Second Half of the Card (in my dreams);

If you assign a tractor beam token to a ship with a tractor beam token or an ion token, assign a stress token to that ship.

I don't think you can really judge this until we know the full card text. Only half the card is even visible at the moment.

The card is visible it is just what does the tractor beam tokens do. Still judging on the card it is a 3 firepower cannon that does little or in this case no damage and historically they have never been that good with the only exception being the ion cannon.

Now sure the tractor beam token supplement card is only half visible but critical information is revealed such as what is done at each of the phases. In the combat phase it reduces the agility by 1 to a minimum of 0 and end all tokens are discarded. The only thing that could be hidden is probably clarification on what multiple tokens do or maybe how large ships are affected such as requiring two tokens which all disappear at the end phase.

Sure we don't know everything but there is more than enough to get a good picture of what is happening. I think this is going to be more of a niche card instead of a top strategy. It could be used as a whale harpoon killing B-wings and YT-1300 but not too well on Decimators or the upcoming VCX Ghost for obvious reasons.

The rules for Tractor Beam tokens are only half visible. At present, I'd agree that they're not that great if you're giving up a 3-dice attack to use it. However, if they also add a secondary effect that helps attackers other than the Defender/D, then they may still be useful on things like B-Wings, Aggressors, Firesprays and Lambda Shuttles.

The only thing that could be hidden is probably clarification on what multiple tokens do or maybe how large ships are affected such as requiring two tokens which all disappear at the end phase.

I assure you, that is not "the only thing" that could be hidden. But even "if" it is, the Tractor Beam still has a place since it is only 1 point. At that price, you don't have to build a list around it. Just put your spare point into it and use it if it helps at the time.

For one point it will see a lot of use.it does not seem like much but if you say hit a yt with it and you then fire with several more ships you may end up doing a lot more damage then the damage missed from the original attack. On leatin (m3a) it may do some serious work.

We really do need a full card read and some time to try it out.

Didn't we initially hear the same kind of things about TLT?

I think before you decide that it's broken, you see how it works with all the new stuff coming out.

TLT was already decided to be good before it was out. Anyone that said TLT would not be good is eating their own words. Still I don't understand how anyone would have thought that TLT would not make top meta.

Now this is not premature because when tractor beam first came out we did not know anything about tractor beam tokens and how they work. Well we do now, they reduce the agility by 1 and are discarded in the end phase. The fact that it is a 0 damage attack is something that makes it not too effective in the meta. Tractor beam alone will never work, that's why you need at least the title. But it works better with more ships firing at the defender after a tractor beam token is placed on them.

Is it bad? Well I don't think I would throw it in with the proton torpedoes and concussion missiles yet but this is not good by itself. Putting this on a Blue Squadron or OGP is worthless unless the rest of your list is 2 pilot skill or less. Plus any tractor beam attack from that list is already a 3 damage attack that is negated as tractor beams do 0 damage.

Is there a way to make this work well that is what the second part of my post is. But yeah it is not looking to hot.

It is true that the tractor beam is essentially a 0 damage attack. However, it can be a great force multiplier. I am not sure if the math will support this, but from a casual glance it would seem that the potential damage the rest of your list will be doing due to the defender's decreased agility would offset any damage lost from the tractor beam carrier.

I'd say it depends on what your list looks like. Swarms will benefit the most from this; think in terms of how many fewer green dice your opponent is going to throw over time. If you have a tractor beam in a brobots list, you can only affect the one other attack that you make. Your enemy rolls 1 less green die.

But with a tractor+swarm, your opponent rolls 1 less die each time they defend, and could roll far fewer over the course of that round. Say you have Laetin Asheara w/tractor and 6 binayre pirates, flying against a palpmobile list. If you manage to land the tractor on the shuttle before losing Laetin and have shots with all your ships, you could be stealing 6 green dice from your opponent's hand over the course of the round. That's nothing to sneeze at!

Vessery with /D title flying with /fo miniswarm is gonna be rough. The Defender title means. It giving up that 3 attack primary.

with the tie/D title you make the tractor beam shot, then shoot with the primary.

It was a typo, I was trying to say that yes he defender doesn't give up anything to use the tractor beam. It's almost like it's made for it! Who woulda thunk it.

So what does it do for MistHunter besides act as a 1pt tax? Curiouser and curiouser.

So what does it do for MistHunter besides act as a 1pt tax? Curiouser and curiouser.

Achieve maximum thematics?

Also: obviously eats up the cannon slot, so not just a point tax as well as an opportunity cost. They want to make sure you REALLY want that barrel roll.

Tractor Beam seems to be a pretty hard counter for Fat Han, from the looks of it.

Every build I think of Tractor Beam in, I think Ion Cannon is just worlds scarier if you have the points. The hard part of killing ships with swarms is getting them all in arc. Ion Cannon is the medicine.

The effect with an ion cannon is delayed, though; and not cumulative. Tractor beam is instantly effective and cumulative (which is probably only ever going to matter in multiple defender builds). Both are good swarm force multipliers, but I think these differences are significant enough to really distinguish the two.

The thing is once you get the ion token or 2 the ion effect will take place. On the tractor beam you need a follow up attack. If you do not have a follow up attack? Then why did you use tractor beam in the first place. Sure it is only one point but again 1 point is a great thing to take off for the initiative bid.

Tractor Beam seems to be a pretty hard counter for Fat Han, from the looks of it.

If only Fat Han was still part of the meta.

B-Wings however ...

I wish I could put a cannon on Torkhil Mux.

It's possible to also see use on Brobots (idea just popped into my head, so no math atm): run FCS, HLC and Tractor Beam. Shoot tractor beam at a high agi target with first brobot. If you miss, B's ability triggers and now you have a HLC shot with Target Lock. If you hit, 2nd bot gets a HLC off at -1 agi. Combine with crackshot and you might one-shot Soontirs

Can we wait for the full rules card before we declare whether or not an upgrade is DOA?

We actually know pretty well what it does, but we see only 2 bullets of a list and there might be more. Or not!

My tip is that it perhaps as a 3rd point it won't work on large ships... Would make sense as tacking a sort of gravitational beam onto an object with more mass than yourself could potentially be a bad idea. Okay it's Star wars and we are talking about intuitive space physics here at best... But in that setzing, it could make sense!

Can we wait for the full rules card before we declare whether or not an upgrade is DOA?

We actually know pretty well what it does, but we see only 2 bullets of a list and there might be more. Or not!

My tip is that it perhaps as a 3rd point it won't work on large ships... Would make sense as tacking a sort of gravitational beam onto an object with more mass than yourself could potentially be a bad idea. Okay it's Star wars and we are talking about intuitive space physics here at best... But in that setzing, it could make sense!

By way of example...

Rexler Brath - TIE/D, Lone Wolf, Tractor Beam

Academy Pilot x 5

Brath shoots at Dash Rendar with the Tractor Beam. Hits. Reduces Dash's agility by one.

Brath shoots again with his primary weapon, against Dash's reduced agility.

ALL FIVE ACADEMY TIES attack Dash, also against his reduced agility.

In this instance, the Tractor Beam may not have caused any direct damage itself, but it has potentially contributed towards up to six points of damage on Dash, due to reducing his agility against six separate attacks.

Now you tell me - is that worth one point?

Of course it is. I never had any doubt about that Gecko!

Can we wait for the full rules card before we declare whether or not an upgrade is DOA?

We actually know pretty well what it does, but we see only 2 bullets of a list and there might be more. Or not!

My tip is that it perhaps as a 3rd point it won't work on large ships... Would make sense as tacking a sort of gravitational beam onto an object with more mass than yourself could potentially be a bad idea. Okay it's Star wars and we are talking about intuitive space physics here at best... But in that setzing, it could make sense!

Actually, I think it has more to do with thrust rather than mass. If the object initiating the tractor beam can develop enough thrust to overcome the mass (and thrust if it's a ship actively resisting) of the pulled object, then its own size shouldn't matter too much.

Okay, i am not going to argue about SciFi space physics with anyone XD.

But then a larger ship with more mass needs more thrust to get over inertia anyway. So the Falcon should have more thrust than a Defender too!

Doesn't the Mist Hunter have a rule card about double cannons? Firing off two tractor beams maybe?

We don't know yet what that card is going to say.

I think the real beauty of this card is how cheap it is. It is something you can add to any squad assuming you already have the ships that can carry it, and if you never get to, or never need to use it, it's not really a waste.

The thing is, against the ships you really want it to hit, like Soontir Fel, you're going to struggle to hit anyway with only 3 attack dice. If I had to choose between 1 damage or -1 agility against our favourite 35 pointer, I'd almost always choose the damage. A 3 attack dice ship just isn't going to hit him often enough.

On the flip side, pairing this with a swarm of 2 attack dice ships makes range 3 engagements not as useless.

Defenders with the Title not withstanding, the ship that fires it is giving up precious damage, I feel this was designed with a high PS, mostly utility ship in mind, like Serissu.

They should have reversed it.

IF the target successfully evades it all, it gets a token.

Because right now it's useless against foes it's supposedly was intended to scare.

the "I have 4 evades and a shitton of tokens" type of foes

I would imagine Brobot builds will include this as well.

The only thing that could be hidden is probably clarification on what multiple tokens do or maybe how large ships are affected such as requiring two tokens which all disappear at the end phase.

I assure you, that is not "the only thing" that could be hidden. But even "if" it is, the Tractor Beam still has a place since it is only 1 point. At that price, you don't have to build a list around it. Just put your spare point into it and use it if it helps at the time.

I'm going to have to agree with KinectOperator on this one, there's at least half the card that isn't visible and that seems like a lot of space to clarify "discard excess tokens at end of round". All we know right now is that the attack dishes out a token and reduces agility.

From what we can see, giving up an attack to reduce the agility for the rest of your squad at least has potential. Not gamebreaking potential by any means but enough to make it worth tossing onto a ship with an unused cannon slot for 1 point. Which is really what we want from a new wave - more options to do more interesting things with list-building and flying.

So what does it do for MistHunter besides act as a 1pt tax? Curiouser and curiouser.

Achieve maximum thematics?

Also: obviously eats up the cannon slot, so not just a point tax as well as an opportunity cost. They want to make sure you REALLY want that barrel roll.

The Mist Hunter doesn't have a Cannon slot. The only reason it can equip the Tractor Beam is because the title says it can.

I am going to have to squeeze this into my Vader and 2 Defenders list. Vader strips tokens then the Defenders clean up the mess. A tokenless -2 Agility ship is a sitting duck.

They should have reversed it.

IF the target successfully evades it all, it gets a token.

Because right now it's useless against foes it's supposedly was intended to scare.

the "I have 4 evades and a shitton of tokens" type of foes

would have been a fun mechanic, I'll give you that