pilots and 1 low generic (however with a large ship being around twice the cost of a small ship the additional value is welcomed.) And some Ties have 3 generic pilots as well as 3 unique pilots. It is a decent start but I'm sure more pilots will come out.

I was just trying to be conservative, since I'd still see a value in those interceptors even if they were more expensive. As for Y-wings though, what about the droid argument? I just had a friend do some really cool stuff with the boosting/tl droid with Dutch. If Dutch had an EPT it would definitely be too much. Has anyone used that droid with Horton? Seems like he could do quite a bit to make APTs a thing with him.

Im not sure where the argument for a Ywing not getting to have a EPT has any merit. It doesn't matter what you're flying, thats why its an Elite Pilot Talent, not an Elite Ship Talent.

Agreed, it isn't the ship that matters, it's a pilot worth naming. If they have a name, they ought to have an elite pilot talent. Regarding the next waves, I'd like to see some of the original ships re-released with new paint schemes, new named pilots and old named pilots with EPT, and the cost for missiles and torpedoes fixed.

Just because Horton doesnt need an ept for torpedos shouldn't exclude him from getting one. Right now there are 3 "builds" if you will for Y-wings: Ordinance, Turrets, and Naked(?). Naked is terrible for obvious reasons, Ordinance isn't popular due to the problems inherit with how they work, so that leaves us with just turrets.
(And don't you dare tell me Horton with torps is the best cause no one uses that outside of epic and you know it.)
Now we have two candidates for turrets, blaster and ion. Blaster has its own problems with needing a focus to fire, leaving Horton vulnerable to stress and blocking, which leaves Ion as the go-to choice for anyone running a Ywing. The problem we encounter here is that both turrets are 1-2 which means a good chunk of Horton's ability just went out the window.

His ability is clearly designed to work with Proton Torpedoes which fit the same range band parameters.
FFG is pretty big on not pigeonholing anyship into one designated role, especially with the PS 8-9 pilots. They have excellent abilities that are easy to get mileage out of. I.E you don't have to jump through hoops to use Wedge, Corran, Janson, Cracken, Howlrunner, Vader, Fett, and the like. I mean honestly most of those guys can be run naked and at least be useful. Of course you'l want to dress them up to maximize your points spent, but i think my point can be seen. Not so with Horton. Reroll your 2 Dice at range 2-3 for 25 pts? me thinks not. Which means hes made to take Ordinance and Turrets. With Ordinance you get two shots that yes, should do very good damage, but then hes about useless unless you put a turret on him. At which point with the Astro you put on him hes starting to look at 45 points.

He just can't get enough mileage out of his ability without sinking points into him. And when i can run Corran dressed up and ready to rock for the same cost as Horton Salm, Im taking Corran everytime. Horton needs the EPT to make him worth taking at all.

Personally, I think all pilots that have a pilot skill of 6+ should have an EPT. I'm fine with the lower-skill pilots who have an EPT being kind of rare; but I can't really see any good reason why any of the skillful, elite pilots don't have one. Would it really be game-breaking if the likes of Dutch, Garven, Kir Kanos et al had an EPT? It'd certainly make them more useable, and make for more interesting builds.

Personally, I'm fine with named pilots not having an EPT, depending on their already included pilot talent (presumably for being elite) - I see pilots with an included talent and an EPT as effectively having 2 EPTs (albeit with one of them having been pre-selected). The more elite version of unnamed pilots (e.g. Gray Squadron) should get an EPT though. They got that right with A-Wings and TIEs at least.

Overall, I'd prefer to see the basic progression of pilots to be like so:

- Generic

- Elite Generic (pick a pilot talent)

- Named (snazzy talent you can't otherwise get)

- The Best of the Best (a snazzy talent AND you get to pick a 2nd talent)

Sadly, we have a distinct Elite Generics for most ship types :/

People are putting way to much stock in names here.

Pilot Skill doesn't really mean that the person in question is a super pilot. They may be good, but just because someone has a PS of X doesn't mean they're elite pilots. It just means they move after lower PS and shoot before them.

I'm not saying that a EPT for anyone with a PS of 6+ is bad, but look at Prototype pilot and you can put it on any ship with a ps of 2 or higher. You have PS 3 Green squad and PS 4 Black Squad pilots with EPT's as well.

So clearly FFG doesn't have a PS X = EPT rule in place.

Second just because it's called an Elite Pilot Talent doesn't mean anything. Gemmer Sojan for example was part of Rogue Squad but he doesn't have a EPT, neither does Garven, yet Etahn A'baht who as far as I can tell never flew a fighter really, does have one, everything on the Wookipedia page for him is about fleets and not dog fights.

FFG based the point value on the pilots on their PS, abilities, weapons ect...

I'm not going to even pretend that they got it right every time, but I don't know that simply errata'ing in an EPT is the answer either. I wouldn't mind seeing him get one, but I also don't think he's broken without one.

Also I know the OP said this shouldn't be part of the discussion but even if everyone agreed that he should have one, doing it as an errata simply won't work. The issues of player confusion and all the rest are just too big of an issue to simply handwave away.

Also I know the OP said this shouldn't be part of the discussion but even if everyone agreed that he should have one, doing it as an errata simply won't work. The issues of player confusion and all the rest are just too big of an issue to simply handwave away.

Okay I knew people wouldn't leave it alone so I'm going to address how I feel about this particular possible errata.

I think it is absolutely possible, easy, and won't even be confusing or get players into trouble and here's why:

If they errata the card to have an EPT without changing cost, then any player who is unaware of this cannot possibly get into any issues by not knowing it. They cannot inadvertently build an illegal list, because this errata only adds something that is completely optional. In fact, FFG has already done an errata on a card that completely changes the upgrade, and people seem to just ignore that.

I do realize that FFG probably won't add an EPT to Salm, simply because they can make him more powerful by improving ordinance, and that in itself would probably be enough. As a matter of fact I applaud their restraint with stuff like this. I just wanted to kind of brainstorm and see if there was some out there combo that FFG saw that we didnt that made the prospect of an EPT on him too dangerous. I certainly can't think of anything OP, but I can think of at least a few combos that would be fun.

Honestly the easiest way for them to errata Horton would be to send out a dozen or so "Errata Cards" with the prize support for tournaments, and change the contents of all future Ywing releases. Not that they will.

In fact, FFG has already done an errata on a card that completely changes the upgrade, and people seem to just ignore that.

Huh? What are you talking about here?

I tell you what.

Horton would be fine if his ability wasn't range restriced.

Imagine Horton w/o range restriction with Blaster turret or Autoblaster Turret

In fact, FFG has already done an errata on a card that completely changes the upgrade, and people seem to just ignore that.

Huh? What are you talking about here?

daredevil was originally a red maneuver