While I do really like Attanni mind link, and I'm excited about its potential, I think people are understating how crippling red maneuvers are. Not only can you perform only one red maneuver per group of linked minds, but unless they are performing a green maneuver and activate after the red maneuver, then they'll end the turn stressed and then and be unable to perform a red maneuver next turn either.

So essentially, if any ship needs to do a red maneuver, every other ship should really, really try to do a green maneuver. Otherwise it's one K-turn every other turn for the whole group.

And I think you're completely overstating how crippling red maneuvers are. All the problems you highlight are much less of an issue when you run the Mindlink on ships with the same pilot skill, and all these issues can be controlled by the player. If anything, Attanni Mindlink makes red maneuvers LESS crippling as you can still potentially receive a focus token the turn you do it.

Say for example you have 4 Black Sun Aces with Attanni Mindlink. One needs to pull a 5-K. You activate that ship LAST.

Two of the first three ships take Target Lock.

One of them takes Focus, and all four get the focus token.

THEN the K-turner activates, and all four ships take a stress token.

The following turn, you can either do green moves on however many ships as you want to continue to double up on actions (i.e. 1 does a green move and takes the focus action, all four ships receive the token, then the other ships do green moves and take Target Lock), OR you can do a green move with just one of your four ships, take the Focus action and all four benefit. You're not tied into doing green moves for everyone if stressed, UNLESS you want to double up on actions.

At the end of the day, if one Mindlinked ship manages to clear it's stress, they're ALL getting a Focus token.

A mass AML squad seems to be a good choice for 3 large debris fields. As long as the first ship to move performs a green, clears stress, and Focuses, everybody else can just blitz through without much risk.

I'm thinking about trying 4 black sun aces with the mindlink just to see how it works out in play. You'd be limited to 1 k-turn a turn but you'd get some serious action economy.

Wait can't you only get one of each? Card says if you don't have one already. You only get a max of one focus and one stress token.

https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/0b/39/0b39e966-6e07-4f3a-8178-336b1f7fa511/attanni-mindlink.png

Edit: which means a stresshog would only cause you to stress just the one ship twice and all the others once.

Wait can't you only get one of each? Card says if you don't have one already. You only get a max of one focus and one stress token.

Only one of each from the card, yes. But you can get others from the pilot's actions; they can do a focus action of their own, or get stress of their own.

A mass AML squad seems to be a good choice for 3 large debris fields. As long as the first ship to move performs a green, clears stress, and Focuses, everybody else can just blitz through without much risk.

Without much risk? They all get double stressed, that sounds p. risky, unless they all do green moves, at which point they might as well not have bothered with the debris and just taken and avoided the smallest rocks. They just have a single focus to alleviate it.

Funny how nobody is talking about Mindlinking IG-88; it was my first thought for the upgrade. Between IG-88B and FCS you've got pretty consistent offence regardless, and Mindlink can toss a Focus around really very handily. TL+F HLC shots are absolutely brutal and I feel like the consistency of Mindlink can provide more hits over time than Crackshot.

IGB performs a 3 Sloop, stressing itself and IGC. IGC performs a 3-Bank, clearing its stress, and Focussing to slap a token on both ships. They can trade off green/red moves like this all game and both ships have a Focus every single turn. You need some pretty solid planning and a good approach but I think you can get more return out of this than any other 1-point EPT so far!

A mass AML squad seems to be a good choice for 3 large debris fields. As long as the first ship to move performs a green, clears stress, and Focuses, everybody else can just blitz through without much risk.

Without much risk? They all get double stressed, that sounds p. risky, unless they all do green moves, at which point they might as well not have bothered with the debris and just taken and avoided the smallest rocks. They just have a single focus to alleviate it.

Hmm... Forgot double stacking stress somehow. Woops.

It will be useful but you will need to plan your maneuvers/actions carefully.

I envision a scenario like this:

Imagine a GS A Wing Swarm

Ship 1: red maneuver, stress, assign stress to ships with AML

Ship 2: green maneuver, shed stress, focus, assign focus to ships with AML

Ship 3: green maneuver, shed stress, focus, assign focus to ships with AML

Now you have 1 ship with stress and 2 focus tokens, and 2 ships with no stress and 2 focus tokens

or

Ship 1: non-red maneuver, focus, assign focus to ships with AML

Ship 2: non-red maneuver, focus, assign focus to ships with AML

Ship 3: red maneuver, stress, assign stress to ships with AML

Now you have 3 ships with 2 focus and 1 stress.

An opposing stresshog would severely handicap this type of list and since it's so prevalent I don't expect to see a lot of AML.

No, you have 2 ships with a focus and a stress and one with 2 focuses and a stress. Mindlink doesn't assign a token to someone that already has one.

This is how it would actually look:

Ship 1: non-red maneuver, focus, assign focus to ships with AML

Ship 2: non-red maneuver, focus, tries to assign focus to ships with AML but everyone already has one.

Ship 3: red maneuver, stress, assign stress to ships with AML

Thanks, my mistake but replace the second focus with an evade and you get 2 actions and no stress for 2 ships, 2 actions 1 stress for the 3rd or 2 and 1 for all three. PTL on all 3 would be 9 points.

I think I corrected my post to reflect the proper sequence/tokens.

AML doesn't work with Evade tokens, only Focus and Stress.

A mass AML squad seems to be a good choice for 3 large debris fields. As long as the first ship to move performs a green, clears stress, and Focuses, everybody else can just blitz through without much risk.

Without much risk? They all get double stressed, that sounds p. risky, unless they all do green moves, at which point they might as well not have bothered with the debris and just taken and avoided the smallest rocks. They just have a single focus to alleviate it.

Hmm... Forgot double stacking stress somehow. Woops.

No, I think your concept there is fine Biophysical. So long as you have one ship that avoids the debris, moves first and focuses, the rest are free to fly where/when they want to and they'll will still get a focus token.

Critical hits will still hurt, mind you (never tell me the odds)

While I do really like Attanni mind link, and I'm excited about its potential, I think people are understating how crippling red maneuvers are. Not only can you perform only one red maneuver per group of linked minds, but unless they are performing a green maneuver and activate after the red maneuver, then they'll end the turn stressed and then and be unable to perform a red maneuver next turn either.

So essentially, if any ship needs to do a red maneuver, every other ship should really, really try to do a green maneuver. Otherwise it's one K-turn every other turn for the whole group.

And I think you're completely overstating how crippling red maneuvers are. All the problems you highlight are much less of an issue when you run the Mindlink on ships with the same pilot skill, and all these issues can be controlled by the player. If anything, Attanni Mindlink makes red maneuvers LESS crippling as you can still potentially receive a focus token the turn you do it.

Say for example you have 4 Black Sun Aces with Attanni Mindlink. One needs to pull a 5-K. You activate that ship LAST.

Two of the first three ships take Target Lock.

One of them takes Focus, and all four get the focus token.

THEN the K-turner activates, and all four ships take a stress token.

The following turn, you can either do green moves on however many ships as you want to continue to double up on actions (i.e. 1 does a green move and takes the focus action, all four ships receive the token, then the other ships do green moves and take Target Lock), OR you can do a green move with just one of your four ships, take the Focus action and all four benefit. You're not tied into doing green moves for everyone if stressed, UNLESS you want to double up on actions.

At the end of the day, if one Mindlinked ship manages to clear it's stress, they're ALL getting a Focus token.

I understand the action economy is still great even when they're stressed, that's not my point. My point is action economy is kind of meaningless if you're facing the wrong direction.

A clever player will be able to abuse how incredibly long an Attanni squadron takes to turn around.

I understand the action economy is still great even when they're stressed, that's not my point. My point is action economy is kind of meaningless if you're facing the wrong direction.

A clever player will be able to abuse how incredibly long an Attanni squadron takes to turn around.

That's down to the Attanni player to manage, isn't it? Not flying in formation will help. Unlike Howlrunner, Serissu etc here are no range restrictions on the ability, so there's no reason to fly in a rigid formation.

K-Turns don't (or shouldn't) happen as often as you're suggesting they do. Repositioning with a K-Turn can very useful in a pinch, but careful movement planning usually yields more dividends.

And again, even if you absolutely need to K-Turn, make sure that ship activates last and you're fine. And all it takes is ONE green maneuver the following turn - from ANY of your ships - and you're getting your focus again.

Honestly, the advantages on this upgrade outweigh the disadvantages by an entire order of magnitude, so long as you plan ahead and think about what you're doing.

And again, even if you absolutely need to K-Turn, make sure that ship activates last and you're fine.

I agree with you but would like to point out that generally speaking (there will be exceptions), the most efficient order of activation (assuming all mindlinked ships are same PS) will be:

1) white moves

2) red move (can only do one)

3) green moves

This ensures that some of your ships are always getting more than one token. So don't activate your k-turns last if you have any other mindlinked ships making green moves...

I understand the action economy is still great even when they're stressed, that's not my point. My point is action economy is kind of meaningless if you're facing the wrong direction.

A clever player will be able to abuse how incredibly long an Attanni squadron takes to turn around.

That's down to the Attanni player to manage, isn't it? Not flying in formation will help. Unlike Howlrunner, Serissu etc here are no range restrictions on the ability, so there's no reason to fly in a rigid formation.

K-Turns don't (or shouldn't) happen as often as you're suggesting they do. Repositioning with a K-Turn can very useful in a pinch, but careful movement planning usually yields more dividends.

And again, even if you absolutely need to K-Turn, make sure that ship activates last and you're fine. And all it takes is ONE green maneuver the following turn - from ANY of your ships - and you're getting your focus again.

Honestly, the advantages on this upgrade outweigh the disadvantages by an entire order of magnitude, so long as you plan ahead and think about what you're doing.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. As I stated at the outset, I think Attanni mind link has potential to be a very good card and I do think it is AWESOME thematically.

But I really don't feel the advantages out weigh the disadvantages by an order of magnitude, as you said, it is up to the Attanni player. If you make a mistake with this card, the disadvantages can absolutely outweigh the advantages.

Having 2 focus tokens does not make up for Corran Horn behind you and you can't turn around. And if you're taking 3+ mind links, you're probably hovering around PS 5 and on ships with little repositioning power. It isn't a difficult squad to outmaneuver and it is not forgiving whatsoever to correct a bad position.

I look forward to getting my hands on it, but I think to fly it well requires a level of critical thinking that you don't seem to appreciate. This card is no Crackshot, it's not universally good.

There will likely be more situations where you're thrilled to have it, but you will absolutely lose games because you have that card. I don't think we're doing anyone a service by dismissing the impacts of stress on an entire squadron as so rare they don't bear considering.

I think this might go quite well with the new imperial veterans tie defender generics with the ept. The white k-turn minimizes the impact of attani mindlink stress drawback. With x7 title, move first defender, get evade and take focus action. Other defender gets tl focus and evade. That's not so bad.

I think this might go quite well with the new imperial veterans tie defender generics with the ept. The white k-turn minimizes the impact of attani mindlink stress drawback. With x7 title, move first defender, get evade and take focus action. Other defender gets tl focus and evade. That's not so bad.

The AML only works on stress and evade and, more importantly, is Scum Only.

The AML only works on stress and evade and, more importantly, is Scum Only.

Stress and focus

Yeah I'm mainly excited to use it thematically. And not in a Star Wars way.

This thread's title REALLY put me back on a Pacific Rim kick and I WANT drift compatible Jumpmasters going around killing Kaiju (cough...the Emperor...)

Yeah I'm mainly excited to use it thematically. And not in a Star Wars way.

This thread's title REALLY put me back on a Pacific Rim kick and I WANT drift compatible Jumpmasters going around killing Kaiju (cough...the Emperor...)

I love that there's a slice of people with an overlapping interest in both Pacific Rim and Star Wars

On topic though; I'm looking through the list of PS5 scum with EPTs and noticed several of what I would like to call "Attanni Squad Leaders" which in addition to the movement planning advantages of everyone at the same PS, can get focus regardless of stress, and pass it around to their Attanni squadmates:

- Palob Godalhi steals one at the start of combat and spreads it through the squad, or just doubles up for himself if someone got to take a focus action

- Guri gets one for being close to the action and again spreads it or doubles up

- Kaa'to Leeachos can grab a focus from an ally outside the link and spread it through

- then there's the lower PS4 Manaroo who can give a focus away and, if linked with the reciever, gets one right back

the short list of "Attanni Squad" generic PS5 w/ EPT to fly beside:

- Tansarii Point Vet at 18 points (with mindlink installed) can fly 4 next to Palob with 7 points left for upgrades

- Black Sun Ace at 24 points (with mindlink installed) 3 of these come to the same 72 points as 4 Tansarii Vets, but gets you more firepower and hull spread between one fewer ships

- Mandalorian Merc at 36 points (with mindlink installed) x2 is 72 points (what's going on here?) gets you another 5hp over BS Aces but drops your total attack and further reduces the total ship count by one more

I can't wait to try an Attanni Squad on the table!