... Yes, I was hoping to get the basis for that opinion.

TRC is solid, but definitely not overpriced. It comes at a pretty major cost to your defenses. Ackbar is fine. Double arc>Ackbar with the exception of an AFII gunnery team. I will grant you APTs are undercosted by a point or two.

TRC is solid, but definitely not overpriced. It comes at a pretty major cost to your defenses. Ackbar is fine. Double arc>Ackbar with the exception of an AFII gunnery team. I will grant you APTs are undercosted by a point or two.

We should get over assumptions regarding Muff2ns opinion on points cost of particular cards. His idea to have point values printed in lists rather than on each individual card does have a point, though. It would allow to rebalance stuff at later stages, or to adjust earlier waves to some designs of future waves. Although FFG won't change the system at this point, I think the advantages are obvious.

We should get over assumptions regarding Muff2ns opinion on points cost of particular cards. His idea to have point values printed in lists rather than on each individual card does have a point, though. It would allow to rebalance stuff at later stages, or to adjust earlier waves to some designs of future waves. Although FFG won't change the system at this point, I think the advantages are obvious.

The disadvantages aren't insignificant, either.

What happens when they update the costs a couple days before a tournament I'm going to?

I show up with a list that is all out of whack because a couple of my cards changed points.

That already happens with tournament rules and FAQ releases, this is just one more thing that will change without some people knowing, except it has an even bigger effect.

FFG is not going to micro-manage game design by leaving everything in a perpetual state of open endedness. It just isn't how thier design process works. They will regress gross imbalances in the sense of overpowered things, but they won't make large scale tweaks.

We should get over assumptions regarding Muff2ns opinion on points cost of particular cards. His idea to have point values printed in lists rather than on each individual card does have a point, though. It would allow to rebalance stuff at later stages, or to adjust earlier waves to some designs of future waves. Although FFG won't change the system at this point, I think the advantages are obvious.

The disadvantages aren't insignificant, either.

What happens when they update the costs a couple days before a tournament I'm going to?

I show up with a list that is all out of whack because a couple of my cards changed points.

That already happens with tournament rules and FAQ releases, this is just one more thing that will change without some people knowing, except it has an even bigger effect.

Well, many other TTGs go the way Muff2n was proposing, and they manage to get around this disadvantage somehow. I would also not expect too frequent changes to point costs in this (solely hypothetical) SW:A lists, as point costs have already gone a long way of playtesting before the release. It would most likely happen in advance to a new wave release, to align previous waves with it - and one could expect that FFG would broadcast the update, and would leave a gap between uploading the new rules and declaring them as the official rules for tournaments.

We should get over assumptions regarding Muff2ns opinion on points cost of particular cards. His idea to have point values printed in lists rather than on each individual card does have a point, though. It would allow to rebalance stuff at later stages, or to adjust earlier waves to some designs of future waves. Although FFG won't change the system at this point, I think the advantages are obvious.

The disadvantages aren't insignificant, either.

What happens when they update the costs a couple days before a tournament I'm going to?

I show up with a list that is all out of whack because a couple of my cards changed points.

That already happens with tournament rules and FAQ releases, this is just one more thing that will change without some people knowing, except it has an even bigger effect.

Well, many other TTGs go the way Muff2n was proposing, and they manage to get around this disadvantage somehow. I would also not expect too frequent changes to point costs in this (solely hypothetical) SW:A lists, as point costs have already gone a long way of playtesting before the release. It would most likely happen in advance to a new wave release, to align previous waves with it - and one could expect that FFG would broadcast the update, and would leave a gap between uploading the new rules and declaring them as the official rules for tournaments.

May I point out that, even though Wave 2 is Official for Tournaments now, with a 400pt List Build, we do not yet have the MoV tables to enable that...

That's one of the problems involved - timeliness of updates. Wave 2 and 400pts was legal upon release in North America, but what will actually empower that has lagged behind...

Now, imagine that was points costs, too...

I've had stuff errata'd right before a tournament - not fun. I'd prefer FFG not play that way either. They've got a fantastic game design team with a lot of experience - I trust their judgement.

Well, I do fear they will develop this like they have with X-Wing. Most everything you buy will be pretty obsolete for competitive play in about two years. Then a year after that they will have upgrade cards that boost the old ships up to the current power creep level, but you'll have to buy the current ships to get the cards to help your old ones since FFG won't sell packs of upgrade cards. And the ships in Armada cost a lot more money than X-Wing fighters!

I'm not going to try to get into competitive play with this one.

I've had stuff errata'd right before a tournament - not fun. I'd prefer FFG not play that way either. They've got a fantastic game design team with a lot of experience - I trust their judgement.

I think that's more how you administrate a tournament though. In my world, the proper way to run a tournament is also to post which "version" of the rules you're running it with. Allowing last minute erratas or FAQ updates is just a poor way to run a tournament.

Obviously, this is barring something truly game breaking. But if that's a concern, you're probably not a playing a game that can be considered ready for competitive play.

Well, I do fear they will develop this like they have with X-Wing. Most everything you buy will be pretty obsolete for competitive play in about two years. Then a year after that they will have upgrade cards that boost the old ships up to the current power creep level, but you'll have to buy the current ships to get the cards to help your old ones since FFG won't sell packs of upgrade cards. And the ships in Armada cost a lot more money than X-Wing fighters!

I'm not going to try to get into competitive play with this one.

Too many people to reply to to wrote everything. But to answer some points:

Yes my initial feeling on those wave 2 cards is that they are under costed. This was agreeing with OP. But I totally accept both that I could be wrong and it's too early to say. Please don't get hung up on my butt hurt sounding comment.

I imaging the points tweaking thing would be done with a very light touch. Like only when a new wave is released. And yes it's because I don't like what happened in X wing. FFG have great designers. I play many of their games and love them. But no one can release lots of cards and get them all right first time.

I wouldn't necessarily change anything yet. Who knows what wave two holds? Though I expect people would agree that if you reduced point defence by one point you would still never see it played. I deliberately chose the VSD as my points example because a one point movement here is fairly insignificant.

And about power creep. If you accept that not all cards are equal, say they are all drawn from a normal distribution and only the best cards are played. As time goes on, more and more cards will be significantly better than the average. At tournaments the old average cards will see less use.

That's not actually power creep. Or at least, that's not what designers refer to as power creep. Power creep is where a card breaks from the power curve and forces every other card to be designed around it until a new power curve results. Players drifting towards the most powerful cards is just normal metagame behavior.

Relevant Video

Regarding APT specifically: If you look at it in terms of Engineering Points required to mitigate the extra damage compared to ACM, they both seem to fall on the same curve. Now, we'd need more missiles with crit effects to get a real curve, but as it stands their efficiency is as close as it can be at their point values.

Well, many other TTGs go the way Muff2n was proposing, and they manage to get around this disadvantage somehow.

None of the games I've played do. They may not have the point cost printed on card of some sort, but they also don't have them on a PDF. They have them in fairly expensive books that you have to buy to play the game.

Not having to spend $30-70 on a new codex every year or so is one of the nice things about FFG games. Not having to spend $30-70 for a codex for every faction I might play is another one.

It also goes against FFG's concept of everything you need is in the box.