Maybe 1 point mod that's something like "If you hit a cloaked phantom, reduce that ship's agility by 1 for the rest of the combat round. So you'd put it on your best/highest PS ship, hope you hit, then it gives the rest of your squad a better chance to do damage with their attacks that round. It wouldn't be too overpowered since you DO have to hit first, and no guarantee you have other ships available to shoot at the phantom if you do. Also it's only 1 point because it only works against phantoms, so any more and people wouldn't take it probably.

The folks saying that you really don't need to do anything to the Phantom are spot on. The tide is rising on other build types that will soon sweep the Phantom out to sea (at least if we are all reading the scum upgrades correctly).

That said, if I had the power, I would have banned ACD and C-3PO from last worlds and all competitive events going forward. Those two cards are probably the worst mistakes made by FFG (forgetting that the Rebel HWK is a thing for a minute).

The folks saying that you really don't need to do anything to the Phantom are spot on. The tide is rising on other build types that will soon sweep the Phantom out to sea (at least if we are all reading the scum upgrades correctly).

That said, if I had the power, I would have banned ACD and C-3PO from last worlds and all competitive events going forward. Those two cards are probably the worst mistakes made by FFG (forgetting that the Rebel HWK is a thing for a minute).

I'll be interested to see, but I'm not sure that the tricks Scum has are going to be better than what is currently out even though there are new tricks.

I personally love running the rear admiral with V.I. and rebel captive. Phantom players just gawk as their precious little crafts loses all of its maneuverability. Engine upgrade adds more shinanegans and antics to invalidate Whisper.

Tbh I find that the Phantom does not need a direct counter. With it cloaked it's like an Interceptor with a permanent Stealth Device + Hull with a -2Ag Expose.

If something does get released I expect it to be similar to Wes' Ability but harder to pull off.

:Slot: EPT :Cost: 4 :Title: Marker

"When attacking a target within Firing Arc you may Spend a Target Lock and remove 1 Focus, Evade, Cloak or Target Lock from the Defender. Then receive 2 Stress Tokens.

The Defender may receive 1 Stress Token to negate this effect."

Wording is a WIP also not sure about cost vs stress on the part of the attacker since the Defender is allowed to cancel this effect. On top of that it also requires access to a TL and an EPT.

Well, theoretically Turret will decrease (which is good for all because apart from Outrider + HLC there wasn't much maneuvering involved compared to normal dogfighting). Decrease in turrets means all those builds that turrets pushed down can come back up.

5 TIE/In can take on a Phantom, even while cloaked.

4 Agi averages 1.5 Evades

3 Attack averages 1.5 hits, and focus/TL tips the balance.

4 TIE/In each with PtL average 2.8 hits (more or less).

Not to mention Fel can fire before Phantoms cloak and can double focus/TL (or TL/Focus/Boost) every turn, pretty much.

The TIE/x1 with ATC guarantees a crit (Phantoms will almost never take Expert Handling) and average 2 hits with just their two dice + ATC, which is already more than a Phantoms average defense. That guaranteed crit greatly shortens the life of the Phantom, and it doesn't even have to be Double Hit to be useful. -1 to Agi, ignore EPT, etc, all work wonders.

TIE/D becomes better with Sigma's or Vader (or Stele) keeping up a never used TL so Vessary essentially gets a TL every turn plus whatever action he takes, and the ability to do a white 4-k makes normal phantom maneuvers less useful as the D moves differently than almost any other ship. 4 Dice HLC is good even against 4 Greens.

Plus Phantoms are beatable now, there are just more ways to do it after S&V and the Raider. (I haven't even gone over the Scums own methods for taking out Phantoms, Scyks with HLC, woohoo!)

Increase the standard tournament squad points from 100 to 150

Kill multiple birds in one Fel swoop: extend target lock and ordnance range to 5, add Advanced Homing Missiles to be fired out of arc.

Ordnance: fixed

Hypermobility: nerfed

Turrets: nerfed

Ya range 5 not going to work

Not everyone has huge ships

Has yo be based off core set components

I had forgotten about Vader. He and Fel might do the job by themselves.

To the original question: "Design something that would threaten Whisper's top-tier status"

Here is what I would design: I would take a few recognized top tier players (world champions and such), have them write an article about how they use their favorite fleet in conjunction with proper positionning, asteroid placements, etc to kill phantoms, followed by concrete examples. I would then post them on FFG's website.

That's the only thing I would design. Seriously, I'm willing to bet that half of the losses against Phantoms or fat Hans are due to people having only a fuzzy idea of what they should do instead of having a concrete plan of "this is how I defeat my opponent with my list".

I already posted this in the TIE Scout thread, but Id like to see a "Sensor Ping" action as well, as a system card, possibly limited to specific "AWACS" type ships, i.e. something like a TIE Scout, Recon-X or something similar.

My version of the sensor ping would strip one non-red token from a hostile ship within range 1-2 if it turned out to be to powerful. It would be most useful when stripping a cloak token, but it would also be capable of stripping an evade or focus token, so it wouldn't exclusively be a Phantom counter.

Without the cloak token, the Phantom is a complete glass cannon, so Phantom vs Scout/Recon-Xs would be an interesting battle, with the Phantom player trying to stay at range 3 or beyond of the Recon-X/Scout, while still trying to get into firing positions on other hostile ships. Could be very fun, fir both sides.

All you have to do is change the timing of the decloak and everything gets fixed. Treat the decloak action as PS0 so they have to choose decloak before all ships move. The better players will still survive with Phantoms and it will bring the power level down enough to not make them and auto win against most ships.

I agree with most people here that Phantoms themselves are not overpowered. However, their influence on what you run is overpowering. There are lots of things that can counter a phantom, but you're pretty much required to take at least one of them. VI+R3A2, RC, ICT, VI, VI, Turret, VI... And that reduces the list design space.

So going and creating a modification that prevents cloaks or an ept that prevents cloak tokens from occurring is just going to add one more option to the list of things that counter phantoms.

I liked the errata that if you get hit you lose your cloak, which also makes sense, now they see where you are. All of the current counters don't really get better from that since the primary counter is to move after and shoot first on an uncloaked target, so it would keep them viable. But it would make it such that when you run Garven, and the rare time that he catches a Phantom in arc, and the even more rare time that he does a damage, that then the Rookie with a TL+F now can make it count! I really liked this idea. But then I realized that it's putting even more on the dice, and I'm not for this.

I like Osoroshii's suggestion of decloaking at PS0, but I feel like it's too much of a nerf. One of the main advantages a phantom has is that it can decloak after everyone moves. Normally, there's one really good move for it to do, but if you train in on that move, it has the choice of doing something else, which is a huge advantage. So while I personally like it as it allows lower PS pilots the ability to get it in arc more frequently, I think that it exposes the Phantom too much.

IMO, it's not that the cloak is too powerful, it's that the decloak is too powerful. I wish I could pay another point and get Psycho Tycho to PS10 so he can do his crazy maneuvers after a phantom, but since he can't - what if there was a ship that allowed you to combine two maneuvers? If there was a ship to be released like this, it would require two dials, and should be that you do one maneuver and then the second, so you're still susceptible to being blocked on either maneuver. And for stress reasons, the most difficult maneuver would dictate the overall level (so two greens would be the only way to clear stress). But you could execute them in any order.

This would probably be a scum ship as it feels like cheating. And the dial would have to be... interesting to say the least. Perhaps no straights at all (but you could always 1 bank L 1 bank R for basically a 3 straight + br). It would fly completely different than any other ship out there, which is something some people are worried about (design space getting too crowded regarding the dials). And if it was a high enough PS, could totally outfly the phantom.

But this would make it a super slippery ship, how do we prevent it from being the next phantom? Easy - make it 1-2agi, and no more than 6 health. So now it's slippery, but once you get it in your sights, it melts. Or you could make all of the turns red, so it would have to do two banks to turn without being stressed (which should be hard to clear). It would also have to have a slower dial. No one wants to see a 5 straight + 5 straight, or a 3 bank + 3 bank.

It also wouldn't have any movement actions natively, and perhaps something to discourage it from taking modifications... Which would be simple enough - have it start with 1 attack, and have a 4 pt mod that raises it to 2 attack (or 2 to 3 attack if you prefer). Now it doesn't want to take EU because it wants to take it's own special mod, it doesn't want to take EH because it can't deal with stress very well, so the dials are slippery, but if you stress it or catch it in arc, it dies easily. But it eats phantoms and their silly lateral movement.

All you have to do is change the timing of the decloak and everything gets fixed. Treat the decloak action as PS0 so they have to choose decloak before all ships move. The better players will still survive with Phantoms and it will bring the power level down enough to not make them and auto win against most ships.

Great idea. Very rough on sigma's and shadow's though

Maybe decloak at ps0 when ACD is equipped?

To the original question: "Design something that would threaten Whisper's top-tier status"

Here is what I would design: I would take a few recognized top tier players (world champions and such), have them write an article about how they use their favorite fleet in conjunction with proper positionning, asteroid placements, etc to kill phantoms, followed by concrete examples. I would then post them on FFG's website.

That's the only thing I would design. Seriously, I'm willing to bet that half of the losses against Phantoms or fat Hans are due to people having only a fuzzy idea of what they should do instead of having a concrete plan of "this is how I defeat my opponent with my list".

Doug Kinney, former World Champion, already wrote an article on TC that basically concluded that no matter what the swarm player does, the phantom player can always counter it if he's goo enough. IE if your opponent is skilled and doesnt want you to kill their Phantom, unless you have a dedicated coubter, they wont let you kill their Phantom.

Whenever I encounter the Phantom, I am only able to kill it by outsmarting the Phantom player, but it's never a foregone conclusion because the Phantom has so many options. It can be both frustrating and strangely satisfying at the same time.

Since both players could potentially field Whisper, I think the Rebels have the short end of the stick when it comes to dealing with her nimble ways; generally due to being less maneuverable. Here's what I would design to give the Rebels more equal footing:

Astromech (Unique) - 3 Points

R1-G4 - Action: During the Activation Phase, choose an enemy ship at Range 1 inside your firing arc. After your Perform Action Step, the chosen ship becomes the next active ship.

Essentially, this Astromech bypasses Pilot Skill order and forces the chosen ship to move next. This would allow you to react to the chosen ship's maneuver and not the other way around. I chose to make this an Astromech to give X and Y wings more utility, as it seems they are easily out maneuvered in this current meta. Also, it loses effectiveness the higher the user's pilot skill is, so it would make lower pilot skill generic pilots more viable in competitive play.

If anything, I could see something where you can't decloak if the template would cross obstacles or ships. It'd make it a little easier to block them, without being a severe nerf.

My suggestion:

Advanced cloaking device: At the end of a combat phase in which you perform an attack, you may perform a free cloak action.

Id like to see an ion bomb as well as a stress bomb. This is no specific counter to whisper, but can be used to shut down phantoms. A ioned/stressed phantom is easier to kill.

To the original question: "Design something that would threaten Whisper's top-tier status"

Here is what I would design: I would take a few recognized top tier players (world champions and such), have them write an article about how they use their favorite fleet in conjunction with proper positionning, asteroid placements, etc to kill phantoms, followed by concrete examples. I would then post them on FFG's website.

That's the only thing I would design. Seriously, I'm willing to bet that half of the losses against Phantoms or fat Hans are due to people having only a fuzzy idea of what they should do instead of having a concrete plan of "this is how I defeat my opponent with my list".

Thankfully the power creep will weaken the fat turrets hold on the meta. I don't see autothrusters being this meta changing ability people are trying to make it out to be but I do see the advance fix as a turret buster. There is just no way a fat falcon can weather 12-16 hits a turn and deal enough damage to 4 ships with 5 hull with 3 evade each. However interceptors and phantoms will fly circles around the advance so all is good again.

Some kind of 4 attack, range 2-3 cannon, that costs about 7 points.

I didn't design these, I kind of "borrowed" them from someone else.

I didn't design these, I kind of "borrowed" them from someone else.

There's also Vader(crew) for the Empire if you're borrowing things