Revenge of the Autoblaster

By Herowannabe, in X-Wing

i predict that we will be seeing a resurgence (or well, since it never caught on to begin with, maybe just a surgence?) of the Autoblaster. Not only is it effective against both Fat Han AND Cloaked Phantoms, but there are a lot of potent combos that have come out and are about to come out.

Consider the following:

Autoblaster + Outrider, especially on a hyper mobile Dash

Autoblaster + Rexlar Brath. Unblockable crits anyone?

Autoblaster + Accuracy Corrector. A guaranteed 2+ unblockable damage anyone?

Autoblaster + Scumm Boba Fett + Greedo. At least one reroll on your attack, + the first damage card is automatically a crit, AND you're still free to take focus action. Ouch.

Thoughts?

EDIT:Noticed that it duplicated my thread somehow. Sorry about that guys. Please post any future responses in the other thread:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/127702-revenge-of-the-autoblaster/

Edited by Herowannabe

We won't see any more Autoblaster than we currently are. The card's problem was never that it could be stopped by Evade tokens. Evade tokens don't even show up against most Rebel ships. Its problem was the range 1 restriction, which meant you got it off too rarely and, even when you did, you usually didn't do any more damage than you would have with your main guns. That made it a great way to waste 5 points, and none of that has changed.

Looking through the suggestions there, the Outrider gives you a ship that is easily sniped to death, especially by higher PS ships, Rexler again has to be at range 1 and still suffers from his problem of getting a spare Focus token to modify his own attack, and the last two exacerbate the cost problem without providing any improvement over a Heavy Laser Cannon.

Autoblaster is still a bad card. Stop trying to make it work, people.

The real thing that is going to make the autoblaster relevant: turning it into a 2-point turret.

We won't see any more Autoblaster than we currently are. The card's problem was never that it could be stopped by Evade tokens. Evade tokens don't even show up against most Rebel ships. Its problem was the range 1 restriction, which meant you got it off too rarely and, even when you did, you usually didn't do any more damage than you would have with your main guns. That made it a great way to waste 5 points, and none of that has changed.

Looking through the suggestions there, the Outrider gives you a ship that is easily sniped to death, especially by higher PS ships, Rexler again has to be at range 1 and still suffers from his problem of getting a spare Focus token to modify his own attack, and the last two exacerbate the cost problem without providing any improvement over a Heavy Laser Cannon.

Autoblaster is still a bad card. Stop trying to make it work, people.

I WILL wholeheartedly agree that it is overpriced though. It probably ought to be around 3 points, maybe 4 at the most.

Edited by Herowannabe

Expose is still a bad card, but it's finding its uses with Chiraneau. I'm not trying to say that Autoblaster is all of a sudden the coolest, meanest, end-all-be-all card, just that I think it's starting to have its uses now, too.

I WILL wholeheartedly agree that it is overpriced though. It probably ought to be around 3 points, maybe 4 at the most.

IMO, Expose-on-Decimator will only last a little while, because once again the wrong problem has been fixed. Expose's biggest problem wasn't the agility loss, it was the cost and action requirement. People will realise that it still sucks even on the Admiral soon enough and move on to things that are actually useful (for example, why are we spending 4 points on Expose when Predator does much the same thing for a point less?)

Re: the Autoblaster, you say yourself that it is still overcosted, so why do you think that it's suddenly become useful? What else has changed that suddenly makes it an acceptable option? Because I can't see anything.

Edited by DR4CO

The problem is not only the range but the firepower. It is a cannon upgrade with 3 firepower at range one and as of now (since Wave 5 isn't out yet) the only ships with cannons already have 3 firepower. So you sacrifice a dice in the roll in order to prevent your opponent from canceling any dice with evades or 3PO. As of the adjustments that make it slightly better such as negating evade tokens and C-3PO the range is still an issue as you have to get within range 1 of a falcon which will have 4 dice against your 3 be it autoblaster or 3 Firepower with a Range 1 against 3PO who will auto-cancel one of those hits. With the latter you don't have to invest 5 more points into them.

I very often use the autoblaster on a B-wing, as my opponents generally spam TIE/LN and interceptors.