I just got to play my first two games today and am not quite sure what to think. My friend and I used my starter set and went with 180 points. Since a lot of the objectives seemed to refer to multiple ships, or not make sense with the now ship count, we just decided to have a straight up battle with 180 points with all the debris and asteroids out on the table.

I ran a VSD II with Tarkin, Gunnery Team, and the enhanced side weaponry, along with Howlrunner and 3 Ties. My friend had Dodonna on his Pride, and the Escort Frigate with enhanced fighter capacity and three sets of X-wings. In the second game he dropped a useless upgrade to get Luke in there. Both times I sort of got the Ties to at least tie up his X-wings so they couldn't focus on the VSD and by the time all my fighters were dead I'd done massive damage to or blown up one of his ships without him doing much except whittling down my shields.

I read about people having trouble with the VSD, but if you slow-roll it does really well, and Tarkin was giving me a ton of flexibility. It seemed like if I decided to just do a lot of repairing, I could redirect and heal most of what he would throw at me, even if he managed to focus on my rear arc for a while. So our thought is that the Rebels just don't have the firepower to really take that thing down yet. Hopefully the Assault Frigate will even things up. But what have other people found? If you're a Rebel, what did you do to win? The objectives will change it a lot as well, but they just don't seem to fit that point format either.

Check out this post here:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F142247-rebel-tactics%2F

I did a write-up on Rebel tactics. It's been fairly well-received. Rebels in this game have an odd learning curve.

In my current experience, I would say that both sides have a decent shot at winning using only the starter box (but not the learning scenario). What it seems to come down to is that both sides have very specific tactics that they need to adhere to. The VSD is a juggernaut that wants to wade into the capital ships one by one at as close range as possible. In the meantime, the VSD needs to issue enough squadron orders to clear out the X-wings or the bombing runs will become a nightmare.

The rebels want to engage at range with the frigate while the corvette initiates combos (Dodonna with Dodonna's Pride is potentially brutal) and helps murder ties. If the rebels don't work in tandem they get blown apart. If the rebels can clear out the tie fighters, the X-Wings will do some moderately heavy lifting against the VSD.

Thanks, I'll take a look! So the corvette with all blue dice for accuracy isn't the best combo then? The thought was that it would work well with Dodonna, but the thing only triggered once in two games and I was able to enough X-wings out of the way that they couldn't all do their thing. Does 4 Ties and 3 X-wing squads sound about right, or should the Rebel pass on some upgrades to just get more squadrons on the field? It also hurt that I had two redirect tokens so you'd need two accuracy results on one attack to keep that from spreading it all out.

I use the Covette with all blue and Overload Pulse to neuter the VSD's defenses, initiating the combo. I use that particular one because it's cheaper and has more dice with which to trigger the blue crit. Plus, blue range on the corvette isn't as bad as it seems. Forcing the VSD to either take nasty hits or discard its defense tokens is always a plus if you're forced to duel it. Like in all competitive games, if you can force your opponent into making a bad decision you've got the upper hand.

Hmm, maybe it was partly just bad dice with the corvette then. With the X-wings, did you find that keeping them together with the Nebulon B to help with the Ties worked better, or have you had luck trying to get them around the side and past the Ties? I think we didn't get the crit results to trigger the first game at all, and since you can't combine the Overload Pulse with Dodonna we dropped it to try to upgrade other stuff.

Well best we can conclude at this time is that the Starter box issue is not so much balance issue but more of a learning curve issue. The Rebels are harder to play.

The ships that come with the box are of totally different design and function. If you throw the CR-90 and Nebulon at a VSD you are giving the Imperial player an easy win. Direct combat is the Imperial's strength and the VSD is the most hard hitting ship until the ISD gets here. Even the Mark II can not joust a VSD, it has a higher movement and yaw and it needs to use that to flank a VSD to have a chance.

This game is going to be less of a "let's punch each other" while we fly around each other game like X-Wing, it is a Management game where combat is important but positioning and well timed orders are going to win games, not the number of dice and Arc Dodging.

And when Wave 1 hits a lot of the unbalanced feel will go away.

You aren't playing the real game just utilizing the Core Set contents, so balanced or not it doesn't matter. It isn't something that needs to be or is meant to be balanced.

Ive noticed that right now its an uphill battle for the rebs. The key seems to be getting fighter superiority. Once you clear out the Ties the X-wings can put a hurt on a VSD.

Hmm, maybe it was partly just bad dice with the corvette then. With the X-wings, did you find that keeping them together with the Nebulon B to help with the Ties worked better, or have you had luck trying to get them around the side and past the Ties? I think we didn't get the crit results to trigger the first game at all, and since you can't combine the Overload Pulse with Dodonna we dropped it to try to upgrade other stuff.

I turtle the X-wings with the escort frigate until the turn where they're going to be in range of the VSD, then burn a Nav token to bounce out of front arc while doing a squadron dial. With x-wings vs swarmed TIEs, you MUST give the x-wings initiative over the TIEs, or the Rebel squadrons will die. Gang up, and kill as many as possible. Your Nebby will then shoot at the TIEs to clean them up after the X-wings had their way. Takes some timing, but I've found that while there's still a lot of TIEs around, the Nebby is better as an anti-fighter than anti-capital ship. On-two punch to victory!

I'm not sure if I have seen a Miniatures game this popular out of the gate. It does come on the heels of X-Wing which took a year to get up there. And when I first started X-Wing you had Tie fighters and X-Wings. The balance question went back and forth between my friends. By Wave 2 things got interesting.

I just hope we can avoid the Fat Han and Whisper issues so no Erratas are needed.

Of the games I've played so far I've won as the Empire consistently and I think my play is getting better, but I've also seen 3 different people play as Rebels now and they have all done the same thing for their losses, which is not utilize their "fleet". As in they send out the fighters on their own, and want to use the capital ships to do their work. I also noticed how they would yaw the Nebulon, presenting its side arc for way too many shots. So the last time I played I went Rebs and played based on my observations. I used the Escort Frigate to escort, lol. The I is the Nebulon, ^ are X-Wings, ^x are TIEs and V is the VSD:

V ^xxx

I ^^^

The VSD was to the left of the X and I used it to screen the fighters. I also used the Nebulon in a jousting maneuver, where it kept its front arc towards the VSD and on the turn when it got close to fire into my sides, I sped up to shoot past it to present my rear arc as fast as possible. My fighters then jumped over the frigate to engage the VSD, once the TIEs were destroyed by my Nebulon. It felt weird being close in to the VSD but always opting for maximum anti-fighter attacks over shots on the VSD, but it was the right call. In the mean time my corvette wrapped around the board and got to his rear arc with the Dodonna's Pride and my intact X-Wings to pile on shots. The game ended by rounds, but I cleared out his TIES so it could have went off points for a win. In the end, it would still be hard to say who could win with his massive repairs and still being able to shred my ships, but that's not the goal of the game, so not really a big deal.

So it's more about the commander, than the tools given to them. The core is fine as it is. I'm sure the year or so of testing they put into the game is how they came to these numbers. :-p

...It also hurt that I had two redirect tokens...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think that was possible. Is there not a restriction on having multiples of the same token?

...It also hurt that I had two redirect tokens...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think that was possible. Is there not a restriction on having multiples of the same token?

Close, you can only spend one token of a type on a single attack.

The victory can brace and redirect a single attack from the front arc of the nebulon, and exhaust the other redirect on a different attack.

Edit...thought you were talking about command tokens.

Vsd does have 2 redirect defensive tokens.

So thing I was wondering about that: we played it like the accuracy results pointed at a specific token, but could it actually refer to a particular token type? That would have made things a lot better in terms of locking down the VSD's defenses.

Also, we're talking about the defense tokens on the ship card, not the command tokens.

No, its an individual token not a type. So you would need 2 accuracy to cancel both vsd redirects.

I think I may be confusing the two, as well. (Defense tokens and Command tokens) Thanks for the clarifications.

Of the games I've played so far I've won as the Empire consistently and I think my play is getting better, but I've also seen 3 different people play as Rebels now and they have all done the same thing for their losses, which is not utilize their "fleet". As in they send out the fighters on their own, and want to use the capital ships to do their work. I also noticed how they would yaw the Nebulon, presenting its side arc for way too many shots. So the last time I played I went Rebs and played based on my observations. I used the Escort Frigate to escort, lol. The I is the Nebulon, ^ are X-Wings, ^x are TIEs and V is the VSD:

V ^xxx

I ^^^

The VSD was to the left of the X and I used it to screen the fighters. I also used the Nebulon in a jousting maneuver, where it kept its front arc towards the VSD and on the turn when it got close to fire into my sides, I sped up to shoot past it to present my rear arc as fast as possible. My fighters then jumped over the frigate to engage the VSD, once the TIEs were destroyed by my Nebulon. It felt weird being close in to the VSD but always opting for maximum anti-fighter attacks over shots on the VSD, but it was the right call. In the mean time my corvette wrapped around the board and got to his rear arc with the Dodonna's Pride and my intact X-Wings to pile on shots. The game ended by rounds, but I cleared out his TIES so it could have went off points for a win. In the end, it would still be hard to say who could win with his massive repairs and still being able to shred my ships, but that's not the goal of the game, so not really a big deal.

So it's more about the commander, than the tools given to them. The core is fine as it is. I'm sure the year or so of testing they put into the game is how they came to these numbers. :-p

Lets be honest here. There are ALOT of people who see bomber on the xwing card and just assume that xwings can solo star destroyers. Either that or they played the pc game back in the day...

As a kid I was so proud to discover those blind-spots on the ISD, and so sad when even flying into the hangar of a Nebulon B didn't work.

I've tried and had 0 luck against the Imperials either I take out the Tie's and die to the VSD or I focus on the VSD and do nothing to the Tie's.

I find most Imperial players now are keeping the Tie's up as a wall before the VSD as the VSD out guns both ships. I get some more luck if I can get behind him with both ships but that doesn't happen too often unless I'm going speed3 and then the xwings fall behind.

Keep in mind that at range 3 a frigate shoots just as hard as the VSD. The trick is maneuvering so that you have a shot on their side or rear arc.