Except it wouldn't be just one die. There would be a range of dice and additional complexity. We've done this in other games. It detracts from the simplicity and elegance of this game. And completely destroys any balance. How many years would it take to rebalance all of it to an approximation of where it is now (not saying it is perfect, but it ain't bad).

Yes, it's adding one roll. But that added roll, that added stat, would have a lot of ramifications in regards to it's impact.

It completely changes the landscape and valuation associated with the game and would require revamp of the upgrade system to accommodate. It would also be a significantly harder system to design, balance, and involve new players in.

aye, the complexity of warmachine has nothing to do with rolling twice to attack (it's trying to remember all those crazy interactions and that even the basic units have like 5-6 special abilities )

I don't think anyone already playing this game and who has already learned to maneuver their squadrons around each other, enemies, and obstructions as well as thinking ahead of the opponent and managing the several match-ups will have any problem adjusting to a different set of 2 dice (rolling to hit and damage, rather than hit and green dice)

the question of the necessity of said revision is far more relevant

the simplicity of x-wing is quite appreciable (though "elegant" is some bull, green dice are about as elegant as the snot they're colored after )

Except it wouldn't be just one die. There would be a range of dice and additional complexity. We've done this in other games. It detracts from the simplicity and elegance of this game. And completely destroys any balance. How many years would it take to rebalance all of it to an approximation of where it is now (not saying it is perfect, but it ain't bad).

umm no.

The same attack dice we use now would be used, it would simply be rolled twice (if you beat the green dice). That's legit all it's adding.

And as I said, I'm not an advocate for this to be added to the game, but I could see how it would work and balance everything a bit more.

I'm just saying the whole premise doesn't honestly make a ton of sense. How can something shooting a laser be more accurate than something else shooting a laser aside from pilot skill? There no recoil to shooting a beam of light. There's no air resistance to slow it down. You can't shoot a laser more slowly but harder or faster but softer, it's a beam of light...

Getting hit by a B Wing laser or an A Wing laser is still doing 1 laser of damage. B Wings just shoot more lasers on a target because they're slower. This makes sense if you think about the game as it is, a continuous space dog fight, the ships don't actually move, stop, shoot, move, stop, shoot, so to approximate the action they move at different speeds and can unload a different amount of laser at the enemy in the same time period.

I'm just saying the whole premise doesn't honestly make a ton of sense. How can something shooting a laser be more accurate than something else shooting a laser aside from pilot skill? There no recoil to shooting a beam of light. There's no air resistance to slow it down. You can't shoot a laser more slowly but harder or faster but softer, it's a beam of light...

Getting hit by a B Wing laser or an A Wing laser is still doing 1 laser of damage. B Wings just shoot more lasers on a target because they're slower. This makes sense if you think about the game as it is, a continuous space dog fight, the ships don't actually move, stop, shoot, move, stop, shoot, so to approximate the action they move at different speeds and can unload a different amount of laser at the enemy in the same time period.

I apologize in advance, nigel, for putting on my nerd hat

*ahem*

technically Star Wars "lasers" aren't actually lasers. They're blaster bolts, which are apparently bolts of super-heated somethings (almost plasma). According to star wars physics, they basically function like conventional munitions only cooler and color-coded for your convenience

different blasters have different sizes and different uses

"They're too small and they're evading our turbo-"lasers""

"We'll have to destroy them ship-to-ship."

now it's true that there still wouldn't be air resistance (dat space) but assuming that space physics matter at all in star wars (in the cold dark of space, no one can hear your awesome tie fighter noises), there's still the issue of relative speed. The slow ass B-wing is going to have trouble locking down the far more nimble craft in the game. Because the projectiles are not actually moving at the speed of light, they can be dodged and a B-wing's arc of fire can be raced past. By contrast, the B is going to pack a lot more firepower than most ships, given it was more of a gunship than a fighter.

An a-wing would instead pack less weaponry (not enough room on our little gnat-fighter) but would be fast enough or move precisely enough to catch the flightier ties, resulting in more accurate, less damaging shots.

a good way to introduce variety would be stuff like homing missiles being far more accurate (they home and all...) than conventional fire, giving missiles and torps an actual reason to exist and it'd also make stuff like autoblaster relevant (more accurate, less powerful) and HLC less of an obvious choice (more powerful, less accurate)

well, there's my super nerdy fluff justification for hypothetical gameplay mechanics

I wouldn't do a double roll. Thinking about it further, if I had to decouple (or at least decorrelate) accuracy and damage now, I'd do something vaguely similar to Imperial Assault. Still have one set of dice, but have two symbols on each face, an Accurary symbol (which cancels evades) and a damage symbol (which hits hull). Same speed little to no complexity increase in gameplay. You then have a few different dice colours, say red with a lot of hits but not many accuracy results, a blue with loads of accuracies but fewer damage symbols, a yellow with central values and then maybe a fourth one that's poor on both but has a higher crit chance. Which ones you roll are on the attack bar. The only increase in complexity in gameplay is grabbing the right colours, which a toddler could do.

That, or go for the evade mechanic. Reduce the probability of rolling evade significantly but make them total dodges: they cancel the whole attack. Then you make heavy weapons have high but singular dice rolls and rapid fire weapons roll lots of weaker attacks. That' probably more thematic than the above.

Let's be honest with ourselves though, they probably tried most the ideas we're suggesting here in initial development. By Wave I logic the system they've got worked best.

This conversation could bring back my idea of ordnance ignoring shields. The highly fast but fragile ship would be balanced out with the higher chance to evade a missile. Though, with the route Fantasy Flight have gone of trying to make ordnance more reliable, this could be over powered.

If ordnance had, say an orange die, that had more hits that would offset the regular cannons. Heck, secondary weapons in general could get a boost from that, which isn't always a great thing. But if the orange die had sides with two [boom] results, single [boom] results and only one side that had one [kaboom] it could have worked.

However adding in a new die type, as mentioned earlier, is a drastic change and would have to be done correctly. The way wiz kids did it is not it, where you get a better die for being in a tourney or buying it on eBay. It has to be optional, such as an upgrade for a single ship and only that ship has the enhanced laser canon modification : replace one red die with an orange one. 5 -7 ppints.

This has challenges all its own.

I still think an advanced x-wing/force awakens starter would be the best place to include a new die type, fluff wise it would show the progression of technology, have the above upgrade that most will buy anyway, so won't affect the tourney scene and would give us the new ships. The current T-65 x-wing should be slightly less powerful than the new T-70. Adding a new die type for the sequel ships COULD possibly work. The enhanced laser cannon mod I mentioned could be renamed armament retrofit to upgrade the older x-wing game models.

The advantages of a new die type, as proposed above, for the new ships keeps the dice pools relatively low while increasing the power of said ships in another way. Now the idea is not perfect, but would be the best way as I see it to introduce any type of new dice. Make the force awakens starter set a stand alone expansion of sorts. It is compatible but not required and has the advantage of separate branding for the new movie.

I'm just saying the whole premise doesn't honestly make a ton of sense. How can something shooting a laser be more accurate than something else shooting a laser aside from pilot skill? There no recoil to shooting a beam of light. There's no air resistance to slow it down. You can't shoot a laser more slowly but harder or faster but softer, it's a beam of light...

Getting hit by a B Wing laser or an A Wing laser is still doing 1 laser of damage. B Wings just shoot more lasers on a target because they're slower. This makes sense if you think about the game as it is, a continuous space dog fight, the ships don't actually move, stop, shoot, move, stop, shoot, so to approximate the action they move at different speeds and can unload a different amount of laser at the enemy in the same time period.

No recoil you say?

Also note that those anti-frigate turbolasers can't hit those Y-wings despite them staying almost completely still. Vader's TIE advanced has no such issues.

Star Wars fires plasma bolts. They're called blaster and laser cannons but they're shooting tibanna plasma, hence being able to see the bolts, hence recoil, and hence them travelling at visible speeds.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

More weak-suace. if that is correct then it is just stupid.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

More weak-suace. if that is correct then it is just stupid.

oh joe, you of all people I'd trust to be more optimistic

imo, the upgrade is absolute bonkers insane and will breathe new life into the Y. Think about it. Splitting a max of two damage into two separate attacks makes it far more difficult to defend against because it completely screws with token usage. for example, if fat han wants to c3po and evade an attack he'll only dodge one damage from the first TLT shot and stlill take the second to the face

of course, being a 2ndary weapon, both shots will also ignore the range 3 bonus

it alone will make the panic attack Y a joy to play, since the TLT allows the Y to double-tap enemies while keeping the turret advantage (with ICT, you'd need the title) which is kind of important when you have to ignore its 2 green maneuvers to acomplish much of anything and you're stuck using 2-hards to get back into the fight With TLT, you'll at least be able to contribute damage while you're busy swinging r3-a2 around to smack soontir.

EDIT: forgot to mention, your humble gold squaddie/thug with TLT is a mere 24 points

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

More weak-suace. if that is correct then it is just stupid.

oh joe, you of all people I'd trust to be more optimistic

imo, the upgrade is absolute bonkers insane and will breathe new life into the Y. Think about it. Splitting a max of two damage into two separate attacks makes it far more difficult to defend against because it completely screws with token usage. for example, if fat han wants to c3po and evade an attack he'll only dodge one damage from the first TLT shot and stlill take the second to the face

of course, being a 2ndary weapon, both shots will also ignore the range 3 bonus

it alone will make the panic attack Y a joy to play, since the TLT allows the Y to double-tap enemies while keeping the turret advantage (with ICT, you'd need the title) which is kind of important when you have to ignore its 2 green maneuvers to acomplish much of anything and you're stuck using 2-hards to get back into the fight With TLT, you'll at least be able to contribute damage while you're busy swinging r3-a2 around to smack soontir.

Oh see now with that additional info I say it is pretty good then.

I have not been keeping up with all of these (Might be true) detailes, just like I have been avoiding to much news on Episode 7.

On the other hand, it might be fun to try a variant in which some A - wings with +2 longbows go up against TIE bomber who have pole arms and flasks of flaming oil. Gotta try that tonight.

Well, yeah, A-wings *should* roll d12s for damage instead of d8s ...

Dice are a mediocre conflict resolution mechanism.

News at 11.

Dice are a mediocre conflict resolution mechanism.

News at 11.

Had FFG instituted sword and pistol duels instead it would have been so much better.

Dice are a mediocre conflict resolution mechanism.

News at 11.

Had FFG instituted sword and pistol duels instead it would have been so much better.

dice are, however, amazing conflict generators

Had FFG instituted sword and pistol duels instead it would have been so much better.

You mean lightsabers and blasters, but we get your drift.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

More weak-suace. if that is correct then it is just stupid.

It sounds odd the way it's phrased but it's in essence a two damage turret that's very likely to hit. It's good for killing agile ships that don't have much health but that doesn't translate into utter destruction versus Decimators. It's a very clever upgrade in my opinion.

cluster missile mechanics (multiple attacks) favor higher agility ships that can green dice your offense away

low agility ships and 0 agility ships will still take more damage overall, and their guaranteed defensive mechanics are severely mitigated by the fact that damage is split across two attacks. Since it's a turret, fat turrets also can't just trivially arc dodge it (not so fun when the bull's reserved ). Four of these babies will hopefully pick a fattie apart like a living thing thrown to the piranhas of the amazon

removing the range 3 bonus gives it utility against 3 agility, but auto-thrusters should shut it down unless its modified (hello Horton!)

cluster missile mechanics (multiple attacks) favor higher agility ships that can green dice your offense away

Because there's no damage cap on them. A Cluster Missile is more likely to hit than a single 3 dice attack, it's just that it's a six dice attack versus a Decimator. The damage capping on Twin Laser Turret is essential for making it an anti-agility weapon rather than a Cluster Missile Launcher that's better against low agility.

The extremely limited damage output means that while the TLT is much more likely to hit than a two dice attack would, it's still in damage terms a two dice attack. Sure, it'll hit a turret or a B-wing easily but they've got loads of health. A TIE interceptor has 3.

Essentially, what TLT does is deal a low-ish amount of damage that can get through damage cancellation. That's agility dice and fattery.

fattery shall henceforth be known as "blubber"

and I thought fatties smelled bad... on the outside

but yeah, the I still think the TLT will be money against fatties. Cutting through their defensive tech is already incredible, and while their mitigated damage seems limiting it is going

a.) stack up with other TLTs

b.) get flung from almost anywhere

I know a lot of people don't truly appreciate the idiocy of being able to fire outside your firing arc, and while TLTs are fine because they're damage capped and have a minimum range, you're probably going to get a lot more damage out of sustained TLT barrages than you would shooting at the empty space the fattie was occupying before it trivially boosted out of arc. Almost completely negating its maneuvers just like they do for the rest of the game is going to expose them right quick

B-wings will probably steamroll the ys, though, creative flying pending

the difficult will probably come from keeping the Ys alive from the Zs and soontir

Also, on the matter of HLC, people seem to think it's a mini turbolaser. A slow, powerful big gun.

Well, it's big and powerful but...

I figured that image would represent the autoblaster.

It's using the exact weapon pictured on the HLC card.

It's using the exact weapon pictured on the HLC card.

Wookieepedia actually has it as "Rapid-firing laser cannons (2)", no mention of heavy.

Strictly-speaking, cyclic rate in these cases is basically just a function of power plant (can it pump the cannons really fast AND do all the other stuff), and cooling (space SUCKS in this regard, without a decent radiator setup all the heat's just going to stay in the barrels and then it's bye-bye accuracy/RoF/gun)