Emperor Palpatine

Lambda-shuttle only Imp. only

Crew Cost: 15 (10)

All friendly ships may spend their stress token as if it was a focus.

Decrease the cost of this card by 5 in a standard size match.

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Okay. Am I crazy? Maybe.

Fluff: Portrays Palpatine's Battle Meditation. Gets better with bigger battles. Portrays Palpatine's excessive need for micro-management of everything. Force abilities tend to involve focus.

Why stress = focus?

The other thing I wanted to try was: "All friendly ships may always change [eyeballs] to [hits] or [dodges] when attacking or defending."

This however is really really powerful and scary. If a focus is = 2 points, this is like giving out 5 focuses a turn or more, depending on number of ships and attacks.

It also gets exceedingly difficult to balance in Epic games, as it has no range limitation and the Lambda can simply sit protected behind a huge wall of stuff.

Stress = focus is actually in a way less powerful: It only works WHEN you have a stress. This means for swarms: K-turns only. For Interceptors, its exceptionally powerful and wonderful. For Vader, he now is able to K-turn, the one thing he HATES to do now.

For larger ships it gains less efficacy as you're taking less ships.

Defenders will LOVE this. Bombers too will LOVE this. It gives them great damage potential in tons of area that they could not move into before because of stress!

It gives the Lambda great damage and maneuverability! But, only if your list is built for it. At 10 points its not going to fit on every Lambda.

Let's break this thing:

Can you? Here are my builds that I think will benefit. Note that most of these ships could use a new technique or a literal buff:

1. The exceedingly fluffy Kagi-driven Shuttle + RGs. Amazing fluff. Incredible reason to take RGs now in this meta: The RGs gain huge amounts of maneuverability with Bst, BR and Focus each turn. Or great survivability: Bst/BR, Evade, Focus. Kagi gains great maneuverability. List is restrictive enough to not allow for too much else.

The funnest part is that gives the Interceptors their full mobility. What a wonderful feeling to have! It increases the skill to play the game, while making it feel more fun too.

The swarm only gets the bonus upon K-turning. This allows for death-blossoming, whites after reds and using the full extent of the ties maneuverability for blocking. (See TeamCovenant for Death Blossom, a Phantom trapping anti-counter).

5. Lambda Soontir Whisper. On second thought, this one is probably okay: It looks broken. Phantoms gain a slight edge when K-turning. This is however at the cost of 10 points. I could see this being a problem still. At least you can't take Buzzsaw PLUS Soontir Auto Stealth. That would be utter broken.

I haven't quite thought of how this will work in Epic, but as long as its not exceptionally broken, it should be okay.

15 points.

Still has to be put on a flimsy Lambda, though this Lambda can hang in the back exceptionally well.

The idea in Epic is that it should be an extremely good idea, almost always taken if you field a Lambda, but not so utterly broken its an auto-required-include.

At this current time, I don't think it is. The need to actually GET a stress stops it from being mass spammed every turn.

At 20 points, it could probably still be an ok card, but starts to get expensive.

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See its not worth JUST 10 or 15 points, as you do need to either pay for ships or upgrades that give you regular stress.

Tie fighters don't get stress until they K-turn. Then, well, they're pretty vicious.

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Being able to K-turn or hard Lambda turn after turn might be an issue. But I think the K-turns will be the worst, still it should be okay for the 10 point cost.

Another option is "All friendly ships may change [eyeballs] to [hit] or [dodge] when attacking or defending if they have a stress token."

This requires still clearing the stress with a green afterward.

However, this should reduce the cost to a 7 or 8 point.

Edit. This gives all imperial ships with a k turn a white k turn. Not good.

The problem is that it should work with stress to improve maneuvering ability but also not do this: completely unbalance all the dials. Or make you fly everywhere with stress. So. Hmm.

I think gaining a TL right before stress would work but would also be kind of silly. Doesn't feel very cool and force like. Also reduces cost probably down to 7 or 8 again.

Spending stress tokens as focus would let you dump infinite stress every time you attack or defend, as you could spend one to change 0 results. You could also fire missiles with deadeye and stress.... I'd look at a more Keyan Farlander type wording.

Why not just word it so you gain a focus token when you gain a stress. So you have the focus to spend, but still need to get rid of the stress normally.

You've already done a good job of figuring out why this doesn't work, so just set it aside in the "ideas that need a lot more work" pile and find something else to think about.

Also, in case you haven't seen th speculations, it's widely believed that the Raider will bring a Palpatine upgrade card to the game.

What if it was something more like:

At the start of the combat phase, assign 1 focus token to each ship. If emperor palpatine is removed from play, assign one stress token instead.

I would prefer some kind of self harming thing to reflect the double-edged power of the darkside

Once per round, when attacking or defending, a friendly ship may suffer one damage/stress to [insert glitterstim here, minus the stress]

I always think palpatine as a 'crew' card is a bit silly.

To me i think he'd be better as a card you pay for but is not assigned to any one ship.

if hes 'used' (and like leia, hes one use only) in the deployment phase you could redeploy your fleet before the first turn.

This would simulate his ability to mislead and misdirect. Like getting the entire rebel fleet into a trap at endor while his own fleet was concealed.

I just dont see the emperor turning up to a five ship skirmish but i could see you paying to have his 'influence'.

Now I'm fairly new to xwing, have only played a handful of games (and this is my first post here) so I'm not that experienced... However, I believe that perhaps the emperor should have a special "named ship" card for the shuttle. According to the book "Star Wars the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Ships" it says, in the description of the Lambda shuttle:

"The Emperor himself used a highly modified Lambda shuttle which was believed to be equipped with a cloaking device. It is know that the Emperor's top aides, military officers, and operatives, including Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor, had access to heavily armed Lambda shuttles. These special shuttles carried secured HoloNet transceivers, allowing instantaneous communication with Imperial City from any point in the Empire."

I don't know what the benefit could be from the communication thing, however, a cloaking device would make for a rather fun shuttle, especially if it was a little heavier armed!

You've already done a good job of figuring out why this doesn't work, so just set it aside in the "ideas that need a lot more work" pile and find something else to think about.

Also, in case you haven't seen th speculations, it's widely believed that the Raider will bring a Palpatine upgrade card to the game.

The Emperor is a badass. As such, he should be able to tempt opposing player's crew card upgrades over to the dark side.

Oh hell yes. HAHAHA.

Yeah. After the Ozzel, Needa and Tarkin spoils though, i AM NOT HAPPY with current big wig imp design. its not going well imo.

Ozzel I think is cost efficient. Just sheerly boring.

What about something cheaper

Say

Emperor Palpatine 2 Points

During the combat phase, 1 friendly ship may receive a focus token, then receive one stress token.

Would give you other options with soontir fel for EPT's, and would allow captain Yorr to take the stress instead.

Would make firing munitions easier as you can lock then get a focus.