New action idea for 1 attack die ships...

By Plainsman, in X-Wing

I came up with the following this morning after seeing Crabbock's thread.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/184126-1-attack-die-ships/

Action: Simultaneous Attack

Each ship with ATT 1 may use.

During combat all ships declaring Simultaneous Attack declare the same enemy ship as their target and roll ALL their attack dice as one Simultaneous Attack! The defender only rolls defense dice against a single attack no matter how many enemy ships are attacking. No further attacks may be performed by the ships declaring Simultaneous Attack.

Scenario: Four 1 att die ships are in Range 1 of an enemy ship and all four declare Simultaneous Attack. Each has 1 die for primary weapon and 1 for range 1 bonus!!! This is 8 attack dice in one strike!! It could be devastating, but its throwing everything at one ship all at once!

Four ships would be about max, I would think. But if there was a swarm of 7-8 of these two to three attacks per turn would be feasible. I would think a SA at range three could be used on approach at ranges 2-3 throwing 7-8 dice at one ship hoping for an early kill!

What do you think? Thoughts on cleaning it up/fleshing it out?

So...if 1 atk die ships (HWKs) get Simultaneous Attack...then for what good, non-BS reason would 2 atk TIEs NOT get to use such an obvious Swarming tactic?

One problem would be on your wallet, because you'd want to have 4+ of this particular ship type. Another problem would be keeping all of your tiny swarm ships pointed at the same enemy ship. What if ONE ship is range 1, and another is range 3? do you ignore the defender's range bonus for each ship?

What if you have 8, can you do 4 to one guy and 4 to another?

From a fluff or even a real world dog fight stand point this actually makes more sense than the current game mecanics of being able to defend over and over with no penlty, but it just doesn't quite work in the game.

You could simulate something like this though through an upgrade.

Distraction

EPT, 3 points

After performing an attack, reduce the defender's agility by 1 to a minimum of 0 until the end of this game round.

Now everyone else attacking the same target gets an easier shot.

Good questions!

I was envisioning something like pilotless drones esp making use of this, hence to make life simple, all ships using Simultaneous Attack could either have to be at the same range...or the defender gets one extra die if any attacking ship is at range 3...there is a couple of ways of looking at it and either would work. I like the second option best! Even giving the Defender an extra die for EACH attacker at Range 3 would probably work...

Yes, if somebody had a Swarm of say 8 of these ships, then they could use them in "groups" with each group performing a Simultaneous Attack. They would have to declare their target as an Action, so they are committed to their attack early on! If two groups declared the same ship as a target and the first group killed it, the second would have no attack that round.

I would say a token set, similar to a TL would be used to identify this.

A swarm of these would be more "swarmy" than our current swarms because they are dependent on each other to be effective!

Im actually liking more of the mechanics associated with this the more I think about it!

Edited by Plainsman