There are a lot of routes to stopping action-dependent spike damage, and I hope any counter is not ordnance specific. It would be sad if we spent all this time waiting for it to be good only for it to be countered a wave later.

A good meta can always be better.

The best meta would be this one, sans Palp Aces. That's the real NPE power list IMO.

This meta sans palp aces would be a completely different meta.

One where you could fly ships with 2 attack dice and not autolose to a Fel player.

"Lol, squishy tie fighters."

- 6-0 torp scouts

At least the TIEs can damage the scouts. They can also inexpensively bid to PS 3+.

Against a Fel player my opponent will just convert 3 blanks to an evade, or god roll on defense the one or two chances I have per game to block Fel and shoot him.

I think you should consider that maybe DICE are an NPE for you.

It's not getting screwed over by, "soontir rolled triple evade trolololo", it's getting screwed over by the guaranteed damage mitigation he gets that turn average or even straight blank results into something that can just tank 3/3 and 4/4 hit shots reliably. Being able to convert 3 blanks into 3 evades, or 3 blanks and a focus into 4 is the very opposite of getting screwed by dice luck, that's just being doomed.

And the times you do successfully block and get a ship in range 1-2 of soontir? If he god rolls then your entire game is over. Once he isn't blocked he is invincible again next turn. If aF Fire Spray or TIE Fighter gets lucky max evade results on a crucial turn, there is always next turn to try again. Block a Soontir and hit him with a 4 hit homing missile at range 2? Triple evade naturally and Palpatine. Game over.

The direct hard-counter to this is a punch in the face.

Do not fret, fellow pilots, the imperial veterans will soon arrive to bring swift justice to these outlaws

This unfortunately seems to be par for the course for FFG. Overall, their design is great, but I know when I played Netrunner, they had a tendency to print 'silver bullet' cards as a solution to something that was dominating the meta. You were required to put it in your deck or else get hosed in a tournament, but against every other archetype it was wasted space.

that sounds incredibly dumb, actually

you can't go around with situational, direct hard counters to very specific builds without releasing incredibly situational upgrades with very little overall utility. Do too much of that and you risk turning the game into match-up rng rather than an actual game about maneuvers

Assumes that this direct hard counter has limited value otherwise. Unjustified.

justified

direct hard-counter implies the upgrade was designed to limit the opposing build in some manner

I am not sure what upgrade you could make to counter scouts, whose strength lies in their (just recently viable) ordnance, which is kind of unique atm. It sure as **** isn't their plinky PWTs, for which we already have thrusters

I'm expecting autothrusters for secondary weapons including cannons. This would also directly nerf TLT. All this means is you shouldn't spam 3 scouts with ordnance. You need to diversify your list.

hell no, way too situational

thrusters at least work globally with the "Beyond range 2" trigger, the hypothetical upgrade is just a match-up skew

not to mention TLTs don't need counters when you can ordnance boat your way through them

secondly, if you can't spam you're already losing diversity. As many forms of lists as possible should be viable at any given them, though given you only ever see 1 interceptor (soontir) 1 advance (vader) 1 FO (Omega L) 1 TAPs (Inquisitor) etc. it may be beyond FFG at this point. Personally prefer having a bumpmaster in there.

the only way to create a general counter is some kind of burst defensive buff, which will probably be abused to hell and back on high mobility, defensive ships

only acceptable one I can imagine is an Action: discard on use immunity for a turn w/weapon's disabled

A good meta can always be better.

The best meta would be this one, sans Palp Aces. That's the real NPE power list IMO.

It's obvious you like scouts however tournament data disagrees with your opinion. Honestly something like autothrusters but works for all secondary weapons that any ship can use in the modification slot would do wonders to improve the game by preventing people from spamming scouts with missiles. Heaven forbid you diversify. The palp aces at least use three different ships and have like 8 varients. You have shuttles including yorr, interceptors like Jax and Fel, advanced usually vadar, tie fo like omega leader, adv prototype like inquisitor, and tie ln including wampa. Honestly you are lumping nearly every imperial ship into aces which simply is wrong. Why not just say you hate imperial builds. Or is it just the fel, vadar, palp mobile you hate so much? Because that list alone hasn't done better then 3x uboats.

How long has it been since there was a good Imp list without PS8+ or PTL stuffed into every hole?

Simple. Engine Upgrade or boost.

My guess is that the counter will be mag pulse warheads

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Magnetic_pulse

Mag Pulse Warhead (4 pts)

Type: Torpedo (or perhaps Missile)

Range 2-3

Attack: 4

Attack (target lock): Spend your target lock and discard this card to perform this attack.

If this attack hits, the defender and each ship at Range 1 of it receives 1 Weapons Disabled token. Then cancel all dice results.

that mag pulse warhead would only succeed in making torp boats many times more potent (because it's overpowered as hell)

I wonder which faction will get hosed this wave. Whatever ship the fix is in will not have to be good or effective in multiples

Well... I believe scum getting 2 ships everyone else gets 1..

that mag pulse warhead would only succeed in making torp boats many times more potent (because it's overpowered as hell)

Maybe. I haven’t play tested it, I was just having a bit of fun. Note though that it will only affect ships not having shot yet this round and don't do any actual damage, so it will only affect ps 1-2 and non-initiative 3 ships if put on scouts, but whatever.

I find the worship of this game and it's supposed balance to be wildly annoying. Don't get me wrong, it's generally fun, but it is NOT well-balanced from even a fundamental level. I REALLY wish they would actually playtest this game thoroughly rather than having wave after wave of broken or useless and then a fix, but I guess that's the business model that drives sales. Broken stuff sells out (e.g., no one would have bothered with StarVipers if not for Autothrusters, no one would have cared about K-Wings without TLT), and then you can package a "fix" later for the over-costed/useless stuff to sell even more. Literally every meta has been defined by the most imbalanced units in the game rising to the forefront and then an over-adjustment to direct counters to that imbalanced build. I, for one, am really tired of the yo-yo effect and how, roughly, at any given time 80%+ of my collection is useless in a competitive list. It would really be novel if there were, say, a dozen archetypes at a given time rather than 3 that rock/paper/scissor each other. At the cancer tourney tomorrow, let me assure you, I will be overjoyed to play nothing but Jumpmasters, Palp Aces, and TLTs. YAY.

I agree with you exactly about the overpowered stuff being obvious and always used each wave and meta. I really wish they would play test more.

These fixes for everything are just **** obnoxious nowadays. To fly like an old ship you gotta buy like 2 different sets in the future.

A good meta can always be better.

The best meta would be this one, sans Palp Aces. That's the real NPE power list IMO.

This meta sans palp aces would be a completely different meta.

One where you could fly ships with 2 attack dice and not autolose to a Fel player.

"Lol, squishy tie fighters."

- 6-0 torp scouts

At least the TIEs can damage the scouts. They can also inexpensively bid to PS 3+.

Against a Fel player my opponent will just convert 3 blanks to an evade, or god roll on the one or two chances I have per game to block Fel and shoot him.

I gotta figure out how to convert three blanks to an evade...

Palpatine, Autothrusters, Evade. #JustFelThings

Point of order: the evade token doesn't change a blank, it adds an evade die.

Would that mean that spending an evade token is modifying dice? Not actually changing the dice thrown, but adding an evade die? If so, then evade tokens suck when Omega Leader is locked onto you and shooting.

Welcome to Omega Leader. A great asset to any imperial ace list. Average damage against Fel with Focus and Evade Tokens + SD and AT at Range 1 = 1.64, at Range 2 still on average 1

http://xwing-miniatures.wikia.com/wiki/Modifying_Dice

Well... I believe scum getting 2 ships everyone else gets 1..

more likely everyone getting 1

or all getting 2 and rtebels getting 1 (because they are +1 ove others)

Well... I believe scum getting 2 ships everyone else gets 1..

more likely everyone getting 1

or all getting 2 and rtebels getting 1 (because they are +1 ove others)

We should bet... something fun.... I bet u a jujube. . Red...

I thought I heard something on that recently... that Rebels will probably always have more ships... maybe I was dreaming of a podcast... I've listened to soooo many lately

Maybe something that swaps colors for movements.

I thought I heard something on that recently... that Rebels will probably always have more ships... maybe I was dreaming of a podcast... I've listened to soooo many lately

Yea they did sort of leak some ship count stuff in the nova interview. But it was a "by wave 9 I think scum will be caught up" kind of quote, so we don't know if that includes a scum epic or aces pack or something similar.

The only reason Rebels are ahead right now is because of the Ghost/Attack Shuttle combo. So my guess is it's just likely to be status quo until they come up with a reason/ship that will do the same for the other factions.

I would like some cards like this:

"Overheated Ammunition"

Illicit type

ATT 3, Range 1-2

ATTACK: Discard this card to attack 1 ship.

If this attack hits, cancel all dice results. Roll a red dice for each Torpedo, Missile and Bomb Upgrades. On a hit result, discard the upgrade card, on a crit, discard the upgrade card and deal one face-up damage card on the ship.

"EMF Emitter"

Sensor type, dual card.

Side A:

All ships within 1-2 range may not use Torpedoes, Missiles and/or deploy Bombs. At the end of each round, and flip this upgrade card.

Side B:

Action: Put an activation token on this card.

Action: Discard an activation token and flip this upgrade card.

Is it going to be a counter to Scouts, or a counter to ordnance, like "flares" or something? Because I'd like to see ordnance become a thing and I'd hate for it to have very cheap hard counters the second it becomes viable.

Eh, if it's a hard counter that eats up a Missile slot like Flares probably would, that wouldn't be so bad.

It maybe like ECM upgrade. Chimps turns a die into a hit. Maybe ECM turns a hit to a blank/eye. Seems like a direction they may go.

I really hope this supposed counter is not against ordnance in general. Its quite difficult to make ordnance work. And some ships and some pilots like e.g. Lt Blount mostly rely on ordnance.

Like I said I hope its autothrusters but for all secondary weapons with no range 3 bonus. This directly nerf people who spam TLT or Ordnance. However comes at the cost of a precious mod slot. It's obvious ffg wants you to diversify lists and they want you to rely on maneuvering. Not spamming turrets or cannons or missles. Diversify your lists!!! Because spamming the same ship just shows its broken.

I disagree. (Mini)Swarms of TIEs, Z95s, Scyks [hear hear ], X-wing, Y-wings, Khiraxz should be as viable as a list of purely aces. And are more realistically.